My New Venture: Teaching Online Courses

Every year in autumn as soon as the weather gets cool, I get the same urge: to teach. I think this stems from all the years of going to back to school. Well, that and for a long time now I’ve wanted to be a college professor. The bad news is I can’t afford to go back to school (again – I have 2 bachelors and a masters degree), so that PhD is going to have to wait.

But this past fall I embarked on a new venture aimed at satisfying my inner teacher (while hopefully earning some extra money): creating online classes. After researching many possible platforms, I chose to go with Teachable. Then I developed a series of 12 business and craft classes to launch my school, Professional Author Academy. But between my full-time job and releasing a book in November, I’ve just now launched the classes.

I love this option because it gives me a chance to take all the presentations I’ve done for speaking engagements (and a few new ones) and expand them out to people who wouldn’t otherwise be able to come see me speak. And it gives me something to do with all this knowledge and experience in my head. (In addition to the degrees I mentioned earlier, I have 15 years of professional experience in marketing. Here’s my whole list of qualifications.)

I’m a firm believer that one should never stop learning, so I’ve created classes for different skill levels from aspiring author to multi-published, as well as indie and traditionally published. These courses can be taken anyone:

• How to Write Back Cover Copy That Sells
• Marketing Plans for Authors
• Business Plans for Authors
• Branding for Authors
• Websites and Social Media for Authors
• Self-Editing
• Writing Historical Fiction
• Setting and Description

These are geared only to indie authors:

• Steps to Self Publishing
• Self Publishing 101
• Audio Books for Indie Authors
• Legal Issues for Indie Authors

See a complete course catalogue, including course descriptions. Samples are available for each course (just click on the course you’re interested in from the main page for Professional Author Academy and you’ll see a video on the top left) so you can see what you’re getting before you commit. Plus, if you want to experience my online teaching style, the How to Write Back Cover Copy That Sells course is free, so there’s no risk to you.

Convenient and Reasonably Priced
I know what it’s like to try to fit learning into a life already filled with work, family, writing and other responsibilities. That’s why they are short; most are around 30 mins and none exceed 2 hours. Plus, they don’t require any homework and can be taken at your own pace. All courses include a welcome video and narrated Powerpoint slides. Many also include a recommended reading list and other handouts for reference or use as a worksheet or template.

In addition, they are cheaper than your average college course, which runs about $1,500/course (at $500/credit hour), or even many Writer’s Digest Online Workshops, which average between $200-$600+. I offer a tiered pricing structure based on the amount of information in each course. You can pay all at once or installments.

Mini – Free (so you can try before you buy)

• Back Cover Copy That Sells

Basic – $100/course

• Legal Issues for Indie Authors
• Writing Setting and Description

Standard – $200/course

• Audio Books for Indie Authors
• Business Plans for Authors
• Self-Editing

Advanced – $300/course

• Branding for Authors
• Website and Social Media for Authors
• Steps to Self Publishing

Premium – $500/course

• Marketing Plans for Authors
• Writing Historical Fiction

Premier – $1,000/course

• Self Publishing 101 (This course is several courses in one, including Steps to Self Publishing, Business Plans, Marketing Plans, Legal Issues, Web and Social Media. If you bought the classes separately, you’d pay more than $1,400.)

To register, just head over to Professional Author Academy.

Stay Up to Date
I’m planning to add new courses several times a year, so if you’d like to be notified when there is a new course or a current course goes on sale, please sign up for my course newsletter.

But for now, since the classes are done, I’m going to take off my teacher hat and put my writer one back on. It will be nice to think about fiction for a while again! Mistress of Legend calls to me, as does Isolde’s currently untitled story.

Have you ever taken online classes? If so where? What was your experience like? Do you have questions about my courses? What other subjects would you like to see?

The Tax Man Cometh…Or the Uncertain Future for Indies Under the Senate Tax Bill

Image purchased from Adobe Stock. My ability to write off my stock photography subscription would be eliminated under the current tax reform.

You guys, I am scared to death that the Senate tax reform is going to become law.

Before I go into why, a disclaimer: I am totally not a political person and I am not posting this to bring up anything about either party. In this article, I’m putting aside the ACA inclusion, the wins for big business, and other factors included in the proposal to focus solely on the concerns of small business owners, indie authors included.

At issue is the fact that small businesses – sole proprietors like myself, LLCs, S-corps and partnerships – are what is called “flow  through” or “pass through” businesses. This means that I don’t pay taxes as Lawson Gartner Publishing, even though that is my company. My business taxes pass through to me as an individual and I pay taxes on my business profits at a lower rate.

The way I understand it, the problem is that some corporations are managing to get away with being classified like us small business people and are therefore paying much lower tax rates than they should. Boo. (That’s as far as my understanding goes. Check out this article from Forbes or this one from The Washington Post for two experts’ takes.)

The biggest problem is that under the Senate’s tax reform, the itemized deductions we can currently take for professional memberships, conference travel, office expenses, marketing costs, etc. all go away. That is a death-blow to indie authors. Most of us have day jobs and can only afford to publish because we can write off these expenses. (This is in addition to many other deductions we would lose personally, like medical expenses, tax preparation costs, student loan interest, any mortgage interest above $10,000, etc.)

That means I am facing the possibility of going out of business if this law passes. Right now, I’m totally not managing my finances well – and I’m telling you that for the sake of transparency; we need more of that in the publishing world. I spend about 10x more than what I make. (Sad, but true. I’m working on that in 2018 since I now have two years of experience to help guide me.) When I get my tax refund each year, it’s about twice what I make and not quite a third of what I spend. That is not an insignificant amount and it’s what keeps me afloat (along with the income from my day job).

Besides lowering or eliminating my tax refund, what really sucks is I’d have to stop going to conferences, or at most only go to one a year because travel is expensive and many times the registration costs as much or more than your flight. Even though I don’t sell many books at those events, they are incredibly valuable for networking and learning. Plus, they give me a chance to expand my speaking career and attract new fans. While not doing this isn’t the end of the world, it’s a big blow to me professionally.

The silver lining is that even if the proposal passes, it doesn’t go into effect until at least 2022 (I’ve even heard as late as 2027). The way I see it, this means I have a few options for future business:

1. Pray that I get a traditional publishing contract in the next four to 10 years and can stop relying on self-publishing. Ugh. I have four books in mind that I’m planning to try to traditionally publish once they are written, but I really don’t want to be beholden to the industry forevermore. I like being able to write what I want when I want, even if it isn’t “marketable.” I would really like to have the option to be a hybrid author in the future.
2. Significantly scale back my self-publishing. Right now, I try to publish one or two books a year, which is all I have the time and money to do. (I’m still recovering financially from releasing four books in 2016.) My current pace is still considered slow, but it us adequate to keep my career going. According to conventional wisdom, if I slow down to a book year or every other year, I have very little chance of maintaining the momentum needed to make a decent showing as an indie author. But I will try it if I have to.
3. Quit self-publishing all together, close my business and put all my eggs in the traditional publishing basket. See #1 above.

One thing is for certain: I won’t stop writing. I have stories that MUST be told or I will go crazy. Even if I have to stick them in a drawer for someone to publish after I’m dead, they will keep happening. But no one wants that to be the case, and I’m really uncertain of what the future will hold.

I very rarely contact my representatives, but I did for this. I highly doubt my voice will change the outcome, but I have to at least try when it is going to affect my livelihood, the thing that brings me more joy than anything else in the world. I have actually been praying about this. Those two things are all I can do.

And I’m one of the lucky ones. I have a day job that pays well that I can fall back on to pay my existing debt and, if I save, finance future projects. I can’t imagine how scared those whose only livelihood is their small business must feel. For me, this is about making my dreams come true; for so many it is about subsistence. All of this so that politicians can get a “win.” It’s just not right.

What Makes a “Real Book?”

Purchased from Adobe Stock

When I was at the Historical Novel Society Conference at the end of June, an agent reportedly told a room full of writers that when querying him/her, authors should mention any previously published books, but only if they are traditionally published because “self-published books aren’t real books.”

*Facepalm* In a world where traditional (especially “Big 5”) publishers and agents are making getting a traditional book deal more and more difficult, especially for first-time and newer (read: lower-selling) authors, what else do we have to do to convince those in the traditional industry that we are just as serious about our careers as our traditional counterparts and that our books are just as real?

What makes a book “real,” anyway?

1. Well, obviously it needs to exist. That means any book offered in print, ebook or audio form is a real book. If I can read it in some way, it is a real book.
2. For the publishing industry, it makes sense the book would need to make money, which means it needs to sell. Okay, those of us who have sold a few copies have real books. I know authors who are making in the five- and six-figure range each year with self-published books. Sadly, I am not yet one of them. But that makes my books no less real.
3. Maybe it needs to have fans? Indie books have those as well. Ask their authors and they will show you fan mail. Those fans will show you their ratings on Amazon. Yep. Real book.
4. Beyond that, the only other thing I can think of is that it needs special fairy rainbow unicorn dust.

In fact, I would argue that our books could be seen as more “real” because we invest our own money in publishing and marketing them. That doesn’t make our books any more high or low quality than those traditionally published, but it does give us a financial skin in the game that doesn’t come when you are paid for your writing.

What a comment like the one the agent made appears to come down to is the argument that in order to be a “real book,” it has to have passed the approval of an agent and then an editor. So under that logic, only the books they consider worthy are real. What makes them any more qualified to determine that, given many of the stinkers they have published? Any avid reader should be able to make that choice in an informed manner, and with self-published books, those readers have an even wider array of books to choose from, not only the few topics the industry thinks are “hot.”

Around 4th of July I saw a meme that showed The Declaration of Independence. Beneath it were the words “This was a self-published document.” That is so appropriate because this whole argument is kind of like saying only the king and queen can say which books get published. Well, now the people are rising up and saying, “no, we don’t need you to make every decision for us. We’re going to take power into our own hands.” Like every revolution, the indie movement has its supporters and its detractors. But like the bid for US independence, the horse has left the barn and there is no going back. Call indie authors rouge colonists all you want, but we’re here to stay whether you approve of us or not.

Now I know not every agent or editor feels this way, and I’m glad for that. I have nothing against the traditional publishing industry. What I do have a problem with is the “be-all-and-end-all” attitude inherent in the idea that only traditionally published books are “real books.” All we’re asking for here is equality, plain and simple. You don’t have to like that our books exist. Just acknowledge us and our ability to produce our own work. (Hmm…does that sound like the suffrage movement to anyone else?) And let us include it in our query letters. You can still turn us down if you don’t think our books are valid or our sales are high enough.

But please, don’t tell us our books aren’t real.

On Being Stuck

The subtitle of this post should be: thoughts on how to regain forward motion.

Here’s the thing. In the last year, I’ve finished two books with my co-writer Irene Preston and a novella set in that same world. Before I edited this paragraph, the line read “I’ve only finished…” but I took the “only” out, because a novel and two novellas are definite accomplishments. In fact, you’re probably thinking I should be happy with three completed projects, and I am.

It’s just that I could have done more.

 

 

In between the finished novel/novellas, I sliced and diced an old project, trying to make it work better, and began two other stories, only to stall out every time.

That’s a lot of crap, lemme check Facebook to see if I can shake something loose.

Those stories I fizzled out on? One is almost 200 pages long, and the other is just over 100 pages. (That’s double spaced, 12-font TNR, ~ 300 words a page.) The old project I fiddled with is even longer. My point is, I’ve invested a fair amount of time, creativity, and emotion into each of these and I don’t want to see all that energy go to waste.

Any time you’re doing something creative, false starts are part of the game. I’ll get an idea, slap it down on the page, and see what comes of it. I’ve got several of those; two or three thousand words sketching out a main character along with some bullet points regarding the plot, the kind of thing I can throw together in an afternoon, then set aside to see if anything roots.

But you figure if – at best – I write 5000 words a week, it probably took me 3 months to get to 200 pages. That’s too much for me to toss aside, and while I’m one of those writers who loves the process of editing, I can’t fix what isn’t on the page.

So now you know a couple of my dirty secrets. I give up too easily and then whine about it.

Oh, and to complicate matters, I’m doing Camp NaNo this month, the abbreviated spring version of NaNoWriMo – National Novel Writing Month. I committed to writing 20,000 words in the month of April. I’m at 17,600 words with three days left, which means I need to get one of these projects moving again.

 

 

Basically I made this post in the hopes I’d find a way out of this pickle.  I did a google search for “how to get unstuck fiction writing”, and in the interest of helping others in the same situation, I want to share some of what I learned.

The author of an article on The Center for Fiction website said her blocks usually come from not knowing the characters well enough. She recommended doing some free writing from the main character’s point of view, asking them why they’re so pissed off. (That’s not as crazy as it might sound. Jump HERE for the full post.)

An article on the website thinkitcreative.com also recommended focusing on the characters to move the plot forward. The author here suggested working on the backstory to get insights into what could happen next. One of their ideas involved going to an online dating site to get a list of questions for the characters to answer, which kind of cracks me up, but just might work. (Jump HERE for the complete post.)

I also liked an article on the Writers Digest website, because it recommended brainstorming “what could happen next”, then choosing the option the reader is least likely to expect. The article’s second bullet point was even more succinct:

Kill someone.

Heh. Yeah. That’d definitely shake things up.

Finally, they suggested meditation, to let your mind go quiet and see what ideas wander in.  “Stillness is the native language of creativity, yet it’s astonishing how we try to avoid silence.” (Jump HERE for the full article.)

So yeah, maybe I’m not really stuck. Maybe I’m just giving my ideas more time to blossom.

Or maybe I should spend less time on Facebook, and more time exploring. I’m going to go walk the dogs and see what I can come up with. If you’ve got ideas for how to move through a block, share them in the comments. Would love to learn from you!

 

 

10 Things I’ve Learned in My First Year as a Published Indie Author

Image purchased from Adobe Stock

When I originally picked this date for my post, I thought I would be writing something about making history with our first female president and a tie-in to my book Madame Presidentess, which is about Victoria Woodhull, the first woman to ever run for president in the US in 1872. 

Yeah, not so much.

The last thing we all need right now is another political diatribe (believe me, I’ve written many in my head in the last 24 hours). So, as they say on Monty Python “and now for something completely different…”

My one-year anniversary of being a published author is coming up on January 1. As with all other things, you learn as you go. Here are 10 things I’ve learned from experience this year.

1. Set a realistic publication schedule. Don’t try to publish four books in seven months like I did. I am living proof that is possible, but you will wear yourself to your breaking point. I set that schedule because I didn’t know what I didn’t know – namely, that even if you indie publish like I did, all the rounds of editing and cover design and layout take a lot longer than you think they will – especially when you’re juggling them with a full-time job. My suggestion is one book every six months at the most. That way you’ll have time to take things slowly and carefully, as you should. That being said, releasing several books in a short time frame is great for marketing and sales because it gives people more things to read once they find one book they like.
2. Have some kind of a marketing and production budget. I did not because I didn’t save before I decided to publish. I also had no idea how much things cost. You can do some/all of these things yourself, but I know my skills and what I have time for. There are also ways to save money on some of these (don’t sacrifice the editing or cover!), so your mileage may vary. Here’s a run down of approximate cost ranges:
   1. Editing = Can run you $1,000-$3,000+ depending on who you hire and how many rounds you do
   2. Cover design = $250-$500
   3. Layout = $1,000
   4. Audio books = varies by length of book and cost of talent but mine were $2,000-$3,00o each
   5. Printing/distribution = There will be a setup fee in IngramSpark (Createspace is free, but bookstores won’t order from them) and you have to pay for your own copies that you hand sell. You’re looking at around $50 for setup and $4-$6 per book you order depending on length.
   6. Marketing = This is totally up to you. I went overboard, but I’m glad I’ve tried just about everything. That just means it will take a while to earn that money back and pay off my credit cards. 🙂
3. Audio books are worth the cost. Yes, they are expensive and time consuming, but they are also great passive income once they are done. I’ve sold more audio books than print and ebook combined. They are also a ton of fun to be involved in, and many sources say audio is the next big thing in books. As soon as I can afford to get Madame Presidentess made into audio, I’m going to, and it will be part of my publishing budget for every book I write.
4. Your book will find it’s audience. No matter what you write, there are people out there who want to read it. You can help them find you by blogging even before you publish and by attending events related to what you write. And of course, through targeted marketing. Most writers are niche writers, so don’t be disappointed if you start out small. Indie publishing is not about the overnight success; it’s about the long tail career. You never know what may happen that will expose you to a wider audience over time.
5. Marketing is hard. I say this as someone with 15 years of professional marketing experience and a master’s degree in public relations. Marketing a book is unlike any other kind of sales/PR/marketing you will ever do. And it is harder than ever to break through the noise, regardless of whether you are traditionally or indie published. But you have to try. I learned a lot through what didn’t work.
6. Don’t drive yourself crazy over sales. There is more to life than your sales numbers. Yes, we all want to make the big bucks, but if you focus solely on that, especially as an indie, you will drive yourself mad. Some authors take the perspective of “if it doesn’t translate directly into sales, it isn’t worth doing.” I respect that mindset, but it isn’t mine. I started out writing because I have to, not for the money. So I look at how creatively fulfilled I am and how things are working from an exposure/branding/PR perspective in addition to sales.
7. The writing community is incredibly supportive. I knew that already, but man will indies join together. This year I have experienced so much love from the community and little to no competitive ire. I even got the best support from a man who wrote about the same subject I did. I think a lot of the reason for this mindset is because we know what it’s like to go it on our own and we don’t have to worry about being dropped by a publisher/agent.
8. You get better at everything as you go along. Whether it’s writing or marketing, you hone your skills with practice. Just keep going.
9. Keep writing. The best type of marketing is another book. It gets your name back out there and draws attention to what you’ve already written. This is why it’s so important not to get caught up in too much marketing. We have to remember that our #1 job is to be writers.
10. Take breaks when you need them. Says the girl who hasn’t taken one in four years. But this is how I know how important they are. If you don’t refill your creative well, you won’t have anything left to give. I’m taking at least the rest of this year off to do just that.

I feel like given other subjects I could have covered today, this is a pretty generic post. But it’s honest. And this is all I have in me at the moment.

Why I Chose to Self Publish

So, as some of you know, I announced earlier this week that I’ve chosen to become an indie author. This was not a decision that I made lightly. In fact, if you would have told me six months ago that I was going to do it, I would have laughed at you. That’s because being a traditionally published author is a dream I’ve held for nearly 20 years. However, things change in that amount of time and I’ve come to believe that for me – as for several of my fellow Spellbound Scribes – this is the right path – at least for right now.

I want to be clear that I have nothing against traditional publishing. I may still end up agented and with a traditional house at some point in my career. I am closing the door to nothing.

If that’s the case, why did I decide to go indie? Two main reasons:

1) It was time for my work to get out there. It’s been four and a half years – and six books – since I started querying agents. It took me two years to get my agent. I was with her for two years before she left the industry, and though we got sooooo close to a traditional contract three times, she was unable to sell my debut work of Arthurian historical fantasy. Every single time it was for marketing reasons – traditional publishing doesn’t seem to believe that historical fiction set before 1066 AD will sell – or because I was an unknown author with no publication record.

Because of this, I shifted my focus to a much later time period, writing Madame Presidentess, a historical novel about Victoria Woodhull, the first American woman to run for President. While that MS was very well received with many full requests and at agencies I never imagined I’d have a chance at, I quickly ran out of time for an agent to be able to sell it and for it to get published before the 2016 election. (Traditional deals can take a year or more to secure and then another 12-24 months to produce the book.) The tie to the election, with the likelihood of Hillary Clinton getting the Democratic nomination, is the whole reason I pushed myself to write it so fast in the first place. So when it became clear a traditional deal wouldn’t make this possible, I chose to publish it myself.

Plus, I realized that even if I went with an agent right now, there is no guarantee they would have any better luck selling my books than the first one did. I was sitting on six books I’d already written (five fiction and one non-fiction) and I was tired of telling people to trust me that I had writing they would want to read. I wanted to prove it to them, so I decided not to wait another year or more for the traditional industry to say yay or nay. With self publishing, I control the pace at which my books are released, and I plan for it to be rapid. (This post gives my publication schedule for 2016.)

2) The industry is changing and I wanted to be in control of my career. The advent of ebooks changed publishing forever, removing (or at least lessening) the stigma associated with self publishing, and giving authors more freedom than ever. Couple that with a tight economy even so many years after the recession and this means agents are taking on fewer clients and publishers are buying fewer books from unknown authors, so it’s harder than ever to break in as a debut author.

I know my books have potential, and I’m confident fans will, too. No one knows what will be the next best-seller, but I want readers to have a chance to decide if it is my work. If so, FABULOUS! If not, I’ll learn from these early books and get better until I make it there. But I’ll never learn if my books languish in a drawer.

While self publishing has significant up-front costs (especially when you’re putting out four in six months like I am), I think it’s worth it. I’d have to do my own marketing, even with a traditional contract. Royalty rates are much higher as an indie and you have total control over your career. You get to pick the cover, decide when a book has had enough editing, write your own back-page copy and decide what order you’re going to write your books in. Plus, you never have to worry about being dropped if your book takes more than a few weeks to find its readership. To me, these are the important things – those that free me up to be an artist the way I want to be, without having to worry about industry trends or write what my publisher thinks will sell the best. Basically, being an indie author means being my own patron.

This also means that I take on the risk that I won’t break even, much less turn a profit. I know that is a possibility, but I don’t care. I’m doing this because I love it. As my mother mentioned to me the other day, if I had kids (which I don’t want), I’d be spending a ton of money on them. Instead, my books are my babies. If I got that MFA I was thinking about, I’d spend $50,000, far more than it will cost me to put out my first five books. This is an investment in my future – in my career as a writer and in my imprint, which is my company.

Suddenly, I’m very grateful I got that business degree and work in marketing. Everything happens for a reason, right? 😉

Fellow self-pubbers, what was your reasoning behind making the decision? Readers, do you care if a book is self-published as long as it is high-quality?

Plagiarism Happens

So, this happened…

This is obviously an Amazon listing, describing a novel written by someone named Melissa Rogers. The listing rather prominently advertises ‘bdsm’ and ‘alpha male’ tags, and for several days it was a free download, with a ranking of around 5000.

So why is this a problem?

It’s a problem because The Perfect Man wasn’t written by Melissa Rogers. It was written by my friend Amanda Byrne, aka Radiodemon. (It also doesn’t contain any bdsm, and the hero is more of a beta with strong alpha tendencies, but that’s beside the point.) She entered her story in last year’s Valentine’s contest at Literotica.com, and she won. The entire story (not just the first 18 pages as shown here in “Part One”) has been available at Literotica for free, although it will be taken down soon at Amanda’s request.

Last Friday someone emailed Amanda, letting her know a chunk of her story had been published on Amazon under three parts. A Literotica reader saw the story, recognized it, and was thoughtful enough to contact Amanda about it. (So YAY for conscientious community members.) Amanda downloaded all three parts, the first half to 2/3 of the piece, just to confirm it was in fact her story. The other two parts were published under different authors’ names, with similar cover art. All three were free, though as is apparent from the image at the top of this post, Part One is now priced at $2.99, and parts 2 and 3 appear to have been taken down.

Amanda contacted Amazon on Friday through their copyright complaint tool,and she’s sent Amazon a cease and desist letter. She’s provided them with as much information as she had. It’s her story. The story has been up on Literotica.com under her log-in. She has a copy of the cancelled check for the prize money, Amazon acknowledged receipt of her complaint, but says it takes 5-7 business days for them to investigate the situation. 

That’s five to seven days someone could be making money off of Amanda’s work.

So this makes me mad, and not just because something shitty happened to a friend of mine.

Authors have their work pirated all the time. It’s sort of an occupational hazard of publishing in the digital age.  I don’t usually get too excited when I find one of my books on a shady “download for free” site, because I figure as soon as I send off the cease and desist letter, it’ll disappear from one site and put up somewhere else.  I also figure if you’re a big enough loser to download people’s work from a pirate site, you deserve whatever malware or viruses come along with it.

But Amazon is different. Regardless of what you think of their business practices, most of us trust it as a place to shop. My experience with Amazon customer service has always been good, too, so it’s appalling to me that they’re slow to respond to the concerns of an author, one of the many who keep their machine running. It’s bad enough that losers out there would rip off someone else’s work, but when an author is lucky enough to uncover such blatant plagiarism, it’s frightening to feel like you don’t have back-up.

In a perfect world, Amazon would have pulled the listing down while they investigated the complaint, ensuring that no one would benefit from this fraud. In a perfect world, anyone stumbling on this listing would look at the ten one-star reviews and stay the hell away.

In a perfect world, cheaters wouldn’t win.

If you’re interested in reading all of The Perfect Man, I’ll be sharing the listing when Amanda publishes it for real, and if you’ve got any advice on how to avoid situations like this, or what to do when they happen, please leave your thoughts in the comments. I’m putting this same post up on my personal blog, because I want people to know about what happened. Jump HERE for Amanda’s own blog, to get her thoughts on the issues this raises.

Peace,
Liv