​Masks work. I'm on my 10th day of breakthrough Covid Thursday, but all of my BJJ partners have tested negative. As mandated by our governor, we roll in masks, which we have complained about, but now I'm so glad we did.

As for me, breakthrough Covid is no joke. I got it from my husband, who has no idea who he got it from, but he has had beers outside with vaccinated friends. My first symptoms were a sore throat at night and a greatly elevated heart rate, which I noticed by chance when I was bored and playing with my Apple Watch (95 after sitting for an hour). Later symptoms included: body aches, temperature over 101, hacking cough, headache, severe congestion, losing my sense of smell, and muddled, slow thinking. Also note that I had a negative PCR test the day my husband learned his positive results, and then tested positive two days later.

I was really worried about my atrial fibrillation coming back, as Covid does seem to do that. I wanted monoclonal antibodies. Friday late afternoon is not a good time to figure that out. I qualified, but finding someone to give them to me was impossible. Because they are in short supply, they are being somewhat rationed. On my third day of Covid, I found a doctor who would give them if I paid $450 out of pocket. For me, the peace of mind was worth it. Regeneron isn't a cure, but it does reduce symptoms and cuts by 70% the chances you will end up in the hospital.

Despite being vaccinated with Moderna and getting Regeneron, this is still hitting me hard. I usually accomplish a lot every day, but now just reading my email is a challenge.  I don't feel that bright.  Yesterday I spent a couple of hours looking at $100 leggings - so many colors! pockets or not? - when I finally came to my senses and remembered I get my leggings at Costco. 

Like everyone else, I had a crazy year. I was in 11 states in the first 11 weeks of 2020. Since the pandemic started, I've only used a tank and a half of gas. The farthest I've driven since mid-March was to my heart surgeon's. I got diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and the surgery to fix it got pushed back due to Covid. I gained weight and a little bit of patience. I lost income and had to put my beloved Brazilian jiu jitsu on hold. But basically I am so, so lucky. 

I long ago gave up long lists of New Year's resolutions that I never kept. For the last few years I've chosen a short mantra. Some worked better than others. RISK got me to do Brazilian jiu jitsu in the fist place.  Another good one was MORE OR LESS.  On the other hand, FLEXIBLE and PRECIOUS (because time is short and I should act like that) did not really guide me.

I got so distracted over the last four years, and especially in 2020, when I would frantically jump from NY Times to Washington Post to CNN to Facebook to Twitter and then start all over again. (I finally put time limits on Twitter and Facebook, which helped.)  

​For 2021, my word is FOCUS.

Traditionally, a bestseller was a book that was selling lots of copies in many bookstores.  

Things got complicated with ebooks.

Every ebook has an Amazon best-sellers rank. Number 1 is the current best-selling ebook on Amazon Kindle and number 5,000,000 or something is the worst-selling book. Amazon updates their sales rankings every hour based on an algorithm.  It's harder to manipulate these overall rankings, although I assume it could be done because it's a much more limited universe than a lot of bookstores.  

But Amazon has created numerous subcategories of bestsellers. My latest book, The Lonely Dead, was ranked an Amazon bestseller in various subcategories numerous times. The rankings weren't manipulated, but it doesn't take many sales to make an ebook number one in a limited category (Children's Illness??)  for one day or even one hour.  

This week, I was leafing through Oprah magazine and saw an ad for a company that variously called itself a marketing company or a publisher. "With the AUTHORity Package, it's all done for you, and we can turn around a finished product-from interview to bestseller-in as little as 30 days. Our process overall is what I call a modern approach to publishing; we function in a manner that's considerably different-and less formal- than the traditional publishing houses....Every book has been a best-seller. Our success rate is 100 percent."

When I looked up some of the books featured in the ad, some had rankings around 4,000,000.  So they clearly weren't really bestsellers for any length of time. I would assume they were "bestsellers" for a day or two. 

How much does all this "success" cost?  There's a stripped down program that involves three webinars and you doing all the work yourself.  And that costs $1800!  I can only imagine what the full program costs. When someone wants you to pay a lot of money for something, be skeptical and do lots of research. 

In traditional publishing, money flows to the author. Personally, I like traditional publishing.  I have experts who edit my book, design the interior, design the cover, market it, get it into libraries and bookstores, sell foreign rights, etc.  

​If you want to self publish, you should control things yourself, not pay someone thousands of dollars to do a (not very good, judging by the clip art covers I saw in the ad) for you.  

Here are some ideas on how to do it yourself:  https://www.janefriedman.com/self-publish-your-book/

A few weeks ago, I attended the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association event to sign advanced copies of my 22nd book (or is it 23rd?), The Lonely Dead. Twenty years ago, I did my very first signing at PNBA in Eugene for my first book, Circles of Confusion (and signed it for JB of Seattle Mystery Books, which is sadly gone now).

Eugene is just 90 minutes from Portland, but at that time both my car and my husband's car were so old and crappy that we actually had an argument over whose car was worse. He said his was in better shape, and I should take it. It was a Subaru wagon that was old enough to vote and had what had once been a super cool "digital dash." Only most of it had stopped working. My husband's mechanic had installed an analog gauge for engine temperature by the handbrake. Right before I left, my husband insisted I take his cell phone (also a fairly new thing) because it came with a free service called "Mr Rescue." He also told me I should keep an eye on the analog gauge, as he thought the car might be overheating.

I promptly forgot that part. When I was 38 miles from Eugene (I only knew because I kept thinking how long it would be before I could hit the restroom) the car began to slow down even though I had my foot on the accelerator.

You guessed it (especially if you ever owned an older Subaru). I had blown the head gasket. I called Mr. Rescue, which turned out to be some lady in a room in Florida with maybe some phone books and maps. She did not understand "38 miles from Eugene." She wanted the name of a town. Finally she dispatched a tow truck driver on speed who had been up for three days straight. I remembering trying to bond with him in the hopes he wouldn't kill me. He did not, and dropped me off at a truck stop.

I called my husband, who buckled our toddler in my old car, drove down, rescued me, and took me to the signing - and I was not even all that late! And he never, ever said one bad word about me not watching his precious car (he loved it so much he would paint tiny scratches on the bumper with model paint) or the thousands of dollars it cost to get it fixed. ​

In June, I was in the middle of a four-mile run when I saw something ahead of me on the edge of the road.  A small black garbage bag?  A black rubber glove?

It was a crow. 

And it was alive.  

Every now and then it would try to move, but failed.  Eventually its legs ended up behind it.  

My gut feeling was that it wasn't going to live.  And that seemed cruel, to let it suffer and die.  But I didn't know what to do.  I thought about picking it up and twisting its neck, which is how I've heard you kill chickens.  But I didn't feel capable of doing it.  

A older man was walking toward me. Together, we regarded the crow.  "Birds live precarious lives," he said with a German accent.  

A woman driving her car stopped. She rolled down her window. "Is it still there? Is it still alive?"  She had spotted it a few hours earlier.  

When we said yes, she said she couldn't stand to think of it suffering. Her plan was to run over it several times. I asked her to wait until I had run down the hill. When I looked back over my shoulder, the older man had walked on and the woman was trying to line up her tire.  I ran faster.

A minute later she passed me and slowed down again.  "I couldn't do it," she admitted.

When I got home, I called the Audubon society. They thought it was possibly a fledgling crow.  And they said that fledgling crows often end up on the ground but are fine. They have blue eyes, but otherwise are hard to tell apart from full-grown crows.  In fact, they are not much smaller.  

So was my crow a fledgling?  I don't think so. And even the Audubon said it was a very bad sign that it could not get its feet under it.  

I still wonder if one of us should have killed the crow. And if we had, would it have been a mercy or a murder. 

Would you like to make $48,000 a month?  

It's easy!  All you need to do is run a cheesy literary award competition and charge $19.95 an entry for each of 12 categories - and then make it seem like it's a select group because there are "only" 200 entries per category.  

Be sure to make your award appear more "real" by adding quotes, with the insinuation that they are about your "award."  Take one from the New York Times, which is really from a 1992 article about the importance of the Caldecott and the Pulitzer. Throw in another quote from a guy who was once an editor at Dutton - only he died at the age of 86 in 1983.  And there's a quote from agent "Julie Pickering" - only her name is Juliet and her agency is in London.  And this quote: 

“Wow! I’m so honored; thank you!! I’m deeply grateful… Thank you so much for the recognition! This means a LOT.” – Kathryn Le Veque, NY Times Bestselling Author.

Only she's not a NYT bestselling author, but a USA Today bestselling author (which are different nuts to crack). 

While alll of the quotes appear to be real, almost all of them seem to be about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AWARDS.  Other clues: Grammatical mistakes. Calling something a "fiction novel." Art work that seems to have been hijacked from the 1980s.  

Remember that money should flow to the author. Don't tell yourself that it's "only" $19.95 - they are counting on 2.400 people to tell themselves that, month after month.