The Pitfalls of Being a (armchair) Masterchef Contestant

Undoubtedly, you have heard of an armchair quarterback. I have now invented a new one, armchair, MasterChef contestant.

Like millions of others, maybe not that high, I became obsessed via binge watching the television show MasterChef. I had heard of it, but never watched it. After watching a TV show called Pressure Cooker, I found my love of cooking shows and movies and naturally gravitated to Masterchef. where have I been the last 14 years or so. Watching it, I hated Joe the judge and I loved Joe, in the same breath. I found myself rooting and cheering some contestants while begging for others to serve raw chicken. Early on the cooks were okay but as the seasons moved on they got better and we were privileged to Gordon Ramsey master classes. Some seasons I disliked because it was obvious who they favorited, but overall, it’s fantastic.

For the record, I can’t get into Masterchef Junior, the judges are way too nice.

Anyhow while watching the show I suddenly found myself loving to cook more, trying new things and techniques.

I’ve always been a good cook. Masterchef contestant level? No. I was a Mom cook and Nana cook. Whipping up comfort foods, like Mac n cheese, goulash, sloppy joes and a killer spaghetti sauce I learned from my grandmother.

But as the seasons rolled on and the contestants got better, so did I. Suddenly I was making a perfectly medium rare filet mignon,  my own pot stickers, I could poach a lobster, and do my own pasta. (Albeit I have a pasta machine now). Heck I made a rack of lamb with red wine reduction. Fondant potatoes are once a week. Before Masterchef I didn’t have a clue what a fondant potato was.

Every day, I kid you not, was a new cooking experience. I went from having three or four spices to an entire rack and a cabinet with Asian sauces and Indian spices I never would have thought to buy let alone know how to use. I do.

My fresh drunken noodles … the bomb.

My phone camera roll went from pictures of kids to mainly food I created (Obviously by this blog).

I was serving myself and granddaughter restaurant quality meals. I stopped getting take out because I wanted fresh. Not a bad thing right? I slowly became a food snob.

But something happened, something horrible.

While taking the path to great cooking I lost my knack for making tasty comfort foods. Or did I?

I learned this when I decided to make Mac n cheese. It didn’t taste right, gummy. The cheese was weird. I didn’t do anything different. Had to be a fluke. Then the confirmation came when I wanted Sloppy Joe’s. Simple right? No. They were horrible. Meat was hard, the sauce too sweet. One bite and I threw it out. Who fails at making Sloppy Joes. This lady here.

Ug! What happened to me? Did I become a horrible Mom cook or did I just get used to elevated style meals. I don’t even want to try a pot roast. Thankfully my sauce is still super killer.

Even though I lost my touch or rather palate for normal foods, I anxiously await season 13. Let the cooking neuroticism begin.

Sigh.

I really wanted a Sloppy Joe

The Great Bacon Off Test

It’s all about the bacon. You would think. In an unpopular opinion, probably even offensive to people, I’m not overly crazy about bacon. I think it goes back to my youth when we were “lucky” to get two pieces of bacon and it was hard to tell upon looking if it was even cooked. My parents loved their bacon fatty and limp. Yeah. Um no. But I do enjoy a bacon sandwich or a piece on a burger.

Which brings me to my hatred of cooking bacon. The grease, sizzle and snap of oil that burns your skin when it flies from the pan. The greatest invention to me was precooked bacon you out in the microwave or flash fry.

There are so many brands. I didn’t think they were too different until my granddaughter, Penny asked me for magical bacon (that’s what I call it because it’s done fast like magic). I only had two strips of one brand and made two strips of another. She refused to eat the second type because it was different.

Was it.? So I decided to take it to task and invite two of my grandkids over for a bacon off.  Lily is five, Aiden is 14.

They didn’t know which was which. Plates simply number one through five. I asked them to score 1 – 10 and tell me what they liked or didn’t.

I cooked the bacon according to the package instructions and both kids knew this.

Here is an image before and after. I apologize because the kids dug into bacon 2 and 3 before I could take the photo.

Here are the results I quote their own words. (Video of their final results at the end)

Bacon One – Sugardale

 

Lily: Score 3.

“Not impressed, said it was too hard and burnt, but the flavor was okay.”

Aiden: Score 7

“Love this bacon, can I have the rest?”

SCORE TOTAL: 10/20 

Bacon Two – Oscar Myer

Lily: Score 8

“Texture is great and it tastes good and bacony.”

Aiden: Score 5

“Texture is good, tastes is a little off and is greasy.”

 SCORE TOTAL: 13/20

 

Bacon Three – Trader Joe’s

 

Lily: Score 6

“Not bad tasting. I like the texture, the instructions don’t make it hard”

Aiden: Score 4

“It has the best texture but the smoke flavor stays with you too much.”

SCORE TOTAL: 10/20

 

Bacon Four – Hormel

 

Lily: Score 5

“Flavor is great. I kinda like the texture. Needs to be softer.” (Man my parents would have loved this girl.

Aiden: Score 4

“Goes kinda haywire in your mouth. Nah.”

SCORE TOTAL: 11/10

 

Bacon Five – Store Brand Giant Eagle

Lily: Score 9“I love this. It’s soft but crispy, tiny and melts in your mouth. My favorite,”

Aiden: Score 3

“No, no. What happened to it. It’s too thin and dry.”

SCORE TOTAL: 12/20

 

Finally Now because the original inspiration (Penny) was under the weather and couldn’t make it, I carefully wrapped each sample and marked them and sent them over.

She wasn’t in the mood so my son and son in law took the test and both decided bacon 2 was the best.

After adding the scores from Aiden and Lily, bacon 2 was the highest

Me? I agree with Lily and prefer the broke  and tiny tasty store brand. 

Which do you prefer if you buy precooked bacon. Leave a comment and let me know. And enjoy the quick video testimonies!

The Breaking Point of Negative Feedback

I heard it said that negative feedback is better than no feedback, or you need to hear the negative to fix the mistakes. While that is true, for the purpose of this blog, there are two types of negative feedback. Critical and harsh. You can tell someone they suck without using the word suck.

This cherry pie sucked!

This cherry didn’t do it for me.

Both tell the baker he didn’t do a good job on the pie, but while one can make the baker reexamine his recipe, the other can inadvertently make that baker put away his mixing bowl for a long time.

When you put yourself out there, especially as a writer, you have to expect the bad with the good. I know this, I have been doing this a long time. People are going to love your stories, hate your stories, or be indifferent.

You can’t please everyone, and I know that. I love getting positive feedback, emails thanking me for a great story, I mean, who doesn’t. Believe it or not, I don’t mind the critical ones. Often times, I see their point and make the change or mental note.

Critical.

Not Harsh Negative.

There’s a big difference you know and every so often, every couple years, something I write causes a rash of harsh negative emails. Again, not critical, but harsh negative.

For example, things like … (Taken from recent emails)

‘I’ll never read your books again, the errors were horrible.’

‘I wanted to throw my kindle, what a waste.’

‘Did you even graduate eighth grade?’ (Why do I get asked this? It’s happened before)

‘What were you thinking putting out crap like this’

A recent critical comment, the woman said, ‘I really enjoyed the story, there seemed to be far more errors than normal for you, please let me know if I can help.’

If you don’t see the difference, I can’t explain. But I can say this, the impact of the emails makes a difference. One type tells me, ‘Wow, she hasn’t given up on me’, the other makes me question as to why I even bother.

Recently, after a book was released through my publisher, those harsh negative emails started to arrive. All stating multiple errors, but they weren’t just letting me know about them, they were slamming me as a writer. I’ve had this happen with self published books, despite having two or three sets of eyes on the book. Things slip by.

But this … this is relentless and I am not exaggerating. It started as a few here and there after the release. A couple critical, one or two harsh negative and then it took a turn. After a weekend of several a day, suddenly, every single day I am getting no less than five emails. First, balancing out between criticism and negative and then the scales tipped. Never in my career have I ever gotten so many negative, bashing emails a day over one book. The ones not ‘slamming’ became few and far between. It has gotten to the point if I see an email and the subject even slightly talks about ‘The Book’, I don’t even open it. I have probably 50 unread in my inbox. So I apologize if you were emailing about something else and I didn’t reply yet..

Not one. Not a single one is positive. And you know what sucks? I LOVED writing that book, I created a cover from scratch and labored over it. Before you say it’s on the publisher, ask yourself … is it? My name is on that book and my name is also synonymous with self publishing so those who know my work just assume it’s self published. They aren’t blaming a publisher, they’re blaming me.

Maybe I should take it as a good thing that people feel they can reach out to me about this. That I am so approachable they can tell me anything,

There are readers I communicate with regularly that are just ‘letting me know how horrible it was’,. Not the story, the errors, then again, no one cares about this story. Little hint, if a book has been out for a couple months, and it’s that bad, really there’s  no need to let me know, chances are 50 others beat you to the punch.

So here I have a super original story, I freaking loved, sunk to a quicksand world of humiliation. A work I want to be proud of but now that ship has sailed.

For the errors, I blame myself. I didn’t pick up what the editor missed. My eyes read what my mind wrote.

I own it. My readers deserve the best I can give them and I failed them.

I know how frustrating it is to be in the flow of reading only to be halted by an avoidable error. I have reached out to many authors and none have ever experienced this, especially at this volume. Readers leave the negativity in the reviews for them not their inbox. Heck not even I have had it this bad.

This is a phenomenon, even after I was assured the mistakes were corrected the emails not only kept coming but grew in numbers.

The bottom line is, everyone has their breaking point. I’ve reached mine along with a legitimate fear that his could be the downfall of everything I worked so hard for.

So why did I write this blog? Maybe to vent, to be a bit of therapy, but mainly to ask anyone reading this that before you fire off an email of criticism/complaint penned in your frustration, whether it’s a coworker, an author, a business, just pause, breathe, reread before you hit send.

As a consumer, leaving bad reviews are your right, say what you want. But when sending a personal email, just know you, think it through.

Maybe I’m wrong. But I just wanted to put this out there.

Why I side with Harry

 On the eve of his book’s release, my preorder is in and I can wait to dive into Harry’s words.

I am obsessed with the Harry-Meagan story. I have at times used their first names as if talking  about old friends.

Actually, my obsession began with the royals the day Diana married Charles. I was doing my Saturday volunteer duty (candy striper back in the day) at the hospital with Sister Mary Louisa. A very tiny, old, petite, scary nun and as we were bagging surgical supplies she went off on a tangent about what the heck was that old man doing marrying such a young girl. “I give it ten years. I heard he has a tart on the side”

What? Who were these people she spoke of. Plus, I wasn’t familiar with what a tart was. I went home, spoke to my Nana and she immediately got me a national enquirer (reading choice of our family then)

I have followed ever since. A real life soap opera. So when things started with Harry a few years back, I called it. He’s gonna do what his mother couldn’t and break away.

I watched the Netflix Documentary and unlike everyone else I know, I loved it.

What’s the deal with the Meghan hate? Immediately, it’s like ‘blame the woman’. When we all know from the get go, Harry was the wild child. We all remember his Vegas Vacation and the nude snaps that came out.

Meghan didn’t grow up rich. She grew up with very little and I can totally understand where her thinking was skewed on how it was going to be. But Harry knew. Like his father, he didn’t prepare her. Because she was a B list celebrity didn’t mean she knew how to handle things. And though I love Harry, I bet he can be a real dick.

Okay all that aside, we saw what happened with Princess Di. Relentlessly hounded by the media, cheated on by her husband, made to look foolish in public. We all heard her side of the story, and I remember people judging her, not believing her. Harry and Meghan say pretty much the same thing, and people are reacting the same way. This isn’t the first or even second time, a royal stepped away and said these things. We all remember Edward.

Plus, hey, Tyler Perry is standing up for them and he is the stand up guy.

I heard someone today say, “He’s turning on his family.” Um, isn’t Meghan and the two kids his family too?

Harry never wanted to walk the normal royal walk. When he served his country he did so unlike any other royal, he led by example and was out there with his men and women. Harry is not stuffy, well, not like the others. He’s like Philip who refused to be tamed.

Maybe I’ll have a different feeling when I read the book, who knows. But I do know this and this is the way I see it. Dick or not, he walked away because he saw things unfolding the exact same way they did with his mother, and her final result is not the history he wanted to see repeated.

I wonder what Sister Mary Louisa would say.

Facing the Writing Changes

 

I think this may be the longest I have gone without blogging, and I think I need to get back into it. Every year, I say the same thing. Who knows, maybe this will be the year.

 I thought about blogging again because I wanted to do a food blog. Since living on my own, I find myself cooking more because, well, I am making what I want to eat not what everyone else likes to eat. My daughter calls them spinster dinners, but technically AM I spinster if I have been married a bunch.

 This year I face a lot of challenges as a writer and any oldie (Writing for Kindle for 7+ years) will know what I mean about changes. I just celebrated my 12^th anniversary with Kindle and the changes are strange. Many I never noticed because I never used a lot of the things other authors did.

It took me 10 years to realize I could email amazon and add my book to different categories other than the two I picked during publishing.  I always thought that was limiting, now, you can tell them what categories to add but you will only really show in three. So I’ll just stick with my two and let Amazon determine from the keywords, like I always did.

There’s a lot of changes in my genre of apocalypse as far as readers go. It starts out subtle, you don’t notice the trend until your rank is no longer what it used to be. So many genres are buried and done, like zombie. No one wants to read about a plague. Forget nuclear war. Until a fresh batch of readers gets scared of it, that will tank. EMP is so overused, as now is the CME events. So what is left? Natural disasters, aliens. I try at least once a year to invent a new type of apocalypse.

I find myself, as others probably do, stalled to the will of the masses. When I actually think my diehard readers don’t care. Yeah, some refuse to read zombie or aliens. But trying to fit the mold takes more time then just writing what comes to me. Be it horror, apocalypse, comedy, BEGINNNINGS!

So for the record, I am making my writing New Year’s Resolutions. I’ll check back in a year and see how I did.

• Finish at least two books I started and never finished.
• Finish a dead trilogy (One I stopped writing because I lost interest)
• Write what I feel, what comes from me. If the genre is a gone genre, vow to bring it back with good story telling..
• Get back to Vella. I like to do a vella book once and a while, they really keep me on my writing tows.
• Make my yearly ‘different’ book that I write, really different.

Is there Injustice in Justice?

It doesn’t register, nor does it ever seem important the background of the person deciding your fate when you step into a court of law. My ignorance of the process has always led me to think that judges are highly qualified and can objectively look at a case based on their experience as an attorney.

Magistrates I always looked at them as the street smart judges. Not always attorneys, but have the smarts to make quick and sometimes compassionate decisions.

It wasn’t until I started looking into things that I said, “Whoa, hey, wait a minute.”

Now I speak only for what I have learned in Pennsylvania, specifically the Fifth Judicial District. – I am not a lawyer and I never took Civics, this is based on my observation as a layperson so correct and educate me where I am wrong.

If you want to look up for your state I caution you that it’s a rabbit hole of WTH moments.

It’s mind baffling. It literally sounds like something you’d read in a dystopian, totalitarian society novel.

How many of us really, really look into the background of judges when they appear on the ballot? Maybe you do, maybe you just trust the system. Because those on the ballot are heavily vetted by the judiciary committee of the bar association.

“A well-rounded field of candidates to fill seats.” A quote from an article said.

Judges are elected and seated for a ten-year term – yeah, that needs to stop.

But did you know, at least in this county, once elected, it’s anyone’s guess where they go. Why is it that way?

There are four areas in the Common Pleas court system: Criminal, Civil, Family, Orphans.

One person, the presidential judge makes the decision who serves where ( I think). And by looking at the backgrounds, there’s no rhyme or reason to it.

Why are these judges not elected to specific benches? When we vote, why aren’t we voting on Family Court Judges, Civil Judges and Criminal Judges?

We want former pubic defenders and prosecutors in the criminal court, Real estate and personal injury lawyers in Civil, family lawyers in Family Court.

No instead we have a former personal injury, eminent domain, and defense attorneys deciding the fate of our most precious commodity … our children.

They say in custody cases, the courts favor the mothers in 72% of the cases, In Allegheny County is it any wonder?

45 judges preside in the Court of Common Pleas. 46% are women.

YET, of the eighteen judges that preside in Family court, 72% of those judges are women.

Of the 12 judges in civil, 90% are men.

Criminal – 69% are men.

What is this saying? Male judges aren’t competent enough to make decisions in Family court. Or maybe women aren’t level-headed enough to make decisions in criminal or civil cases?

With 61% of all female judges in the Fifth Judicial System serving in Family Court, to me, it makes sense why it is so biased.

And look at the cases, go on, they’re public. One judge. Judge X, when a case was filed, ruled the mother could not withhold the child from the father. Yet, four weeks later the father filed an emergency petition because he still hadn’t seen his child.

Denied.

What? Wait, didn’t Judge X just say a month earlier the mother couldn’t withhold? Four more weeks later, the father wanting to see his child, another petition … denied. Three months since originally filing, the father has filed again. Still hasn’t seen his child. This is what happens, they don’t care.

Judge X is out of family court now, bet she never gives the case a second thought. Yet that father feels hopeless, missing his child, over a decision she didn’t blink to make.

Sometimes I think being assigned Family Court is a punishment, clearly, you can have an open criminal case to run as a judge and decide the fate of a child, yet with that same record, you can’t work in a school cafeteria.

In reading over 30 cases, I have found in the last three months 90% of all emergency petitions were DENIED. Mother or father … it didn’t matter … denied.

The defendant is not innocent until proven guilty, this isn’t a criminal case. This is a child’s life, and the judges need to view it as such, look into the facts, and to the point that most of these emergency petitions aren’t filed out of spite, they are filed out of genuine concern.

The judges don’t see it that way because most didn’t start in family law.

In fact, only four of the current Family Court Judges have a background in family law. I'm talking about where they started, not tenure on the bench.

But whose fault is that? The people that elected them? They elect from the choices they are given.

The Presidential Judge makes choices on what he or she has.

Old habits are hard to break and it’s time for a change. When the people elect a judge they should be choosing which judge goes to which bench.

How can a fair and balanced fate be delivered when the process itself is not fair and balanced.

When a former public defender decides the fate of a child and a personal injury lawyer decides the fate of a criminal.

They are sworn to uphold the law … yep, I get it. But those who uphold the law should be experts in the law of the area they serve BEFORE they take that bench. Until that happens … unfathomable rulings will be made, unjust sentences handed out and true and fair justice will never be served a hundred percent. 

BookBub's New Releases for Less - My Experience

Every author knows Bookbub as the Master of Advertising. If you are picked for a feature you’re all but assured of a great sales day and residual bumps. (Most of the time) Heck, I remember when they started and I was one of the first dozen or so authors to get a feature. But note, that didn’t give me any special privileges. I still get rejected by them.

Recently I was able to try the latest feature, ‘New Releases for Less’. Googling this didn’t breed many results. I only read people stating they heard ‘mixed results’. I couldn’t find one dedicated article, so I decided to write one.

I read a comment on a post that they accept everyone. Not true. I had two rejected for new releases for less. That being said, my latest novel, The Black, was accepted under horror and here’s what I learned, but I didn’t just watch my book.

It’s important to note that they base their decision on your release price, so doing a Countdown deal of .99 won’t work unless you contact them ahead of time.

The email

An email is sent out in the early afternoon (EST). It targets readers who subscribe to those categories. In my copy of the email, there were three books. Mine and two others. I tried to reach out to these other authors to get their opinion, but one was like trying to contact a mythical creature, no FB or website. The other just didn’t get back to me.

Anyhow, let me start by saying my book was at a disadvantage going into this ad campaign. A recent Amazon glitch caused my book to be without a rank. For ten out of fourteen days it was not listed in any categories and therefore unsearchable other than by my name. Yeah, that sucked. So it started out pretty bad compared to my other new releases.

RESULTS

There were three books in the email.

The Black – by Me (2.99 – Horror)

The Signal - Philipp Calvert and Joshua T. Calvert (0.99 – Sci Fi)

Not Like Yesterday – Ava Strong (4.99 – Psychological Thriller)

Here is how I charted the ABSR (Amazon Best Seller Rank)

 

Now for the breakdown.

To be fair I used the KDP Rank Calculator to estimate sale. Even on mine, which by the way, if I break down page reads as book sales (Divide by KENP #), it comes pretty close to the calculator.

 

The Black – Release Price $2.99

Est Three-day unit sales – 104

Cost of ad -                 $260.00

 Est. Royalties             $208.24

Loss/Profit                  -$51.76

Opinion – Not great, but not bad. I really think the glitch put my book at a disadvantage, but only the next several days will tell. Like all books sales go up and down. The difference in rank wasn’t grand, but hopefully, it will make a difference.

Not Like Yesterday – Release Price $4.99

Est Three-day unit sales – 29

Cost of ad -                 $700.00

Est. Royalties              $101.30

Loss/Profit                  -$598.70

Opinion – While the massive jump from a rank of 238,000 down to 18,000 is super impressive, as authors we know to go from 238K to 50k takes only a couple sales. Her hardest jump wa from 33k to 18k. I wish the author would have replied to my email, I really wanted to know what she thought.

 

The Signal – Release Price $.99

Note this was not a countdown deal so the author royalties are $.034 a book.

EST Three-day unit sales – 610

Cost of ad -                 $400.00

Est. Royalties              $207.40

Loss/Profit                  -$196.60

Opinion – Impressive freaking jump in best seller rank. However, setting a price of 99 cents with a 35% royalty was risky. In order just to get the money back on the ad the author needed to sell 1200 books roughly in 3 days, which is possible. But not with this type of ad. Even though they took a hit, I’m gonna say the ad worked for them because it’s a book one.

In Conclusion

So what does this tell me. The ad can work if your book is at the right price. I don’t think $4.99 is a new release for less (Unless you’re Stephen King), I think $4.99 is a new release for an average Indie Author Price. The Category has 1.4 million subscribers, you have to wonder how many opened that email and were like, ‘not for less’. I wonder how many she would have sold had she priced it at 1.99

The .99 book rocked as far as sales go but profit margin was lost, however, the strategy for a first book in a series paid off. The thing they did was think it through, come up with a plan.

In looking at the stats I didn’t do too bad. Would I do it again? Yes, but I would plan it through with a strategy to at least break even, and hopefully wihtout another horrible glitch throwing me behind the 8 ball.