Writer Wednesday: Festivals and Signings

Part of being an author is getting out there, whether it’s going to conventions, signings, festivals, or local author nights. I have my artsy stuff also so I tend to split the table at craft fairs and the like and that’s where all of my experience has been until my nearest Barnes and Noble did a local author night.

I struggle a lot with putting myself out there at events. I do have anxiety and I am not always confident in my people skills – though, once I get going, I’m fine usually. I’ve been slowly working my way to bigger and bigger things and, at the end of this summer, I’ve got my first really large festival as I’ll be attending the Beaver County BookFest for the first time. One of these days, I’m aiming for one of the larger local pop culture conventions but, baby steps.

Part of publishing is marketing, there’s no way around that. Putting yourself out there, meeting people who enjoy books, is part of that too. Some libraries have local author events, some book stores will too. It never hurts to reach out to the manager of your nearest Barnes and Noble and whomever is running your library.

Local Author Night table

My event kit is pretty simple. I have a large black table cloth that, so far, has fit every table I’ve been given (and my table when I need to bring my own). I have book stands that I picked up at Wal-Mart, one for each book I’ve got out. I always pack a box of business cards, a spool of black twine, a pair of scissors, three or four pens, a piece of paper and a clipboard for people who would like to be added to my mailing list (with a pen tied to it), and my banner with my name and website. If it’s an outdoor event, I also take a couple of clear shower curtain liners (in case of rain), a roll of paper towels, and bug spray. Every event space has different needs and requirements but my kit doesn’t take up much room in my car and I much prefer being overly prepared. I didn’t need much of my kit at the Barnes and Noble author night but I was glad to have it, just in case.

If you know of any elements that are missing from my kit, please leave a comment! I’m always looking for ways to make things easier!

The Elbow Knows

I’m so tired of stormy weather! I love rain. I love thunder. My dogs and my youngest do not. My elbows, knees, and feet do not. I don’t pay a lot of attention to the news so much and the weather even less but my knee has always been my barometer for weather. Not anymore. It’s probably still talking but boy, my elbow is really loud now. It’s been a long process, learning all the new normals but this crazy weathered summer I’ve learned to speak joint pretty well. I may never be fluent as the dialect of my body keeps changing but I sure knew we were in for the kind of storm that packs a punch today. My elbow told me so.

It’s been a stretch of big storms while my husband and oldest are off on their road trip. RedDog is currently still in the bathroom. We’re in a lull between systems and he won’t get out. My youngest is being a bit touchy with the weather too – we’ve had some sideways rain and wind and he’s got the music loud. He was in the bathroom with the dog during the worst of the one that just passed by. We’re to get another wave in a bit (I did finally look up the weather) but all my joints say the second wave will have less oomph. But not no oomph, or RedDog would come out of the bathroom.

The husband says they’ve passed through some places that have been pretty flooded out, places where the roads are washed out, but they’ve been lucky enough to miss the worst of the weather on their trip around the country. I’ll be glad to get them home and hopefully, they’re bringing better weather with them.

Memory Lane

Memory Lane can be a tricky path to spend too much time on, fraught with any number of things, depending on how many potholes and cracks your lane has or how many catastrophic events have been shoveled off to the side. I’m traipsing down mine pretty hard this week. First, I dreamed of the only home that’s ever really felt like home only to discover the building is up for sale. I made the mistake of looking at the listing and there’s nothing left of my home’s heart or history. Second, my husband and son are off on an around the country road trip and they spent today in my childhood stomping grounds.

I was quite a bit sad to not be with them today but, at the same time, they did the whole of it in one day and missed most of the good stuff. They did walk Pike’s Place Market and take a look at the Space Needle. They didn’t get to Poulsbo’s amazing bakery or take a ferry out into the sound. They didn’t hike through the forests or dig a clam. They went over Snoqualmie pass but didn’t visit the summit or walk down to any of the waterfalls. They went to Spokane, where I spent 5 years of my childhood (and a lot of weeks during the summers after that). They rode my carousel in Riverfront Park, though it’s a lot less circusy and a lot more classy now, and fed the metal goat vacuum. They didn’t go to the Japanese Gardens or hit up the cultural centers or museums. They didn’t even feed the ducks. And they’re already on their way to their next stop.

In some ways, it’s probably better that I’m not with them, I’d have been very disappointed to be in my favorite places and not go to the places that mattered enough to stick in my head and heart for all these years. I haven’t been in any part of Washington state since maybe before my mom died so when I say they stuck, they really stuck. Most of Spokane I did with my dad as he had me every other weekend and we’d hit up all the free stuff after Toastmasters meetings. The japanese gardens, the farmer’s market, myth and story hours at the Native American cultural center, feeding the ducks and swans. Spokane isn’t my favorite of all the places I’ve lived, but I have a lot of good memories there. That’s where my father was young and active and thriving. I have memories of my mom there too but that’s mostly outside of Spokane in places I don’t know how the hell to get to now – marshes where we collected frog’s eggs, fields where we watched the Northern Lights and the hot air balloons, campgrounds, and swimming holes.

The old adage is that you can’t go home again and it’s mostly true. Change is inevitable. Spokane isn’t the same city it was 30 years ago. My Pap’s funeral home hasn’t been the same in decades, I just never saw the damage they did to that beautiful place for myself. Time makes liars of the places we knew, their faces change, the shiny finds rust, the old becomes new. New people mold your former spaces to fit their needs, as you’ve done to someone else’s former space, as has happened and will happen for as long as there are people. That doesn’t mean it isn’t like losing a friend sometimes.

Writer Wednesday: Truth and Facts

Years ago, my dad gave a speech at some speaker’s convention on using humor in paid speaking engagements. Over this past weekend, I was watching a bunch of the video’s I’ve transferred from VHS to my computer and I was surprised by how much of what he had to say applied perfectly to fiction writing. Of course, this was why he was my first reader and all around guru. During this particular speech, I found a little gem that I’ve been mulling over and want to share as it works not just for public speakers but for writers of all stripes as well.

The truth of a story and the facts of a story are not always the same thing.

In his example, he tells the story of being on the way to give the keynote speech at a year’s end review for some company and stopping for gas at one of those fancy new pay at the pump deals when a car with out of state plates pulls in. The woman is telling the man that if he could just read a map, they wouldn’t be lost. The man is telling the woman that, if she’d only turned where he told her, they wouldn’t be lost. They pump their gas and are on their way, still bickering. They didn’t stop, note that there were locals nearby who might be able to help but were so lost in their blame game that they never stopped to figure out how to fix it. By the time he gets to that big event, he’s not as early as he wanted to be but still early enough to watch some of the big wigs give their speeches. First lady gets up, says we had a rough year, profits are down, and this is why it’s not my fault. The second guy gets up, says it’s been a rough year, profits are down, and it’s not my fault. And so on, each speaker getting slightly more verbose and eloquent as it goes up the ladder until it reaches the CEO who says it’s been a rough year, profits are down, and it’s your fault, calling out specific people for specific things. Then he gives his speech, using  the couple from out of state to illustrate the real problem the company is having: everyone is so busy putting the blame elsewhere that no one is fixing the problem.

The facts of the story are this, it never happened. The truth of the story is that every time he used that anecdote, someone asked him if it was such and such a company in whatever year, because they worked there and were pretty sure that was their boss. It is true without being factual. That’s the key for fiction as well – even the outlandish stuff – when there is truth in the story, it will resonate with readers and suspend whatever disbelief needs suspending. It also helps with plausible deniability when you strip the facts of your experience away to build the story in a way that doesn’t cause problems with your friends and family.

Happy writing!

 

Author Night and Signing

7-9 pm June 18, 2019 at Barnes and noble at Settler’s Ridge

If you’re looking for something to do on this potentially rainy evening and are somewhat local to Pittsburgh, come out to the Barnes and Noble at Settler’s Ridge. I’ll be one of the authors there with copies of Hunter’s Crossing and Eldercynne Rising on hand to sign.

This will be the first event I’ve done at a Barnes and Noble so I’m not exactly sure what to expect but I’m really looking forward to it!

Happy Father’s Day!

On this lovely father’s day, I’m thinking about my own dad and missing him a lot. I thought I’d take this opportunity to share a note he wrote me a long time ago, when I was feeling an awful lot like nothing I did meant anything, even when everything was going brilliantly, coursing full steam in the right direction. He might not have been perfect, hell, he was absent from the middle years just by geography (3000 miles is a hell of a barrier), but he was a good dad. For years, he didn’t say, “I’m proud of you,” he said, “I’m proud to be your dad.” I know that seems like the same thing but, when you’re in a down spot, you don’t hear it the same way and apparently, I was cranky that I’d done this thing and still, no one was proud of me.

I came across this note again recently when I was having a really awful day and just needed someone to pat me on the head and tell me I’m wonderful, which is apparently a theme in my life. I happened to be looking for another story he used to tell that I was going to share here but now, you’ll just have to wait on old Ivoh for next father’s day. (Kathy is my stepmom, just so you know).

Something that I learned a long time ago came into play here. Only you have the right to be proud of you. It’s not up to anyone else to set a value for you. When I was successful at something, Kathy always used to tell me “I’m so proud of you,” and it bothered me when she did so. Of course it was a pure sentiment on her part, but it bothered me nonetheless. She really couldn’t tell the difference between something that I just fell into, or something that came easy, or something that I really worked and struggled with. Even though I knew her motives were pure, it almost seemed to me that she was either horning in on my accomplishment or overinflating something that wasn’t worthy of being proud of. As I said, I knew her motives were pure, but it still bothered me. And then there is another thing. Sometimes when I am the most proud of myself no one else even has an idea that I have done anything to warrant being proud of. (Doing an anonymous good deed, holding my tongue when I wanted to unload on someone, things like that.)

As I struggled with this, I met an American Indian businessman in Spokane. He would not tell someone “That outfit looks good on you” or “This is a great meal.” Instead, he would say “You really make that outfit look good” or “You make the food you cook seem like the best gourmet meal in the world.” When I talked to him, he told me that was the way compliments were paid in his culture. Native Americans don’t compliment the outfit or the meal, they complement the wearer or the cook.

Now, it may be a bit of a leap, but from that, I finally understood that what Kathy was saying was that she was proud to be with me, she was just expressing it in the vernacular that most people in our culture use.

So now then, I try my best to express things in that light. If you have any familiarity with Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, you will understand that at some point, what happens in our lives is that our measures of success become internal rather than external. Once we have our survival needs met, have some confidence in our basic safety, once we secure a place within our family and within society, then the most important areas of our life become things like personal growth and development.

So when you get the opportunity that this gave you, when it dawns on you that you’ve accomplished something out of the ordinary, then you are operating at the upper levels of the needs pyramid. So if I say I’m proud of you, it sort of seems like I’m trying to imply that something I did helped you accomplish this. That is sort of like trying to horn in on your success. Your success is yours, and no one should do anything to diminish that. When I say I’m proud to be your dad, I want you to own all the good feelings that come with this accomplishment.

This is one of the things I love most about email… so much of our correspondence was written and I can find things like this when I need them. I am more grateful than I can say for it. The funny thing is that this lesson is one I still haven’t really learned – I’m still trying to make certain people proud of me, even though that would be a herculean task. One day, I hope to be able to learn this lesson, that the only person who needs to be proud of me is me. Thanks Dad.

Book Review: Something Wicked This Way Comes

I’ve read this book several times, it’s a long-standing favorite. On this reading, it feels like something has changed. I don’t remember it being so sad as it begins, dawning at a crossroads, at several crossroads and often the choices made define not just the person we are but the person we aspire to be. The fractures are there, stronger than I remember feeling them in previous reads. I wonder if this read is different because this year my youngest turns 13, so close to Jim and Will’s age. Maybe it’s more my own unsettledness and floundering. Maybe it’s that I’ve got half an empty nest, too many pounds, and a house that likes to hide things from me. There is a mournful edge to this story that I don’t remember being so sharp before.

It’s human to want what was, what could have been, to be. We miss our youth as we age but we forget sometimes how hard we willed that age to reach us faster. Nothing comes from nothing, there will always be a price to pay for the things we want and the price is not always monetary.

If you’ve never read the book, it’s one I will always recommend. If you have read it but it’s been a while, read it again. Did it change for you too? The writing is, in places, a bit flowery, an author’s grand flourish, but Bradbury tells a story that bears a little truth for everyone. Maybe a little too much truth, once you’ve reached a certain age.

I wonder sometimes when books stopped being scary for me because I feel like they were, when I was Will and Jim’s age. I wonder if  perhaps it has more to do with the fact that my greatest fears are no longer about me and my own life experience. I’m still afraid of spiders but I’ll be the one to take care of the one my son is scared of. I am still afraid of the horrors men can do but I check my kids’ rooms for shadows now, not my own. My heart no longer lives inside my body – parted out to my sons, my husband, my puppy. It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t need to be that kind of scary to be good.

 

Odd Duck and the Liar’s Club

I often call myself an odd duck. I was talking to someone the other day and she’s another odd duck. I say that with great affection as it is an idiom I rarely hear, especially in the self-referential way that I use it and I often find great common ground with those who do and this case was no different. I wonder sometimes at the origins of idioms, the narrow geographical scope of some, the wider use of others. I’ve lived many places and they all have their own set of them.

My writer’s group was having a sort of summer dinner get together that really wasn’t about the writing as it was just breaking bread with these wonderful people. I love things like this (plus, good mexican food is always a boon in my book). I noticed though that I’m comfortable with this group now – I can always tell because that’s when the weird stories come out about sleepwalking in my grandfather’s funeral home or the fish tank that really was my first playpen.

I’m realizing more and more that I’ve lived a very interesting life surrounded by very interesting people. Well, up until I locked myself in my house for a few years anyway. My parents really lived the interesting lives, I was just along for the crazy rollercoaster. And my grandparents loved to take me along when they went interesting places (especially when there was an educational facet involved). I had no choice but to have an interesting childhood. Sometimes I wish my adulthood were half as interesting.

My mother was a ridiculously smart person with a wide variety of interests. My father was a ridiculously smart person with a wide variety of interests. I am the connected section of their venn diagram, almost perfectly, though the ridiculously smart part skipped a generation and landed on my kids. I have my father’s love of photography, my mother’s love of crafting, and both of their love of the tall tale.

Storytelling is in my blood. When I was a very young girl, my mother had me convinced she’d broken her back in a skydiving accident. My mother, queen of the acrophobics, who didn’t even like to sit in the window seat of an airplane, had me quite convinced she’d jumped out of one on purpose. She didn’t, I found out several years after her death that she really did break her back but it was a car accident and that made a great deal more sense. In all fairness, the skydiving story was certainly more amazing to a little kid who just wondered why her mom’s back was hurting. It was her very own old war story. My father’s stories were often turned into his speeches, either in his motivational career or in toastmasters. I don’t know how many of them were true but boy, they were funny. I think most of them were rooted in something a bit closer to truth than my mom’s but no doubt they shared a table at the Liar’s Club (and not in a bad way – never for ill gains).

I’m sure, when I’m talking about my mother’s octopus or the trash eating metal goat or getting to see the horse drawn hearse that took both Louisa May Alcott and Nathaniel Hawthorne to the cemetery, that people put me in the same Liar’s Club but I swear, they all are very real things and I haven’t even embellished them. Not that I mind sitting in my parents’ seats there though – there are worse things.

Writing Wednesday: Guidelines Matter

Every publication, publisher, and agent open for submissions has a preferred format for their submissions and they aren’t always the same. A great many places use the Shunn format but not everyone and it does seem like every publisher who accepts unagented manuscripts has different preferences for how you present your book and you always need to check. Usually the guidelines will be pretty well marked and easy to find if not necessarily easy to implement.

Given the easy with which you can reformat things in Word now, I can’t say I don’t wonder if the guidelines are pretty much the Van Halen M&Ms of the writing world. If you don’t care enough to follow how they want the book presented, maybe you’re just throwing the spaghetti at the wall and seeing what sticks, even if that means sending a romance novel to a horror publisher and wasting everyone’s time.

The other day, I sent a submission out because it was on my list of things to do – the market, the title, the format were all in my notes, including that creative nonfiction was among their desired genres. After I sent the submission out, now I can’t find anything about creative nonfiction and that market anywhere and I cannot remember which listing I got the information from. I’m letting it ride because my anxiety decided it’s worse to email and withdraw than just see if this noodle sticks, but it is completely counterintuitive to how I usually deal with submissions.

One of the best things to come into the process is Submittable, in my opinion. It won’t let you submit a file type that isn’t approved for that publication. It keeps your contact information separate for the publications who read blind (without knowing who the author is). There’s also a Discover feature where you’ll find markets and contests and festivals you won’t necessarily find at The Submission Grinder. Sometimes there are submission fees but not always, it mostly depends on the budget of the publication.

Usually, when I’m submitting something, I keep the guidelines tab open as I put together the email or fill out the webform so I can make sure I’m doing everything to their specifications. There’s no point in shooting yourself in the foot before you have a chance at success. When that’s not possible, for whatever reason, I write it down as best I can and hope I didn’t miss something or read something wrong.

Happy writing (and publishing)!

Brainstorming and Foundations

I’m working on this new project, just doing the foundation work for it, figuring out some background pieces that need to solidify a bit before I can build a story on top of it. I have an idea for the place and some of the what. Now I’m working through loose ideas for my main cast of characters. One of the things I’ve noticed since getting my diagnosis is that there aren’t really a lot of characters who have disabilities. I’ve read a few with people who are paraplegic or have PTSD or agoraphobia or anxiety. I’ve seen a few with tertiary characters who are autistic or have alzheimer’s or various other issues so it rounds out the main characters. I don’t see the kind of chronic pain illnesses like what I have or some of my friends have. I don’t want it to be too much me necessarily but I do kind of want to give my main character RA (honestly, probably worse than what I’m dealing with as mine is very well controlled so long as I don’t push too hard).

I hope that doesn’t limit the market and I know that it puts some limits on what my lady will be able to do – at least without consequences – I absolutely can go hiking but I’m also going to pay for it in with swelling that takes a good two days to go away and, depending on how far that hike was, exhaustion. In some ways it’s no different than the magic system I have set up in Guardian of the Gods. Thosha can do amazing things but it does come at a cost to himself. Or like Fullmetal Alchemist’s  law of equivalent exchange. I think I’d like to make it part of this character – it’d be pretty damned boring for a horror story if that were all she had to offer. I think she’s a history professor also but that might change – it’s early days and I’m only 150 words into my zero draft with two pages of scribbled notes. Maybe tonight it’ll let me sleep! I don’t even have a working title yet and that’s usually the first thing I have. There’s a lot of new about this project.