I grew up in Maine and lived there until 2009. During some of that time, I lived within 20 miles of the city of Lewiston. A city which is now internationally known for the worst, most painful of reasons. My heart and thoughts are with those affected by last week’s tragedy.
Category: Uncategorized
New Gift for Subscribers!
Do you want to see how Tobias Rogan became a werewolf and rose to become Alpha of Boston North Pack? Tobias’s origin story, Fresh Meat, is now available in PDF format for free!
Fresh Meat was originally published in 2012 by Featherweight Press, a children’s/young adult imprint of MLR Press. MLR was the original publisher of the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series, so when I decided to write Tobias’s story as a young adult novel, I approached Featherweight to publish it. Because at the time I was still trying to keep Karenna Colcroft *completely* separate from my young adult persona Jo Ramsey, the publisher and I agreed on the explanation that “Jo Ramsey” was a fan of “Karenna Colcroft” who’d gotten Karenna’s permission to write Tobias’s story. I’m outing myself now: Jo Ramsey and Karenna Colcroft are both me.
When I started rereleasing the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat novels, I debated what to do with Fresh Meat. I wanted the story to be available, but currently I have no plans to self-publish my young adult stuff, since that’s a harder sell than romance. (I may reconsider that over time, but right now, I am focusing solely on romance.) But recently, as I realized I’d had the same giveaway short story for over a year, I decided to make Fresh Meat the new giveaway.
Until May 2024, the e-version of Fresh Meat, revised and re-edited, is available exclusively to those who sign up to receive it. Due to technology disagreeing with me, Fresh Meat is available only in PDF format. (The file is hosted through this website, and the website won’t allow me to upload EPUB format.) Fresh Meat does include content that is potentially triggering for some readers, so I have an alternative story available for those who want to sign up for my mailing list but don’t want to read Fresh Meat; instructions on how to get the alternate story are in the email you’ll receive when you sign up.
To get your copy of Fresh Meat (or the alternative short story “Christmas Eve Snow”), just fill out the brief form at https://karennacolcroft.com/get-your-free-story/. This will add you to my monthly newsletter list; you can unsubscribe at any time.
Tired of constant fighting at home, fifteen-year-old Tobias Rogan dreams of getting out. Of never having to care for his younger sisters again. Of living a life far from New Hampshire. And when Tobias meets Larry Denning, he believes he’s found his chance.
But in one afternoon, Tobias’s life is turned upside-down . Larry attacks him. Tobias awakens to find that he’s been changed into a werewolf. The local pack Alpha takes him in, and Tobias begins to adjust to his new life as the pack searches for Larry to punish him for breaking shifter law in changing a minor.
Then Larry changes another boy and dumps him at the Alpha’s home as a warning to Tobias. Tobias is no longer willing to wait for the pack to find Larry. He sets a plan in motion—a plan for revenge.
This book was previously published in 2012. This version has been revised and re-edited from the original. It includes an inappropriate relationship between a 15-year-old boy and a man who claims to be 22; on-page emotional abuse and an incident of physical abuse; an on-page though vaguely described incident of SA; and a werewolf killing another werewolf. Some readers may find this content triggering.
Exhausted
A few weeks ago, I started a new job. Within the first week, I realized it was more than I would be able to handle owing to the amount of physical involvement. I had told the employment agency I was hired through that I can’t do a lot of standing and walking, and yet they put me in a preschool classroom. If you know anything at all about preschool-aged kids, you know that sitting is not a thing adults get to do often when preschoolers are around! So after a week and a half of trying, I gave my notice and said I would stay until they found someone else, but that I wanted to be finished within two weeks.
It’s been a week and a half, and as of yesterday, they haven’t replaced me yet. I’ve been asked to work another full week. I agreed but told them very emphatically (and barely suppressing a couple of swear words) that I will do ONE AND ONLY ONE more week, and after that I don’t care if they’ve replaced me or not, my health is more important.
I love the kids I’m working with, and I get along well with ALL of the adults I’m working with. (Which is VERY rare for me; I struggle with social skills and social cues, and usually when I’ve had jobs in the past, I’ve been the odd one out and people either barely tolerated me or full-on bullied me. Yes, including jobs in public schools.) But I have physical and mental health conditions that mean this job simply isn’t a viable thing for me, and I’ve had to acknowledge that. Meanwhile, over the past week, at least four kids have come down sick, including one who was at school with an active fever. So I’m feeling kind of blah and seriously overtired and not really in the mood for writing the blog post I’d planned.
On Thursday, I’ll be releasing Fill the Empty Spaces! It will be available for Kindle, including Kindle Unlimited, and in paperback. This is one of the books that I’m planning to bring “wide” (in other words, available through a variety of sources) in spring 2024, but for the next six months or so, it will be Amazon exclusive. The Kindle preorder is live now. I’ll share more about the book and the psychopomp involved in it in my next post. Right now, I think I need a nap…
A Lot Going On…
Over the coming weeks, I might be blogging less often. I have a lot of things happening in my personal life that are going to be taking time and attention, and since I have a finite amount of time and attention, I have to pull it from somewhere. Blogging is one of the things that might get less while I put more into the other stuff that’s happening. In related news, because of the other things happening as well as having paid attention to comments and thoughts from readers, I am likely to drop my newsletter back to once a month rather than the current twice-monthly mailing; I will still have two newsletters this month as I’ve agreed to host another author in the second August newsletter, but beginning in September I will probably do one newsletter per month plus a “bonus” issue for preorders.
In the next few months, I have to find a “day job,” which is a process I’ve been in for several months already with no results. All the people who say “No one wants to work anymore!” don’t seem to count those of us who *do* want to work but are physically and/or mentally unable to do certain jobs. (For example, I literally pass out if I’m on my feet for more than 30 minutes at a stretch, and sometimes 30 minutes is more than I can handle, which means any jobs that require me to stand without breaks–i.e. most retail and food service jobs–are out of the question for me.) But I’m continuing to job hunt and narrow things down to the junction of my skills/education and the jobs I’m physically and mentally capable of doing.
I’m also very likely to be moving to a new home within the next few months. There are a few factors behind this that I’d rather not go into right now, but let’s just say that while I do want to move to a quieter location (I live about 15 miles from Boston, Massachusetts, so a very urban area), *needing* to move and the timeline for moving are not entirely my choice or within my control. There are going to be a number of smaller changes involved in this big one, and in addition to the time and attention it will take, it’s going to take a lot of my mental/emotional bandwidth to handle everything. If you’ve ever moved, particularly from one state (U.S.) to another, you know that it isn’t always a simple process.
Through all of this, I am continuing to write and revise/re-edit and plan releases. I’m currently working on a novel with the working title of A Fighting Chance, which is the sequel to Chance Met (released in March of this year), and hope to have the first draft of that finished within the next couple of weeks; the book is tentatively planned for release in March 2024. I’m also at work on another round of edits for Fill the Empty Spaces, my new novel that is planned for release on October 12 of this year. I’m looking ahead to what I’ll be writing (or rewriting, or at least revising and re-editing) going forward into 2024, and I’ll make announcements about upcoming books as I firm up those plans.
I plan to still *try* to blog weekly, but life–and my mental and physical health–are my top priority. So if a week goes by without a blog post, that’s why.
And for something positive to end this post on, here’s a pair of cats.
I’m Traveling…
Last week, I journeyed to Canada to visit my kid, who is in veterinary school up here. Since I’m traveling and spending time with my kid, I’m not doing a long blog post this week. But I did want to share a picture I took on my drive up: The world’s longest covered bridge, which is in Hartland, New Brunswick. The bridge is part of a road, so people actually drive through it; I was able to drive through twice (once on my way to the bridge-side restaurant I’d chosen for lunch, and again on the way back to the highway). This bridge will quite likely show up in a book at some point!
Birthday Fundraiser
June is my birthday month, and this year I’m doing something a little different.
One of the things I do when I’m not writing is volunteering at a cat cafe near where I live in Massachusetts. This experience found its way into my novel Fill the Empty Spaces; in fact, in that book, the cats who are mentioned at the cafe where main character Del volunteers are all real-life cats who reside (or at least resided when I wrote the scenes that mention them) at the real-life cat cafe. The humans in Fill the Empty Spaces, however, do not have any real-life equivalents, just to be clear.
Anyway, I’ve been volunteering at that cafe since January. It’s a nonprofit, and most of the cats there are available for adoption, though we have a few who, due to medical concerns, will probably live out the rest of their lives at the cafe, where they can receive constant monitoring and the care they need. We have anywhere from 8-12 cats most of the time; several have been adopted since I’ve been volunteering there, but there are always others to take their place. The cafe partners with two rescue organizations in the area to bring in cats.
For my birthday this year, I’m doing a Facebook fundraiser for the cafe. If you’re inclined to provide help to feed the cats, buy them toys, and contribute to their general care, please make a donation at https://www.facebook.com/donate/654773599828408/. You can find out more about the cafe, schedule a visit, and make a direct donation to them (if you aren’t a Facebooky person) at https://www.kittycatcafema.com/.
And here’s my favorite resident of the cafe, Charlie the Sweater Cat (I am the only one who calls him that, but I’m totally trying to make it a thing), who has become a character in Fill the Empty Spaces:
Life Stuff
Cutting this week’s post VERY short because I am working on way too many things, and sometimes I need to set something aside for the sake of my mental health and well-being.
I’m still working on the first draft (which is partially edited) of Fill the Empty Spaces, because the story keeps getting longer and also the characters don’t seem to have a stopping point in mind. I might have to put my foot down. Meanwhile, Trey Damone and his son Mikey, along with Zane Wolfskin, from my Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat series and the novel Chance Met, have just made a cameo appearance…
I’m also finishing up proofreading on the re-edited version of Try the Tofu (Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat 4), which will be up for preorder June 22 and will be released July 13.
And, on the not-writing-life side, I’m working on applications for graduate school. I finished my Bachelor’s degree in 1992 and then let a combination of trauma, life circumstances (including abuse, hence the trauma), and raising my kids keep me from going any further. For over a decade now, I’ve thought about becoming a mental health counselor, and I’ve decided if I don’t make the effort now, I probably never will. So I’m applying to various Master’s degree programs to try to make this my new career. And the application process is a LOT more intensive than I anticipated, so it’s taking a LOT of my time and mental bandwidth. But it will be worth it if I get accepted.
There are other life things going on that I’m not ready to talk about yet. But all of the above plus the things I’m keeping to myself mean that I don’t have as much time or “spoons” as I would like, so I’m going to end this blog post here.
Time Management
Time management…where what often happens is my time manages me.
That’s something I’m working on, but I’m neurodivergent (I haven’t been formally diagnosed with anything, but multiple medical/mental health professionals have said that I am almost definitely autistic, along with living with Complex PTSD which also affects how my brain functions). There are numerous factors that go into my relationship with time and accomplishing things, and some of those factors fluctuate day by day. For example, I have fibromyalgia. If it’s a higher-than-typical pain day, more of my mental bandwidth goes into just being capable of things like preparing a meal or walking to the bathroom; I don’t have anything left over to focus on writing a story or doing paperwork or whatever was on that day’s agenda. If it’s a day I’m scheduled to work at the daycare center where I’ve just taken on a one-day-a-week gig, I have to get up at 4am and probably won’t be able to concentrate on anything by the time I get home at 4pm. (To clarify: I’m not working a 12-hour shift. I get up at 4 because I prefer to have time to ease into the day rather than getting up and immediately rushing out of the house; I leave a little before 7 and have to fight city-area rush hour traffic to get to the center by 8. I leave work at 3 and then have to fight the beginning of afternoon rush-hour traffic to get home.)
In addition to the “do I have the bandwidth today” thing, I also have some issues with executive functioning. I might have a task in mind but not be able to sort out where to start (e.g. do I make the spreadsheet first, or look up the info that goes on the spreadsheet and write it down and then make the spreadsheet, or…), which isn’t a case of “just figuring it out” or “making a decision,” it’s literally my brain being unable to put multiple steps of a process into the most logical and efficient order. That difficulty also crops up when it comes to determining which task of the several on my list should be done first. I do have a daily “task list” (I hate calling it a “to-do list” because then I feel crappy if I don’t get everything done), but I’ve found that trying to schedule the tasks at certain times of day leads to a further break-down of brain cooperation because I start feeling trapped, which pings one of my CPTSD buttons and can even trigger a full-on PTSD flashback/panic attack. But *not* scheduling the tasks sometimes leads to me spending 5-10 minutes just staring at the day’s list trying to decide what to do first.
This is becoming more of an issue for me because I’ve added things to my figurative plate. I’m still trying to write, though my writing brain seems to be on a bit of a break (I’ve done a couple of short stories recently and hope to start working on another novel by the end of the month). I’m promoting the books I’ve already released. As noted, I’ve started working one day a week at a daycare, and that might not be the *same* day every week; they’ve said they’ll try to let me know the week before which day they’ll want me the following week. I’m looking into going back to school for a Master’s degree in social work or mental health counseling, and yes, I am aware that going back to school with my particular combination of mental and physical health issues along with the neurodivergence and associated executive dysfunction might be a recipe for frustration, if not disaster; meanwhile, I’m trying to organize myself and my time to allow for researching different schools and their requirements and then actually completing the application processes for the schools I choose. (I’ll worry about how to manage the program itself once I’ve applied and been accepted and figured out how to finance it…)
A lot of times when I talk about trying to organize my time and tasks, I get advice like “Use a planner!” or “Just figure it out!” or “If you really wanted to do these things, you wouldn’t be having such a hard time.” None of which is helpful, and none of which even remotely acknowledges that executive dysfunction and physical or mental health conditions are not a CHOICE. I didn’t choose to be repeatedly and relentlessly traumatized at home and in other settings from pretty much birth until my mid-30s. I didn’t choose to be born to two neurodivergent parents (neurodiversity often has a genetic component). I don’t choose to feel trapped and panicky when I try to follow an intensely structured schedule, and I don’t choose to have a messed-up memory that sometimes results in me not even remembering to write things in a planner, let alone look in the planner to follow the plans. I definitely don’t choose to be unable to figure out how to sequence the steps of a process or to take longer to sequence the steps than it ultimately takes to complete the task itself…
Over the years, I’ve learned some accommodations and routines that help, but none of the issues I deal with are choices. I’ve also learned to give myself compassion and make allowances for the things that are genuinely outside of my control.
I Took a Trip
When I decided to start blogging (again… I used to have a blog on the old Karenna Colcroft site years ago), my intention was to do it weekly.
Obviously I forget sometimes. Or things happen that lead to me not writing a post.
Last week, I didn’t have a blog post because I was traveling. I took a trip to Canada to visit my kid, who is in veterinary school there. This was my fourth visit to the city and province where they’re studying, and the first time I actually stayed at their house. I really enjoyed the visit, and while I was there, I wrote two short stories! I’ll be sharing those in my next two newsletters (which will be sent out on April 13 and 27; if you haven’t subscribed, visit the “Free Short Story” page to sign up for the mailing list and get a Kyle and Tobias short story). Before I left, I finished writing the first draft of Fill the Empty Spaces, and I didn’t anticipate writing anything while I was gone. But the story deities proved me wrong!
I also spent some time visiting cousins I haven’t seen in over four years, visiting a bookstore that had offered to carry the Real Werewolves Don’t Eat Meat books (which fell through for the moment because the store has to move from its current location, so the owner isn’t currently taking any new stock), and just enjoying peace and quiet.
My mother was from Nova Scotia, and I spent a week or two there each year when I was growing up. I’ve always felt more at home in the Maritimes provinces than anywhere else. Will a move there happen? Anything’s possible; I have dual US and Canadian citizenship, so I could in theory relocate if I wanted. Meanwhile, I enjoy my visits there!
(I didn’t get any pictures this time around; this one is from a previous visit.)
Musing About Marketing
As a self-published author, the responsibility for marketing my books is entirely mine. Even years ago when I worked with publishers, much of the marketing responsibility fell on me; small publishers don’t have the budget to put a ton of marketing muscle behind their authors, especially the authors whose sales aren’t in the higher levels. Which is me.
Marketing is something I’ve always struggled with, mainly because I don’t completely understand what I’m supposed to do. “Write blogs.” Okay, but then don’t I have to get people to read the blogs? How do I do that? Likewise with “Have a newsletter.” I do have one, but that’s also something I have to market because otherwise people won’t subscribe to it. Having to market a marketing tool I’m supposed to use to market my books doesn’t make sense to me. (I do have a newsletter. If you go to the page on this site that’s titled “Free Short Story,” you can sign up to get the Real Werewolves short story “Kale and Karaoke,” and thereby be added to my newsletter mailing list.)
When I ask people what to do to market, I often get vague answers like “You know, let people know you have books.” Yes, I know that’s what I need to do… but HOW? “Post on Facebook.” Which is like whispering into a hurricane; there are literally millions of people posting about their books on Facebook.
“Connect with people.” Okay… how does one do that? This is the most frequent piece of marketing advice I receive, and it, like the concept of marketing a marketing tool, makes no sense to me. I am neurodivergent. I grew up being severely bullied and not understanding how to “human,” so to speak, and as an adult who lived through fourteen years of an abusive marriage, I never had much opportunity to develop any healthy ways of connecting to people. I didn’t learn the social intricacies most people take for granted. I’ve been told that I don’t *appear* awkward in social situations, but I sure as hell feel awkward…and anxious that the figurative mask I’ve put in place will slip and people will see how awkward I really am. Not to mention that even as an adult, even after leaving that abusive marriage in 2006, I’ve continually encountered people in work and social setting who find me an easy target for bullying. (Children are not the only ones who bully; some grown-ass adults never got over the high-school mean kid mentality.) So what little bit I understand of what “connect with people” means is something I’m disinclined to do, because it’s complicated and not something I’m even sure how to do, and there’s always the risk of more bullying. Not in favor of that.
So I bungle along trying to market my books doing the same things I generally do, because those are the things I know how to do. I join Facebook groups and sometimes interact, but I don’t form out-of-group connections with anyone. I mention my books on my profile and Facebook page, as well as (very occasionally, when I feel comfortable–which is rare) on my profile on another social networking site. I blog and send out my newsletter, and when budget allows, I book blog tours for my new releases.
I know other authors who seem very at ease with marketing, and judging from what I’ve seen about their sales, they do it quite well. I watch and try to learn from them, but at the end of the day, I’m me and have to do what I’m able to do. Which is not bringing my books the attention I would like for them. But here we are.
What marketing advice have you heard? If you’re an author, or someone who has a business or product, how do you market?