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Kitty Bucholtz

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Menopause Rage Can Be Funny by Kitty Bucholtz

November 9, 2024 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, new release, Perimenopause, romantic comedy

A year and a half ago I finally found out what was wrong with me. Problem: middle age womanhood. Bigger problem: this part of life is apparently such a freaking big secret that no one except ONE friend bothered to say a word about it! Not my mom, not my grandma, not my older sister. I literally thought I was losing my mind. In fact, the GP I finally went to see immediately wrote a prescription for HRT (hormone replacement therapy) and another one to make an appointment with a head doctor.

Great. That’s just…great. I guess she was covering all bases.

I’m better now, but partly because now my craziness has a name. Still, I feel like a lunatic half the time. I don’t want to leave my apartment. I don’t like to go to church. (Used to be one of my favorite things, but now there’s just way too many people and too much putting on a smile when I want to say, “That song sucked,” because it probably didn’t suck and I shouldn’t rain on other people’s happy moment.) I do still like going to the library — whew! — but I’m eating too much and drinking too much and swearing way too much.

And even though my problem has a name and I’m trying to find better solutions for me, turns out a lot of my friends don’t have nearly as many problems as I do. That definitely makes me feel alone. And stupid. And like I’m not a nice person because I just want to yell F*** a lot!!

So when my friend and fellow author Maggie Nash told me about a new book that was on sale on Amazon for 99c (it’s still only $2.99!) about a woman going through menopause, I bought it without even reading the description!!!

I just finished it last night. It. Was. Marvellous!!! Even though I’m not divorced and don’t have kids, I felt like I completely related to the main character, Heidi, who almost gets herself fired in the first chapter! I normally don’t like many books with women my age as protagonists because their lives are so unlike mine as to have nothing in common.

But Hot (Not Bothered) by Harper Ford is a super fun book I think you might love!

One other book about a middle-aged woman that I immediately pre-ordered book two the minute I finished book one is Tess Gerritsen’s The Spy Coast. I don’t want to say too much but she’s a retired spy who gets sucked back in!

Some of my friends know I’ve been wearying of writing about 20-somethings falling in love. I’ll finish the two series I started, and maybe I’ll get my mojo/joy back as I do. But the two books above are making me feel like “people like me” aren’t at all boring, and maybe I should write something like that! I’d have to get a pen name if I want to write f*** half as much as I’ve been saying it lately, but it could be worth it!

I hope you check out both of these books! And remember, if you’re going through tough times right now due to brain and body chemistry, you’re not alone! Don’t despair! Talk to a friend, or even a stranger. I went off on a menopause rage rant about the disappearing messages at my credit union the other day and made the middle-aged woman answering laugh out loud, she told me in one of her replies. Yay! Two more women who know they’re not alone! Go read Hot (Not Bothered) and laugh instead of cry!

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Encouraging Words by Kitty Bucholtz

October 9, 2024 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as editing, Encouraging Words, Kitty Bucholtz, Perimenopause, writing

Some days you just need some encouragement.

Since that is one of my primary strengths/gifts, I wanted to focus on that today. 😊 And I hope you’ll feel like sharing encouraging words with the people you’re around today and this month.

If you’re writing, yay! Keep going! Enjoy what you’re creating. It never existed…until you wrote it. That’s amazing!!

If you’re editing, yay! You had words on the page and now you’re making them better. Your readers are going to love what you’re doing today!

If you’re marketing, yay! Keep going and don’t despair! John Wanamaker, U.S. business/religious/political leader, said, “Half the money I spend on advertising is wasted; the trouble is I don’t know which half.” 😂 So hang in there. Even people richer and more successful than you wish there was a better way to find your audience.

If you’re stuck…well, not yay, but…choose to take a deep breath, phone a friend, take a walk, write some nonsense, read a book, watch a movie, do something ridiculous for fun. And then, hopefully, yay! You’ll start to move again.

If you’ve got health issues…again, not yay, but I bet it could be worse. If you’ve got extreme health issues, I’m very sorry because that probably didn’t make you feel better. But there is always something to be grateful for. A friend’s brother fell in his assisted living apartment and was in the hospital for a week, and then has to be in a different care facility and can’t go back “home” to his assisted living apartment until he’s better. He’s very upset. Of course! But I couldn’t help but think, thank God he was able to afford an assisted living apartment where someone checks on you every couple hours. Thank God he had good enough insurance to get proper hospital care for a week. Thank God it will cover extra care for a while. Thank God he has friends and family in the same town to be with him and support him! Soooo many things to be grateful for, even though sometimes you really have to look.

My own health issues have improved — thank God!! But they bring about new problems I have to learn to deal with. My hormones have regulated (due to HRT, and probably less stress and better nutrition and exercise and rest) and I feel at about 90% of where I was ten years ago before it all started changing. YAY!! But now I try to push myself to 110% to try to make up for lost time. And then the next day, depending on how hard and how long I overdid it, I’m down to 80% or 50% or 20%. 😢 It’s hard to accept that I’m doing this to myself so I’m the one who has to change my actions. But I thank God that I’m paying attention enough to see what’s working and what’s not and keep trying to create a schedule that works for me.

By the way, did you know — October is Menopause Awareness Month, at least in the U.K. And October 18 specifically is World Menopause Day. The aim is to “to break taboo and improve women’s health and wellbeing by raising awareness about the symptoms of menopause and the support options available.” https://menopausefriendly.co.uk/world-menopause-day-2024/

I am thrilled to say there is a growing amount of support material — books, videos, groups, medical supplements and medications — far more than I could find no matter how much Googling I did a couple years ago. If you have any friends or relatives who seem particularly crabby or down and they’re the right age and gender, think of something encouraging to say to them today. Keep in mind, the vast majority of people still find the subject taboo and embarrassing, so choose your words with care. Let these women know you care and let them decide how much they want to talk about it with you. Maybe just send an email or text with the above link.

In any case, wherever you are, whatever you’re doing, whatever you’re going through in life, good and bad, ups and downs, I wish you well! Find something to be grateful about today, and help someone else find something to be grateful for as well. Maybe you’ll laugh at feeling grateful for each other! And laughter is the best — and most fun! — medicine! I’m praying for you! Big hugs from Sweden! 😃

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Have You Heard of RAVE? by Kitty Bucholtz

September 9, 2024 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz, Writing tagged as 20BooksVegas, Kitty Bucholtz, writers conference

A short post this month to tell you about something new and exciting — RAVE, the Reader Author Vegas Event. If you’re active on the 20BooksVegas Facebook group, you probably know all about this.

The annual 20BooksVegas writers conference has a new owner/manager, Joe Solari, and it’s now called Author Nation. This November is the first conference with the Author Nation name, and the first one I’ll be going to! One of the new things Joe and his team are doing is creating a full-day reader event. (I attended this sort of thing in Vegas in 2012 or 2013 when the guy behind Romance Novel Covers did a conference and reader event. It didn’t work as well as he expected. But I’m hopeful Joe can make it work!)

You have to be an author attending Author Nation to get a table, but then you can put your books in the online store for the RAVE event and start getting presales before the conference. Author Nation and the authors attending will be promoting the site. And guess what? I’m excited to say I’ll be there at a table!!

Here is the link to the Author Nation conference, and here is the link you and your readers can check out for going to RAVE. Additionally, here is The Signing Store where the authors will upload their books (I just signed up so I still have to hurry and get that done!) and where readers can pre-purchase them before the conference so they can get them autographed. 🙂 Do books need to be pre-purchased? No, but if the author doesn’t bring any books or sells out of their table stock…well, readers will have to take the time to purchase them elsewhere and miss out on getting them autographed.

I think that’s everything I know at this point. I’m sure I’ll learn more before my post next month so I’ll keep you updated. And if you know more about any of this, please leave a comment! Will you be at Author Nation this year? If so, let me know!

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MY FIRST KICKSTARTER by Kitty Bucholtz

July 9, 2024 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as kickstarter, Kitty Bucholtz, Little Miss Lovesick

I’m so excited!

On the one hand, my health issues the last couple years have led me to decide to essentially take the summer off and try to figure out how to heal (faster). I’m trying to do that—vacation starts on Saturday!

On the other hand, an opportunity came up, and it sounded fun—so I jumped in! 😅 (This might be the sort of decision that has led to my health improving so slowly!)

I’ve just created my very first Kickstarter campaign! If it funds, I’ll create a special edition of my first book, Little Miss Lovesick. The 13th anniversary edition! 😂 It’s part of Kickstarter’s July promotion for romance books called Heartstrings and Hardbacks. The page just went live today. Here is the link:

https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/kittybucholtz/littlemisslovesick

Let me know what you think. I am still adding a few more things (digital only this time since I’m just learning Kickstarter, so no paperbacks yet), and I’d love to know if there’s anything you’d like to see available that’s not there. Especially anything funny/fun. I have a few ideas.

And if you’re wondering how easy or hard it was, or why now, let me know and I’ll try to answer your question. Maybe you’ve been thinking about doing a Kickstarter for something too.

And would you do me a favor? Will you go click on the Remind Me button near the top right of the page if you don’t have time to check it out? Maybe even share on your social media? I’m a little desperate to feel that people are even a little bit excited about it. 😅 After all, I’ve never done anything like this before. 😃

Thank you so much!! 😃😍 Reply and ask me your questions!

Some of Kitty’s Books

ROMANCING THE PAGES

ADVENTURES OF LEWIS AND CLARK BOXED SET

WELCOME TO LOON LAKE

LOVE AT THE FLUFF AND FOLD

LITTLE MISS LOVESICK

A VERY MERRY SUPERHERO WEDDING

UNEXPECTED SUPERHERO

MY BULLHEADED SUPERHERO VALENTINE

SUPERHERO IN DISGUISE

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Encouragement for Writers in Perimenopause by Kitty Bucholtz

April 9, 2024 by Kitty Bucholtz in category It's Worth It by Kitty Bucholtz tagged as It's Worth It, Kitty Bucholtz, Perimenopause

I am having the worst time going through perimenopause. Seriously. It seems I’m angry or stressed or anxious or angry-stressed-anxious almost all the time! A year ago, I finally saw a doctor and started HRT (hormone replacement therapy—bioidentical from plants, not the old stuff from pregnant horses). Things started getting better, and I even wrote in my journal one day that I felt almost 100%.

Then it started sliding downhill again. I’ve been trying to figure out what changed, in my body or my life, to make things feel worse. The best guess my husband and I could come up with was that my doctor changed my prescription around September or October, and that seemed to be around the time I got worse.

But today, minutes before I started typing this, I spoke to another friend going through this and she said since I had Covid in October, it was probably that. I had no idea Covid could compound my symptoms! My friend is a therapist (I can’t remember if she’s a psychologist or something else) and she said, “It’s true. It can make it worse.”

CRAP!

Why am I talking about this? Because around half the people reading this blog post have recently gone through or are going through perimenopause or know someone who is. (Maybe you’re married to someone like me. I’m so sorry. My husband might start a support group.) And if your hormonal changes haven’t been kind to you, you’re not getting much writing done. And if you’re anything like me…that really bothers you.

I don’t know what it is about my personality, but pretty much every really difficult thing I’ve gone through in my life, I process by writing about it in such a way as to help others through it. So that’s what I’m doing again.

I’ve just started outlining Encouragement for Writers in Perimenopause, one of the first books that will come out in my Encouragement for Writers series. Hopefully, it will release later this year. But…the other thing perimenopause seems to steal away, for a while at least, is confidence. This seems true in every field—my architect friend and my actress friend report the same. We’re afraid to get gigs or pursue clients because we’re afraid our brains will be in “brain fog” condition just at the time we need to use them in front of the people who’ve hired us!

Five years ago, just 2019, I couldn’t find very much helpful information online. Mostly I was reading articles by (here I go, being unfairly prejudicial to a group; sorry, but at least I recognize it!)—white, male, American doctors. And nearly everything I read then pretty much said, these are the symptoms and there’s not much you can do, but don’t worry, it’ll go away in five or ten years.

WHAT?!

Talk about making me angry!

Whew…okay…taking a breath now.

But in the last few years, a lot more helpful information has become more easily available (i.e., I found more of it when Googling), mostly written by women who were struggling themselves. I even found two white, male, American doctors on YouTube who were super helpful! (Haha!)

Unfortunately, just like when we were teenagers, everyone is different. There are things that will make a small positive difference for me that might make a huge positive difference for you, and vice versa. And there are SO. MANY. SYMPTOMS. Some of them are really weird—like itchy ears! (I’ve got that, too! Only recently read it’s something enough women have complained about to add it to the list of potential issues.)

If you’re going through this and want more answers, or if you were able to figure out some helpful answers for yourself, please leave a comment and/or email me at kitty @ kittybucholtz .com. Maybe you have some useful information that can go into the book!

I’m determined to help myself and others get through this easier. And I’m doubly determined to help women and men stop being embarrassed to talk about it. We all know that we all went through hormonal changes as teenagers, and everyone accepted it as a normal part of life. We need to look at perimenopause in the same way—it’s just a normal part of life, nothing for any of us to be embarrassed about, and the more we understand it, the easier it will be to deal with it.

Imagine not wondering if your friend, sister, wife, mother, or coworker was considering divorce…or had started to hate her job…or hated your guts for some unknown reason. It’d be a wonderful life if we understood each other a little more.