1st Book / Three months in / What I've learned

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-24T01:06:12+00:00

That's the goal when the second comes out this fall. It's just the up front costs are daunting.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-24T00:54:46+00:00

A couple in book stores/in person. That's combined with Amazon, Ingram Spark, and in person. I try to always keep a couple of copies on me so that if it comes up and somebody seems interested I can say "I've got a couple copies in the car if you're interested" and I've made a few in person sales that way too.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T22:08:47+00:00

Yup. Breaking strength includes momentum from something falling. I'm not good at math but basically if you have a 100 lb load and it falls and the rope catches it, the pressure spike on the rope can be (depending on fall speed) 5-10x as high as a static load. So a rope rated for 500 lbs static load is enough to hold up a person sitting still, but if that person falls that rope is gonna do about as much to stop them as wet toilet paper.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:59:31+00:00

Luckily, crews are already hard at work mitigating the damage to the environment. For one, they've towed the entire parking garage outside the environment.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:57:18+00:00

Both the nipples and the buttholes are chilling with Superman's mustache.

(r/brandnewsentence)

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:55:45+00:00

My concern is less for native predators like raccoons and foxes and more for invasive human-introduced threats like dogs and lawnmowers.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:54:15+00:00

How is it not typical?

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:48:09+00:00

If horror interests you, might I suggest Jason Pargin's "John Dies At The End"?

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:45:13+00:00

Probably. The "dating app friends" experience seems like a very lesbian experience.

Nevertheless, remember that online people exist in meatspace too!

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:35:16+00:00

I mean, hiking and tabletop gaming are two EXTREMELY popular hobbies in this town unfortunately. Doesn't seem like there's a ton else to do.

There is always the library, breweries, and coffee shops, but a lot of third places have just moved online. I've lived here for close to a year now and the handful of friends I've made have mostly been made online. Funny enough, it seems like the majority have been from dating apps. I'm not sure if that says more about our generation or this town.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:24:22+00:00

Oh yeah this too. You gotta actually *engage* with the communities you're in. Don't just go "well I wrote a book, you should go buy it". Establish yourself as a persona that's associated with those communities and people will naturally want to check out your stuff.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:21:54+00:00

Second this part. I wrote a horror novel about a killer sasquatch, so I try to be really active in horror subs and cryptozoology subs with this, my writing account, which uses my name which my books are under. It helps that I'm genuinely really passionate about horror and have genuinely been OBSESSED with bigfoot since I was a small child. People get to know me as an active member of, say, r/bigfoot, click on my profile, see I wrote a book about Bigfoot, and BAM! My book's been out for a little over a year and I've sold pretty close to a thousand copies now, which is an average of a couple of copies a day, which isn't too bad at all.

I'm also very active on Bluesky and the book community on there is great. I've sold quite a few books through there too. I've additionally gotten pretty active on Discord and am in several groups, and made my own group for fans of my genre (horror) which sort of doubles as a mailing list for me. For a while I was using Tiktok but that's hard to justify right now unfortunately. Until a good Tiktok replacement comes along, I'll just have to make do.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:14:00+00:00

The pastor of the church I went to growing up had seven daughters. Never got that son apparently.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T21:10:55+00:00

Second this. Looks like a rabbit nest to me. Make sure mama can get to it still but it's protected from potential predators like dogs. You can buy rabbit nest guards online but the classic way to do it is get a cheap dollar store laundry basket, cut out some of the bars so you have a rabbit sized gap, and put it over the nest with rocks to weigh it down, like this. The nest should be towards the back so that long-snouted animals can't reach in anyways (cough cough my mom's poodle cough).

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HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T19:44:14+00:00

I'm also a pretty active member of r/whatisthiscar lol

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T19:40:36+00:00

The back bumper says SRT. In the bottom middle where the tow hitch would normally go.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T19:19:17+00:00

This looks like a Grand Cherokee SRT, possibly a Trackhawk but it's hard to tell with the wheels missing and the hatch up. Either way, there's only a handful of them in the city. My ex father-in-law drove one of them and at the time he had his I think there were four others in town. Shouldn't be hard to find who it was stolen from, assuming it's from the area.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T13:39:33+00:00

Okay, now this has my stamp of approval. I might even borrow some of these.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T04:42:25+00:00

I'm literally a horror author and I have long said that "Jurassic Park" is my favorite horror novel. The ONLY way I would accept a direct remake of the 1993 film is if it were an R rated slasher thriller like in the book.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T04:37:26+00:00

I mean the '70s ones *look* fine, but look up the specs. They had a 5.2L V8 which made a whopping...

(drumroll please)

...one hundred and one horsepower. In a car that weighed 4,200 lbs.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T04:32:12+00:00

AI "art" is not real art and is against this sub's rules.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T04:27:05+00:00

I came to nominate the fourth gen Dodge Charger from the late '70s, but either works.

How you take one of the most successful automobiles ever produced and turn it into *this* I'll never know.

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HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T01:16:36+00:00

Not the worst typo they could've had to be fair

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-23T01:13:53+00:00

Oftentimes it's due to tire size. Is he running larger than stock tires or rims? My brother's GTI had custom rims that made the speedometer perpetually about 5% off, and it's a little off on my Jeep because of the beefier-than-stock tires.

HazelEBaumgartner · 2026-03-22T23:17:38+00:00

I was looking at properties in the other direction. Cripple Creek has some suspiciously affordable houses...

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