November | 2024 | Bobbi Ann Johnson Holmes

I hope you all had a blessed Thanksgiving. We spent it with our son, daughter-in-law, and several of her family members. Thanksgiving also marked the fifth week since Mom moved on in her journey.

I’m adjusting to my new normal without Mom. I find comfort in knowing she was ready to move on and now free from dementia. In my heart of hearts, I sincerely believe she is spending the holidays with those who moved on before her, like Dad, Grandma Hilda, my Aunt Margaret, and others we both loved and missed.

As you can see, we are putting up the Christmas decorations. Once again our tree is placed by the front door. We don’t have a big house, and it is the only place it fits! Plus we never use that door. As you can see, we have a “back” door on the other side of the room that leads to the back yard. We now need to decorate the tree.

I am also focusing my energy on a project I started almost a year ago, building my own online bookstore. I took a class on how to build the online store, and I hired an expert to help me. It took much longer than I originally anticipated, but when I started, I didn’t take into consideration the books I was scheduled to write, time I wanted to spend with Mom, and other realities of daily life.

But I finally did it! I officially opened my online bookstore without any fanfare.

Currently the only books available in the store, aside from two Havasu books, are Haunting Danielle and Anna J. McIntyre books in eBook format. We are working on the print books, and they will be available in the near future, including hardback books.

Since Tantor Media owns the audiobook rights to the Haunting Danielle series, and Dreamscape Media has the audiobook rights to The Coulson Family Saga, I won’t be selling audiobooks from my online bookstore. However, I will have links at my store helping you find where you can find the audiobooks.

This doesn’t mean Haunting Danielle or McIntyre eBooks will no longer be available at sites like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Kobo, Google, iTunes, or Smashwords. They will still be there. But at my store, I will be able to offer specials, discounts on bundles, and autographed copies.

Having my own store gives me both flexibility and independence. Authors have no real control over how major online bookstores do business, which may help or hinder book sales. For example, I know of authors who decided to put their eBooks exclusive on Amazon’s Unlimited program, only to have their accounts shut down because their books showed up (no fault to the author) on a pirate site, thus violating Amazon’s TOS. While many of those authors were eventually able to get reinstated, their stream of income stopped abruptly for days or weeks.

One time Barnes & Noble abruptly closed my account because they thought I was selling spicy books—I wasn’t. It took a while to work it out, and I often wonder if they would have reopened my account so quickly if it hadn’t been for all my loyal readers who sent them angry emails.

As an author, we have no control if someone else’s online bookstore suddenly closes down or decides not to list our books. Having my own online bookstore gives me a sense of security.

I urge you to stop by the store—its official name is Bobbi Holmes Books at the domain store, instead of dot com. Here is the link: https://bobbiholmesbooks.store

Like I said, it is a work in progress, and we still have a lot to do on the store. So stop by periodically and see what we’ve added!

Over on Booktok there has been some discussion aka drama about some wanting to keep politics out of the Booktok space. The irony in that for me, books are inherently political.

Before I continue, let me say that I have intentionally kept any blatant discussion of current politics off my Haunting Danielle social media pages. Those being my author page and Haunting Danielle page over on Facebook, and my Haunting Danielle newsletter.

I do this out of respect for my readers. You see, many of the emails and messages I receive from readers tell me how much they enjoy the Haunting Danielle series for the escape it affords them from the everyday stress of life, or from something they are personally dealing with. That being the case, I would rather my author pages be a safe place to escape, like my books.

Of course that does not mean I never discuss politics online. After all, I am a writer, and writers are compelled to express opinions. But I choose to do that on other spaces, such as this blog, or my private Facebook page.

I will be leaving a link to this blogpost in my Facebook author page, disclosing the topic in the title, thus giving the reader the option to come here and read this, or skip any discussion on politics.

Recently there was a bit of drama on my Facebook author page regarding a post I made about opening a Bluesky account and closing my Twitter aka X account. I will discuss that in a moment, but first, I want to explain why I believe books are inherently political.

I turn seventy this week. (Yikes, that sounds old!) When I was a little girl one of my favorite book series was Nancy Drew. Nancy Drew was an independent, smart, resourceful young woman who solved problems and didn’t wait for a man to save her. The men (boys) in her life respected her. She was probably my first feminist role model. Feminism is political.

Now let’s look at a classic Christmas story, after all, Christmas is just around the corner. The one I am thinking of is Charles Dicken’s A Christmas Carol. It is a story of a very rich man, who underpays and overworks his employee, ignores the medical needs of said employee’s family, which includes a special needs child. What could be more political than a story about the super-rich and the struggling working class?

Like I said, books are inherently political. Booktok is a space where readers discuss and recommend books, and in my opinion, banning politics from the space is no different than book banning.

Now back to the political drama that took place on my author page.

I have a number of social media accounts. My first was MySpace which I left for Facebook. This was pre-Haunting Danielle years. Back then my eldest nephew urged the family to jump over to the then new Facebook.

Over the years I have joined Pinterest, Linkedin, Twitter, Instagram, and TikTok. I haven’t been on Pinterest for a long time, and I rarely use Linkedin. I joined TikTok for Booktok a couple years ago, but stopped making videos when it looked as if the site might get shut down in the US. I still surf videos there and comment.

At one time the two social media accounts I used the most was Twitter and Facebook. What I liked about Twitter was the ability to find current conversations that interested me. For example, if I was watching a documentary on TV and wanted to discuss it with someone, I could type in the name of the documentary and hook up with other people watching and wanting to discuss the show.

Or, if there was a fire in my old hometown of Wrightwood, California, I could type in #fire #wrightwood in the search bar and discover the most current discussion and often firsthand news. It didn’t matter who the person was on the other end of the tweet, I would see his words. And if I responded to his tweet, everyone on the thread would see my response. Twitter of old gave us the ability to converse with the world, without having to gain some special status from the platform beforehand.

When Elon Musk took over Twitter it began to change. I found it super annoying that Elon’s tweets kept being shoved in my face. If I wanted to see what he had to say, I would follow him. But it wasn’t just that. Twitter, now X, no longer worked the same.

In frustration, I signed up for Threads to check it out, but I wasn’t a fan. Technically I may still have an account over there.

But then a couple weeks ago I started reading about authors leaving X for BlueSky. Some of them mentioned the new TOC rolled out by Elon. I decided to have a look, and where BlueSky claimed they would not be using our content to train Ai, X would. There were other sketchy things in the TOC that bugged me.

So I decided it was time to close down X. I had been considering it for a long time and had stopped using it over a year ago. I would occasionally pop over there to check on things, but the experience was always so frustrating, that I always left annoyed.

Over the years I have shared my social media profiles with readers, and I knew some followed me on X. I decided to let them know where I had gone so I posted the following message on my author page.

I finally decided to deactivate Twitter aka X. I’ll need to update my social media icons on some of my author pages and websites. I will put that on my to do list! After deactivating X, I opened an account at BlueSky. My account there is: @bajh.bsky.social

Wow, did a drama ensue! One reader blasted me for bringing politics to the page, claimed she would never buy another book from me, and after leaving a number of snarky posts blocked me before I had a chance to respond.

Another reader made a comment about hoping it wasn’t about politics, and another expressed her disappointment in me for bringing politics to the page, to which she did apologize when I clarified my reasons for that post.

But was I being political? If I am honest with myself, maybe unconsciously in a passive aggressive way.

The fact is, I am not a fan of Elon Musk. But did I leave X because of him? Only in that his changes to the site made me leave. Had Musk made no changes to how the site worked, I might not have deactivated my account.

Disliking the man, and not wanting to support him is understandable, but when it comes to X, I don’t think Musk cares if it crashes. It’s a toy to him. And while the money he spent to buy X could help so many people, to him it is a toy where he can be the center of attention and when he gets bored and finds another distraction he can use it as a tax write off.

Does this make me suddenly political? If you have read the first six books of the Haunting Danielle series, you know Chris Johnson. If you continued to read the books, you may also be familiar with his uncles. If it wasn’t for real life people like Elon Musk, the actions of Chris’s uncles would seem farfetched.

If you know, you know.

Monthly Archives: November 2024

Holidays and Bookstores

Books and Politics