Friday, December 4, 2020

I'm Not OK .. I Promise! PLUS .. An XMAS DIY Challenge For Everyone!


Come inside for the XMAS DIY Challenge .. and a bit of a survey for everyone! PLEASE READ!


OK, well, first of .. this is a repeat caption from September of last year. But only Helena and Sally commented on it, so this just might be .. NEW TO YOU!

Some of what I had to say about the caption back then? Hoping she isn't too young to remember bands from the mid to late 2000's, as I figured that was about the middle school years for her. Damn, I feel old now! Not only might I have to explain who the band is to older folk, now I have to say things like, "back in MY day, there were a bunch of sensitive guys who dressed up like vampires but used lots of guy-liner."

Now on to other things. My health insurance is going up big time, and I need to possibly augment some of my income to compensate .. the insurance went up 300 percent in monthly amount, and the annual deduction went from 0 to 2k .. I'm on a pace for "barely scraping by" as a now single person living by themselves in a time of economic uncertainty in an area that has a high cost of living .. so one thought I had was to possibly start writing TG stories and selling them on Amazon. 

I am not quite sure how I would do that as of yet .. so anyone that does, please reach out to me! as I am not sure if I could earn more, if that would screw up the insurance plan even more, how would I deal with anonymity, etc .. but right now I'm trying to think of how I would do it.

Would people be interested in purchasing TG short stories if I decided to start crafting them and had them for sale? If so, would you prefer like 10-15 page works of fiction for 99 cents a piece? Or would you prefer like a 3 story 'anthology' for 2.99? In that case, I might try to make them either themed, or just maybe the next 3 stories I write go into that book, which would you prefer? Once again, if you would be interested, how often would you like to see books released by me?

I would really like to know how all of you feel about this. Many people have started Patreon pages, and while that works for them, I'm not sure I'd be up for that, for the following reasons .. seems like an awful lot of fucking pressure to HAVE to create X amount of works per month depending on tiers, catering to each individual backer, and possibly make specialized / personalized works for them, etc .. and as far as captions go, I don't own the rights to any of the pictures I use, other than to claim "fair use" and hope that the actual models don't get offended. I am not making any money off this blog, trust me on that! To charge a fee for people to see my work would throw me over the line on that, and I wouldn't want to cross that at this moment in time.

So, please do leave comments below about (1) the caption if you enjoyed it, and more importantly, (2) let me know what you think about the whole Amazon TG fiction thing .. and since it was sort of brought up, how do you feel about Patreon and that whole deal?

And now to the fun part! I haven't done a DIY Challenge in quite some time, apparently February of 2018, was the last time I offered it. Since it's Christmas of a shit-astic year, why not try to bring some cheer into the last vestiges of perhaps the worst year ever .. 2020! So here is a caption setting .. and a sentence that must be included in the caption, "We'll she'd (or she's) done it this time!"

There's two ways you can play this as well. Either download the caption setting .. unfortunately this was something I started last year and never finished .. and make your own caption, perhaps you can cut the picture out and use your own backgruond. OR you can submit your own write up and leave it in the comment section of my page, "Latest DIY" and I WILL MAKE YOUR CAPTION FOR YOU!


Isn't that a great Christmas Present for anyone that decides they want to make something but, doesn't have the necessary graphic design skills to make it happen? Well, there is NO EXCUSE NOW!

Want to star in this caption? Well, now you can! All I ask is that you don't make it TOO LONG. 150-200 words is probably plenty .. more than that and it'll be a tiny font, and who wants to read that? It's not an issue if it isn't very long .. that's what SHE SAID .. because I can make the fonts bigger or fancier. I will edit for content / clarity / grammar if need be, but it'll still be YOUR STORY!

Deadline is Sunday, December 13th at midnight EST. Anyone who makes their own caption with the setting and/or picture can email it to me at Dem!!entia.Not!!me!!you@gmai!l.com by taking out the exclamation marks. Let's make this the holiday celebration to remember!

8 comments:

  1. Um, hello! Cute author/editor girl over here in the corner! LOL

    You've got my email, Dee - hit me up if you want to talk self-publishing. I'd be more than happy to share my experiences and my insights. What I'll say is it's as much about self-promotion as publishing, that getting people to discover the stories is the hard part, but you've got great platforms here and on the Haven to help drive that audience.

    I'm with you, the idea of a Patreon is nice, but is way too much pressure. I can knock out a few stories in a month, and then months where I don't write a word.

    And I'm totally in for the caption. I'll get you something this week. :)

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    1. I might shoot you an email in the next week or so. I wouldn't be doing this until January anyway, so I'll have time to talk turkey with people to see if this is feasible. I do know a bit about SEO and other friends work with it as well, so I'm hoping I'd be able to promote them well. Then there are some people who review ebooks on their blogs, so reaching out to them is a good idea too! ;)

      Glad you are going to take a shot at the caption. Also, wanted to let you know that the Haven is again doing a "25 captions of Christmas" special, and there are still dates available if you'd like to throw your hat into the ring!

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  2. Love how she turned out in the red top and fish net stockings!!Zoe

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    1. How did she get that way though? We'll find out when people submit their captons!

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  3. As to the caption, I love it and she should slap on a bit of eyeliner if she wants but leave the apartment and go to a club and she will find what she is looking for.
    Patreon sure does seem a like a ton of commitment. Some other format should work.
    I love the whole outfit in the DIY challenge.

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    1. We are taking submissions for the story behind the picture for the DIY Challenge!

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  4. This is a ‘new to me’ cap so let’s start with a compliment there… NICE! I had to look up the song, but that didn’t diminish it in the least. As a matter of fact, I think it helped that I didn’t know what the song was as I got to look at the lyrics through a clear lens! And that image… perfection! I’m not sure how exactly I would have capped it, but it just screams out to be capped!

    As for your questions. I thought about doing the whole Amazon thing, but never got further than thinking about it. I don’t know what it takes or how you can protect your anonymity. Would I be interested in purchasing TG short stories in general? To be honest, no. I think I’ve purchased maybe 4 or 5 stories total. I think there’s just too much decent to good material out on sites like Fictionmania to make paying for something before reading it kind of hard to swallow (heh). Now, with that being said, would I be interested in purchasing TG short stories by YOU? Yes. Yes, I would. I practically have a guarantee of quality and know that even if I’m not entirely enamored with the story itself, I’m happy to help support you in any way I can.

    I think the single stories for 99 cents method would work best for you. It lets you just push out material and let your muse dictate the subjects. You could later match up two or three stories with a similar theme, add a new story, and sell it for the 2.99 to 3.99 range. As for release schedule, my initial thought is “As often as possible”, but knowing what it would take, I’d rephrase that as “As often as you’re comfortable making them”. One book a season? One a month? One a week? As long as you aren’t burning yourself out, I think any of these are reasonable answers.

    Here’s the thing with Patreon… I think a lot of artists look at it as a method of finding customers. A lot of ‘patrons’ on Patreon think of it in the same way. They figure paying $1, $5, $10 a month is payment for new and possibly exclusive content. But I think there’s a smaller group of people that see it as the true earlier definition of patron: A person who gives financial or other support to a person. One of the artists I am a patron of on Patreon recently said she’d be changing the way she operates because she can’t continue to make her longer form work when she’s focused on short or single page comics for the Patreon each month. I commented, and honestly feel, that I want to support her work. Not get work for my monthly fee. What I’m saying is I think if you were open about what your Patreon is… a way to support you as an artist without any particular content guaranteed at any level…. you could still find an audience there. Sure, not as big as if you treated it as another storefront, but some is better than none.

    I DO agree that you don’t want to cross the cap barrier. These images and the use we give them are fun, but legal reasons could come down hard if you profit from them. If you go through writing stories or a Patreon, I think you’d have to unfortunately not even mention your caps. I know it cuts off a bit of your possible audience, but you could still direct people to your work from your blog to your Amazon or Patreon page… just not the other way around.

    Finally, I’ll take a swing at the Christmas cap. Haven’t felt particularly cappy or creative lately, but maybe a challenge is just what I need. If I come up with something, I’ll email it to you.

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    1. Thank you for your usual well-thought out, and thorough reply to my questions. Gives me something to think about going forward.

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