I worked for over thirty years in the publishing industry. I did everything from fiction to journalism and had two guest (invite only) pieces in the Washington Post Book World in the '80s. I did everything from proofreading to development editing with a major company.
However, I had polio when I was eight. 1962. I made what looked like a complete (or as complete as possible) recovery only to get hit with post polio syndrome in my forties. At that time, I also became un-employable. Because most of my work had been contract, I had not paid enough into Social Security and ended up hitting bottom and landing on SSI.
There were other factors, but I'm not going to dump them all on you at once.
I ended up in a tiny apartment in a rough neighborhood, lost most of my belongings, and had to struggle.
The only industry I knew was publishing. I had the internet for many years before I first ventured onto a chat room or a forum. In 2003, I stepped into the rest of the world by way of the internet at the urging of SFWA's then webmaster. That was a huge learning curve for me, but unable to get around had left me no other way to have people in my life.
Along the way, I met other disabled, but talented authors. We started Daverana Enterprises in 2008, seeing it as a last chance to write our way off the dole and actually have a life again. One of our editors has a broken disc in her back, which is not covered by her insurance, and can't work. Two of them have fibro. One us has both fibro and dyslexia. Two others are disabled vets. We have one token normie. We are all colors of the spectrum, united by a single goal.
Each year I file my taxes and turn a copy into SSI. They then make a decision on whether or not it affects my benefits.
This is the first year that we have actually made a profit after paying out royalties and cover costs and editors. So we bought two blog tours for our lowest selling authors.
I intend to do two things with this blog: talk about our struggles and challenges; and the ways that publishing has changed over the more than 30 years I have worked in it.