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About Kathryn Magendie

TENDER GRACES, Magendie's first novel, was an Amazon Kindle Number 1 best-seller. As well as her novelist life, she’s a freelance editor, personal trainer, and former Publishing Editor of The Rose & Thorn. Her short stories, essays, poetry, and photography have been published in print and online publications. Her novels are available in print and ebook. Along with her freelance editing, she's website editor for Edge of Arlington Saw & Tool. She lives in the Smoky Mountains in a little log house in the Cove at Killian Knob in Maggie Valley, Western North Carolina with her wonky-toothed little dog named lil Bear. Sometimes there is vodka in the freezer. Critters love her. Some or all of this is likely true.

Recent Posts by this author:

  • Royalties: What This Writer Made, Once Upon One Time
  • The Happy Go Lucky Guide To Problem- & Maniac-Free Travel
  • The Sheldon Cooper in Me
  • Living The Dreamy Dreamland
  • Becoming a Rogue Planet (When You Lose Your Publisher)
  • To Those Who Encourage Us To Write & To Dig A Whole Lot Deeper: T’anky!
  • Will We Read On? Or Put Down The Book? Sometimes It’s The Little Things
  • Mathematical Equations of Perfection in Nature
  • Christmas Lists: Then (Tangible) and Now (Intangible)
  • In South Louisiana, They Will Feed Your (Sensory) Senses
  • The Tiny Former Planet
  • Letting Go Of The Negative Dark Cycle

    • Royalties: What This Writer Made, Once Upon One Time

    By 12 Comments

    Photo Credit: Ted Van Pelt “Cash”

    So, Covid19, right? I thought I’d talk about something less stressful—money! What? … Oh. Yeah.

    For 1.222333222222111% of writers, things have been pretty golden. As for the rest of us 98.77766677777789% of writers, there are varying degrees of royalty money or not royalty money—honestly, I have vague ideas of what other writers’ royalties are but I always imagine many are doing just fine because they are wise and smart and savvy in their book-business—alternatively, I and a few others like me are confused and uninspired and stubborn.

    I admit it. I just wanted to write books and hoped that was good enough to, while not make me a ton of money, at least make me a little steady money. Well, if that isn’t naïve, I don’t know what is, but that’s how early on I approached my “writing career,” and since it worked out (not) soooooooo well for me, I continued that way.

    If it ain’t fixed, don’t broke it, right? Maybe my experience will help you, or be your cautionary tale.

    A familiar conversation I’ve had with those who are thinking of entering the book business:

    “How much money you think I’ll make?”

    I say, “I dunno.”

    “Like, could I quit my job within a year?”

    “I dunno.” I fidget in my seat.

    “Well, how much are you making?”

    Noneya! I sniff haughtily. “I don’t like discussing my royalties.”

    Looks irritated at me, as if I’m hiding something glorious that I won’t share. “Like, you think being a writer is a secret society or something? Not anymore! Why don’t you all just tell us what it’s really like?”

    “We do! All the time! There’s a veritable glut of information, advice, and other stuff out there. Huh.”

    “So, tell me how much you make from your book sales. I’ve been to your Amazon page—”

    “—then you have an idea, right?”

    “You are no help at all.”

    Nope, I am not. Because it’s private. Because most people—writers and not-writers—don’t like to talk about personal finances. It makes our brains feel itchy. But is there an aura of secrecy and mystique with Writer Money and Writer Book Sales? Do we keep that magic curtain pulled tight so all the mechanisms are hidden, like the Wiz of Oz? Or are those the old days and we are much more open about the entire experience?

    Creatives can let Creative Money define us in a critical way. We feel overwhelmed by what we think we should be doing as a business versus what we want to do as creators. We can grow stagnant and moldy, afraid to move forward, or languish into The Big Stop—

    —I haven’t written a novel in about 7 years. Dang. Yeah. Feels judgy eyes upon her little tortured soul.

    It’s not what you may think. It’s not just about money. But money plays a role.

    So. Actual dollars and no sense. Your results can and may vary, or can and may have already varied.

    Gulp … deep breath … scratch the itchy brain …. [Read more…]

    The Happy Go Lucky Guide To Problem- & Maniac-Free Travel

    By

    In 1947, the first living critters to be launched into space were fruit flies—they were sent up with some corn so they’d not be hungry (I don’t know why this amuses me, but every time I read it I laugh; I’m laughing now … hold on … wait … okay I’m done).  106 miles up. The capsule was recovered and the fruit flies weren’t any worse for wear—their future families are now circling your fruit bowl to get away from Grandpa Fruit Fly and his space-travel stories they’ve heard fifty-galleven … [Read more...]

    The Sheldon Cooper in Me

    By

    You know, I don’t even pretend that I will write the insightful crowd-pleasing intelligent informative posts that you read on all the other days besides the second Saturday of the month. I firmly believe when you “try” to do what you think “should” be done, by god it just don’t feel right, right? I run my hillbilly feet from my mountain cove to the WU lovely suburbs and . . . well, there goes the neighborhood! Haw! I like to talk to you (empty my head). You know, yappity about stuff. We have … [Read more...]

    Living The Dreamy Dreamland

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    We writers aren’t so unique, you know. It’s not the Writer who is especially unique—though we often in our self-indulgent brilliance think it is so—it is our personalities and tics and weirdnesses that are unique. Some of us are just a wee bit more cray or intense or discombobulated than others and if we happen to be writers, well then now—stir it all together and it’s a pot of deliciously toxic soup! But for the sake of this post, I’m thinking about writing and writers and the inner worlds we … [Read more...]

    Becoming a Rogue Planet (When You Lose Your Publisher)

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    Where have I been?, at least one of you may have wondered. Well, since one of you asked: I've been here, there, and yonder! Traveling the metaphorical Universe. Dodging wayward orbital obstacles, sliding down moonbeams, burned by the sun, cooled by away-from-the-sun. I’ve not written one word of fiction since my hiatus from Writer Unboxed five months ago. I’ve been working extra hard for another goal. But even before my hiatus, writing days for quite a long time now have been fewer and fewer. … [Read more...]

    To Those Who Encourage Us To Write & To Dig A Whole Lot Deeper: T’anky!

    By

    If I chance to talk a little wild, forgive me … (from King Henry VIII) I forgive you William Shakespeare, and I love you for it too, for I’ve often felt a little wild, talked a little wild, written a little wild, been a little wild. Oh, but it wasn’t always so that I loved you (or the idea of you). There was a time when I just didn’t get you, dear William. I’d hear your name reverently fall from trembling lips and I’d shrug. I’d attempt to read your plays, and attempt is a generous word to … [Read more...]

    Will We Read On? Or Put Down The Book? Sometimes It’s The Little Things

    By

    There is not a writer in all the land who can write to please everyone. We simply cannot please everyone. Never-ever-ever! However, as readers we can sometimes unrealistically expect some sort of perfection—and if we are a writer and/or editor reading, perhaps we are a bit more arrogant in our persnickityness. For me, it may begin that way as I read the first few chapters of a book, a sort of noticing too much, but then something magical happens and I tap in to the rhythm of the character’s … [Read more...]

    Mathematical Equations of Perfection in Nature

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    Nobody's perfect, I thought by myself to myself, as I walked my mountain cove one spring morning. I am measuring me against me. The time of writing consistently and arrogantly and prolifically against the me now who watches her bank account as if it may disappear while sleeping—and it often does, what with auto-pay ripping out its due. There should never be a time in an author's life when what you loved so fervently and beautifully is placed away on a shelf while Real Life Stuff, like work to … [Read more...]

    Christmas Lists: Then (Tangible) and Now (Intangible)

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    Ah Christmas. It's just over two weeks away. Plenty of time to make your lists and check them twice, right? At various stages of Kid-dom, my Christmas list would read something like this: Real Candy, with Chocolate—not that hard stuff, and please no fruit (Santa, fruit is not nature's candy—you ain't foolin' nobody) Baby Doll with a Stroller (I know, Santa, you gave me one last year but my bratty brothers threw a rock through the stroller and shaved all the hair off baby doll) Barbie … [Read more...]

    In South Louisiana, They Will Feed Your (Sensory) Senses

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    I spent a good many years hiding in books—whether writing them or reading them. Basically, I hid. Like a little coward. I recognize how afraid of everything and everyone I have been. I'm still working on some of that. Yet. Now I see the need to explore and  experience, for I know discovery will improve my writing, and my life. Though I was born in the mountains, I spent a good many years in South Louisiana. My Virginia Kate Sagas hold South Louisiana (and West Virginia—where I was born) at … [Read more...]

    The Tiny Former Planet

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    At one time Pluto, though the smallest in the solar system and the farthest away (as far as we knew of what we know), was a regular old planet and a part of the Nine Planets some of us grew up reciting in school using a mnemonic that may or may not have made sense, such as: My Very Educated Mother Just Served Us Nine Pizzas. But one fine day Pluto was flung out of its A Part of the Whole planet status in our galaxy, left to drift there in the cold and dark. Perhaps because scientists felt so … [Read more...]

    Letting Go Of The Negative Dark Cycle

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    Recently, I had this weird sensation come over me. What is this feeling? This … this thing? Well, what do you know? I was feeling contentment. Huh. Dang! And having that acceptance and contentment, and happiness, slap me upside my hard head had me think about the journey to finding some peace and joy. After my father's death six years ago, where there was no sudden last pages of a novel having us say all the things we never said and as the reader comes to The End, with little pearls of tears … [Read more...]