Happy Bankruptcy

After a disastrous 2024, I spent January with Karen and her girls in Ecuador.

In February, I returned to Michigan and took stock of my financial situation. I had been heartened by messages from my marketing consultant, Elaine Ash, telling me she was getting excellent results from the Facebook ads we had been running for the Rex Nihilo books. Now that I actually checked the data, though, I could see that although people were clearly clicking on the ads, they weren’t buying my books. At all. Out of hundreds of clicks I was getting literally zero sales. (In retrospect, I think it was probably bots “clicking” on the ads.)

Additionally, because I had wanted to get a good idea of baseline sales without doing any marketing, I had stopped doing the periodic promotions that I usually did. So not only was I making no money on the ads; I was making virtually no money, period. I had several months in a row where I made around $500 on my entire catalog. I don’t blame Elaine for this; I think she found a strategy that worked, and then something changed and it stopped working. She very graciously offered to return the money I’d paid her. Knowing she’d done a lot of work, I accepted a refund of half the fee.

Meanwhile, the medical emergencies continued. On March 13, 2025 Karen was diagnosed with dengue and hospitalized for two weeks. On April 2, she went in for surgery for ovarian cysts.

My credit cards were again maxed out, and the people in charge of the pension fund were now telling me that I wouldn’t get the money until August. I was about to launch a Kickstarter for a new series, Ransom’s Law, but I wouldn’t get that money until August either. I was by this time thoroughly defeated. It seemed like no matter what I did, no matter how many times I got up, I would always get knocked down again. I was barely keeping it together. During one of the more stressful moments, I checked my blood pressure and it was 180 over 100.