Happiness is Doing What You Love. or Oh My Gods, What Have I Done?

I have a brother who is a Captain and Tennille fan. He is also a bigwig. By that I mean he was recently chosen to be the president to a 30 million dollar a year privately owned company, and one of the two hardest workers I have ever met. The second is my wife. Lorelle busts her ass harder than Tyler does.
Anyway, after reading my last post Tyler sent me a text saying, "How come I'm president of a 30m company and you seem happier than me? You little pud."
My response was, "You just answered your own question. This morning I woke up, made some coffee, picked some cherries, played a round of disc golf, then went home to write a space battle. Your day was slightly more stressful I would guess." As a side note, Lorelle encourages me to play disc golf with a friend twice a week because it gets me off my butt. I love my wife.
My blood pressure spikes just like my brother's does, but in my case it is because my new Star Mamba driver lands in the creek, or maybe supper is later than I'm used to. Seriously, Lorelle will tell you, a me without food is an agitated me. A very agitated me. That's the Happiness is doing what you love part of this post.
But the Oh my gods, what have I done? part exists, too. That same night, just twenty-four hours after I officially quit my old job, book sales hit a thirty-day low. Before I went to bed that night, I looked at my sales. After using my home defibrillator on myself, which entails taping two bare wires to my chest and plugging them into an wall outlet, I swallowed a shot of whiskey and tried to sleep. Slumber did not come easy.
The next morning I woke up, made my coffee, had some fruit for breakfast, and opened my Chromebook. After reading the news and tabbing the science news I needed to read, I clicked on the tab for book sales. All was right in the world again. My sales for the first eight hours of the day were just a little higher than my entire sales day reflected the day before.
The obsessive-compulsive side of my personality, which to Lorelle's chagrin does not bleed over into cleanliness, compels me to analyze things like this. How does one Saturday compare to another? Do sales jump on common paydays? If the Moon is rising in Virgo, do sales dip? You get the idea. But this dip and jump coincided with nothing I could measure. No solar flares, no double rainbows, not even the arena vote in Sacramento. There was no discernible connection between the calamitous drop and sudden rise in daily sales. That frustrates me. It fell into the category of Why the hell can't I figure this out?
In my previous business, I faced the same sort of thing, but it was on a much larger scale. To some degree though, I could predict what was going to happen in my work, based on what was happening in Lorelle's, since the two industries were related. When she had a slow spell, I would have a slow spell about four weeks later. When her work picked up, mine would about four weeks later. As a writer, I no longer have that barometer. That adds to the What have I done? sentiment.
The point of this is one that will benefit writers. The rest of you have read my ramblings for nothing other than a glimpse into my world. But for you writers out there, I've learned something. Look at your sales every day if you want to, that's fine. But DO NOT stress over a low day, because there will be others that balance it out. In fact, just look at your thirty-day averages, which is something that Amazon's KDP program makes very easy with their new layout. That line graph is awesome.
Okay, now it is time to kill a few aliens while Judge Judy screams at stupid people in the background. I wonder if there is a correlation between the mentality of her litigants and the bloodshed in my stories.

That's One Small Step for Shawn, One Giant Leap for Shawn's Bowels

Twenty-odd years ago, I started writing as self-imposed therapy. My mom had just died, and writing was my way to express my feelings without expressing them, so to speak. I wrote poetry and short stories for years, but never thought about publishing. When Google + came on the scene, I started a hashtag series called 'GamingConfessions' and a few people liked it. Once in a while I told a story of my childhood, and the people in my circles oohed and ahhed over it, so I kept it up.
Two years ago, I took part in NaNoWriMo, but for some reason I didn't finish it. I kept feeling the itch though, so when it came around last year, I modified it a little bit for myself, and called it SwiNoWriMo, because at the time, Skeptik Swine was my G+ ID. I made a circle of people who were interested, and told them to scold me every day I didn't post a little progress. SwiNoWriMo was a success. I finished a book and found an artist to do a cover for it.
Lorelle then jumped in, and damned near every day she asked when I was going to publish it. To shut her up and make it look like I intended to follow through with being an author, I sent the book out to that group of people who were in the SwiNoWriMo circle, and used them for 'crowd-sourced editing'. That weekend was Thanksgiving, 2013. At the end of the weekend, I had a finished product. And every day, Lorelle bugged me to publish. It took some time to research and learn what did and didn't work, to set up my royalty accounts, and enrolled in KDP from Amazon. Finally, on December 8th, 2013, I couldn't take Lorelle calling me out anymore, and uploaded the book file to the Kindle store. Then I pressed 'Publish'.
Those first few days were terrifying. I remember how happy I was the first time I saw a sale pop up. Someone in the UK bought my book. For the first six weeks, Warrior's Scar was even on a time travel top ten list in the UK, right between H.G. Wells and a Doctor Who book. I still look at that screenshot once in a while.
When February 2014 arrived, I started to really think I was on to something. I had a real editor, some great beta readers, and good feedback from both readers and other authors. Warrior's Blood released that month, and I was able to start projecting sales figures and think about writing as a career. I figured out that after six books, I would be able to close my business and write full time. Lorelle and I talked about what my numbers needed to be, where we would have to cut corners, how we could make it work, and even what my bare minimum royalties would have to be in order for me to close down my shop and move on. Dexter had to cut back a little on his dog biscuits, and Lorelle and Alex gave up a few things. We pulled the plug on our cable, etc. Getting rid of cable turned out to be a GREAT decision, regardless of my writing success or failure, by the way. I met my 'bare minimum' goals in March. Then came April 23rd, 2014. I released Warrior's Realm that morning. I put the first two books on sale and started watching the numbers.
As all this was going on, I was still working my other business, but I hated it. For every good job I had, there were three that were horrible. Not because of any one thing, just little things that made me miss the world I have built around Cortland Addison. I had one customer schedule me and two competitors to do the same job at the same time, and he gave the work to the company that got there first.  Another lady called and asked me to rearrange my schedule to suit her, which I did, then she cancelled on me. Little crap like that, but it was enough to make me hate the sound of my phone ringing.
Fast forward to this past weekend. Lorelle and I spent it in the bay area watching Alex play basketball, and in the course of our many discussions, from tucking in boobs and oral sex to our upcoming vacation, we also talked about the money I would have to spend on materials and some new tools to keep selling medical equipment. We also talked about my books, where the story was headed, and how my sales have been. Which brings us to this post.
I closed my business today. I still have a little back stock I am going to sell off, but as of this post I am a full-time author. A full-time author who is scared shitless. A successful, full-time author who is scared shitless.
Oh fuck, what the hell have I just done?
The only thing I am sure of, is that I couldn't have done it without the support Lorelle and Alex, or the help of Tracy, Lillith, Eve, Shawn, Melissa, and Goose. And of course, thanks to you, my readers, for actually buying the books. You guys all rock!
And I am still scared shitless.