Personal-Professional sucess and what it means to me.

First off I have to say thank you to everyone who reads my books and supports me.

Success: What does it really mean. For me it was being able to do what I love for a living. but for a lot of people it means different things and it is usually tied to how much money they make. Personally money has never been a big driving factor in my life. I grew up poor...Really poor but I never considered myself t a disadvantage. It has had some effects on me even to this day. I don't eat much growing up we never had an abundance of food so we only ate enough to keep ourselves fed even today I only eat two small meals a day. I have tried to eat more but honestly I just don't get that hungry.  My kids on the other hand have no problem eating large meals though I do my best to keep it healthy food.

Now i ran into a small problem in the past 8 months and that was what to do with the large excess of money that was coming into my house. Two years ago I made at most 2.5k a month and i thought that was good. It was enough to pay for my rent, food, bills with enough to take the kids out every so often but now that it has increased I was at a loss. First i hired a pro editing company to go over my books (for those of you who read those I am sorry they did such a poor job.) I found out that due to the explosion of indie eBooks many companies are just out there looking to make a quick buck and are about as trustworthy as a snake oil salesman. But I have hired two full time employees (college students working on English degrees.) To go over my books and I will also be using beta readers again. (My fans are awesome and it is nice to get firsthand honest feedback.)

College students don't cost a huge amount as their hours are flexible so I wanted to know what else I could do to not only make my books better but also increase my fan base so I have been looking into advertisement.  I looked around and decided youtube would be the best choice.

My family thinks I should save up and buy a house and while i plan to buy on Honestly its not a huge thing for me. Mainly I want to travel. as some of you know i love culture, history, and just meeting different kinds of people. Thankfully I can write from anywhere so i plan to do just that, though i still have two kids and the last thing I want is for them to feel neglected so my trips will be limited to one or two a year thankfully though I have a close nit family and am not lacking in people willing to watch the kids for long periods of time. as some of you know my health isn't the best and i frequently spend long bouts in the hospital. so my kids are used to me being gone for weeks at a time though my 10 yo daughter did throw a fit (she is afraid i will get sick and something will happen when i am in Japan later this year.) Love the girl to death but she is a worrywort.

Besides editing. ( which I promise is the first thing on my plate to get fixed.) Translating. (and if any of my fans are native speakers of another language feel more that welcome to email with an offer to translate. I know I have many fans from all corners of the globe, and I hope to get more. if anyone has any ideas of what i can do to increase my audience or quality of my books let me know and i will do my best to work on that. f you have any questions feel free to ask.

And for my fans besides trying to make my books better every time you buy one of my books the money goes to many things besides myself. I now have a scholarship program at the local college here for English majors, i take the local guard unit out to eat, send books to troops stationed oversea. (so far I have sent 4 different groups books. if you are a soldier stationed overseas feel free to contact me and I will see about sending your unit a box of books.) Honestly besides putting back for my trips I still only make about as much as I did when I had a full time job after I pay everything, but I am happy and can not thank my fans enough for supporting me. I hope that in the future that you continue to enjoy my books.

I do have one more goal for the future and that is to start a national scholarship for high school and college students who want to study abroad. I love America but I think too few of us really have a firm view on the rest of the world outside of the media and I think that we should. At the point i am now i cant afford to do this but some time in the future i hope to make this dream a reality.