My husband has a mistress.
I’ve known about her for some time. I’ve even met her. I knew her long before I knew my husband.
She is amazing, as mistresses go. She’s attractive, to say the least. At her worst, she looks like she could kill you with a snap of her fingers. At her best, she looks like she could throw you down on the floor and do things to your body that would have you begging for her to never stop.

She’s lean, and athletic. If his mistress was an inanimate thing, she’d be a Harley Davidson motorcycle: shiny, fast, and made to be ridden hard and long over great stretches of time and distance until her rider was soaked in sweat and couldn’t stand on his own two feet.
Her hair is unmistakable. Everyone who meets her knows just who she is by the hair alone. Even women have been known to reach out and run their fingers down the back of her head. It gives even them a thrill and makes them question all of their choices.
She has a body to die for. She’s toned and trained and she could crush any person who dared to stand in the way of what she wants. What she needs.
I’ve seen what she does to my husband. I’ve seen the scratches on his body when he comes home from being with her. I’ve seen the red marks and the results of her dominatrix style. I’ve seen the light in his eyes after a night with her, and I know I can’t compare to what she does for him.

She’s been known to take a female mistress or two, as well. That’s actually how I met my husband. She introduced us after she and I severed our relationship.
She is so intertwined in our lives that we even celebrate her birthday. Every year we get dressed up in our finest gowns and jewels and we shine our shoes and swords and buttons and we celebrate in royal style. We dine and we dance and we toast to her and sometimes two thousand people will show up to a single birthday party to eat cake and drink in her honor. People around the world will gather in her name and all her sexy glory to drink to her.
So this year, let’s all raise a glass to my husband’s mistress.
Happy Birthday, Marine Corps. You beautiful bad ass you.

When I was 26, I was diagnosed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) and recurrent depression. To understand the diagnosis, one would have to understand some of the circumstances I came from.
The brief details go something like this:​

​I sought counseling after my second child was born. At first, the doctors wanted to prescribe me medication. I declined and asked for a therapist instead. I’ve never been one for medication. Not that I don’t believe in it, but rather that I come from a history of drug and alcohol abusers, and I have worked very hard to avoid any dependency on anything manufactured.
The doctors preferred to medicate me and then follow up with counseling if I felt it was necessary. It was the way our insurance was set up.
Coincidently, just after the diagnosis and before starting the medication, we found out I was pregnant again. The doctors immediately withdrew their request that I be medicated, and sent me to a therapist instead.
I worked with the therapist, Dana, for over a year. For the first 3 months, I saw her three times a week. Then it went down to once a week. Then it was once a month until one day she sat across from me in her office and said, “Katie, I think we’ve done all we can do. You aren’t healed. You never will be. But you have every tool you need, and you know how to use them.” We left her office and walked around in the shady park behind the building for an hour after that, just chatting about kids, college, and the dreams we had for ourselves.
I saw Dana once, after that. I was about to do an interview following up on a candle light vigil I organized for a pregnant female Marine who’d been murdered by her rapist earlier that year. She sought me out and took my shoulders, holding me out away from her and just looking at me. Finally, she said, “You’re going to be okay,” and then she left.
Dana was right. I was going to be okay. I still struggled with the things that sent me to her: the anger, the fear. I worked very hard for several years, not to curb those feelings, but to express them in ways that were conducive to healing. Sometimes I failed miserably. Sometimes those around me failed me miserably in their lack of understanding and support.
But most of the time I was extremely successful.​

​When I woke up from my nap yesterday, I felt like a different person. For whatever reason, it reminded me of one of my very first appointments with Dana. “How are you sleeping?” she’d asked me.
“How are you sleeping?” I asked myself yesterday. To be honest, my sleep has been complete and utter crap for two months now. “How are you eating?” Dana had asked me.
“How are you eating?” I asked myself yesterday. To be honest, I barely eat. I tell myself I’m very busy, I forgot, I got too lazy to cook something. But honestly, I just don’t feel like eating.
One by one, I began to ask myself all the questions that Dana asked me those first few weeks, and one by one, I began to realize I’d stumbled into a different aspect of depression.
My depression was angry, it always was. It was angry or scared. I would have moments of unexplainable fear that would leave me unable to move. I would have moments of sudden rage that left me shaking and unable to tell a soul why.
But this? This was new to me. If I was honest with myself, I would see that I’d been tired long before I got pneumonia. It was at least a solid month before. Not only was I tired, but I had no desire to do anything. Sure, occasionally I would travel up to Baltimore to work. But in my day to day life, I had no desire to do anything more than curl up on my couch and watch Netflix.
I quit writing. I quit talking to my coworkers, who- coincidentally- are some of my closest friends. I quit working very much. I quit talking to my writers.
I kept track of the people I knew were struggling, and I made a concentrated effort to reach out to them and check on them, often, all the while ignoring what was going on with me.
I was sinking, and I didn’t even know it. I was throwing out lifelines to other people, and I was drowning alone in my own house. I was advising people to take care of themselves, get help, talk to their loved ones, get rest, and eat. And all that time, I wasn’t doing the same for myself.
Yesterday, after I jumped out of my bed and into the first shower I’d taken in a week, I thought about all of it. By the time I stepped out of the steaming shower, I found myself asking “How did you get here, Kate? What happened?”
The exhaustion got me. The exhaustion got me and held on and sucked all of my energy away when I wasn’t paying attention.

I have a pituitary tumor, and it is growing. The extremely brief explanation is that a tumor in any other part of the body minus the brain is considered cancerous or non-cancerous, regardless of whether it grows or spreads, and it can be tested to determine whether it’s cancer or not. A tumor on the brain however, is simply a growth. It is considered cancerous when it begins growing. Mine is growing. We’ve known for a few years that it’s growing, but for a few years, I had a neurologist that refused to treat it, and an insurance company that refused to allow me to see someone else. We couldn’t afford to pay out of pocket, not with all of the medications we had to pay for for our kids, the extra monthly bills we had with living away from a military installation, the college bills with my husband at the university, and so my tumor took a back seat.
But then we moved, and I was promptly sent to Bethesda. Tests were run, buckets of blood were drawn, MRIs were suffered through, and all I had to do was wait.
The waiting. The unknowing. The exhaustion of just not knowing got me.
It got me and it drained everything out of me to the point that I could barely function. I used to stay up all night and write and clean, alternating, getting so much accomplished that I could be proud of. I would stay up until it was time to take the kids to school and then I would crash for a solid six hours and get up and happily, feeling rejuvenated, do it all over again.
Yesterday my shining accomplishment was that I took a shower and I made myself eat a sandwich.
How did I get here?
I stopped paying attention to me.

​I woke up this morning, a bit late, but I woke up. Still tired, not at all hungry, and aching to crawl back into bed. Instead, I sent my daughter off to the bus, drove my boys to school, drank some coffee, and pulled out my laptop to write. It’s been so long since I’ve done that that I still have an opened file from September 8th that’s been untouched and unfinished.
As I was opening a new file, I got a text message asking if I wanted to meet for coffee. “That’s a perfectly valid way to spend my morning,” I thought. “I don’t need to write right now, do I?”
I could hear Dana answer me back as if she were sitting next to me. “Coffee is great. Hell, I love coffee. But you have work to do for you. You need to be writing. It’s your thing. It’s your biggest coping tool. You know it is. Coffee can wait. You cannot.”
Today I’m going to fight my way back. I’m going to write. I’m going to accomplish things. I’m not going to take a nap, and I’m actually going to unload my dishwasher. I’m not going to turn on my TV until I’ve finished doing something.
Today I’m going to battle against depression, and I am going to get back to taking care of me. Because I can't wait any more.
Many Kind Regards,
Katie Foley

For the military readers in the audience, I hear your collective groan. Standby. It gets better.

What happened was basically this: back then (over a decade ago, and at the very beginning stages of Operation Iraqi Freedom), red tape and paperwork was even more of a bear than it is today. Today, everything is digital and there's been a decade to work out the kinks. Back then, our active duty ID cards were still green and we still carried around actual paper files for everything. So when we went to get me registered in DEERS, as every service member and dependent is registered in DEERS, I was still in their system as an active duty Marine. Rather than just add me as a Marine married to another Marine, the DEERS office opted to add me to their system under a pseudo-social – or a fake social security number - attached to his personnel file. Because we all know that’s the most secure way to do crap, right?

That was Monday. Thursday we had Thanksgiving and Saturday he flew back to California to deploy with his unit. He returned from Iraq in mid-July, went on leave for a month, went to the field off and on for 3 months, went on pre-deployment leave, and then went back to Iraq for another 7 months. In the mess of things – deployments, a cancer diagnosis, field ops, and then orders to North Carolina, our DEERS issue seemed like it was never going to get resolved. Because, basically, Marine Corps.

When we got to North Carolina, the DEERS office finally determined that they could fix the issue. Of course they could fix it, in the fashion that only the Marine Corps is capable of.

Within two months of moving, we found out that we were expecting DITY baby number two. Military couples have this running joke about deployment babies. Every military child born within the last twelve years was born nearly exactly nine months after his or her parent came home from deployment. It happens – check the statistics on that highly scientific crap. Well – in our family, we have DITY babies. Every time we PCS or DITY move, we pop out a baby. Extra unnecessary precautions were taken during our last three moves because, well, exhaustion.

The problem came in that every time I had to make an appointment, either OBGYN or with my regular provider, if they typed in my husband’s last four (of his social security number, which is how the military tracks everything), I came up under the pseudo-social. If they typed in his full social, I came up normal. When I went in to have my blood test to confirm the pregnancy, they typed his full social from my ID card, and BOOM, I was pregnant. But the lady with the pseudo-social wasn’t. Do you see where I’m going with this?

Unfortunately, the DEERS at good ol’ Naval Hospital Camp LeJeune wasn’t quite caught up, and when I wobbled in to push out my kid, they had to admit me under my pseudo-social, creating an even bigger issue. When my son was born shortly later, the system had caught up, and he was registered in the hospital to my husband (who received a matching armband to his) and to his mother – the one who was correctly registered in DEERS. Things escalated when we went to leave the hospital Monday morning and my arm band didn’t match his. You can imagine how that went...

Of course, it gets even better. Because, Semper Gumby.

Fast forward 6 weeks. You know that number, Moms who are married to service members that deploy a LOT. It’s the date you get to go to the doctor for the okay to have sex again and you pray she recommends the highest dosage of birth control possible but that she gives you two thumbs up for sex because let’s be honest, we liked that part of baby-making, and we never know when our husbands are going to be shipped off again. I sailed into the clinic with the baby carrier on my arm and my daughter holding my hand, day dreaming of the sex I was finally going to get to have.

I checked in at the counter and then was called back up by a nurse. I grinned and thought, “Maybe she’ll just tell me to go have sex now and skip the whole appointment thing.” Guys, I really just wanted to have sex with my husband. Have I made that part clear yet? After the first baby, he was deployed and then I had medical issues and then the cancer and it was months and months and I just.. I don’t have to explain this to you. You get it. Anyway.

“Ma’am? Are you the first wife?”

Well that’s a weird question, but okay. “Yes,” I grinned.

"We can’t allow you to check in,” the nurse told me.

What the what? “I’m sorry?” I returned, obviously confused off my rocker. “Why?”

“Because first wives aren’t generally allowed to check in for subsequent wives,” the nurse answered, looking me over like I was some kind of evil impersonator trying to steal classified information.

I mean, her answer made perfect sense. So I asked what any reasonable woman in my position would ask.

“How many wives does my husband have?”

To which she replied, “Apparently three, but there could be more.”

Thanks to the Marine Corps and DEERS, I am apparently my husband’s first, second, and third wife...

Image Credit: mzeecedric via Flickr

So of course I passed out around 8 and woke up at midnight, refreshed and feeling like I was ready to do it all over again.

The problem was, it was midnight on a Friday night and I’m a mother, so I couldn’t exactly hop out of bed and go party with the young crowd. Instead I did what every 30 something writer/editor/actress/socially-awkward-girl with kids and a husband and no life outside of work does: I got on Facebook and started catching up on all the posts I’d missed while I was filming (because phones are rarely allowed on a set).

One of the first posts that caught my attention was a political one, and - well - if you hadn’t noticed by my recent article “How I Know Facebook Thinks Trump Supporters Are Dumb,” I have opinions - and a lot of them are about politics. So I read the status and the comments. I even responded to a few of them. The entire conversation was generally very pleasant and respectful and well thought out on everyone’s parts. And then came the Donald Trump supporter, in all his cocky “I’m wealthy” glory. It didn’t take him long to privately message me about my views of the Don.

The conversation was boringly interesting, to say the least. I mean, it was about politics, which I find fascinating, but other than that, it was mostly a mundane disagreement about policy and who’s the best fit to run a country.

I won’t go into all of the details, because they were mostly unexciting. The conversation centered on my belief that Donald Trump is pompous and would be a horrible selection for the Republican Party and his belief that Donald Trump poops golden nuggets and we should all worship him. He wasn’t having any of my concerns about losing the female, Latino, and African American votes (which, let’s be honest, Republicans can’t afford to lose even one vote), and went so far as to insinuate that Donald Trump is the manliest man to ever man in the history of man. I compared Donald Trump to Vladimir Putin, and that seemed to delight him.

At some point in the conversation, he sang Trump’s praises because of his immense wealth, and even compared his own wealth to that of Trump’s. Later in the conversation, he randomly went on to tell me about his incredibly expensive car.

Through all of this, questions were peppered here and there that I generally scaled around. Some of the questions I vaguely answered because they seemed like they might pertain to the subject (“Where did you say you live?” “Washington D.C.”), some of them I answered because the answer could explain some of my views (“How old are you?” “34.”) and some of them I didn’t answer at all (“What were you filming?” I signed a Nondisclosure Agreement, so obviously I wasn’t telling him anything about that).

But then the conversation took the weirdest turn. Ever. He said something about being stationed somewhere that’s within a few hours of where I currently live, and I commented about how that’s not so far away from me. When you’re part of the military community, it’s always really fun to find someone who’s been stationed close to you.

What happened next was just creepy. He came back with a comment about driving to my house in his really fast, really expensive car. I sat and thought about that for a moment.

Now - let me break from the story to say this. I’m not perfect. I’ve been known to unknowingly flirt and find myself in a precarious situation a time or two. I’ve also been on the receiving and giving end of affair accusations. It’s not a pretty sight. Nobody wants to go through that. Especially not on accident. So I am extremely careful not to give off an air of interest to someone of the opposite sex (or of the same sex if that’s the team they play for). I am still fun and playful, but in a private conversation, unless I know a person personally, I don’t do the whole “fun” thing. It’s so easy to misconstrue, and I just cannot have that conversation with people any more. I don’t have the time or the energy for it.

So I thought about my response and typed out something along the lines of, “Yeah, road trips are fun.”

His response was more forthcoming. It basically said “My car is fast, I could be there tonight in just a few hours.”

That one made me put my phone down and look at my husband. Should I wake him up and ask him to deal with this? I mean, my Facebook profile very clearly says I’m married.

But then again, would he respond with, “I wasn’t even hitting on her?”

I went back and forth with myself over it. Maybe I could just ignore it? But then I went back and read the entire conversation and realized that, without even realizing I’d done it, I’d given out more information than I was comfortable with. It wasn’t nearly enough to find out where I lived, but it was, for any person with a real desire, enough information for someone to track down my husband. Or any number of my friends' Facebook pages. For anyone interested in spending the time, it was enough to figure out where I worked, find my fan page, or figure out what project I’d been filming on (which could result in serious consequences for me). And then it hit me - with the questions peppered the way they were, there was a pretty good chance he’d already done all of that while we were arguing over Donald Trump.

So I picked up my phone and messaged back, “My husband and I are big fans of road trips.”

It was all I could think to say. Let him know you’re married, and do it in a way that isn’t threatening or assuming something that could turn into an argument. That was my thought process.

He, however, didn’t see it that simple, and his response was not pleasant.

The entire exchange really bothered me for days, and for so many different reasons.

For starters there was the fact that he got pissed that I’m married. Coincidentally, we both belong to a closed Facebook group where I’ve spoken about my husband a few times. Then, there’s the fact that my page outright declares me to be married. Seriously, men? If you’re willing to get in your car and drive in the middle of the night to the house of some stranger you just met on Facebook for a booty call, don’t you at least look at her Facebook? I have no less than 100 pictures of my husband ALL OVER IT. A good 15% of my photos have my husband tagged in them with comments like “We NEED this!” and “This hunka hunka burnin love just folded all my laundry and now I’m all hot and bothered.”

Something else that bothered me was my own husband’s response to the entire thing the next morning. When I showed him the conversation (because, honestly, I didn’t want some freak contacting him and saying crap about me), his first question was “What time was this again?” When I told him it was around 2am, he just nodded and said, “That’s why.”

Seriously? OMG, seriously?! 2am is the magical hour where guys can be douche canoes and it’s MY fault because I should’ve been sleeping? What the heck are you even doing awake at 2am when you’re on duty? Harassing women online? That makes about as much sense as being angry at me for being married.

And then there was the fact that a dude would have a conversation with a girl where he argues about politics, sings the praises of the Don, brags about his so called “wealth,” and thinks that THAT would turn her on so much that she’d be all over him driving to her house in the middle of the night to get it on. I don’t even understand that. Like - I can’t even explain how that might even remotely make sense to anyone either.

But perhaps the biggest issue I took with all of it was his unwavering support for Donald Trump. Just. Ew. Even if I was a single woman who was all about hooking up in the middle of the night with a stranger from Facebook with a cocky attitude who was turned on by a political disagreement - being turned on by a conversation about Comb-Over Trump would be the ultimate deal breaker to beat all deal breakers!

I mean, does it get any creepier than that?

Have you had a creepy experience with someone on social media? Please, someone tell me I’m not the only one.

Many Kind Regards,
Katie

Does Facebook think Donald Trump supporters are dumb? Katie has a theory...

Original image credit: statlc416 Flickr

Day 2:
• Emojis severely impede my ability to communicate with people.

• This must be what it feels like to be intellectually challenged. There is an inability to properly communicate intelligent thoughts, and responding to posts that would normally warrant my time and attention are frustrating and I suddenly feel like one of those internet trolls I despise. They make no sense and they add nothing to the conversation.

• I wonder what’s on Netflix.

Day 3:
• Hieroglyphics would be better.

• Donald Trump is all over my news feed. Is it because of my emojis? Could the lack of real intelligent responses be sending bad political stories my way? Is this the end of the world?

• Oh, Heavenly Father. How much longer can I withstand this?

• Started binge watching Sherlock just to feel like I’m in the same room with an intelligent adult.


Day 4:
• What have I done? This is by far the worst decision I have ever made. My decisions as a young twenty something year old suddenly look like solid life choices.

• I finished Sherlock. I wonder what else is on Netflix.

Day 6:
• It’s Saturday. The grass needs mowing. It’s a beautiful day. What a beautiful view I have from my front window!

• I wonder what’s on Netflix.

Day 7:
• I am most definitely going to get fired this week. How many posts has my boss tagged me in and I’ve just responded with the universal emoji for "okay?"

• I can only watch Sherlock so many times. I lied. I’m going to watch Sherlock again. And then I quit.

Day 8:
• I can’t do this any more. Every post that I see on my timeline is either a bitstrip, or a stupid picture, or Allen West singing Donald Trump’s praises and to be honest I’d rather see all of the snarky posts about Hillary and the baby posts and the cat videos even though I don’t like any of them.

• Forget this crap. Peace out, social sciences.


That’s right, after day 8, I quit. I couldn’t deal any more. There were a number of factors to my decision, but the biggest was my job. A significant part of my job relies on my ability to interact with people, and most of their preferred method of contact is Facebook. So I could post things, but I couldn’t respond to anything. I couldn’t ask for more information in regards to something posted or commented, and I had to rely on people’s ability to translate my emoticons into what I might be trying to say. I can’t and don’t operate that way. I’m a social person. My experience this last 8 days would be like sending me to a summit on communication and expecting me to only be able to communicate with everyone else (who have no limits) by using a deck of playing cards. I might have better luck with the cards, to be honest.

But there was a different side effect that I did not expect. Remember me writing about Trump and West? When I stopped commenting on the posts that I normally comment on, for some reason I started seeing a LOT more posts from Allen West’s Facebook page and a significant number of posts about how amazeballs Donald Trump supposedly is. As far as I can tell, it wasn’t because West was putting out more posts in that 8 days. Now, I don’t claim to know how Facebook does their algorithms and what-not, but I do honestly wonder if the lack of intelligent responses from me somehow resulted in the lack of intelligent posts visible on my timeline.

Now - don’t go calling me a left wing liberal just yet. I’m solidly in the Republican camp, and that’s part of what bothered me. I know the Don has been in the news a lot lately, and he’s a hot button issue (all of him is). But, somehow in 8 days, all other political posts were gone. When I visited my friends pages, I could see they were posting about other things, but those things weren’t showing up on my timeline. I honestly think that somehow, funny as it is, Facebook has Donald Trump posts marketed for people who don’t interact well with others. It only makes sense! Donald Trump doesn’t play well with others, so let’s market him to like minded people!

Anyway, that’s about the most significant thing I got out of this experiment. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have an entire list of posts I’m going to comment bomb now.

Many Kind Regards,
Katie

How else does social media affect our lives? Read how one writer now thinks in 140 characters here.

Original image credit: The All-Nite Images Flickr

As I was searching around for the perfect gifts this year, I wondered if other people do this, as well. Someone else must do it, right? I mean, teachers in this country are basically heroes! They do a whole heck of a lot for very little praise and even less money and they only complain about it just a little. If you aren’t buying your kid’s teacher a back to school gift, you’re a heartless wench.

So this year, I went to the experts and asked them what they would like to receive as a back to school gift. In no significant order, here is what the teachers in my life had to say about what they might like to receive as a back to school gift.

Gift Cards - gift cards seemed to be the winning pick among teachers. Most them mentioned gift cards more than any other thing: Starbucks, Target, Sonic, OfficeMax, Staples, Amazon, other fast food stores, local supply stores. The food place gift cards really caught me off guard, but as one teacher out of Texas put it “the first week will be crazy and if you can help with dinner- awesome!!!”

Food - quite a few teachers mentioned wine and liquor. I’m not saying our leading educators are all up in the drinky drink, but maybe some wine sippy cups might be useful, as well. Premade snacks from the grocery (think: fruit trays, trail mix, veggie trays), made from home lunch (if your school allows it) for the teacher’s lounge, 8 O’Clock Coffee, mini coffee maker and travel mug.

Supplies - every teacher loves supplies, so bring on the markers, erasers, pencils, red pens, staples, sharpies, copy paper. Basically, if you are financially capable of doing it, double up your kids’ supply list and wrap it up with a bow. I’ve actually done this twice, and one year a teacher cried upon seeing it. A student had just come in with a note from his mother saying she was unable to afford the things on the list, and the teacher had already assured him she’d personally purchase everything he needed. Most teachers wouldn’t even hesitate to do that, but if 10 in 35 students has this happen, that really adds up. If you really love your kid’s teacher (and want him to be the teacher’s pet) do your best to make sure she’s well supplied throughout the year.

Random - there were some things that didn’t really fit into a category here. Namely: Advil and Tylenol, but also handmade cards and candles seemed to be a big hit with the scholarly among us.

So there you go! Four ideas for back to school gifts for your child’s teacher! Me? I’ll probably be getting my kids’ teachers some Calamity Sue (reisling) and a condolence card.

Many Kind Regards,
Katie Foley

With your kids going back to school, you might want to reminisce. Rachel Engel understands.

Original photo credit: Hubspot.

Yesterday, I published an article titled “We Need a Hero” about the recent changes to Amazon’s KDP Select and KU programs. The response was a bit different than I expected, but that’s part of the beauty of online writing- we never know when dissenting arguments might crop up. Here at Many Kind Regards, we pride ourselves on listening to our readers, trying to understand where they are coming from, and why. As the Editor-In-Chief of Many Kind Regards, that responsibility is even greater for me. One of the most important parts of my job is to be an example to our writing community, and so, today I sat down and read every comment on the article, as well as every comment I could find on other websites where it was shared. What I came away with was, surprise surprise, a better understanding of our readers. Though some of the comments on other pages were insulting and hurtful, I still gained a better understanding of the opposing position.

So let me begin, first, by apologizing to the indie authors in the audience. It is never my intention to make my fellow Indies feel as if I am insulting them. While I don’t believe my piece was insulting, that did not stop some readers from feeling that it was. I could go on, deconstructing the comments and explaining where I felt they were misunderstanding and misrepresenting what I had written, but an apology is not about explaining myself. That would not be an apology, it would be a defense. In all honesty, I wanted to defend what I had written, but at the end of the day, my end goal is always to seek ways to improve the world of independent writing. So- you deserve an apology and I freely give it. I am truly sorry for having written something you found insulting.

Further, I want to thank you for having taken the time to comment on the article. It’s been said that a writer never knows how many people read her work until she pisses someone off, and today was a bittersweet reminder at the truthfulness behind that statement. The upside of the comments is that you’ve given both myself and my community of writers an amazing opportunity to learn. My team and I are big fans of always learning, always looking for ways to improve, and you as readers have provided an amazing opportunity for us to do just that. People make mistakes, it happens to the best of us, and the only way around them is to learn from them.

I did want to address one of the comments on the original article. It came from a commenter named Iamaha.

 “Katie, I'm sure you wrote this out of ignorance”

Actually, I have nothing to argue against on this. It’s interesting. According to some of the commenters on The Passive Voice (one place where my article was shared), I’m an idiot, a whiner with no real writing skills, and probably got caught gaming the system and am now just super bummed because I won’t get paid as well as people with real talent. However, a majority of the comments on The Passive Voice went into incredible detail about how the KU system works. Several commenters noted that I mentioned KDP instead of KU, and that I got the “program” part of it wrong (It’s Kindle Direct Publishing, not program as I originally wrote).

I say this is interesting because, well, they are right. I’m not talking about the commenters who spent a majority of their time insulting me, but about the commenters who took the time to deconstruct what I wrote and explain where my understanding of the situation was wrong. So I’m going to do what most writers in my position would never dream of doing:

I might have been wrong in my initial understanding of the changes to the KU program.

I’ll go a step further and blame it on my own lack of having done enough research to back up my article. I did research everything I wrote, and I stand behind that statement. But, ultimately, it is the responsibility of the writer to have done enough research. In this case, according to The Passive Voice, I did not meet that responsibility. After having read every comment, I’m not entirely sure that my initial reaction to the change in the KU system is on point.

So where does that leave me? For one, I’ll be a lot more careful in the future of using a news source as a source of information. As an American, you’d think I’d already have known that news sources aren’t always great sources of accurate information, but hey- everyone has to be wrong at some point in their lives. Secondly, I’m going to have to do more research on this whole KU thing with Amazon. I’m still not convinced that it’s fair to the writers who put so much effort in to their work, but it’s obvious that I need more information to come to that conclusion.

On that note, Amazon themselves actually reached out to me regarding my article. Their email, in part, states, “I just wanted to reach out to clarify a few points... When you write “So, eventually, this will affect all independent authors who choose to publish with Amazon” that’s not correct. Please let me know if I can help answer any questions about the upcoming changes.”

I appreciate Amazon reaching out to me regarding this issue. Not only does it show a desire to make sure information is accurate, but the fact that they would reach out to one small time writer to set the record straight shows a respect for independent authors everywhere. I have had my work on Amazon for some time, and I appreciate a company who is concerned about those who utilize their services. 

I will continue to engage in a conversation directly with Amazon so that I might have a better understanding of how the changes to the KDP and KU programs will affect us as writers, and I’ll be certain to keep you as readers informed of that conversation as it progresses.

We do, however, think Katie got this piece right. What do you think?

image credit: Flickr

Dear J.K. Rowling,

We need a hero.

I’m sure you’ve seen by now the announcement from Amazon regarding its royalty payments to authors who take part in their Kindle Direct Program. But, just in case you haven’t, allow me to briefly fill you in.

The Kindle Direct Program, or KDP, is a self-publishing service offered by Amazon. Independent writers who are still in the process of finding an agent utilize it to publish their writings as a means of getting more eyes on their work. Amazon has recently announced that it will stop paying these writers for their work. Rather, writers who have opted in to a program that Amazon promises will “earn higher royalties,” “maximize your book’s sales potential,” and “reach a new audience” will actually only be paid for what Amazon determines the reader has read, despite Amazon’s own promise on their KDP FAQ that “you'll continue to earn royalties from those sales like you do today.”

This move appears to affect only authors who opt in to the lending library (who wouldn’t, at the promise of higher royalties, and the opportunity to get their novels in front of a larger audience?), but according to the Telegraph, this change is “initially” going to affect those in the lending program. So, eventually, this will affect all independent authors who choose to publish with Amazon.

I have a problem with this, and so does every independent author I know. Authors work hard, and anyone who doesn’t believe that doesn’t know an author. We spend countless hours over our work, stretching our minds, and sometimes breaking our own hearts, creating these lives and these intertwining stories that weave in and out of our own lives. Our families watch us crouched over our keyboards, lost in the work, and they sacrifice their time with us so that we might be able to put everything we have into the story that occupies our minds. You know just as well as the rest of us the labor of love that is a novel. You know the hard work, the re-writes, the stress and the tears that are part of the creation of a story. And that doesn’t even include the research, the agent search, the time spent crafting the perfect agent query…

Our very existence as authors depends on our ability to thrive, and this most recent move by Amazon threatens that existence. By saying that our work is not worthy enough to be paid for the way Amazon pays for any other product on their website, Amazon is saying that they don’t value literature. They are saying that the work that goes into creating a novel is not respectable.

A lot goes into writing a novel, and when authors decide to sell their work, they should be paid for their work. We don’t only pay for the portion of our dinners that we eat in a restaurant. A restaurant owner would never pay their chef only for the portion of food on a plate that a patron consumes. They’d never get away with that. 

So why is Amazon being allowed to only pay for a portion of the work a writer does?

Because Amazon is a big name, and the writers who use KDP are not. Why would we have the clout to stand up for ourselves? If we had that kind of pull with Amazon, we wouldn’t be independent writers. We’d be big name published writers with agents and movie deals and millions of fans to back us up.

That, Miss Rowling, is why I am reaching out to you today. I am writing to ask you to stand up for us little people. As was evidenced just earlier this week with Taylor Swift and Apple, when a leading lady stands up and tells the world that something isn’t right, the world listens. You, Miss Rowling, are the leading lady in the world of literature. Basically, we all want to be you when we grow up. You have the voice that we so desperately need right now.

Please consider lending us that voice. Please consider being our hero. The worlds that we create would forever be indebted to you.

Thank you,

Katie Foley

Update: "My Apologies: How I Got the Amazon Thing Wrong"

I don’t talk about weight very often, and when I do, it’s in the privacy of my home, standing in front of my husband, nekid as a jaybird, saying “I hate all these lumps!” (To his credit- he does not care. As long as those lumps sleep naked next to him, he does not care about them. If he cares at all, it’s because he knows how my body embarrasses me.)

But I don’t discuss weight issues publicly for a few very complicated reasons. For starters, I know how to dress myself in public so that my flabby belly is flat and my thunder thighs are contained in those beautiful things we women know as Spanx. I know if I wear a skirt, I need to wear hose and flashy heels to draw attention away from the width of my ankles. I know if I wear something form fitting it needs to have a high waist and a belt to give the image of a slimmer figure. I know how to dress myself. So if I say anything about weight, my friends look at me like I’ve grown a third eye.

Secondly, I don’t discuss my weight because I don’t want people to look at me and go, “160 pounds! You’re uncomfortable at 160 pounds!? I weigh 200 pounds, are you judging me?” Let me take a moment here to say, “No.” 

I am not judging anyone based on what they weigh. I judge people, sure. I judge people based on how they treat other people. And dogs. I definitely judge people by how they treat dogs. But that’s another story for another day.

Third, I don’t discuss my weight (or shape) because I don’t want my daughter to feel like that’s normal. I don’t want her to feel like when women get older, they focus on their weight. I want her to see me focusing on my dreams and my goals and my passions. Not my weight. I want her to see me working hard when I work out because it’s what I want to do, and not because she’s heard me gripe 20 times a day about being fat. I want her to see me work for what I want, not complain about what I don’t have. The same goes for my sons. I don’t want them growing up thinking that a woman should be uncomfortable in her skin. I want them growing up thinking that a woman works toward what she wants, and look for a wife who’ll do just that. I want my kids to grow up seeing that women reach for what they want because they want it, not because they feel bad about themselves.

And lastly, it’s become very taboo to not like your body. Everywhere I turn, people are throwing out these pictures of larger women with lines such as “Real women have curves” and “Love your body.” Women who have committed to being healthy and strong are mocked and called names, labeled as “unrealistic” and everything about their morals is questioned.

It has become socially unacceptable to be publicly uncomfortable about your weight. This goes both ways! I absolutely despised it when I heard my husband reference an especially thin girl as “That one who needs to eat a hamburger” (and he knows it now, because I might’ve yelled at him one day about it. He hasn’t done it since). We’ve gone from a society with an unhealthy obsession with stick-figure girls to a society with an unhealthy obsession with telling people to love their bodies.

I will NOT love my body if I don’t want to. I’m so tired of this current fad of people saying, “Love your body.” What that says to me is, “Your feelings are not valid.” It says to me, “Society thinks you look fine the way you are, and so you shouldn’t change.” It says, “We get to determine what looks good on you, not you.” Does no one see a problem with this?

I don’t know, maybe I’m the only person alive who feels this intense pressure from society to love my body. I don’t love my body, and I’m tired of feeling wrong about that.

If I want to go on a diet and exercise program to fight my way back to my glory days of 126 pounds of flat and muscled stomach (oh but for the days when they called me “Washboard Jones!”), then dangit, I will! And I should get to be proud of that and flaunt my journey just like the girl next to me with an hourglass figure who’s finally gained enough weight to be content right where she is! Yes, I know such a girl, and yes, I am so proud of her for loving the body she’s worked for.

But I’m done pretending to love my body. I’m done thinking that these “Love your body” memes are helping people. I’m done letting society tell me that being on the edge of being overweight is okay.

My battle with my weight has been a short one. Up until 3 years ago, I was a healthy 135 pounds, save for the last two months of each of my three pregnancies. After giving birth to each of my beautiful kids, I worked hard to get back to the shape I was comfortable with, and I worked hard to maintain it. I come from a family of thin, petite women, and so- being the only tall girl in the family- I always felt like the giant growing up. I grew up hiking and riding my bike at our mountain home. I grew up eating healthy and balanced, home-cooked meals. I worked very hard to maintain a body that made me feel comfortable in my own skin.

However.

Three years ago, one of my doctors took me off a medication I’d been on for the previous year and a half used to treat seizures, and I blew up. Within the next year and a half, I put on 25 pounds- without changing a thing about my diet- and I gave up. The following year and a half I just sat, stagnant at 160 pounds, tired and miserable, carrying around the extra weight.

I didn’t want to focus on my weight then because I was achieving other dreams. A radio personality gig here, a novel written there, a trip to DC and a new job, and then another new job and a volunteer gig… I didn’t want to worry about my weight because I was rocking life everywhere else.

But now that life is beginning to settle into a routine (a crazy and hectic one, but still a routine), I’m ready to address the weight issue. I’m ready to fit back into my jeans and wear women’s t-shirts that aren’t XL or men’s large shirts that hide the belly. I’m ready to stop being embarrassed for my kids when I take them to the pool.

I’m ready to be uncomfortable and not love my body enough to find my way back to the body I love.

So stop telling me to love my body, because I don’t. And for me, that’s a great feeling to have. Because it means that someday, with hard work and perseverance, I will.

Many Kind Regards,
Katie

Read how writer Rebekah encourages a healthy lifestyle to combat the obesity epidemic.

Original Image Credit: David Cedrone Flickr

And then you have a small faction of Christians and other traditionally old fashioned folks stuck in the middle, their collective voices little more than a whisper, asking “Why can’t we all just get along?” Which is where you might find me. I am a Christian, Southern Baptist, traditional girl. I am working on my twelfth year of marriage to my first husband, with whom I have three children. We were both raised in homes where our parents were still married, attended church, and taught The Gospel, and we’re raising our children the same way. I myself am a Christian author, with two full length Christian based novels under my belt, and two more in the works. I am a practicing Christian, which is different than just claiming Christianity as the religion with which I most closely identify.

I am part of a  small group of Christians that deviates from mainstream faith based arguments against same sex marriage here.

Here we come to the meat of the issue at hand: gay rights.

I must address a few things outside of the Bible itself, though they are affected by it; namely the fact that our country was founded on religious (read Christian) principles. This fact is not arguable. Our country was, indeed, founded on religious principles. But more specifically, our country was founded on the idea that we as individuals should have the right to read our own Bibles and determine for ourselves what they mean- rather than having our leaders tell us what to believe. This was, in my opinion, a double edged sword. While we have the freedom to figure out what it all means, so now does everyone else. We set our own selves up for this. By designing our country to be the ultimate free republic, we have opened our doors to those who are not founded on our religious, Biblical, principles. Our very laws that were designed to protect us from discrimination from our leaders also protect those who believe differently than we do, and there isn’t much to be done about that outside of creating new laws that might open us up to that same discrimination we were protecting ourselves from.

Further, we must address how the landscape of religion in our country has changed. We have been, since our founding, considered a Christian nation. But are we truly a Christian nation? Roughly 84% of US citizens identified closest to Christians in 2000, down from 96% in 1900. (Source) That number dropped to 78% in 2007 and 77% in 2012 (Source and Source, respectively). In 100 years, the percentage of Christians dropped 12 percentage points. In 12 years it dropped 7 points. The number of Christians in our country is declining at a rapid pace, and it will not be long before we are in the minority in this country.

The news gets even grimmer- according to Religion News Service, roughly 40% of Christians are not “practicing Christians.” This means they identify as Christians, but they do not adhere to Christianity as a set of guidelines, either morally or spiritually.

What this tells us is that our “Christian nation” is rapidly becoming an “unaffiliated” nation. What this means for us as practicing Christians is that we are about to be the minority, if we are not already.

Can we really afford to limit the legal freedoms of any minority group of people when we ourselves are at risk of becoming the minority?

This brings us directly to cake and pizza. Indiana recently passed a law that was pitched as a bill to protect religious freedoms. While I acknowledge that a law protecting my right to practice my religion and barring other laws that would impede on that right is a good thing, I must also acknowledge that people are notorious for utilizing laws and legal loopholes to push their own agendas off on unsuspecting people all around them. Just look at the shenanigans the American media pulls every day in the name of freedom of the press and freedom of speech (if you need an example of this, read any article on the same political target from CNN and then FOX and you’ll see the bias of agendas clear as day).

I get what Indiana was trying to do- if only at the surface of the law. To the general Christian public, this most recent law was meant to protect them from having to adhere to laws that might conflict directly with their religious beliefs. On that front, there doesn’t seem to be anything wrong with the law.

It’s when we take that law and we question an unsuspecting business owner (read: Pizza Gate), setting them up for a lose-lose situation, and then we get all righteously indignant when their response falls within what they would consider a religious protection, that we fall into the trap of loopholes and agendas. As Christians, we suffer the backlash of the LGBT community, and we all get lumped into one giant pile of intolerance. As supporters of equality, we suffer the backlash of the Christian community where we all get lumped into one giant pile of deviant behavior.

Both sides of the fight scream “I’m being discriminated against!”

But both sides fail to realize that cake and pizza don’t make a person any more or less equal to the person next to them. Both sides compare themselves to black freedom fighters, though cake and pizza have nothing in common with slavery and freedom. Both sides are screaming their heads off about their rights being trampled, and barely a sole on either side even lifts a finger to find a moment in time to simply love the person on the other side of the fence.

No matter where you stand as a Christian, because we are on both sides of this debate, you have been commanded to “Follow peace with all men, and holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord” (Hebrews 12:14 KJV).

If we can’t do that, if we won’t do that, our day is coming. Our day when we are the minority and our freedom to claim the one thing none of us should be disagreeing about (“I am the way, the truth, and the life: no man comes to the Father, but by me.” (John 14:6 KJV)) is in real jeopardy. If we continue to use our Bibles to design laws which limit the rights of those around us who do not believe the things we believe (despite those things having no bearing on us), there will come a day when those same people use those same laws to shut us down and shut us up.

Are you ready for that?

Or will you just let them eat cake… and pizza.

Many Kind Regards,
Katie

Katie reminded us that our country was founded on Christian beliefs. Creator Erin thinks religion should stay out of politics to keep it friendly. Read more about her thoughts here.