I am feeling better, and I should begin revising the historical biography proposal and/or my description of Trang tomorrow. (Today I bought a new ball and checked out the last new book on the subject of my historical biography--this one was very academic, so now I can continue in good conscience.)
But I'm going to toss out one last cranky, sinus-headache-induced rant about perceptions of self-publishing. It seems that whenever someone posts about the success they've had as a result of the current self-publishing environment, someone else feels obligated to comment: But don't you want to be James Patterson? Don't you want to be J.K. Rowling? Don't you want to be Stephen King? Don't you want to be Danielle Steele?
Don't you wish you were Tinkerbell and could fly and had a magic wand? Doesn't the fact that you're not Tinkerbell and can't fly and don't have a magic wand mean that any success you have had isn't actually worth anything, and you might as well go kill yourself right now?
Honest to Pete, talk about missing the damned point. The exciting aspect of self-publishing these days is that writers can make decent money without having to sell a gazillion bazillion copies--which, for the record, is something not a lot of writers have ever done or are ever going to do. I am less excited by the fact that some self-published authors have had tremendous success than I am about the fact that an author could make a decent living just selling a few thousand copies of each one of their titles. That is new. And that's what should excite people.