I’ve learned to never tell your family about your writing aspirations. I’m reminded of JK Rowling’s interview many years ago, where she revealed that she cut off her father completely but wouldn’t reveal why, some investigation was done by journalists and they concluded that it was likely because he had sold her original manuscript of the first Harry Potter book in an auction without ever informing her. If that is true, then that would make him an exploitative parent.

I have the opposite problem after my family argued that I hide too much from them and I was made to feel guilty. I repeatedly tell my family members to never under any circumstances help me with anything related to writing, because they don’t understand anything about it. My brother looked up SEO nonsense and actually seems to believe it, ignored when I tried to explain to him the SEO nonsense is a marketing scam, and tried to “engineer it” by listing reviews for my books with his full real name shown. I told him to remove them upon spotting them. Just yesterday, I now learned that my mother did the same thing, despite me telling her under no uncertain terms to never, ever do such a thing years ago. I honestly don’t have time for what is honestly making me livid with them, because it’s honestly just completely asinine and a waste of my time to deal with. SEO bullshit is just SEO bullshit, name one serious writer who ever became famous or renown because their book was given help from search engine optimization. A Catholic blog explaining why masturbation is devil worship being the number one search on Google several years ago isn’t going to convince people of following the teachings of their glorified pedophile cult. Now, I look like some desperate loser out for people’s money because of this egregiously asinine behavior and it just seems embarrassing overall to now have to explain for those who paid any attention and were confused as to what was going on.

I love my family, of course. But, holy shit, if you’re a writer, and your family’s the type to ignore exactly what you say in no uncertain terms and never respect your wishes, especially when they think they know what’s best, then never tell them about your writing pursuits, ever. I partly created a pseudonym to avoid them being seen by family members and then I decided to be honest and it blew-up in my face. The more you know. Honestly, I’m sorry to say that there is nothing positive to say about this and I just wanted to make clear what happened, so I don’t look even more stupid than I probably already do.