MY FIRST KICKSTARTER by Kitty Bucholtz
July 9, 2024 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as kickstarter, Kitty Bucholtz, Little Miss Lovesick
I’m so excited!
On the one hand, my health issues the last couple years have led me to decide to essentially take the summer off and try to figure out how to heal (faster). I’m trying to do that—vacation starts on Saturday!
On the other hand, an opportunity came up, and it sounded fun—so I jumped in! 😅 (This might be the sort of decision that has led to my health improving so slowly!)
I’ve just created my very first Kickstarter campaign! If it funds, I’ll create a special edition of my first book, Little Miss Lovesick. The 13th anniversary edition! 😂 It’s part of Kickstarter’s July promotion for romance books called Heartstrings and Hardbacks. The page just went live today. Here is the link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kittybucholtz/littlemisslovesick
Let me know what you think. I am still adding a few more things (digital only this time since I’m just learning Kickstarter, so no paperbacks yet), and I’d love to know if there’s anything you’d like to see available that’s not there. Especially anything funny/fun. I have a few ideas.
And if you’re wondering how easy or hard it was, or why now, let me know and I’ll try to answer your question. Maybe you’ve been thinking about doing a Kickstarter for something too.
And would you do me a favor? Will you go click on the Remind Me button near the top right of the page if you don’t have time to check it out? Maybe even share on your social media? I’m a little desperate to feel that people are even a little bit excited about it. 😅 After all, I’ve never done anything like this before. 😃
Thank you so much!! 😃😍 Reply and ask me your questions!
Some of Kitty’s Books
Encouragement for Writers in Perimenopause by Kitty Bucholtz
April 9, 2024 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Perimenopause
I am having the worst time going through perimenopause. Seriously. It seems I’m angry or stressed or anxious or angry-stressed-anxious almost all the time! A year ago, I finally saw a doctor and started HRT (hormone replacement therapy—bioidentical from plants, not the old stuff from pregnant horses). Things started getting better, and I even wrote in my journal one day that I felt almost 100%.
Then it started sliding downhill again. I’ve been trying to figure out what changed, in my body or my life, to make things feel worse. The best guess my husband and I could come up with was that my doctor changed my prescription around September or October, and that seemed to be around the time I got worse.
But today, minutes before I started typing this, I spoke to another friend going through this and she said since I had Covid in October, it was probably that. I had no idea Covid could compound my symptoms! My friend is a therapist (I can’t remember if she’s a psychologist or something else) and she said, “It’s true. It can make it worse.”
CRAP!
Why am I talking about this? Because around half the people reading this blog post have recently gone through or are going through perimenopause or know someone who is. (Maybe you’re married to someone like me. I’m so sorry. My husband might start a support group.) And if your hormonal changes haven’t been kind to you, you’re not getting much writing done. And if you’re anything like me…that really bothers you.
I don’t know what it is about my personality, but pretty much every really difficult thing I’ve gone through in my life, I process by writing about it in such a way as to help others through it. So that’s what I’m doing again.
I’ve just started outlining Encouragement for Writers in Perimenopause, one of the first books that will come out in my Encouragement for Writers series. Hopefully, it will release later this year. But…the other thing perimenopause seems to steal away, for a while at least, is confidence. This seems true in every field—my architect friend and my actress friend report the same. We’re afraid to get gigs or pursue clients because we’re afraid our brains will be in “brain fog” condition just at the time we need to use them in front of the people who’ve hired us!
Five years ago, just 2019, I couldn’t find very much helpful information online. Mostly I was reading articles by (here I go, being unfairly prejudicial to a group; sorry, but at least I recognize it!)—white, male, American doctors. And nearly everything I read then pretty much said, these are the symptoms and there’s not much you can do, but don’t worry, it’ll go away in five or ten years.
WHAT?!
Talk about making me angry!
Whew…okay…taking a breath now.
But in the last few years, a lot more helpful information has become more easily available (i.e., I found more of it when Googling), mostly written by women who were struggling themselves. I even found two white, male, American doctors on YouTube who were super helpful! (Haha!)
Unfortunately, just like when we were teenagers, everyone is different. There are things that will make a small positive difference for me that might make a huge positive difference for you, and vice versa. And there are SO. MANY. SYMPTOMS. Some of them are really weird—like itchy ears! (I’ve got that, too! Only recently read it’s something enough women have complained about to add it to the list of potential issues.)
If you’re going through this and want more answers, or if you were able to figure out some helpful answers for yourself, please leave a comment and/or email me at kitty @ kittybucholtz .com. Maybe you have some useful information that can go into the book!
I’m determined to help myself and others get through this easier. And I’m doubly determined to help women and men stop being embarrassed to talk about it. We all know that we all went through hormonal changes as teenagers, and everyone accepted it as a normal part of life. We need to look at perimenopause in the same way—it’s just a normal part of life, nothing for any of us to be embarrassed about, and the more we understand it, the easier it will be to deal with it.
Imagine not wondering if your friend, sister, wife, mother, or coworker was considering divorce…or had started to hate her job…or hated your guts for some unknown reason. It’d be a wonderful life if we understood each other a little more.
So of Kitty’s Books
Belated Happy Valentine’s Day!
February 16, 2024 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as Celebrations, Family, love, Valentine's Day
Belated Happy Valentine’s Day! Or…not. It’s not for everyone, apparently only for those in love. And that leaves out a lot of people. But maybe today we can look at it as just a celebration of love. Familial love, brotherly love, these are as important as—arguably more important than—romantic love.
So, what can we do today to be more loving?
You might be thinking, well, all those people fighting can just stop. That would be a great step. (That’s what I’m thinking!) But unless you’re one of “those people,” that isn’t something you can participate in. So, what can you do today to add more love to the world?
Here are some of my ideas based on my own life circumstances:
- Text or email each of my siblings to tell them I love them.
- Text each of my nephews and niece to tell them I love them.
- Send a handwritten note to a couple of my closest friends.
- Say thank you to the person who cleans our apartment building lobby.
- Send a short email to my readers, not saying Happy Valentine’s Day but “Thanks for being part of my life.”
- Rub my husband’s shoulders instead of asking him to rub mine.
- Smile and tell the grocery store clerk to have a great day!
Funny, the first two were easy, then I had to sit here and think about what *I* can do today or this week. But once I got past the third or fourth bullet point, the ideas started flowing!
I hope you’re thinking of some things you’ll do. No matter how small it is, it will make a difference, so do it! At the very least, it will make you feel even a little bit happier to bring a little happiness to someone else.
And that’s worth it.
Have a wonderful day!
P.S. If you’d like to read a short Valentine’s Day story with superheroes on a date, a villain, and a happy ending, try My Bullheaded Superhero Valentine, a side novella in my Adventures of Lewis and Clarke superhero series. I hope it makes you smile!
More of Kitty’s Novels
Creating a Community on Ream by Kitty Bucholtz
January 9, 2024 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as building community, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Ream, subscriptions
Have you heard of Ream yet? It started in May 2023 as an alternative to Patreon especially built for fiction writers. It’s kind of a combination of a membership and a Facebook group and a blog, a way to bring your fans together and get them chatting about your books.
When it first started, I looked into it and decided it wasn’t for me yet. But it has grown a lot in the last seven months, with all kinds of features that I’m excited about. And — just a few days ago — they launched a new look for their home page that is a step closer to the discoverability we’re all craving. Keep in mind, one of the founders, Emilia Rose, writes (very) steamy romance and so right now, the site seems to be mostly authors and stories who haven’t been able to find a place on Amazon. Not Safe For Work (NSFW) content. So maybe don’t go wandering around there on your lunch hour. Haha!
Even though I’m a “clean” romance author (not a great word, as if other romance is unclean – haha! – but it’s the word used), and I’m not sure how many like me are on Ream yet, I’m super excited about the possibilities there! It will allow a free/public tier that you can use to get more followers, and then additional paid levels like on Patreon. You can offer early access to your work in progress, exclusive bonuses that you can’t get anywhere else, Zoom calls and book clubs (for your books or for others you’re reading in your genre), autographed paperbacks — really, anything your creative brain can come up with! And you’ll have the email addresses of your paid subscribers so you can stay in touch with them.
I don’t know about you, but I can get really lonely writing away in my office, wondering if anyone is reading my books and what they think of them. (Yes, I can tell if people are buying my books, but is anyone enjoying my books?) So I’m excited about the feature that allows subscribers to comment publicly on the WIP story they’re reading, and for everyone to read everyone else’s comments. This is a great way to have a big beta reader group and could help you create better books as you write.
There are so many things about Ream that I’m excited about! I’ll be launching my page later this week (and continuing to tweak it as I learn more), so check out reamstories.com/kittybucholtz in a few days. I’m meeting with half a dozen writer friends a few times a month to discuss what we’re learning from the podcast, the Facebook group, and the help center so we can share and make changes to our plans. Several of our pages should go live in January and we’ll immediately be able to connect with fans at the free level. We’re all really excited about building a community. And it doesn’t hurt that over time we’ll also be creating another revenue stream. 😀
I’ll let you know next month how my first month has gone. Meanwhile, you can learn more about Ream here on their LinkTree. Let me know if you have questions, and I’ll try to answer them for next month!
0 0 Read more3 Steps to Planning Your Year by Kitty Bucholtz
December 9, 2023 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as Goal Setting, It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, writingThere are a lot of ways to plan out your year. I’ve spent most of the last two decades doing very detailed planning that got right into what I’d end up doing each week. I decided on the big tasks and goals, and then broke them down into quarters, then months, then weeks. Then each week I would work on those smaller tasks on whatever days seemed to work best in the moment.
But sometimes you need to walk away from the granular so you can stay focused on the big picture. If that’s what you’re looking for, I can help you get your year planned in three easy steps.
- Do a brain dump of every single thing you can think of that you’d like to do this year. Add to it every single thing you can think of that you know is already going to be on your calendar. (Weddings, babies, vacations, writers conferences, everything.) Also, write down the things you need to do for yourself in order to make it through the year in a mentally and physically healthy way. (Yup, talking self-care here. Mental health day each month? Lunch with a friend on a regular basis? Exercise?)
- Now pick the #1 task/goal you really want to do even if nothing else gets accomplished. The very most important. After that one, pick one or two more that you really want to accomplish.
- Now break down those top 1-3 tasks into chunks. Look at your calendar to see where you have those other big life events, and plan around them. (Be sure to include “white space” for traveling, un/packing, planning, etc.) Write the first bits of what you need to do into your calendar for the first 1-3 months. As you get those smaller tasks done, add more as you go along. Now you won’t be overwhelmed with a year’s worth of stuff you want to do, but you can still stay on track to finish your top goals.
I hope this helps you get started on how you’d like to spend 2024. I’m getting more and more excited about the new year the closer it gets! See you on the other side! Happy New Year!
Some of Kitty’s Books
Featured Books
MY FRIEND JACKSON
Can Jasmine untangle her life and reclaim her identity, her life—her soul?
More info →
THE FALLING OF THE MOON
In the gloomy mountains of Shadowvale, Ascot Abberdorf is expected to marry a somber Count and settle down to a quiet life terrorizing the villagers.
More info →
A CHRISTMAS SAMPLER: Sweet, Funny, and Strange Holiday Tales
Winner of the 2010 Next Generation Indie Book Awards for Best Short Fiction and Best Anthology
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