humor – Britt Skrabanek

Goodbye, Kindle

Those of you who know me are used to this. I get attached to things—like, REALLY attached.

The time I tried to pretend that I was a real adult, somewhere around the age of 25, I declared to Mr. H that it was time to get rid of Ken the cow.

ken the cow on the road — (If you haven’t met him, this is Ken and he’s awesome.)

I made him put Ken in a duffel bag so I couldn’t see his face as he went out the front door, out of my life forever.

As you can imagine, that made it even worse. It was like my favorite stuffed animal friend was being carried off in a body bag.

Mr. H hesitated by the door, took one look at me, and brought Ken safely back inside. He knew.

I still have Ken the cow to this day. I’m in my thirties, I sleep with a stuffed animal—and dammit—I don’t care.

Today this post is about letting go of another friend, who simply goes by the name of Kindle.

My mom asked me if I wanted the new Kindle for my birthday next week, which is the sweetest gift she could ever offer me. Naturally, I hesitated before saying yes.

Me and Kindle go WAY back. My mom passed him on to me back in 2012 when she got an iPad.

It was a life-changing moment for me, when I finally decided to give ebooks a chance after being such a paperback purist.

But I wanted to read ebooks by other indie authors, to support them in the same way that some of them have supported me.

Kindle was the way to do it.

Me and Kindle got off to a rocky start. I was reluctant to give up real books in any way. Kindle knew our relationship would take some time and he was very patient with me.

But then, tragedy struck.

Hazel the cat murdered him, knocked him right off the top of our built-in cabinet. I found Kindle’s lifeless body on the floor. I pressed his power button repeatedly, trying to resuscitate him…but there was nothing.

Until that moment, I didn’t realize how close I had become to Kindle and I was very sad. I went back to regular books for a while, then months later—for shits and giggles—I tried turning Kindle back on.

And he was alive. Back from the dead!

After that we were inseparable, and I rarely left the house without Kindle by my side.

He showed me many wonderful novels on his little screen. He didn’t mind when I spilled beer on him and he never judged me when I was too tired to spend quality time with him in bed.

Kindle didn’t complain once during our cross-country move from Milwaukee to Portland. He was a real trooper and a stand-up guy.

New Kindle arrived on Thursday. It’s lightweight, tech savvy, and shiny.

The transition has been made. My library is now on New Kindle, but I haven’t read anything just yet. I needed to give Original Kindle a proper goodbye with this tribute.

Though I only captured a few moments, here are some of our fondest memories together…

Thanks for everything, Kindle. You will be missed!

P.S. In case you missed grabbing the Everything’s Not Bigger freebie last weekend, if you have Amazon prime, you can borrow two of my books completely free from the Owner’s Library—Everything’s Not Bigger and I just added Nola Fran Evie. Enjoy!

Secret Single Behavior (SSB)

Today we celebrate Hermit Day. (Don’t worry, I didn’t have a damn clue there was such a thing either.)

But my friend Eli over at Coach Daddy, who is clearly cooler than I am for knowing about this random holiday, told me all about it. For the second time he invited me to participate in his monthly 6 Words challenge, a fun project where he asks friends and strangers to dish out a cute little sentence based on a prompt of his choosing.

Now we writers love, love, love to elaborate on a topic for hundreds, sometimes thousands of words—meaning six words is kinda cruel. But it’s also a fun challenge so of course I agreed to do it.

The prompt…October 29th is Hermit Day, how would you spend an ideal day all to yourself, in six words?

Over eighty of us played along this time…wowza! (Be sure to stop by Eli’s to check them all out.)

Obviously writing and reading is something I do most of the time when I’m in hermit mode. Those books don’t write themselves.

But Eli caught me at a time when I was feeling rather mysterious, during my blogging and social media hiatus in September. Naturally, I gave a coy response.

I’m hanging somewhere in the middle at #39 with the following…

Secret single behavior, I’ll never tell.

For those who aren’t diehard Sex and the City fans like I am, there’s a really fantastic episode where Carrie Bradshaw discusses Secret Single Behavior (SSB).

This is the thing you often do when you’re all alone. It’s top-secret because it’s probably so weird that you don’t even want your own spouse to know about it.

Well, Mr. H and I are going on almost a decade of marriage so we don’t keep secrets from one another. Although he knows about my SSB’s, I perform these odd habits as they are intended to be performed. Totally alone.

Eli thought my Hermit Day response about SSB was intriguing and figured that my readers would too.

So, embarrassing as it is, I’m going to reveal one of my SSB’s on one condition—each of YOU needs to reveal an SSB in the comment section below.

Obviously this blog is a public place and while I’m all for a healthy sexual appetite, let’s keep it clean, people. The more random, the better.

As promised, here is one of my typical SSB’s…

Dancer's Pose Natarajasana — Aphrodite the cat says: “Ah, crap. Hausfrau’s back.”

MEET HAUSFRAU

Some years ago Hausfrau was a brilliant term coined by Mr. H when he kept walking in on me at the end of my SSB ritual of cleaning the holy shit out of our apartment.

There’s dance music blasting, a bright bandana on my head, dusty stretchy pants, and a mad look in my eyes. The cats stay far, far away from me, usually in a dark corner of the closet praying I don’t vacuum their furry butts.

When I clean, I get down. I get totally focused on a cleaning project and I don’t stop until it’s done. I don’t answer the phone, in fact I don’t even think about the outside world.

If I’m stressed or anxious, sure I meditate, practice Yoga, or hit the trails. But sometimes you just have to clean the hell out of an inanimate object to feel on top of the world. It works like a champ every time.

For those of you who are still following this blog after my SSB reveal, I have one more thing to add. Earlier this year I completed one of the greatest accomplishments in Hausfrau history.

I organized and cleaned my bobby pin container.

Well, folks. I shared one of my SSB’s…your turn!

I Came Back

I’m starting to realize an unsettling Something and I’m just gonna put it out there. We humans avoid self-reflection on purpose by staying so damn busy all the time.

We have full-time jobs, chores, obligations, and errands that must be done. We squeeze in time with family and friends when we can. We fit in exercise and passions, only if there’s time. We are glued to all of the shiny things the Internet has to offer—social media, blogs, news, recipes, the occasional celebrity gossip.

We have so much information available to us at any given moment. In fact, we carry a handheld device around with us to feed our hungry minds.

But, where are we in all of this? Treading water until we get so exhausted that we begin to sink.

Rather than drowning, I took matters into my own hands last year and tried a blogging and social media break, a clean mind sweep for two months. It’s my little way of going to a deserted island without leaving home.

This year, I only did a month. And, I came back.

But see, I meant to come back on October 1st. Then the 2nd, 3rd, and 4th went by quietly. At the end of my hiatus last month, I didn’t feel ready to come back. Not at all.

For inspiration I went back to my hiatus post to see if I completed my mission. I said…Most of all, I simply want to be.

It’s funny, because “being” isn’t simple at all. In fact, it’s effing hard.

WEEK ONE

I battled my ridiculous desire to check-in daily with my blog and social media accounts. Even with my email notifications turned off, muscle memory tricked me into pulling up Facebook on my laptop one night and Twitter on my phone another time during my lunch break. I quickly exited both times.

I realized the absent-minded habit I now possessed and yes, it was pretty freaky. I did my best to unlearn these habits and attempted to “simply be”.

That’s where things got a little dicey.

WEEK TWO

Every day I meditated peacefully in a forest, smiling as I reflected on the beauty within myself and the world around me. Not really.

When I wasn’t busy working and all the rest of it, I used my spare time to question what the hell I was doing with my life.

Mostly, I was coming down after self-publishing my third book, Nola Fran Evie. “Another book out, and still no signs of fame and fortune,” she thought sarcastically.

Also, broadcasting my personal life on blogging and social media started to make me shudder. Though I try to come from a place of good, is what I’m putting out into the world actually meaningful? Or, am I just another chick with first world problems talking about herself and taking selfies?

It was a rough week, needless to say. But then, Mr. H drove my sorry ass to the beach and this happened…

WEEK THREE

I stood in the sand and watched the sea, and guess what? I didn’t need to search or attempt, because I started that “simply be” thing I’ve been yapping about. I stopped getting down on myself and chose instead to see the good in me.

That moment I knew that I was doing alright with life.

WEEK FOUR

My hiatus was coming to an end. The big comeback blog post was looming. Shit.

I didn’t know what to write about—me, the girl who calls herself a writer. I wasn’t ready to deal with all of the waiting notifications and updates. I wanted to stay away, to keep my mystery, to viciously protect that small piece of me I found in September.

TODAY

At 8am I woke up to the sound of a trombone farting. Seriously.

Sunday morning. In the city. Trombone farts.

I wasn’t thrilled about it either, because I was having one of those lovely adult dreams you don’t want to wake up from—if you know what I mean. In the dream I was in the shower and my hunky husband was about to get in with me, then…trombone fart.

That brassy bastard.

My eyes flew open. The trombone farted proudly once again. What the hell?

Apparently, the Portland Marathon is today. Besides downtown, the route goes through our neighborhood as well. Two streets down there’s a block party with dance music and for some ungodly reason…trombone farts.

Surrendering to our fate, Mr H. and I put on some headphones and began our Sunday routine, drinking coffee in our chairs. I opened my laptop, then my WordPress page. I directed my mouse over to “Posts” and clicked on “Add New”.

My fingers started dancing across the keyboard, typing this nonsense. And, I was smiling big the whole time.

I came back.

Nola Fran Evie…The Bloopers

Over the years I’ve created several very, very low-budget online videos.

One such tradition is creating a happy dance every time I reach a followers milestone on this blog.

A few months ago I surpassed the 500 mark (woot!). I made this fancy finger dance video with the same red satin gloves worn on the cover of my first book, Beneath the Satin Gloves. The stage was a picture frame covered with a fluffy black bath towel and a lace shawl for dramatic effect.

That’s right, kiddos. I’m the Repurpose Queen.

This is the minute-long “masterpiece” you saw…

What you didn’t see…the hours of cussing that went into making that video.

Even me, a lifelong dancer, was forgetting my freaking finger choreography. Dammit!

Since I was kneeling on the floor—in my jammies, I might add—behind the frame, the chintzy stage kept collapsing. Shit!

And right when I had the perfect take, the gardeners struck up outside of my apartment with their ear-splitting background music. Dammit, shit, and some other ladylike words I won’t share.

Another tradition I slave away at are book trailers for every release. In these videos I give behind-the-scenes tidbits in the hopes that readers will connect with the inspiration of the story and take a chance on one of my books.

But I’m not talking to real humans, I’m talking face to face with my smartphone camera. Nope, it’s not easy.

I’ve been thinking about doing a bloopers reel for some time. But I always shied away from the idea for two reasons. Firstly, video editing, though I’ve learned to enjoy it, is quite time-consuming. Secondly, would anyone even think it’s funny?

Well, hell if I know! But this time I made the blooper reel anyway for NOLA FRAN EVIE.

Because nobody’s perfect, and I’m certainly not. So why not have a few laughs?

If you missed it, here’s the seemingly flawless book trailer…

And what really happened, the bloopers…

Thank You

Releasing a book is unsettling, and I don’t believe that ever changes. Essentially it’s delivering your heart and soul to everyone in the world—not knowing what will happen, not knowing a damn thing, actually.

Thankfully from sunup to sundown on Tuesday I was comforted by you lovelies. Some of you already bought NOLA FRAN EVIE. Some of you did that AND shared the heck out of my book in social media land.

I was truly overwhelmed by the congrats, woohoo’s, yippee’s, hooray’s, yay’s, and woo’s gracing the comment section of the release post that day. The buzz on Twitter and Facebook made me smile my tushie off.

Wow, you guys…THANK YOU.

It was brought to my attention that I was ranking awesomely on Amazon.

I didn’t believe it, because it’s just little ol’ me after all. But there NOLA FRAN EVIE was all day, kickin’ it with the top 100 of Amazon’s Bestsellers in the Sports category.

It was very neat.

Yesterday I managed to get through a long day at work with my book release hangover. My cat editing team was pretty tuckered out…

Today life is back to normal.

Now comes the time for—fingers crossed—some reviews. A new reader commented on my release post…

“For those who have read this book and enjoyed it – do the author a huge favor and please take a moment to post a review on Amazon! (no we’re not related!) Reviews mean a lot!”

Um, I couldn’t have said it better myself.

Let’s face it, we all read reviews before we purchase anything these days, right? As you all know, I am a little indie author who depends on you guys—my shining community—to spread the good word. A few minutes of your time to leave one would be magnanimously appreciated.

That brings me to NOLA FRAN EVIE on Goodreads! Click right here, loves.

For my Goodreaders out there, be a doll and make sure to add the book to your “currently-reading” or “to-read” lists when you have a sec. I wanted to share NOLA FRAN EVIE’s first bit of praise from a current reader on Goodreads…

“I’m meeting 3 distinct women that share a common past life. I’m looking forward to see which ‘girl’ I’m going to bond with. Too soon to tell. It is definitely not too soon to know how well Britt writes. I like her words a lot. Fine job Britt!!”

And if you haven’t scooped up your copy on Amazon yet, I’ll leave you with a shout-out from a dear friend of mine to see if that persuades you a bit.

“Hey! Do you like to read? Do ya like to read cool books written by rad humans?! PERFECT! My friend Britt Skrabanek wrote a book….so go buy it! Bonus, it’s only $3.99 on Amazon! That’s cheaper than Starbucks, and oh so much better. #SupportIndieAuthors”

AMAZON

AMAZON UK

Thanks a bunch, sweet friends! Hope your weeks are filled with beauty, sunshine, and awesomeness! Much love…Britt.