Oct 3 2023

Authors Help Desk

Calling all authors, regardless of where you are in your publishing journey.

It’s a jungle out there. So many scammers, schemers, gurus, and information, it’s hard to figure out who to trust, where to turn, what information you should listen to and what to discard – it’s nearly impossible for an author to find real information, real industry insight, all without being charged hundreds, if not thousands, of dollars. And who has the time to plow through all the free resources available online? Like I said, it’s a jungle.

How about just skipping all the noise and go straight to a group with industry experts with over 40 years combined experience, a group filled with authors from all walks of life, all in different stages of their careers? A place where you can get critiques, ask for help, get insider information, marketing and publishing resources, and much more – all for free?

Yeah, I know what you are thinking. Where’s the sales pitch? There’s not one. We don’t do that over at the Authors Help Desk. Our files section is full of free resources, including a recently added book launch check list, that authors are welcome to download and use, no strings attached.

Why? Why don’t we just charge for this information? Let’s face it. If it were actually easy to sell tons of books and make six figures plus every year, we’d all be bestselling authors, right? The truth is, the Authors Help Desk’s experts don’t sugar coat the industry. They aren’t there to sell you some hyped up, over-priced course or book. In fact, we’re not there to sell ANYTHING. We’re there to help authors cut through all the crap marketing hacks, figure out what works for them, share their knowledge base, and help keep authors safe against all the scammers and schemers out there looking to separate them from their money. It’s that simple.

Sound like something you’d like to join? Then head over to the Authors Help Desk and help us continue to build a group of authors who are willing to share their knowledge so that we are all successful in the end.

Sep 23 2026

Help Us Finally Go Home

I never imagined I’d be asking strangers for help, but today I don’t know where else to turn. After spending nearly twenty years trying to rebuild our lives after Hurricane Katrina, we were finally three days away from moving into a new home on the family land where five generations of my family lived. Then everything fell apart. The loan never funded, the home was never delivered, the savings we’d spent years building were gone, and today we’re living in a house we can no longer afford to keep up with.

I’m not asking for help to build my dream home. I’m asking for help because we’re running out of options. For years we’ve patched, repaired, and held this house together with everything we had. Today, the damage to the bathroom, hallway, and one bedroom remains, additional repairs are still needed in the kitchen, and we simply don’t have the savings left to make them after losing everything we invested in the home that was supposed to get us out of this situation.

For me, asking for help has been one of the hardest parts of this entire journey. Like so many people, I kept believing that if I just worked harder, saved a little longer, or found one more solution, we could get through this without anyone ever knowing how difficult things had become. But after exhausting every option we could think of, we’ve reached the point where staying silent won’t solve the problem. Sharing our story isn’t easy, but it’s the only path we have left.

How We Got Here

To understand why we’re asking for help today, I have to go back to August of 2005.

When most people hear “Hurricane Katrina,” they think about the devastation along the Mississippi Gulf Coast or in New Orleans. We lived nearly 100 miles inland, so we never imagined the storm would change our lives the way it did. But the winds were stronger than anyone expected, and our family home suffered severe roof damage that allowed water to pour inside.

That house wasn’t just where we lived. My grandparents built it, my father grew up there, and it’s where I was raising my own children. Five generations of my family have called that land home, and at the time, I couldn’t imagine living anywhere else.

Like so many other families, we turned to our insurance company believing they would help us rebuild. Instead, our claim was denied. We suddenly found ourselves in a position we had never expected to be in. We had a home that had been badly damaged, no insurance money to repair it, and nowhere else to go.

So we stayed.

We patched what we could, lived with what we couldn’t, and kept hoping we’d eventually find a way to save our home. What Hurricane Katrina damaged in a single day, time slowly took from us over the years that followed. Every new leak, every section of water-damaged wood, and every repair we had to put off because we simply couldn’t afford it brought us one step closer to losing the place where my family’s story began.

Leaving was never part of the plan, but eventually we reached a point where we could no longer keep up with the repairs. After holding on for years and doing everything we could to make it work, we had no choice but to walk away from the only home we’d ever known.

Starting Over After Katrina

By 2011, we knew we couldn’t stay in our family home any longer. The damage had become more than we could realistically repair, so we purchased a foreclosed house that had been sitting vacant for seven years. It wasn’t the fresh start we’d dreamed of, but it was one we believed we could rebuild.

We weren’t looking for our dream house. We were looking for something we could afford.

The only thing within our budget was a foreclosed house that had been sitting empty for nearly seven years. It needed a tremendous amount of work, but compared to what we were leaving behind, it gave us hope. We emptied our savings, rolled up our sleeves, and spent the next year and a half repairing walls, replacing flooring, painting, and fixing everything we could ourselves. Every paycheck seemed to go right back into that house.

Little by little, it started to feel like we were finally getting our feet back under us. We knew it would never replace the home we had lost, but it was ours, and for the first time in years it felt like maybe life was beginning to settle down.

Unfortunately, that feeling didn’t last.

About three years ago, we discovered a water leak that had been quietly causing damage we couldn’t see. By the time we found it, the floor in one bedroom, our only bathroom, and the hallway had already sustained damage. Despite doing everything we could to stop the damage and make temporary repairs, the damage remains because we haven’t had the resources to complete the repairs.

A year later, we noticed the floor beneath our refrigerator beginning to sink. The work that section of the kitchen needs is beyond what we can currently afford, and we know we’ll eventually have to address it. We haven’t had running water in our bathroom sink for years because the plumbing had to be disconnected, and every time another part of the house needs repair, we’re reminded that we’re running out of time.

We’ve spent years working on this house together because that’s what we’ve always done. We fix what we can, save for the next repair, and keep moving forward. But we’ve reached a point where patching it together isn’t enough anymore. The problems are bigger than what we can solve ourselves, and each new repair seems to uncover another one behind it.

Why This Land Means So Much

People have asked why we’ve fought so hard to get back to our old family home and the homestead we were forced to leave behind. The answer is simple. It’s home.

Long before I was born, my grandfather cut timber from that land to build the house where generations of my family would live. Like so many families in rural Mississippi, they made a life with what they had. My grandparents raised cattle, pigs, and chickens, grew vegetables to feed the family, sold the extra produce when he could, and took on odd jobs to help make ends meet. My grandmother sold eggs every year to pay the property taxes. They didn’t have much, but they always found a way to make it work.

By the time I came along, the house had changed some, but it was still home. There was a front porch with wooden columns where our family gathered, birthday parties were celebrated, and stories were shared. There was a Black Jack tree in the front yard with a swing hanging from one of its branches, and three giant oak trees lined the road leading to the house. Those aren’t just details I remember—they’re part of the picture I still carry in my mind whenever someone asks me where I grew up.

One memory has stayed with me more than any other. Somewhere, there’s a photograph of me when I was about four years old. I’m standing in the front yard wearing little brown pants my mom had hand embroidered with flowers, an orange tank top, and holding a plastic rake while pretending to help rake leaves. My hair is blowing in the wind, and behind me is the old green house with its original front porch. I’ve searched every family photo album I can find hoping that picture will turn up. I’d give just about anything to find it again because, to me, it captures what “home” looked like before everything changed.

There are other pictures taken years later, after my dad remodeled the porch, added siding, and painted the house. Then there are the pictures after Katrina. Today, there isn’t a house there at all.

When we prepared the property for the manufactured home, we had to remove what remained of the original house because it had already collapsed. The new home was going to sit in exactly the same place where the old one had stood for generations. I’ll never get back the house I grew up in. I know that, and I’ve finally made peace with it. The people who made it home are gone, and no matter what we build there, it will never look exactly the way it did when I was a little girl standing in the yard with that plastic rake.

For a long time, I thought what I missed was the house. As I’ve gotten older, I’ve realized that isn’t entirely true. I miss the people who filled it with life. I miss family dinners in my grandmother’s kitchen, birthday parties on the front porch, afternoons spent outside until the sun went down, and a time when home simply felt safe. That house represented my past, my childhood, and a huge portion of my life.

I know I can’t get any of that back. The house is gone, and so are many of the people who made it home. But the land is still there. Every time I stand on it, I’m reminded that while I can’t recreate the past, I can build something new for the future.

That’s what this has always been about. Not trying to rebuild the house I lost, but creating a place where my children and, one day, my grandchildren can make memories of their own on the same land that gave me so many of mine.

A Plan That Finally Gave Us Hope

For years, going back to our family land was something we talked about as “someday.” We wanted to believe we would make it home eventually, but it always felt like something far off in the future. Meanwhile, the repairs on the house we were living in had become more than we could realistically keep up with, and eventually we had to stop talking about someday and make a real decision about what came next.

A few months before we began looking at manufactured homes, I drove past the old place for the first time in nearly eight years. I had stayed away because going back was simply too painful. Every visit left me grieving what had been lost, and after a while, I couldn’t keep putting myself through it.

When I pulled up that day, the property was almost unrecognizable. The circle driveway that once went around the house had disappeared beneath years of overgrowth and young pine trees. Tires and trash had been dumped on the land by people who had come onto the property without our knowledge. The growth was so thick that I couldn’t even see what remained of the house, even though it had stood only about a hundred feet from the road.

I sat on the side of the road and cried for nearly half an hour, thinking the same thing over and over: My home is gone.

I think that was the moment I finally understood that we couldn’t keep putting everything off. We’d reached the point where we could no longer keep up with the repairs on our current home, and patching things together was no longer a long-term solution. We had reached a crossroads. We could invest tens of thousands of dollars into a house that continued to need major repairs and commit ourselves to staying there for the rest of our lives, or we could put that same money toward starting over on the land we had always hoped to return to.

Neither option was easy, and we didn’t take the decision lightly. More than anything, we needed a place we could build a future. But if we were going to take on another mortgage and invest that much money into our future, we had to ask ourselves where we wanted that future to be.

A manufactured home seemed like the quickest and most practical way to make that happen. It would allow us to stop investing in a house we could no longer keep up with and finally return to the family land we’d hoped to call home again for nearly twenty years.

Before we signed anything, I asked every question I could think of because we couldn’t afford to get this wrong. My biggest concern was whether we would have to sell our current home before moving into the new one. That wasn’t possible because, despite its condition, it was still the only roof over our heads.

I explained that concern more than once, and each time I was assured it wouldn’t be a problem. We were told we could move forward without selling our current home first, and hearing that changed everything. For the first time in years, we stopped talking about “someday.”

We paid the down payment, worked through the design process, and chose the floor plan that was supposed to become our home. While it was being built, we cleared years of overgrowth from the property, prepared the home site, and completed everything we were asked to do so we would be ready when delivery day arrived.

A few days after the clearing and dirt work were finished, we went back to clean up brush and start making plans. We talked about where we might put a shed, where the carport could go, and what the property would look like once we were finally living there. I took a video that day, and when I watch it now, what stands out most is how happy I was. Because for the first time since we were forced to leave our home after Hurricane Katrina, I had hope that I was going to finally get to go home.

It was the first time since we moved away that going back didn’t end with me crying. For once, I wasn’t standing there grieving the home that was gone. I was looking around and imagining the life we were about to build. For the first time in nearly twenty years, “someday” had become real.

Three Days Before We Were Supposed to Go Home

Three days before our scheduled delivery, my phone rang. I still remember exactly where I was when I answered it because, even now, it’s one of those moments I can replay in my mind as though it happened yesterday.

The person on the other end told me the loan wasn’t going to fund after all. If we wanted to move forward, we would have to sell our current home first.

I was stunned. From the very beginning, I had explained that selling our current home before moving into the new one wasn’t possible. Despite its condition, it was still the only roof over our heads, and that’s why I had asked that question over and over before we ever signed a contract. Every time, I had been assured it wouldn’t be a problem. We were told we could move forward without selling our home first, and we trusted that information when we made one of the biggest financial decisions of our lives.

Now, everything had changed. The home had already been built. Our family land had been cleared. The homesite was ready, and we had spent months preparing for the day we thought we would finally move home. After all of that, we were being told something completely different than what we had been told from the beginning.

The manufactured home was never delivered. We lost the money we had invested, and the property we had worked so hard to prepare sat empty. We weren’t simply back where we had started; we were in a worse position than before because the savings we had planned to use to build our future were gone, and the home we thought would finally take us there never arrived.

Looking back now, I think what hurt the most wasn’t just losing the house itself. It was losing the certainty that, after nearly twenty years of waiting, we were finally going home. For a brief moment, “someday” had become real. Then, with a single phone call, it became “maybe” all over again.

I wish I could say we immediately found another solution, but we didn’t. Instead, we spent the next several months trying to figure out what options we had left and whether there was any way to salvage the future we had worked so hard to build.

Trying to Find Another Way

After the manufactured home fell through, we weren’t ready to give up. Our first instinct wasn’t to ask for help—it was to find another solution. We started making phone calls, asking questions, and looking at every option we could think of to see if there was some way to move forward.

One of the first places we turned was our bank. We hoped there might be a way to borrow against our current home so we could make the repairs it desperately needed or recover enough financially to start over. Instead, we learned that wasn’t going to be possible. It wasn’t the answer we were hoping for, but it forced us to face the reality that our current home could no longer provide a path forward.

We also reached out to family to see if there was any way to bridge the gap. Unfortunately, that wasn’t an option either. Like so many families today, everyone has their own financial responsibilities, and no one was in a position to help us with something this significant.

When those options didn’t work out, we didn’t stop trying. I continued working my full-time job while also taking on a second job, putting every dollar I could toward rebuilding what we’d lost. We’ve cut expenses where we can, postponed anything that wasn’t absolutely necessary, and continued looking for any realistic path that would allow us to solve this on our own.

The problem has never been a lack of willingness to work for what we need. The problem is that the repairs have become more than we can realistically keep up with.

Today, the damage to the bedroom, bathroom, and hallway remains. The repairs to our kitchen floor are still beyond what we can afford, and we still don’t have a working bathroom sink. Every month that passes brings another repair we simply can’t afford to make. If this were simply a matter of working longer and saving for another year or two, that’s exactly what we would do. But after everything we’ve experienced over the past several years, we honestly don’t believe we’ll be able to keep up with the repairs for another year or two.

That realization was one of the hardest parts of this entire journey. Asking for help was never part of the plan, and it’s not something that comes naturally to either of us. We’ve always believed in working hard, solving our own problems, and doing everything we could with what we had. That’s exactly what we’ve tried to do every step of the way.

This fundraiser isn’t about avoiding the hard work. It’s about running out of time. That’s ultimately what brought us here.

Where We Are Today

Today, we’re still living in the same house we’ve called home since 2011. We take things one day at a time, but the reality is that we’re living in a home that continues to require repairs we simply can’t keep up with. It’s not the future we imagined for ourselves, but it’s the one we’re doing our best to navigate until we can find a way forward.

The good news is that we’re no longer starting from the beginning. We’ve been able to save enough for a down payment, and we finally have a realistic path toward returning to our family land. Our goal has never been a large or elaborate home. We simply want a safe, modest place where we can finally return to the family land and begin rebuilding our lives after everything that’s happened.

What we’re asking for isn’t help paying for the home itself. We’re asking for help covering the essential expenses that remain before we can finally move home. Those include installing a septic system, connecting utilities, purchasing essential appliances, and adding the storage space we’ll need after downsizing from a 2,000-square-foot home that has held more than thirty years of our lives.

Because the new home is much smaller, there simply won’t be room for everything we currently own or for a dedicated workspace. I work a full-time job, a second job that I do from home, and I’m currently working toward my PMP certification through online classes. Having a small outbuilding that can serve as both storage and a home office will allow me to continue earning that second income while also giving us a practical place to keep the things that won’t fit inside the house. It’s not about adding extra space—it’s about making a smaller home work for the life we’re already living.

Every donation, no matter the size, will go directly toward those remaining costs and help us move one step closer to finally going home after nearly twenty years. We’re not asking anyone to buy us a house. We’re simply asking for a little help getting us across the finish line after losing the savings we’d spent years setting aside for these final expenses.

If you’re not in a position to donate, we completely understand. We know times are difficult for many families, and simply taking the time to read our story means more than you probably realize. If you feel comfortable sharing our fundraiser with others, that kindness alone could help us reach someone who is able to make a difference.

For more than twenty years, we’ve done everything we knew to do. We survived Hurricane Katrina, rebuilt a neglected foreclosure with our own hands, saved for years to return to our family land, and when that plan fell apart, we kept looking for another way. This fundraiser isn’t the beginning of our effort—it’s the final piece of a journey that’s been decades in the making.

If you choose to be part of that journey, whether through a donation, sharing our story, or simply keeping us in your thoughts and prayers, please know how deeply grateful we are. Your kindness gives us something we’ve held onto through every setback we’ve faced: hope.

Our dream has never been to build a perfect house. It’s simply been to go home.

To everyone who has taken the time to read our story, shared our story, or donated, thank you. God bless!

If you’d like to learn more about our journey, we’ve been documenting parts of it on TikTok here: Nikki’s Homestead.

View Our Fundraiser on GoFundMe

Apr 16 2025

Parallels Between Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned and Egyptian Deities

If you’ve ever went down the rabbit hole with vampirism and the different myths, such as those with Vlad the Impaler, Dracula, etc., you’ve probably no doubt a fan of Anne Rice’s The Vampire Chronicles. I’ve read nearly every book in the series, some of them multiple times, and I’ve always been fascinated with the characters of Akasha and Enkil and their origin story. I did some digging, and here are a few parallels and differences between Akasha and Enkil’s origin story and a few of the Egyptian myths an deities that could very well have been Anne’s muse for the storyline.

Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned (1988), the third novel in The Vampire Chronicles, introduces Akasha, the first vampire and a pivotal figure whose origin story intertwines themes of blood, immortality, and divine power. To analyze and compare Akasha’s narrative with Egyptian deities or myths, we’ll focus on her role as the progenitor of vampirism, her godlike status, and the mythological underpinnings of her story, drawing parallels with Egyptian figures like Sekhmet, Isis, and Osiris, whose myths share thematic resonances.

Akasha’s Role and Origin in Queen of the Damned

In Rice’s novel, Akasha and her husband Enkil, ancient Egyptian rulers, become the first vampires around 4000 BCE when a malevolent spirit, Amel, fuses with Akasha’s blood after she is mortally wounded. This transformation renders her immortal, superhumanly powerful, and dependent on blood for sustenance. Akasha is revered as the “Queen of the Damned,” a near-divine figure who sustains all vampires through her existence. Her awakening in the modern era brings apocalyptic ambitions, as she seeks to reshape the world, viewing herself as a goddess-like arbiter of life and death. Key themes include:

  • Blood as life force: Vampirism is tied to blood consumption, symbolizing both vitality and destruction.
  • Immortality and divinity: Akasha’s transformation elevates her to a godlike status, yet she is cursed with isolation.
  • Creation and destruction: Akasha embodies a dual role as the mother of vampires and a potential destroyer of humanity.
  • Egyptian setting: The novel’s ancient Egyptian backdrop invites comparisons to the culture’s mythology.

Egyptian Deities and Myths: Comparative Analysis

Egyptian mythology, rich with gods and narratives about creation, destruction, and immortality, offers several figures and stories that parallel Akasha’s mythos. Below, we explore Sekhmet, Isis, and Osiris, focusing on thematic and narrative similarities.

1. Sekhmet: The Bloodthirsty Goddess of War and Healing

Sekhmet, the lioness-headed goddess, is a prime candidate for comparison due to her association with blood, destruction, and divine power.

  • Mythological Context: Sekhmet was created by Ra to punish humanity for rebellion. She became a relentless force of destruction, slaughtering humans and drinking their blood until Ra tricked her into consuming beer dyed red to resemble blood, intoxicating her and halting her rampage. Sekhmet also has a dual role as a healer, capable of curing plagues and restoring balance.
  • Parallels with Akasha:
    • Blood and Destruction: Like Sekhmet, Akasha is defined by bloodlust. Her vampiric nature requires blood to survive, and her awakening in Queen of the Damned unleashes a destructive vision to eradicate most men and establish a matriarchal utopia. Both figures embody primal, uncontrollable power tied to blood.
    • Divine Femininity: Sekhmet’s status as a goddess mirrors Akasha’s self-perception as a divine queen. Both are revered and feared, wielding authority over life and death.
    • Duality: Sekhmet’s dual role as destroyer and healer resonates with Akasha’s position as the creator of vampirism (giving “life” to vampires) and a potential annihilator of humanity. However, while Sekhmet’s destruction is tempered by divine intervention, Akasha’s is driven by her own agency, reflecting a modern reinterpretation of divine will.
  • Differences:
    • Sekhmet’s bloodlust is external, a divine punishment, whereas Akasha’s is intrinsic to her vampiric nature.
    • Sekhmet operates within a divine hierarchy under Ra, while Akasha is a singular, autonomous figure, unbound by higher gods.

2. Isis: The Mother Goddess and Magical Transformer

Isis, the goddess of magic, motherhood, and resurrection, offers another lens for comparison, particularly in Akasha’s role as a progenitor and her transformative power.

  • Mythological Context: Isis is best known for resurrecting her husband Osiris after his murder by Set, using her magical prowess to reassemble his body and conceive their son, Horus. She is a symbol of maternal protection, magical transformation, and the restoration of life, often associated with the life-giving Nile.
  • Parallels with Akasha:
    • Creation and Motherhood: Isis’s role as a mother figure, giving life to Horus and symbolically to Egypt through her magic, parallels Akasha as the “mother” of all vampires. Akasha’s blood, infused with Amel’s spirit, creates the vampiric race, much as Isis’s magic enables continuity through Horus.
    • Transformation: Both figures are linked to transformative acts. Isis transforms Osiris into an immortal god of the underworld, while Akasha’s transformation into a vampire grants her and others eternal life, albeit with a cursed twist.
    • Power and Agency: Isis’s use of magic to defy death reflects Akasha’s godlike powers, including telepathy, telekinesis, and invulnerability, which she uses to assert her will.
  • Differences:
    • Isis’s actions are benevolent, aimed at restoration and protection, while Akasha’s are often destructive, driven by a nihilistic vision.
    • Isis operates within a mythological framework of balance (ma’at), whereas Akasha’s vampirism disrupts natural order, aligning more with chaos.

3. Osiris: The God of Death and Resurrection

Osiris, the god of the underworld and resurrection, shares thematic links with Akasha’s immortality and the cost of eternal life.

  • Mythological Context: Osiris, murdered and dismembered by Set, is resurrected by Isis but becomes lord of the underworld, embodying the cycle of death and rebirth. His myth emphasizes sacrifice, transformation, and the price of immortality, as he can no longer dwell among the living.
  • Parallels with Akasha:
    • Immortality’s Price: Osiris’s resurrection comes at the cost of his earthly life, confining him to the underworld. Similarly, Akasha’s vampiric immortality isolates her, requiring blood and severing her from humanity. Both figures pay a steep price for eternal existence.
    • Sacrificial Transformation: Osiris’s death and rebirth mirror Akasha’s near-death and transformation by Amel’s spirit. Both involve a bodily violation (dismemberment for Osiris, spiritual possession for Akasha) that leads to a new, divine state.
    • Legacy: Osiris’s legacy continues through Horus, while Akasha’s lives on through the vampiric bloodline, linking both to generational continuity.
  • Differences:
    • Osiris’s resurrection is passive, dependent on Isis, while Akasha’s transformation is a direct result of her encounter with Amel, giving her greater agency.
    • Osiris represents cyclical renewal, tied to agriculture and the Nile, whereas Akasha’s immortality is static, a frozen state of predation.

Broader Egyptian Mythological Themes

Beyond specific deities, Akasha’s story resonates with broader Egyptian mythological concepts:

  • Blood and Life Force: In Egyptian mythology, blood (especially divine blood) is often linked to life and power, as seen in myths where gods’ bodily fluids create life or sustain the cosmos. Akasha’s blood as the source of vampirism aligns with this, though Rice subverts it into a darker, parasitic force.
  • Divine Kingship: Egyptian pharaohs were seen as living gods, a concept reflected in Akasha’s royal status and her claim to divine authority. Her ambition to rule as a goddess-queen echoes the pharaoh’s role as a mediator between gods and humans.
  • Chaos vs. Order (Ma’at vs. Isfet): Egyptian mythology emphasizes ma’at (order, balance) against isfet (chaos). Akasha’s apocalyptic vision disrupts ma’at, positioning her closer to chaotic forces like Set or Apophis, despite her claim to divine order.

Comparative Synthesis

Akasha’s narrative in Queen of the Damned blends elements of Sekhmet’s bloodthirsty destruction, Isis’s maternal and transformative power, and Osiris’s sacrificial immortality, but reinterprets them through a modern, gothic lens. Unlike Egyptian deities, who operate within a cosmic balance, Akasha is a solitary figure, unbound by divine hierarchy, reflecting Rice’s existential exploration of power and isolation. Her vampirism subverts the Egyptian ideal of eternal life (achieved through mummification and the afterlife) into a cursed, predatory existence, highlighting a tension between divinity and monstrosity.

  • Closest Parallel: Sekhmet is the most direct comparison due to the shared imagery of blood, destruction, and divine femininity. Akasha’s rampage in the novel mirrors Sekhmet’s near-annihilation of humanity, though Akasha’s motivations are personal and ideological, not divinely ordained.
  • Unique Elements: Rice’s use of a demonic spirit (Amel) as the source of vampirism has no direct Egyptian parallel, drawing more from Mesopotamian or Judeo-Christian demonology. This externalizes the origin of Akasha’s power, contrasting with the innate divinity of Egyptian gods.

Conclusion

Akasha’s story in Queen of the Damned draws heavily on Egyptian mythological themes of blood, immortality, and divine power, with strong parallels to Sekhmet’s destructive bloodlust, Isis’s transformative motherhood, and Osiris’s costly resurrection. However, Rice reimagines these elements in a darker, more individualistic framework, where Akasha’s godlike status is both a gift and a curse. By rooting her narrative in ancient Egypt, Rice taps into the culture’s fascination with eternal life and divine authority, but her vampiric lens transforms these into a meditation on power, isolation, and the human desire for transcendence. For further exploration, examining primary Egyptian texts like The Book of the Dead or myths from Plutarch’s De Iside et Osiride could deepen the comparison, though Rice’s fictional Egypt is more atmospheric than historically precise.

I

May 7 2024

For Those Who Know Me IRL, a Social Media Update

For those who know me IRL, you may have noticed that my personal social profile on FB disappeared last week. This was not an accident, unfortunately. So sick back, buckle up, and let me explain why I’ve not had social media in my “real” name since 2010.

In 2010, as I was finishing up my last two semesters of college, it had become quite normal for employers to not only check out employees’ and potential employees’ social media accounts, they were also using the content as determining factors to hire and/or terminate. We all knew it was going on, and while no one approved of it, it was just another one of those things that we had to put up with. Since I wasn’t very active on any of my IRL accounts, I opted to delete everything that included my “IRL” persona, keeping only those accounts for my pseudonym.

Fast forward to last week, when I found out that my current EDJ made the very unethical decision to terminate someone after finding their TT account. Not because of outlandish claims or questionable morals or ethics. No. This determination was made after the person in question made a video flying the bird. Yeah. First amendment be damned, right?

Needless to say, I opted to once again delete any IRL social media accounts I had. I have also made the decision to not only cut back on any personal information that I share through my social media accounts, but I am also being more proactive to ensure that anything dealing with my IRL, personal life is only made available to specific friends and family on all of my accounts.

While I am loathe to do this, it is the only way I can protect myself from any potential backlash. I will say that in 2024, it is utterly ridiculous that I am still forced to choose between my constitutional right to free speech and self expression, the author brand I have spent over 20 years building up, and an EDJ that (half-ass) pays the bills.

Apr 24 2024

Why Amazon is Not Going to Take Indie Authors’ Demands Seriously

This was originally published on Medium in May, 2022.

In recent weeks, the readers of TikTok (#booktok) have taken to the platform encouraging other bibliophiles to download books from Amazon — and then return them for a full return. Now, before everyone runs off to Amazon to download the entire series of Harry Potter, allow me to go on record with a warning. First, not all books available on Amazon are returnable. And second, for those that are returnable, Amazon will not allow you to return books all willy-nilly. In fact, returning items through Amazon works just like returns at any other store — do it too often or too many times in a given period, and it can get your account locked down or worse-get it banned completely.

For indie authors, book returns is nothing new. In fact, we have been receiving reduced royalties and charge-backs to our author accounts ever since we signed up with the platform. It’s always been Amazon’s rule, written into the Terms of Service, that we are responsible for any returned books, resulting in reduced royalties and charge-backs. This means readers have ample opportunity to buy, read, and return a book for a full return — on our dime.

Before I get into the nuts-and-bolts of this story, let’s back up a bit. Most indie authors do not know publishing houses hammer out their own deals and contracts with Amazon. For many household names like Rice and Rowling, they are allowed to have certain books in Kindle Unlimited while still selling the books wide. Unfortunately, indie authors must abide by the same Terms of Service as every other indie author using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing platform. This means any books we enroll into the KU program must be made exclusive to that platform, we foot the bill for returned ebooks, and a host of other contractual obligations. It’s a one-size-fits-all Terms of Service meant to benefit Amazon, and stiff the author in the process.

The larger publishing houses have a lot more pull where Amazon is concerned. This means not only different contracts and Terms of Services for each house, bit it also means different contracts for different authors and/or different books. Returns are a huge part of any contract. The last thing publishers want to get hit with, indie authors included, is a huge charge-back to their publisher accounts for returns, or reduced royalty payments, due to a massive number of book returns. This is why many houses will negotiate with Amazon on their contracts, trying to reduce the publisher’s liability as much as possible.

Now we have a large group of people (readers) on a large platform (TikTok) all sharing their wisdom on how to get away with reading an endless supply of books that they never have to pay for, all at the expense of indie authors. Enter the Author’s Guild.

Several weeks ago I was invited to a private group of authors who had banned together to get behind the AG as they drew up plans to meet with Amazon representatives and present their demands for Amazon to stop allowing ebook returns — full stop. Two days to return a book when purchased by mistake, but no returns on books where more than 25% of the file had been accessed through Kindle.

It makes sense to us. Every book offers a 10% “look inside” free sample. There is literally no reason why someone would return a book after reading any or all of it, unless they did no specifically to get away with paying for the item. It’s theft, pure and simple. Well, it’s simple to the authors this is happening to. And the AG was ready to go into battle to make this point.

To my knowledge, the meeting the AG had requested on 4/25/2022 did not actually happen. According to the AG, when they first contacted Amazon regarding the policy and their request set up a meeting specifically to discuss the issue, Amazon’s reply was that their data did not show an increase in book returns. And when shown instances from members of the AG, Amazon stated they believed the increase in returns of books by those specific authors was the result of those authors’ marketing activities.

In other words, they do not see a problem and have no intentions of changing their policy. In response, many authors have been spamming Amazon’s emails with demands to change the policy, blowing up various Amazon accounts on Twitter, including the CEO, and spamming the author help box inside the authors’ KDP dashboards. The spam has gotten so bad, Amazon has since disabled these email accounts. And the author help box within their KDP dashboard? That page has been recoded so that the box is no longer there. Instead, you have to upload a file.

Is this a bad idea for authors to do? Oh, let me count the ways.

I have said from the beginning that this entire campaign was not going to change anything. If anything, it could spell potential disaster for many indie authors. Amazon has already proven time and again that they do not take indie authors seriously on their platform. And abusing the very avenues put there to help authors is only going to make things worse. In fact, I wouldn’t put it past the mighty Zon to start disabling author KDP dashboards — or worse. We’ve seen it happen before whenever indie authors made too much of a fuss over something. They started banning accounts left and right, not even bothering to see if the accounts they were banning were actually guilty of anything. Most of it was just a show of force — start banning accounts, and the rest of the complainers will tuck-tail and run in hopes of avoiding the same fate. And it’s worked, time and again.

But — why will our voices go unheard? If independently published books make up approximately 98% of all books published, then why do they show so little regard to our complaints? Why do they negotiate contracts with traditional publishers while sweeping us to the side?

To answer this question, I did some deep digging into Amazon’s 2021 statistics. Let me just say, I know why Amazon thinks so little of us.

In 2021, the top Big 5 (now the Big 4 thanks to mergers) were responsible for approximately 80% of all books sold. Not books published — book SOLD. This means that out of the all the books sold in 2021, 80% of those books were published by one of the large traditional publishers. Add in the rest of the traditional publishers and small presses, and you are looking at 90% of all books sold in 2021 being a traditionally published book. For indie authors, only 10% of those books sales were attributed to self-published books.

We all know that Amazon is the largest book retailer. However, book sales only account for just under 10% of Amazon’s total revenues for 2021. With indie published book sales making up approximately 10% of all books sold, this means the total Amazon revenue attributed to independently published book sales is less than 1%.

This is why Amazon does not take indie author demands seriously. The amount of money we bring to the very large Amazon table is miniscule in comparison to everything else, including traditional book sales. With so little to offer the company as a whole, is it any wonder they lumped us all together under a one-size-fits-all Terms of Service, and then take away all avenue of communications when we don’t get our way? The only thing a $7+ Billion-Dollar-a-Year company understands is money. And until we step up our game and hurt them where it counts, I’m afraid we are always going to be the underdog where KDP is concerned.

Jan 22 2024

The True Key to Author Success- It’s Not What You’ve Been Lead to Believe

I think it’s time we addressed the elephant in the room. And that would be the wealth divide in indie publishing. Buckle up, it’s going to be a long one.

One thing that completely vexes me in this industry are authors’ unwillingness to openly discuss just how much money they are investing in the marketing of their books. I can only guess that it is because no one wants to readily admit what I have been screaming from the rooftops for the past six plus years, and that is the fact that the only thing which separates a bestselling indie book from one that completely flops is how much money an author invests into their marketing efforts.

(For the sake of this article, we’re not going to discuss those authors who became bestsellers because of their connections or those who built a platform in some other industry and then decided that adding “author” to their portfolio was a good idea. That’s a whole other discussion that vexes me even more than the wealth division in the industry.)

Let’s break this down and look further into this phenomenon. Indie author Matthew Olney does a fantastic job of covering this very topic. I highly recommend taking a few minutes to reach through his article as it is very informative.

As I’ve said, most books which succeed these days have one thing in common – lots (and I mean a LOT) of money invested into the marketing and promotion of the books. As one author notes, “…I have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars to become successful….”

Read that again. Just one author admits to investing hundreds of thousands of dollars into her author career to launch the type of success she is currently experiencing. Another romance author boasted, “I routinely spend $1K a day on Amazon ads just to keep my books ranking in the top 10K overall on Amazon.”

In another indie author support group, after much conversing and questions, one author finally admitted that his latest “write-to-market success story” all hinged on the fact that he was running more than a dozen ads for just one book, with each ad having a monthly AMS ad spent allowance of over $1K. He was routinely spending $12-$15K each month on ads just to be “in the green” each month. Unfortunately, I could never get him to divulge how much net profit he was making . What I did get from him was a lot of gaslighting and half-responses when it came to exactly how much he was profiting each month after all expenses were taken into account.

The unfortunate reality of the situation is that success in this industry isn’t free. And hard work, along with a quality product, does not equate to success. Like with any business, it takes money to make money. And nowhere does that basic business principle come into play more so than with the publishing industry. Matthew notes, “For authors with substantial financial resources, the road to success is paved with opportunities that are often out of reach for their less wealthy counterparts.”

It has been an unfortunate fact for the better part of a decade now that readers do not care about a quality product. This is made apparent by any author who has ever looked at the bestsellers list on Amazon and wondered how on earth something with so many grammatical errors and just plain, bad writing could have sold tens of thousands of copies of a single eBook and continuously burn up the Amazon charts. Exactly what makes their book so much more appealing to the masses? The fact of the matter is – money. There is nothing special about the bestselling books out there. The authors simply had more money to invest into the marketing of the product. As Matthew notes in his post, “With the right budget, an author can ensure their book appears in front of millions of potential readers through targeted ads, social media campaigns, and high-profile book tours.” And in this industry and the sheer amount of content being posted to Amazon every day, a massive amount of exposure is the only thing which is going to change a book from just another pretty cover and blurb to a raging, trending success among readers.

But this comes at a price to the entire industry.

As noted, readers do not care about quality, nor do they care if their entertainment is ethically sourced or not. This is why the influx of AI generated books has not sunk to the bottom of the Amazon slush pile, but are rising in the ranks. It is why readers do not bat an eye at the AI generated book ads and book covers and ChatGPT-generated blurbs, but routinely buy the books and leave rave reviews. It’s why one author, who clearly states they are using generative AI to create the work being offered, has over $118K in their KickStarter campaign. Readers do not care where the entertainment comes from, so far as it is cheap or free to them.

Another prime example of shady tactics being used by authors and readers not caring is the case of one author who shall not be named who has published 49 titles to date, with most of those being enrolled in KU. The kicker? Some of these books have racked up hundreds of reviews, however, less than 3% of those reviews are from verified purchases. In one instance, out of 727 reviews, only 24 of them are from actual purchases. These verified reviews seem to be evenly split with half of them giving 1 or 2 stars and the other half being 3 stars or above with mostly positive vibes about the book in question. Anyone who knows anything about book reviews would immediately think something is not right with this sheer volume of reviews. Add in the fact that these seem to be the same 2 or 3 books written verbatim with only a few minor changes such as character names, and not only are those books in direct violation of KU’s Terms of Service, but it leaves a terrible taste in the mouth of every author out there who have busted their asses writing quality books while being ghosted by no less than 2/3’s of their beta group. Again, it seems very clear that readers just simply do not care about quality any more, so long as they have access to a never-ending stream of free and/or cheap disposable entertainment.

And let’s not forget the highly successful male author who recently sent out mass solicitation emails (some going to authors and allegedly, to minors as well) asking BookTok “influencers” to make partly nude videos to promote his latest up-and-coming romance release. One of the suggested prompts encouraged BookTok influencers to post a video which panned up and down the nude body with only the book covering up the naughty bits. Of course, the only ones getting up-in-arms about any of this were other authors and creatives. Readers have, non surprisingly, been completely silent on the manner.

Perhaps even more distressing is the fact that there is not an unlimited pool of readers to pull from. It is the law of supply and demand working against us – there is far too much supply and not nearly enough demand for high-quality, well-written novels. This has driven down prices and is making it next to impossible for anyone without a very large marketing budget at their disposal to be seen.

I know a lot of authors are reading this thinking to themselves, “But I’ve worked HARD to get to where I am right now. I deserve to be successful.” If only hard work was the deciding factor in this industry.

If someone were to give me $100K to invest in the marketing of any of my books, even if it was one that had been published over a decade ago, I can guarantee you three things will happen. 1 – that book will become a bestseller on Amazon, possibly even on one of the larger lists. 2 – my previous 30 years of busting my butt in this industry would have absolutely NOTHING to do with the success of that book. Let’s face it, when you shove that much money into marketing, hard work has zero to do with your success. If that was the case, the book would have been a bestseller all on its own without putting any money into marketing. And 3 – I will work a hell of a lot LESS with that $100K marketing budget than I ever would have with a $100 marketing budget. And I would be the first one to tell you that my success all hinged on the amount of money I spent in marketing. Unlike other authors, I’m not afraid to admit it. I’ll tell you exactly how much it cost me to achieve that level of success, no ten-thousand dollar mastermind course required.

You can’t very well claim hard work is what made you successful in the same breath that you claim to have spent hundreds of thousands of dollars on your author career. In this instance, those two things are mutually exclusive, no matter how much authors want to pretend otherwise. That’s not to say that you can’t work hard while spending ungodly amounts of money on marketing. But to claim that your “hard work” is what got you there while completely ignoring the financial investment portion of the equation is, quite frankly, insulting to the rest of us.

Now, more than ever, the only thing that decides success in this industry, outside of the rare instance of sheer, dumb luck, is the almighty dollar. This is why authors like myself are constantly begging readers to do just two simple, free things for us. 1 – please leave a review. And 2 – please, please, tell others about the book. While we would love to stay your gatekept secret, the truth is, if we are not making sales, then we have zero motivation to keep writing. Which means pretty soon, even those readers who actually do love a well-crafted and well-written book will be left with nothing but the bottom-of-the-barrel wannabe books that are being snapped up by the masses.