Big Kindle Boogie - One Day Left

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There are 10 Kindle Fires up for grabs.  And to top it off the winner of the first drawing also gets $500 donated to their local public library.  As bad as I want a Kindle Fire (any Kindle actually) I would be more thrilled to see that money go to our Jackson County Library System which continues to struggle like a transplant patient on life-support ever since the six month closure in 2007.  So I love that these guys are adding that grace note to their boogie.

I have downloaded all of my copies of the 75 books.  Those I didn't already have from the Kindle Fire Giveaway Scott Nicholson participated in with two other inde authors a couple of weeks ago.  The books among them that I'm the most excited about aren't the novels and short story collections but rather the non-fic books on writing, self-publishing, being an indie author and all that entails including promotion.  So even if you think the genre of story these guys write is not your cup of tea but you are an aspiring writer yourself you might find those books helpful.

I am participating in these events and the virtual author blog tours of the previous two days posts as part of my investigation into the inde option for publishing my own stories.  I believe it takes more than reading books about it.  Watching someone who made it work in action is worth a thousand how-to manuals.  And as I've discussed here before, self promotion is a very alien concept to me because of the way I was raised to believe that it was the equivalent to bragging which in turn was evidence of prIde which was a sIn.  Note the big fat capital 'I' in the middle of those dirty words.  Evidence, see, that when you put your big, fat, selfish self into the middle of something you are standing on a slippery slope on the edge of the abyss and nothing good can come of it.

I learned that before grade school and fifty years later still can't shake it.  Even after eight years of blogging.

Funny thing is tho, whatever in me generates that anxiety and self-disgust surrounding efforts at calling attention to myself does not translate to feeling disgust with others I'm observing in action doing the very thing I can't seem to allow myself to do.  I even have vicarious joy in watching them succeed as I cheer them on.  That seems to indicate to me that this is not a core value of mine but rather something more like a Pavlov response.

So I wonder if I were to create a pen name and instill an alter ego in it and publish and promote under it would my 'I' feel free to cheer on it's alter 'I' and allow it to succeed?  

OMG my brain hurts.

Actually if I had my druthers I'd rather give my alter 'I' all the baggage of the  'self=sin' paradigm and write under my own name.  Which BTW means 'joy reborn'.

OK so this post went places I never intended.  Only the pic and the first paragraph was planned when I opened the draft and I almost clicked on publish but then thought to say something about the free books.  This is what happens when I start typing after being awake over twenty hours--just hit 36.  Which is probably why I do it so often.  24 to 44 hour wake periods are to me what alcohol is to the drunk--a form of self medication that lowers anxiety and inhibition.

I wish I could bottle whatever it is that floods my brain sometime after twenty hours awake and take a swig upon waking.