I have a dream. And a goal. Lots of writing goals. But I need your help to get there.

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.

Even Google Bard has read One Bad Cat!

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.

New Book Title: One Bad Cat by Mandy Webster

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.

Summer Writing Challenge Check-in: Week 7 | Are we there yet?

How can I be expected to write anything when The Big Bang Theory is on? | Cast of characters in The Big Bang Theory. From left: Howard Wolowitz, Leonard Hofstadter, Penny, Sheldon Cooper and Rajesh Koothrappali. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

I have been on a writing roll this past week. I continued with the experiment I started last week and have managed to write one full chapter every single day!

I almost didn’t make it yesterday. I had suffered a bout of insomnia the night before and hadn’t fallen asleep until after 2 a.m. When I woke at 8:00 yesterday morning, I was so exhausted, I just couldn’t seem to function. I spent the first half of the day crashed out on the couch beating myself up over the fact that I hadn’t written my day’s chapter yet. Then I spent the afternoon thinking about it while hanging out with my kids, looking through old photo albums.

10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge: Day 2

Day 2 Prompt: Make 10 Writing Related Confessions

Today’s writing blogger challenge prompt might be a hard one. I am sitting here racking my brain and not coming up with more than one or two. So, here’s what I’m going to do: Let it simmer. I am going to simply leave my Word doc open and run back to write these down as I think of them.

Hopefully I’ll have come up with ten by the time I need to post this. Otherwise, I may end up posting a partial list –OR- using the alternative prompt, which is to take a blogging break for the day. Nah, I’m not taking a day off!

Okay, here’s my list:

10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge: Day 1

Welcome to the 10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge.

I’ve been reading Vikki Thompson’s responses to Hunting Down Writing’s 10 Day Writing Blogger Challenge over on her blog, The View Outside and decided to partake in the challenge myself. So, without further ado, here is my response to the Day 1 Writing Prompt:

For this first post, I chose to use the alternative prompt, as I believe I have already shared a pitch of my current novel project.

Here’s the first prompt: Discuss whether writers should blog about writing.

And my answer: YES! I think writers should blog about writing for a variety of reasons.

What’s in a (my) name?

My ex-husband’s father’s girlfriend took this picture of me recently. Do I look like an Amanda or a Mandy to you?

When my mom was pregnant with me, she wanted to name me Mandy. I think this was around the time Barry Manilow’s song, Mandy came out. My dad said there was no way he was naming his kid Mandy. So they settled for Amanda, which happens to also be a family name.

Then I was born, and my dad was the first person to call me Mandy rather than Amanda. The nickname stuck, and I have been Mandy my whole life to everyone but my grandmothers, some schoolteachers, and an ex-boyfriend who insisted on calling me Amanda despite the fact that it irritated the hell out of me (only special people get to call me Amanda, and he just wasn’t that special.)

When I set up my online portfolio and blog a couple of years ago, I set it up using the name Mandy because that’s what everyone calls me. Now that I am seriously considering actually getting something published, I think I want to publish under the more formal name, Amanda L. Webster.

Here’s the problem:

Summer Writing Challenge Check-in: Week 5 | I just don’t know how to say no

This is my new baby kitty. Her name is Lulu La Gata. (La Gata is Spanish for “the cat.)

I should consider changing my Friday Writing Challenge Check-in series to “This Week’s Excuse for Not Writing.” Seriously, people, if I keep this up, I’m going to have to stop calling myself a writer. Maybe I should change my title to “blogger” since I can at least manage that.

Anyway, last Friday I headed out to Illinois for a huge family campout (huge as in somewhere around 60 to 70 family members showed up.) Of course, I brought my notebooks. Of course, I was too busy camping and visiting with family to write in them.

We camped until Sunday morning, then went to my parents’ house for a couple of days. Then I made a stop at my sister’s house a couple of hours north of my parents. I was planning to come home Wednesday, but she begged me to stay another day since she was off Wednesday and we could actually hang out and see each other. Once school starts, I’ll hardly get to see any of my family at all until next summer, so I couldn’t say no.

Narrowing my focus: Choosing a niche and a time frame for my story

How do you decide which shelf your book will finally end up on at your local book store? | Novels in a Polish bookstore (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Since I began writing my current novel almost one full year ago, I have often struggled with determining which genre my story falls into. My thesis adviser pushed me (a lot!) in the direction of Young Adult (YA,) but it just never felt right to me. Although my protagonist is seventeen years old at the outset of the novel, the story will unfold over the course of several years and will include a failed marriage and other “adult” themes that rule out the possibility of selling this novel to a YA audience.

Another element I am struggling with is my time line. Exactly how many years should my protagonist be married to her jerk husband before she escapes? I need her to stick it out for at least a few years. But then, how do I write her through those years and get to the next big event without boring my reader?

This morning, I was reading a blog post by David Fernandez of DLFWriting titled, Becoming a Storyteller: New Adult, or, Wizards and Vampires and Sex! Oh My! that gave me one of those Aha! moments where everything suddenly becomes so clear. In this post, Fernandez discusses the growth of New Adult (NA) fiction, which is aimed at the previously ignored age group of 18 – 25 year olds.

Studying the four-part story structure

I wonder if someone will one day turn my crappy apartment into a shrine to my writing? | William Faulkner’s Underwood Universal Portable sits in his office at Rowan Oak, which is now maintained by the University of Mississippi in Oxford as a museum. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The second half of my novel is shaping up to be the toughest to figure out. The first half seemed to flow straight out of my subconscious mind and onto the page without much thought or effort on my part. Which is strange, considering I had no idea where I was going with my story at the time.

Now that I know where I want to go, I can’t seem to figure out how to get there. A recent Writer’s Digest blog post titled, How to Structure a Killer Novel Ending got me thinking about my story’s structure again.

In the early stages of writing my novel, I considered my overall structure many times and in various forms. It’s something I might not have done if not for the fact that I was taking an advanced novel writing course and was forced to do so by my professor. I am glad she did though, because that intense examination of structure really helped me get my story moving.