This afternoon while I was at work, I received both a text message and a voicemail message from a Chris Williams at The Spotlight Network TV. When I Googled it to confirm it was a scam, I found the above blog post from another indie author who had already been contacted by this organization and thought I’d share.
I’m not interested in paying someone to interview me on YouTube, but if someone who actually has a literary following wants to do it for free, I’m always open to requests. Just let me know!
As an author, I believe that I have a responsibility to create diverse works that do not present the world as a one-dimensional space where only certain people are welcome to exist. This can be a tricky balancing act for a white writer like myself. I want my novels to be diverse, but I also do not want to unknowingly reinforce stereotypes that I may not be aware of. I do not want to cross the line into cultural appropriation or telling stories about experiences that may not align with my own. For the past few years, I have been taking an #ownvoices approach to this subject, and I feel like I have learned a lot from the experience.
My novel If You Didn’t See It Coming is an example of an #ownvoices book even though people of color are not at the forefront of the story. It’s an accounting of marginalized characters (namely women) involved in domestic violence situations, many of which are inspired by my own experiences with a violent abuser. Although the characters are fictional, and their stories are not a retelling of my own story, it still illustrates the struggles of a marginalized group of people.
Because I was telling the story from my own perspective, the main characters are all white. There is very little intersectionality of identities because I was telling the story from the perspective of a cis white woman. However, I did consider representation and intersectionality while writing the novel. I considered making my main characters more diverse, but I didn’t feel right about trying to write what I consider to be someone else’s story.
I’ve been writing for a long time. I have published a handful of novels that honestly haven’t been widely read. It’s really hard to get people to read your books if you don’t have a big name or someone like Oprah or Reese or Jenna promoting your work. Sometimes, I can’t even give them away. Needless to say, I am not earning a living from my writing.
Before you start to feel too sorry for me, I must admit that I am no starving artist. At least not since I started working two full-time jobs (don’t worry, they’re cake jobs: it’s not as bad as it sounds). We are a dual income family, so we’re not exactly hard up for money. Unfortunately, both incomes must be earned by one person, me. I officially got my single-parent family out from under the poverty line about two years ago, and things have steadily improved for us since. Where I’m going with this is that money is no longer the issue, per se. But the time I am spending making money instead of writing is getting to be an issue.
I asked Google’s new artificial intelligence (AI) platform, Bard, if it had read my latest book, One Bad Cat, and it turns out it has! Not only that, but Bard gave it a glowing review. Here’s what it had to say:
“Yes, I have read One Bad Cat by Mandy Webster. It is a humorous fantasy novel about a psychology professor who is turned into a cat by his female coven members. The novel follows Stephen as he tries to adjust to his new life as a cat, while also plotting revenge on his coven members.
I am so tired of waking up each morning and turning on the news to yet another mass shooting in the United States. I’m even more tired of hearing people argue that “It’s a mental health problem, not a gun problem.” Oh yeah? So what are ya’ll going to do about that mental health problem, then?
I feel like I should be documenting this since I guess it’s kind of historic—even though I personally am not experiencing the level anxiety one might expect at the end of the world.
The thing is, the climate change apocalypse scientists have been warning us about for the past decade or so (or longer) is upon us, but I feel fine. Well, my asthmatic lungs don’t feel fine what with the thick smoke that has been hanging in the air all week from the wildfires in Canada—Canada! So far away from my home in central Illinois in the United States, but the fires are just that bad.
So few of us escape childhood without experiencing at least a little bit of trauma. Even when we have the best parents, things can happen to us. Children are at the whim of the adults around them, and not everyone has a child’s best interests in mind when making decisions that will affect them. Trauma experienced in childhood can rule the decisions you make as an adult. Often, the coping skills we needed as a child backfire on us when we try to apply them in the adult world. Many of us find ourselves repeating the same mistakes throughout our adult lives without ever knowing just how much our decision-making process is impacted by what happened to us in childhood.
Childhood trauma can have a profound and lasting impact on decision-making processes in adulthood. Traumatic experiences during childhood can disrupt the development of various cognitive, emotional, and social capacities, which can influence decision-making in the following ways:
In April, I graduated from the Multicultural Leadership Program offered by the Bloomington-Normal Multicultural Leadership Institute in Illinois, USA. One assignment I completed as part of the program was to write my “Inspirational Story” and share it with the class. This was a hard assignment for me mostly because, as I writer, I had a hard time deciding which story to tell. I finally decided to focus on a theme and then choose elements that would support that theme. (That’s the English teacher in me kicking in!) What follows is the story I finally wrote and shared with my class back in February of 2023:
When I was a kid, my dad loved to take us on long road trips across the country. He had a thing for state capitols, and I have visited the state capitol building of almost every single state I have ever set foot in.
On one such trip, our family of six stopped at a rest area along the interstate and piled out of our old Buick LeSabre to head to the restrooms. A flattened cigarette pack in the parking lot caught my attention, and something told me to pick it up. I had no sooner done so than I heard that other voice in my head – the nagging one that most of us have that sounds like one or both of our parents – “What are you doing? Put that down, that’s disgusting. Why are you playing with trash?”
In case you missed it, I released my latest book, One Bad Cat in 2022 with little fanfare. This was one of those pieces you write and then are afraid to share because it’s almost like lifting your skirt and showing everyone your underwear. I had a lot of fun writing One Bad Cat but was a little afraid of the reception it might receive. So, I quietly put it out there and waited.
After having a few people read the book and getting a lot of (unexpected) good feedback — from some of the most unexpected readers, no less — I took some time to add a new cover and decided to do a re-release. So here it is!
One Bad Cat by Mandy Webster
Dr. Stephen Scott is a psychology professor who dabbles in the occult. When his female coven members cast a spell to turn him into a cat, he vows to seek revenge. But first Stephen must find a way to open his safe so he can get to the charm bag that is the source of all his power.
TicTok. YouTube. Snapchat. Day in and day out, our children are rotting their brains staring at these stupid-making apps. What is the world coming to? Is it as bad as their grandparents might think? I would argue no.
The other day I was hanging out with my 16-year-old in his bedroom because – well, he’s 16: if I want to spend time with him, I go to him. I don’t wait for him to feel like coming to hang out with me. I would never see him. My son likes to play video games on his tv while simultaneously watching YouTube videos. On this day, I asked him what he was watching. He said, “Oh, it’s just some video about Satan.”
Write on the World 