I was so happy three months ago. Okay, so things haven’t been going so well financially. My wife stopped working right around when COVID started, and she hasn’t been healthy enough to work since. We still did okay for a while. Her unemployment paid the groceries until it ran out. The government bonus checks we got during the pandemic also helped us for a few more months. We refinanced our house last year, and used the extra money to pay off a bunch of old debts. For the first time in years, I wasn’t paying a third of my paycheck to revolving debts.
But the fact is, without my wife’s income, I make slightly less than what we need to get through the month. We live windfall to windfall, scraping by for months at a time until I get a handout – my annual Christmas bonus, tax refund, and so on. Our bills are actually pretty low, all things considered. Our mortgage payment is probably half what most people are paying in this area.
So yeah, it sucks, but we get by. I’m lucky, I have some really cheap ways to entertain myself. I love writing, which is about as cheap a hobby as you can get. So far I’ve published two books, and I’ve got a third in the proofreading stage, and I’m a few chapters into a fourth. Being creative makes me happy. Even the non-writing parts of writing, like maintaining social media sites or putting together marketing videos, put me into a creative high.
Or it did. A couple of weeks ago, I got a negative review on my first book. They gave 3 out of 5 stars, which is okay, but the reviewer's comments hit me pretty hard. Yeah, I know, writing is putting myself out there, which is always a risk. Creativity isn’t a business for the thin-skinned, and I promised myself early on that I was only publishing the books for fun, not for profit. But still.
The reviewer had two main complaints. The first wasn’t so bad. The “novel” is really more of a novella/anthology hybrid, and the overarching plot isn’t resolved in the first book. I think of it like a TV series. The first half of book 1 is like the double-length season premiere. The second half is like a bunch of episodes. Then, if you buy book two, the first half is several additional episodes, until finally the overarching plot is resolved at the end of the second season.
I knew it wasn’t the ideal way to compile the story. Originally it was going to be one extra-long book, but a lot of writing websites recommended keeping your first novel under 100,000 words, so I split it across two books. I also considered releasing it as four short novellas, but that would have caused more problems, such as commissioning more covers. Anyway, it is what it is, and regardless of where you put the split, it’s the same story. Maybe I’ll update the blurb to make this more clear.
The reviewer’s other complaint is the one that really hurt, though. They claim that, about a quarter of the way into the book, some characters start talking about events they shouldn’t know about. If I’m understanding them correctly, I switch from third person limited POV to third person omniscient POV without a clutch. I wouldn’t be surprised, honestly. The problem is, they weren’t very specific in the review, so I don’t know where the error is in the book. It’s like knowing that a dog threw up somewhere in the house, but not being able to find it.
I didn’t use an editor. I wish I could have, but living paycheck-to-paycheck (and still slipping behind), it just wasn’t in the budget. I did use beta readers, but they didn’t come across the problem the reviewer mentions. I wish I could have been able to afford an editor. If the book ever makes any money, I might use some of it to combine books 1 and 2 into one book, and get that version edited. But that’s the paradox, innit? The book’s not going to make money without an editor. And even then, it has to get noticed among all the other thousands of self-published books out there.
A few weeks ago, I had so much creative energy, such big plans for future books to write, ways to market them, and so on. But after the review, it just felt like, what’s the point? I’m obviously a bad writer, no one wants to buy my books, and frankly, I’m not sure I even want them to. Why would I want to subject someone else to my crappy writing?
But I forced myself to get over it. After all, it was just one review, and it’s possible the reader just misread something. I decided to go back to my original philosophy: I don’t care. I’ll still release the next book, and I’ll continue to write on book four for as long as I find it fun to do so. I was almost ready to be happy again… and then I opened my wife’s Discover bill.
Like I said, my wife hasn’t worked since COVID started. She has several health issues that keep her from doing most jobs. And she’s suffering from depression, partly because of how useless her health problems make her feel. She doesn’t qualify for disability, because we can’t even get a definitive diagnosis for what’s wrong with her. So she spends most of her days sitting in her easy chair, watching TV, and playing games on her tablet.
And she’s addicted to gambling. She’s always loved going gambling, when she could afford it. She used to be very responsible about it, budgeting exactly how much she would bring with her, knowing how much she was willing to lose ahead of time. For her, it was like going to a video game arcade. But since her health started to decline, things have changed. If she goes to a casino now, she blows her budget every time. She heads to the ATM, gets out more money, and keeps going. If she has money in her bank account, she’s going to spend it. And she won’t come home until it’s all gone. Sometimes she doesn’t even tell me, she just drives to the next state while I’m at work, so she can gamble all day without my judgement.
And you know what? That would be fine, if that’s all it was. But then she discovered how to gamble on her tablet, using play points, which she buys with credit cards. And it’s not really even “gambling” in the casino sense. She plays puzzle games similar to Candy Crush, or solitaire games, but with gambling aspects to them. The odds are insane – they promise you’ll earn a nickel if you play for an hour, and never deliver. But she prefers to play these games to similar free games. She could buy a decent solitaire app for less than $5, or play one that’s free with ads, but she’d rather spend money hourly on a solitaire game that promises her the chance to win 25 cents.
Back in February, I found that she'd charged $500 to one of my credit cards. It was multiple transactions, ranging from $5 to $25 each. This is a credit card I only keep around for gas, because I don’t like using a debit card at the pumps. I gave her a copy of the card, with the understanding it was for gas only. But she couldn’t resist the temptation to use it for these apps. So we had a long talk, and she promised not to do it again.
Then I got her Discover bill. This is one of the cards we paid off last year, and we’ve only used once since, for some car repairs. She had charged an additional $3,000 to the card. My jaw hit the floor when I saw that. $3,000 worth of $5 - $25 transactions, all to the same place. That’s like buying another car without telling me. And for what? What does she have to show for it? It would be one thing if she was addicted to something we could resell, but this was $3,000 to keep playing a mobile app, an app similar to ones you can play for free.
I love her more than anything, but this can’t keep happening. We’re already struggling for groceries, and now our budget’s going to be that much tighter. And with as much as she’s lied, I don’t know if more surprises are coming. She doesn’t have a job, which means she’s lying to the credit card companies about her income, and every dollar she spends is a dollar I’ll have to pay back someday. If I don’t die of a stroke first, because I’m really, really close right now.
And of course the bills just keep getting higher. Our grocery budget has doubled since the pandemic. My wife smokes the most expensive cigarettes – nothing else will do. Her student loan payments had paused due to the pandemic, but since the forgiveness thing fell through, we’ll have resume paying those soon.
We were so close. I wish we could rewind time, to right after we paid off all those credit cards. Maybe get her to see a psychiatrist for her gambling addiction, before anything bad happens. I don’t know where we’re going to go from here. I might have to get a second job on the weekends. But I’m really going to resent my wife if I’m working 7 days a week, paying off her mistakes, while she has no job.
I could have hired an editor for my book for $500. I didn’t because it takes every extra penny each month to buy groceries. Meanwhile, the person I trust most in this world was throwing thousands of dollars out the window. I can’t concentrate at work right now, because I’m constantly worried she’s found another credit card in the house, or applied for one behind my back, and is charging up more debt.
I’m not her parent. I can’t tell her what to do with her life. I can’t ground her or punish her. Really, I can’t even take her credit cards away; I had to talk her into giving them to me voluntarily. But I’m worried that her apps have the numbers saved. If she wants to ruin her life, that’s her choice, but why does she have to drag me down with her?
She needs to feel like she has a purpose. I've been encouraging her to get into a hobby. She used to be such a good writer, and I know she still has story ideas, but she just doesn't want to sit at a computer anymore. I guess our next step will be to make her an appointment with a therapist. Both for her depression, and for her gambling addiction.
To some extent, I blame myself. Maybe if I'd given her more attention, her life wouldn't have felt so empty. Maybe if I didn't spend my Saturdays writing books and/or playing D&D, I don't know. But I'm usually at work when she's charging up these credit cards, so I don't know how I could have kept her occupied then.
We will get through this. We will. She'll go to therapy, and come out a stronger person on the other side. But I don't know how long it will be before I can trust her again.
I'm not going to ask anyone for money; I did one GoFundMe a few years ago, and even though it was for a real emergency, the whole process made me feel slimy. I never want to publicly beg for money again, especially for something like this.
That said, if you're reading this and want to help, buy my books. They're available at several online retailers. If you read them and like them, leave a review. It takes something like 50 reviews before Amazon's algorithm makes your book show up in searches. You can buy them
here or
here.
Or, if you just want to buy me a coffee,
click here. I don't actually drink coffee, but I'll appreciate the gesture.
Anyway, that's my rant. I might take this post back down in a few days, I just wanted to vent a little. Writing things out makes me feel better.
