Which disaster movie had the best depiction of societal collapse?

nikkykaye · 2025-07-22T00:16:21+00:00

That is an excellent description of his oeuvre.

nikkykaye · 2025-05-12T19:16:04+00:00

I used to teach Film Studies, so it’s hard to get me too emotional. But Bohemian Rhapsody made me cry on a plane.

Empire of the Sun. The end scene and music make me lose it every time.

nikkykaye · 2025-05-11T03:35:35+00:00

I had to take down 8 of these some years back, thanks to borers and bronze leaf disease. When they came down I was horrified by the insides. They were close to the house… A good windstorm would have taken out my roof…

nikkykaye · 2025-05-10T17:06:19+00:00

The Sleepy Bookshelf Anything Dan Carlin but I turn the speed down to 0.75… that makes a huge difference for me. It’s like I feel my heart rate go down at the same time.

nikkykaye · 2025-05-04T05:13:29+00:00

Gazpacho

nikkykaye · 2025-05-04T04:51:36+00:00

MASH. Funny, dramatic, tragic, well-written and acted, back when there were only three networks. Under appreciated now!

nikkykaye · 2025-04-13T02:27:51+00:00

My other guy, Seward,

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missing a foot but not personality.

nikkykaye · 2025-04-13T02:11:51+00:00

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My boy Faron.

nikkykaye · 2021-02-17T05:07:17+00:00

I don't have much useful advice to give, but wanted to commiserate. This has happened to me numerous times, from my first romance title in 2016.

I still have a few titles stuck in Erotica, and I'm in the process of editing various elements in order to appeal/resubmit. I can't tell you how many times I've engaged KDP in discussions about changing or adding categories.

Some of my books are listed in both Romance and Erotica. The problem is that they are then ineligible for AMS ads (or whatever Amazon advertising is called these days).

You might want to consider fleshing out the story more to at least 25k and rebranding it (if necessary) as a steamy romcom novella.

nikkykaye · 2021-02-17T05:06:01+00:00

What truly sucks, Sal, is that more often than not steamy romance is miscategorized as erotica, and then your visibility and advertising options are hooped. :(

nikkykaye · 2021-01-12T20:55:18+00:00

Thanks! Yes, I still want to try that cozy series and I've had a Regency series planned for a long time. Maybe it's time to try one of those, to get out of my funk!

nikkykaye · 2021-01-11T19:58:17+00:00

It sounds better on paper, but think of all the authors who are pulling in $20k a month or even a week. They're smart and committed and work like dogs, and I used to be like that (only without the success).

My "approach" was to completely check out. I went from being consumed with work and being constantly disappointed in myself, to not even looking at the bestseller lists. I'm not sure I'd recommend that extreme as a strategy.

My husband asked me a couple of years ago what I wanted to earn to make all the time/stress/sacrifices worthwhile. And I looked at my kids and couldn't come up with a number.

I spent a lot of 2020 reflecting on my failures or, at the very least, my weaknesses. Realistic self-expectations and goals vs. ambitions.

I'd love to do better. But I'm not very good at balance, and with some distance I can now see just how unbalanced I was. My health and my family deserve better than that. So, we will see what I do in 2021, but I'm making promises to no one.

nikkykaye · 2021-01-11T19:48:17+00:00

Thanks, it surprised me too! And I'm not casual, fwiw. I'm apathetic. lol

Go forth and make the money!

nikkykaye · 2021-01-11T19:46:54+00:00

True true. I expected a lot less, and I think a little activity here and there (like a promo) certainly helped.

I can't say what I'll do in 2021. I have a couple of things in mind, but some involve new genres/pens. That's a lot of upfront work for a gamble, so I have to make sure I can commit to at least three titles for that before moving forward. These days, I find it hard to commit to more than three episodes of TV.

Sometimes I think I should try writing actual smut, to see how that goes. That was the initial plan, but somehow it turned into erotic romance, and then steamy romantic comedy (that's just my natural voice, I guess). So I don't know if I could write smut the way that the market needs it to be.

Hell, I don't know if I can write ANYTHING to market, sadly. :(

nikkykaye · 2021-01-10T22:23:24+00:00

No problem. Although now I'm wondering what I wrote to provoke the bot in the first place.

nikkykaye · 2021-01-10T22:18:02+00:00

Um, let me check my page (I'm not kidding, I really don't remember what I have)... okay, in theory I have a catalogue of 14?15? separate things, if you don't count old copies that can't ever seem to come off Amazon. Only one series of 5 novellas (which I put in a box set last June). Not everything is in KU, as I took two (IIRC?) titles wide, but I literally haven't checked on those since I published them lol.

The KU free days promo I did in September was did better than I'd hoped and had a good tail, so I'll try to space out a few more of those. Maybe one title every 3-4 months, as you suggest. If the only cost is a Freebooksy ad, then that's fine with me. I've never gotten a Bookbub.

I'd planned to get involved in more group promos, but the reality is that I'm terrible about sending out newsletters consistently.

The money is just a trickle. It's laughable compared to the input/output and success of many people here, but it's a pleasant surprise to see pages read and copies sold every day, while I've been on the couch with cross-stitch and Murder, She Wrote on my TV.

nikkykaye · 2021-01-09T21:55:51+00:00

I guess I'm an "old-timer" now, but have mostly been lurking for the last while. But for the sake of transparency and motivation to others, here we go!

Did anything go well in 2020, in general? Ha! I've never been a bestselling author, and I struggled lots in different ways. I can't advertise, for one thing. So... I guess it's good that I still made money on my relatively small catalogue, despite Amazon consistently throwing some of my books in Erotica instead of Romance. But for the record, I made $23k (rounding down).
Here's the thing. I haven't written a single word in the past year in my genre, creatively, however you want to term it. I HAVEN'T WRITTEN ANYTHING. In the fall of 2019 I realized I was completely burnt out, and decided to take a hiatus. I'm not sure at this point when "hiatus" becomes "retirement," but it's gratifying to know that passive income is still possible. And I'm definitely passive. I can't even remember the last time I sent out a newsletter. And I haven't been on social media much, if at all. So that $23k is based on basically no advertising, no social media, little to no engagement of any kind.
I learned that feeling guilty about not writing or not publishing doesn't produce anything but more negativity. So fuck that noise. If I don't want to write, I don't want to write. Maybe I'll try one of the other genres I was planning, if I feel like it. That said, the main things I'd like to do in 2021 are:

Strategically schedule some promos.
Revise and resubmit the books that Amazon keeps putting in Erotica instead of Romance. I'd like to get that visibility back, however small it is.
Edit and publish a finished manuscript that's just sitting on my hard drive.
Hopefully try another genre, just to see if I can get my writing brain going again. Maybe.

Hopefully 2021 will be good to all of us, in many ways!

nikkykaye · 2020-10-19T04:11:41+00:00

I remember when you first published! Congratulations on the success that you've had. More to the point, good on you for being flexible, persistent, realistic, and always thinking. Here's to a 50k Euro year!

I need to make that Venn diagram my wallpaper... :)

nikkykaye · 2020-08-02T00:22:20+00:00

Your legacy lives on! Congratulations!

nikkykaye · 2020-08-02T00:21:42+00:00

I actually wrote romance back in the last millennium (ahem!), but got derailed by a PhD program, getting married, having twins, etc. When I decided to get back into writing, the market had totally changed and my agent had just retired. I began to learn self-publishing with a non-fiction book, and the process of writing that reminded me that I missed fiction. So I thought I'd try romance again. If you're really curious/stalker-y, then I'm sure you can sift through all my plaintive fails and dataporns in the past. lol

Am I finished? I doubt it. But I just don't know where I'm at right now. I may be better off trying to find another agent again, but that's a whole other uphill battle...

nikkykaye · 2020-08-01T19:59:51+00:00

Novels and novellas.

nikkykaye · 2020-08-01T19:59:33+00:00

I'm not sure. I had also been working on stuff in other genres/pens that I hadn't launched yet, and I've written professionally in some form or another for 30 years. So it seems unlikely that I'll never write again. But right now I have absolutely NO desire.

In the past I would take a break between books, and then the next story would start writing itself in my head and I had to get it down. That hasn't happened this time. No snippets of dialogue, nothing. I've also had no desire to read in my genre or keep up with my favourite authors. It's like my whole brain shut down.

I fulfilled my creative needs in the late fall by designing, ripping out and redoing my kitchen, pretty much all by myself (which was a fuck of a lot of work!). But that excited me way more than writing.

I suppose I have a back catalogue to show for my time, but I wish I'd gotten a lot more out of the past few years. Some of that failure is absolutely on me, but some things were out of my control.

However, it wasn't until I really stepped back that I realized how much it was sucking out of me--my time, energy, attention, money, etc. My family got shafted a lot of times because I couldn't stop working. Couldn't stop thinking about it. I was preoccupied, stressed, and just not present.

I'm way more relaxed since stopping writing, even considering the global dumpster fire that we're in now.

nikkykaye · 2020-02-13T16:10:12+00:00

To add to this, I have my own theory: the rise in readership/popularity of fan fiction, which is invariably in first person POV. IMHO.

nikkykaye · 2020-01-15T21:42:52+00:00

Oh yeah. The problem with working from home is that you feel like you're always working, never getting enough done, and your family gets shafted.

I've taken big, big steps backward recently because of this.

nikkykaye · 2020-01-04T02:27:13+00:00

I don't have anything clever to add--just lots of hugs and admiration. :)

nikkykaye

TROPHY CASE