YA Bound Book Tours Warning

*After posting this blog, I FINALLY got a response from YA Bound. Apparently, ownership had been transferred and my tour was lost in the mix. The new owner, Sara, has generously offered to do what she can to make things right.*

I booked a blog tour with YA Bound Book Tours in June for my newly released audio books, The Witch Song Series. The tour was supposed to happen the end of August (for a link to the tour, click here). I paid my money and waited for the tour organizer, Nereyda, to get back to me with a list of how many codes per book (there are 4 books total). 

And I waited. A long time. Finally, I contacted Nereyda. She sent me a list of people and wanted me to go through and approve or disprove any of them. Not my job. That's what I pay a tour organizer for. I told her how many codes I had. It was her job to organize and discover the value of the hosts. Nevertheless, I had enough codes for all of them, and a quick perusal showed many of them to be bloggers who I had worked with in the past. And I don't mind helping out newbies or those with smaller blogs, as long as they post their reviews in multiple locations. 

I approved them all.  

Weeks went by. A started to get contacts from bloggers who had signed up and never received their codes. I contacted Nereyda. Crickets. Finally, she told me these bloggers were known pirates and they didn't work with them. Which shocked me. I had worked with them, some of them are on my street team, and never had a problem with them. Also, why was she taking more codes than she would use? The books sell for upwards of 25 dollars, so those codes are worth a lot! 

One of the bloggers finally forwarded me the email Nereyda sent her, claiming she'd only received the audible codes that weekend. Which was absolutely not true. She'd had them for much longer. 

Still, not worth rocking the boat. I instructed her to send the codes to everyone I had approved. 

A few weeks went by. I contacted Nereyda numerous times only to hear nothing back. Finally, Nereyda said the tour was scheduled for September (not true), so things would run then. Again, I let it go. After all, I wasn't in a hurry. 

September came and went. I received one email, informing me that Nereyda was still waiting on some bloggers before she would put up the links for the rest of the posts, and yet a google search didn't reveal any audibook reviews from bloggers. Since Oct. 5th, I have stopped receiving any kind of response. 

I sent an email December 19th that said exactly the following: 
"So it has been MONTHS (my reviews were supposed to go live in August) and I haven't seen any reviews. You have stopped responding to my emails. I'm starting to think you stole my money and my codes. If I don't hear back from you in one week, I'm going public with this to warn off other authors."

Crickets. 

On Monday, I decided to try again via twitter in case my emails were somehow getting lost in spam land and I'd been forgotten. Still nothing. 

The new direction for my blog. #gramber

In the past, my blog has been mostly about my writing and as a means to market myself and my works. I will still post about my books, but my main focus will be changing.

I've been thinking a lot about what kind of legacy I want to leave behind. What I would want my children and grandchildren and any adopted grandchildren (that's everyone else) to know about life. I don't imagine it will go any further than that. And I don't mind. I never wanted to be famous. Never wanted anyone to look at me as better than anyone else. Because I'm not. We all have the same worth, though perhaps we don't all give back to the world the same amount, whether because of circumstances or choices.

Regardless, I feel compelled to share what I've learned--perhaps because at heart I've always been a teacher. And if my words touch a single life, that will be enough. I'll be calling this series #Gramber. See what I did there? Combining Grama and Amber? *giggle snort*

#gramber

An update on our family's medical drama . . .

Lots of things going on. My cyst is gone, and so is the pain (yay!). I've discovered this medicine called Prelief, which has made my IC completely manageable. I can even eat chocolate and tomatoes again (I'll probably never be able to handle soda pop or lemonade (or coffee or alcohol, but I'm Mormon so no worries there)). It's also lessened the pain to the point where I don't hurt very often anymore. My ankle is still giving me a few problems--there's still a broken bone fragment floating around in there that gets pinched every once in awhile. But I really, really don't want another surgery.

I just had a major breakthrough with Winter's Heir. It will require deleting about 7K words and starting over, but this will make the book SO MUCH BETTER. So in the end, it's all good.

We've found a medication for my oldest son that has made his symptoms manageable--he can stay awake and he isn't collapsing anymore. The doctors think he has a sort of transient cataplexy, which he will eventually grow out of. Not a great thing to have, but better than the horrible things like tumors and seizures and narcolepsy that the doctors were talking about. There's still a chance he won't grow out of it, but I'm trying not to focus on that.

My second son has a great teacher this year (unlike the horrible bully he had last year). His femur (where his nonossifying fibroma was) looks great, other than one leg is slightly longer than the other and his knee sometimes bothers him. We can only hope it doesn't get worse.

But here's the other thing--all the trauma my family has gone through over the last 3 years has left me struggling with depression. I have been since about January when it was really, really scary. Like suicidal scary. It was bad again last week (for good reason, my son was having major medical issues and it triggered all the trauma that we went through with my other son). The medical bills are piling up and leaving us completely overwhelmed.

I haven't really told many people about it. Partly because it's so deeply personal. Partly because it's the kind of thing that makes your curl in on yourself. Partly because sometimes people are idiots and mean.

So why write about it at all? Honestly, I'm not even sure myself. I want people like me to know they're not alone. I don't want to be alone either. And that's just kind of who I am. I have this desire for people to know the real me, free of adornments or masks.

Another reason is because someday I want my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren to see this trail I've blazed before them. That it wasn't a legend or a pioneer. I was just a person, doing the best I can. And I want them to have my words.

Finally, I had an an aha moment yesterday. God doesn't "give us" our trials-they come as a natural result of living in the world we do--he's not handing out pain like poison from above. Part of the reason we're here is to learn of suffering. And God will help us through it if we let him. And in the end, all the suffering will be taken away and it will all be made right.

Realizing this has helped me let go of a lot of anger. My hope is that it will help you too.

On bras . . .

Three things:
1. Mom, do not read this post. You will be horrified and give me lectures on being lady-like, which haven't sunk in within the last 34 years so it's time to give it up as a lost cause. Let's just pretend this never happened.
2. I have no filter - well, actually, I do. But if it's funny, it gets through.
3. This post is FUNNY. It's not dirty. Make a dirty comment and I'll delete it.

Every bra has a purpose. Some are simply comfortable, some add bulk, some squish out some cleavage, and some simply try to reign things in. The best bras are the ones that can manage more than one of these feats.

But the particular bra I have in mind has only one purpose: to make your boobs disappear.

Related question, if matter can neither be created nor destroyed, where do my boobs go?

**I've had a couple people ask me what brand the bra is I love. It's a Natori. You need to be fitted for your size though if you've never done that before. They do it at Nordstrom. And honestly, people's bodies are so different you need to try them on to find one that fits you. If you already know your size and favorite style, you can order online. http://amzn.to/1iFU5gE

On Finding Joy

I specifically remember two years ago trying to finish up Witch Fall and feeling overwhelmed. There simply weren't enough hours in the day. I had a four-year old daughter still at home all day, as well as two other young children. My husband had a demanding job and was gone much of the time, leaving me to raise kids and write books mostly alone.

Life was hard, and it was about to get worse. My son started suffering some serious health problems. So I quit writing. A few months later, he was better(ish) and I was behind. Then he was worse than before for six months and I was even more behind. This went on for over two years.

During that time, we moved to another state, leaving my support system behind. I had no friends. I broke my ankle and had major surgery, with a difficult recovery and lots of complications. But I still had this dream - to be a successful author. So I did what I thought was necessary. I made sacrifices. I stayed up late. I stopped hanging out with my friends. I multitasked - every moment of my day was packed.  I stopped relaxing. I stopped exercising. I stopped enjoying the simple pleasures of life. All I did was work.

My career had finally started taking off. I was making good money and people were loving my books. But while it did bring me moments of happiness, it did not make me happy. I was miserable, and guilty for feeling miserable. My husband finally had a job he enjoyed. All my publishing goals were FINALLY getting crossed of the list. My kids were doing well. We'd finally managed to wrangle ourselves into the middle-class. My son was healed and finally, finally climbing out of the depression his broken body had left him.

But my life had become a drudgery, marching myself mercilessly from one task to the next. I got seriously depressed. Like, scary depressed. I felt like I couldn't relax, that I was simply waiting for the next crisis to hit. I shut down. Emotionally and physically, I was a mess. I knew my life was imbalanced, as I know how important a balanced life is. In my Fairy Queens Series, there's this belief in the Balance - that everything has its opposite. Light and dark. Love and hate. Winter and summer. If the balance is thrown off, chaos ensues.

So it is with our own lives. Work, relaxation, nourishing our spiritual side, and joy need to coexist. Achieving our dreams cannot come at the expense of our happiness.

I went to my doctor and got on some medication. And while the scary depression lifted, I still wasn't happy. It wasn't until I was riding horses at my dad's ranch that I finally felt joy again. And then I lost it. I wasn't sure why or how to get it back. I only knew it was gone. Then we had some friends visit us and we went hiking. I found that joy again. And then, after 13 years, I finally had all my kids in school and had a few hours to actually write.

It was then that I realized that while writing used to bring me that kind of joy, it doesn't anymore. I still love doing it, and I can't imagine a life where I don't write and publish books. But somewhere along the way it became my job instead of my release. I have to find other things to bring joy into my life. For me, that's nature. It's saying yes to experiences and no to cramming more work into my life (blog posts, scavenger hunts, box sets, marketing classes). It's saying, "I don't work in the summers. I play with my kids."
Find the things that bring you joy and protect them fiercely.
I'm not saying I have this thing called balance down yet - some lessons have to be learned and relearned throughout our lifetimes. But to those of you who are like me (overachievers), I want you to know that you should never give up the great things for the good things.  Stop trying so hard to be great. Stop pushing yourself to be perfect. Just be.

All my love,
Amber