It’s Christmas Eve, which means I am beginning my traditional Hibernation Half-month. It’s my favorite part of the winter holiday season. From Christmas Eve through Twelfth Night, I am shameless about avoiding social situations, ignoring emails, not returning calls, and staying cozy at home.

Yes, yes, that’s much the same way I operate every other time of year, but I allow myself to wallow in introversion during these two dark overcrowded, overscheduled, overstressed weeks.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m never a complete hermit. I enjoy having people over to my house during Hibernation Half Month, if they’re people who share my love of parallel play and companionable silences. But in general it’s a time of “not allowed to pressure myself about shirking my Business Of Authoring” when I don’t let myself post about book things, check on sales metrics, or deal with finances.

It’s a time to read whatever I want, play games without guilt, sleep late, go to bed early, eat happy foods, and do some nature appreciation.

Speaking of Author Business things, I had an epiphany yesterday about online book promotion. I don’t know many folks who enjoy it, but I full-on despise it to the point of it producing procrastination paralysis.

Over the last I’d finally kicked myself into doing some promo posts, and then it was time for to do my monthly checks for online sales (none, as usual)

That’s when it finally, belatedly occurred to me that I hate doing promos for reasons that have nothing to do with the ones I’ve been taught were at fault. I believe my writing is worthy of reads, I got over my “I’m spamming people with these posts” fears literally years ago, and making the graphics is a fun creative outlet, not a hated chore. So why is actually doing those posts so loathsome that it can derail me from doing anything for days on end?

ADHD, that’s what.. There is not, and cannot be, any immediate reward from doing the seriously B-O-R-I-N-G slog work of composing and posting book promos. There’s a baked-in, unavoidable disconnect between action and result. So that means my toddler DO-NOT-WANT BORED-NOW brain is fighting me every step of the way and sabotaging my every attempt.

There’s no big takeaway from this, I’m not saying it’s easy for anyone, it’s just I’ve long had a nagging feeling it was actually, emphatically harder for me than average, and now I have some justification to back that intuition.

Okay, I’mma wrap here, it’s evening, our usual Absurdly Easy Holiday Feast is nearly done cooking, two of the three traditional Herkes House Christmas cookies are already set for tonight’s dessert and the third is set up for baking tomorrow.

Leftovers & dessert for days, plenty of snacks, reading material, and games on hand. Yeah, we’re all set here. I wish the same for all of you.

Keep safe, do happy things as much as you can during this winding down of the year. Have some cozy pics of cat and cookies.

Or! OR! if you like your local library, you could request a purchase. Free for you, sale for me, everyone wins.

Most libraries need the following info for ordering print books:

• Title: Relics From A Traveling Show

• Author: K. M. Herkes

• ISBN: 9781945745201 (paperback)

  Every library system does things a little differently, but most want their collections to serve their communities, so most of them are very responsive to patron requests.

If you like novels more than short stories, I recommend my series The Rollover Files for hopepunk tales of about an alternate world where moms with midlife crisis superpowers have been saving the world and making the military nervous since 1943.

I also have a completed, quirky slow-burn science fiction thriller duology with a romance chaser: The Stories Of The Restoration.

All my titles are available from Amazon, Apple, Kobo, Hoopla, Barnes & Noble, Bookshop.org, Overdrive and many other fine booksellers.

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