Candlesticks and Cadavers

Friday, June 3, 2016

Humor Me While I Go Off to Rantville

The last three weeks, I ran a sale for my Etsy store and in a word- fail. Okay, I had one sale. So I suppose it was not a complete fail. I have ran sales before with no return, I think what made this one worse was I spent actual money on advertising on Facebook and on Etsy. I ran two different ad types on Facebook and had 13 clicks to my store but no purchases.

It is discouraging. I don't even know how to make my business better. Maybe my jewelry sucks. But I don't think so since I do very positive reviews on my sales (more than I do for my books). I have had my store for five years and had 40 sales, an average of 8 sales per year. I want to do better. I don't understand why I don't do better.

I am in competition with the world.

I don't pay myself a wage, not even minimum wage. I tried pricing my items the right way. I decided on minimum wage. And I kept notes of how long something would take me to make then I added approximate costs of materials. I did those with about 15 items and nothing sold. A year later, I wound dropping all the prices on those items. Make sure you know, I don't pay myself a wage.

My prices are reasonable. My items are unique. I value customer service and it has already screwed me over twice, but I still push the customer service. I charge one price for shipping and you can buy as much as you want and pay one price (notice that will eventually cut into my money). I don't make a profit off my store...

We are a country that does not make things, we are a country that buys things- things that are cheap and from China. And yet, at the same time, there are those who are screaming about the obscene profits corporations make while they buy their junk at Wal-Mart or some department store. Just because they are expensive doesn't mean it's worth anything more. And here I am selling quality for just as inexpensive because I got to keep my prices low to sell.

A couple of years ago, I went to Gabriel Brothers because they were having a sidewalk sale. You could get a bag of jewelry for $5. This was perfect for me because I am upcycler/recycler in addition to making new things. There was this one necklace that was sold at Express and it was broken. MSRP was $40 and it was made in China. I took the rhinestones and made a new necklace and I have mine priced for half as much and I know it will last for a lot longer as well.

I have considered pushing the American made angle. But what good what would that do? No one wants American made items. How I see the world is everyone wants to be like everyone else and pay nothing for it all while protesting the way the world is.

Just so you know I am not a corporation. If you were to do the math, I am so far red, I am touching the center of the earth. Just so you know I am an American and I make jewelry. Just so you know I price way lower than I should and I honestly feel like I deserve to sell my items at a higher price.

You want to send a message to the big bad corporations, why not buy from Americans selling their wares online?

The more you buy from us little guys, eventually we have to pay taxes. The more you buy from us, maybe we could hire someone or spend our earnings in advertising or buying more supplies from other American companies. The more you buy from us, the more the Post Office, Fed Ex, and UPS make.

Final thought... you want the world to change? It starts with you. You make the decision to shop for your jewelry from me or Walmart. You make the choice to shop at Ikea or the local carpenter. Those people in DC will not change anything and they really don't care about you. So you want change, you want a revolution then it starts with you, all of us.

And I'm not going to quit, I just have to figure out how to sell more on my own because no one else is going to help me. Like always, I have to do it on my own.

Wednesday, May 25, 2016

Into the Garden by JM Scott FREE until 5/29/16

Hey all, Just wanted to let you know Into the Garden is FREE in all markets until 5/29/16. This is my first poetry collection. It is an acrostic poetry collection that uses fruits and vegetables for the acrostic portion.

Here is a sample

Bananas

Brought are the gifts
Anointed in dragon’s blood.
Necromancer wanna-be’s play games in the dark,
Ashy veils disintegrate to
Nulls in space.
Aviators fly right into another world, the
Stewardesses has been long gone
for a fortnight.

Enjoy. Until next time...

Finally Summer!!

And it's about god damn time too. My furnace has been running at least once a day, up until the other day. It's the end of May! Granted I live in the mountains, but I am not a mile high up. The weather people are calling for a hot, hot summer this year. I hope so. Okay, so I am not particularly fond of sweating in front of a fan running on high, but I love swimming. Last summer never really got that hot and the water always seemed kind of chilly. Ideally summer should be hot days and cooler nights so I am not sweating my invisible balls off in bed.

I know I haven't written in a couple of weeks. Lots of reasons for that... BRAIN FOG. I don't know why this is happening but sometimes everything just blurs together. I had a rough time getting my act together to get my papers done for class (don't worry though I have turned them in on time, every week). Aforementioned papers for school. I am taking Literary Theory, which is a lot of work. There are short papers to write every week in addition to longer papers. The other class is Nonfiction workshop and just as much as work. This week is light on the work load because the final papers are both due Sunday. But since we are going camping this weekend, I will be turning my papers in on Thursday. In fact, both are done. I am going to read through them once more and slap on the headers and turn them in. I spent a lot of time preparing the sale for my Etsy store (and that is another post all together). Okay so that was three reasons, more than plenty.

How's the writing going? HA HA. I think I am burned out a bit. I took Fiction workshop and my writing challenge went downhill. I do have a story I am going to post on here soon, I did make a bunch of new stories from class. There are two that need editing yet. One is marked for sending away and the other is for my short story collection that I plan on publishing this year. I think it is time for me to get back to basics with the stories. Instead of 4000 word stories, I am going back to flash fiction. I bought some books for Kindle both flash fiction how to books and dozens of flash collections.

What I really need to do, is actually sit down and write. I always have trouble with that, But I try. It seems like when my brain is working better, I write better.

So what are my plans for this year? Finish compiling Sanctioned Shadows, a book of short stories. Many are ones that I sent away over the years. Some were written just for the book. They have never been published. I have quite a few already but the book is not ready. I am not even sure when it will be. I also am starting to work on Trick or Poem which will be 31 Halloween and/or horror themed poems. I have seven. All though I am not too sure about one of them. I have some ideas on the rest. I definitely want that book out either before Halloween or right around there.

And that's about it. Be good to summer and it will be good to you.

Monday, May 9, 2016

Sausage of Knowledge

conundrum and just me
it doesn’t storm
eventually reasons right
the 65 world recuperates
do flash them today
and you will likely finish
Congress Spanish,
obviously jack, probably sexy
Medieval coming,
crushed and embalmed
catapults on stage
you seen Peter
and were glad
she has this and that
out for saying years
can be heads.
not my thing.
There, you have my
out see do.

Source: Colbert, Stephen. "Stephen Colbert’s Address to the Graduates." Alternet.org 5 Jun. 2006. Web. 9 May 2016. http://www.alternet.org/story/37144/stephen_colbert%27s_address_to_the_graduates

****
Hey all today I felt like writing a poem. Today this came from The Found Poetry Review and we were to create a poem from a commencement speech. You can read the prompt here I was going to do Kennedy, but the link wasn't working so I chose Stephen Colbert. Sausage of Knowledge was all his- verbatim, I thought it was funny. Anyway the text was rather large and my brain is rather mushy so I ran it through the Powerball feature at Applied Poetics, did some editing and poof a poem. It really was magic. Enjoy...

Thursday, May 5, 2016

The Wolf's Red Rose by JM Scott Free until 5/8/16

Hey all, just a quick post to let you know that The Wolf's Red Rose is FREE until May 8, 2016. It is a retelling of the famous Little Red Riding Hood fairy tale, told from the point of view of the wolf.

Here's the beginning:

Why do wolves always get a bad reputation? Look at me, I have a college degree and since I moved into the Ethereal Forest, I’ve been ridiculed. Just because of my species. Yes, I love meat but I take animals that are already dead unlike my former pack that hunts for food. They are a good pack though, they only hunt for food and not for glory like some packs. It was my choice to leave the pack and start a new life. I wanted to spend my time writing poetry, piddling in my garden and living a truly peaceful life. That was my plan. And at first things were grand.

I contracted these three little pigs to build my home. They built a three-room house with the utmost details, expert masonry, framed windows, and huge ceilings with wooden beams. They built most of my furniture. After they were done, I invited them to spend time with me, playing cards and what not. I enjoyed their company and they enjoyed my homemade wine.
To this day, I am not exactly sure what happened but the brothers pig had a falling out of sorts. Each pulled pranks on each other. Then for whatever reason my name got dragged into their fight and they all blamed me for their misfortune. And the only reason they would turn their backs on me was because I was a wolf, a hunter, and they were getting a lot of grief for my being my friend.

After that incident, I woke up one morning to my beautiful prize vegetables and my precious grapes smashed all about. Smashed not eaten. On my once pristine brick wall, were words smeared in cranberry-colored blood leave us alone and killer. Animal carcasses littered my yard. Freshly killed animals nonetheless. Who would do this? The only thing left to do is to pick up the pieces to start again. I salvaged all the good meat (just because I didn’t kill them, doesn’t mean I had to waste the meat) and I preserved it. I collected all the bones and the smashed vegetables from my garden and mixed them with my compost. I spent days scouring the graffiti off my walls. Shortly after that, my pack came for a visit. I am positive the eyes and ears of the forest watched closely as a pack of wolves came into town.

Monday, May 2, 2016

Sunken Storm

you trust
pure desertness
squeezed storms
treeless summers
up dunes
ruddy moon dust-
preserves eye dust.

you prevent
the slender lotus
to woody end
dust frost on every
tormented forest.

downpours tempt
your poet well,
very seldom
you express toll wonder,
yet you know
no purpose for
world people.

Source: Austin, Mary Hunter. “The Land of Little Rain.” The Land of Little Rain. Gutenberg.org. Web. 2 May 2016. http://www.gutenberg.org/ebooks/51893

****
And here is the last prompt from The Found Poetry Review. This was to take a text and run it through the phone number constraint on applied poetics. I used 867-5309 not because was already there, but I planned on already using it since it has to do with my name. You can read the full prompt here

And I drop the mic...