Kevin Brennan’s latest novel, Town Father, is NOW available on Amazon! And the best part is, it is available in paperback with an gorgeous cover! Sigh, eye candy for readers :) Don’t waste time. Go get yourself a copy. I’m on my way now :)
Unexpectedly, Town Father has shown up on Amazon and can be purchased in paperback today. I thought for sure it would take two or three days to appear, but CreateSpace and Amazon have become remarkably efficient. Like all Death Stars.
But all the better! You can get your own copy of this fine edition right away.
And my goodness, but doesn’t it look scrumptious? I know, I’m biased, but I think Max Scratchmann outdid himself on the cover image and interior. It’s a real beauty. Matter of fact, if I were to smuggle a copy into a bookstore and plop it on the front fiction table, nobody could possibly tell that it wasn’t published by one of the top traditional houses. One thing I’m thinking of doing, marketing-wise, is to send copies to some of the better-known indie stores out there with a pitch…
In advance of the paperback’s release, I thought you might like a little look-see at Max Scratchmann’s remarkable cover for Town Father, Or, Where Graceful Girls Abound, along with a bit of teaser text.
Be sure to tell all your friends. Don’t forget, word of mouth is literature’s best lubricant.
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A Town of Nothing But Fallen Women?
Utopia or Ill-fated Experiment?
Scandal in the Foothills!
Three hundred independent-minded women in 1880s California have embarked on an impossible journey: to establish a town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada composed exclusively of women. The only way for the singular town of Hestia to succeed, though, is for a second generation of residents to come along, and the women imagine there must be, somewhere in the country, a benign and willing gentleman who can help them. In short…
Ah, yes, I’m back, dear Reader. Back to my home, my blog, my blogging friends who were (and are) never far from my mind, my furry four-legged friends who I don’t think really missed us as much as they missed getting more than two meals a day. Then again, they might have missed our laps since our temperatures are a bit cooler these days. This picture isn’t very good, taken with my camera in poor light: Junior, our feisty, “I just wanna be outdoors all day”, male cat sacked out on my legs once the temperatures dipped toward the 60s. Yes, dear Reader. Our southern cats cannot abide the cold.
Junior crashed out on my legs.
We had a lovely trip overall. Aside from a bit of rain at the beginning, we had clear, sunny days for driving up to north NY, to visit my family. We gave ourselves plenty of time to drive so we had some flexibility with our itinerary, allowing us to make a detour to Gettysburg, PA, and to switch hotels at nearly the last minute when one day we realized we could drive further than originally intended.
I learned how to swim with whales, except these were land whales, or you might call them semi-trucks. On interstate 81 there often were more trucks than cars. Many times we found ourselves between two trucks with one truck cruising along side us on the two-lane road. It was … interesting.
We had only one rainy day in New York, but we were visiting relatives so that was fine. We spent time with my mother, who will be 92 this month, her remaining siblings, my sister and her husband, and two-thirds of their brood.
I met up with an old high school friend, someone I hadn’t seen or talked to in almost 40 years. It was to be a quick visit but, four hours later, we still had plenty we wanted to say and learn about each other. It was hard to say good-bye.
And much of the trip was filled with eye candy. Autumn is my most favorite season, but often when we’ve gone home, it’s been in summer or late fall, after the colors have started to fade. Our timing this time was perfect. It wasn’t riotous reds and oranges all the way, but that was part of the fun. We got to see some of the transition. Each day we drove off from my sister’s house, another tree was starting to turn.
Believe it or not, I took very few pictures. I was too busy enjoying the sights and often too busy driving anyway. My husband, however, took this “movie” of our drive away from Saratoga Springs where we had just spent the afternoon. Unfortunately, the movie is rather pixelated since it was taken with his iPad. But you get the idea of what we saw.
And, finally, a song that always makes me think of where I grew up …
I know I must be having a great time on my trip. I’m looking forward to telling you all about it when I return. In the meantime, here’s one my favorites. And it’s particularly appropriate for this particular trip.
My mother once said I was predictably unpredictable. I would argue that I’m simply consistently inconsistent. Some of you may have noticed that I’ve “rebooted” my LinkedIn account. Those who know me well aren’t the least bit surprised. This seems to my M.O.: I’ll think long and hard about taking an action, consider all the pros and cons, and after considerable debates with me, myself, and I, make a decision and announce it to the world. Then, within a short period of time, I will flipflop. I will discover some reason, some argument that I had somehow overlooked, and come to regret what now seems to be an ill-informed decision.
Well. So it goes.
I try to simplify my life, but life simply isn’t simple.
And I really can’t complain about that. As an older yogi friend of mine said, after asking him how he was feeling: “Well, I’m still vertical and sucking air.” True dat. Still, I get annoyed with myself for being what I perceive as inconsistent. That said, while filling in all my employment and education history (I had deleted my previous account and obviously all the data that went with it), I saw a lot of consistency.
I’ve been working for the same state government for 15 years and have progressively gained more experience in working with, what we in the biz call, “large administrative data sets.” Your birth certificate data sets, your hospital discharge data sets. These files of millions of records that were never designed for research, never meant to “communicate” with each other. But I make them talk, in a manner of speaking. Don’t misunderstand me. I’m no magician or even expert when it comes to this kind of work. I was (and still am to a degree) part of a team of highly skilled epidemiologists and public health experts. Working with data like this is like working on a massive jigsaw puzzle that was designed by different people for different reasons. Not all the pieces are going to fit. Some may even be missing. The fun is in finding those pieces that will fit, and the reward is in knowing that the completed puzzle, even with its missing pieces, will be used to understand health behaviors and, ideally, improve health outcomes.
The true benefit of deleting and then resurrecting my LinkedIn account is my realization that this part of my life is still pretty important to me. Of course, if I could afford to live off my writing, I would. I’m not a fool. But since I have to have a day job, I’m glad it’s in a field that seeks to make a positive difference in the world. A colleague recently said to me, “I just want to be where I can do the most good.” I know some if not many people think government employees are slackers at best, parasites at worst.
Well, hello there, dear Reader. My name is Marie and I am a state government employee. What motivates me in my work is not my salary, not even my benefits (although I truly appreciate having them). My motivation is in being “where I can do the most good.” And I know, in this case, I am very, very lucky.
And now for something different.
A tree!
Yes, a tree and not a cat! This photo was taken a few years ago when I was visiting my childhood home. There’s a wonderful footpath through the woods and past the cornfields near my old house. The photo doesn’t do justice to the wonderful late afternoon light which made the leaves of this tree glow. Soon, I’ll be making another trip to this area. I’ve plan for a couple of posts while I’m gone, but comments will be off since my access to the internet will be intermittent at best.
But you know, dear Reader, I’m always with you in spirit.
Nothing. Yes, dear Reader, I got almost nothing for this post today. I have been fairly productive of late, but not with writing or blogging. Again, it’s the knitting.
A friend noted that the buttons on the baby sweater I knitted for a baby-to-be might not be appropriate for a baby.
Yes, they are cute cat heads but the ears are rather pointy, not too sharp against my rough old skin, but I don’t want to the buttons to be the cause of baby’s first injury. So I swap them out for these.
And, to be honest, I think these buttons are better suited. They are pretty without drawing the eye entirely away from the sweater pattern.
I hope to present the parents-to-be with the sweater and hat tonight. I’m sure they will be pleased that at least the outfit can be machine washed and dried, and yet it is wool. Merino wool, in fact, which is very soft.
Well, that’s it for now. I’m thinking (again) of changing my blogging schedule. If I aim for Fridays, then I can have all week to write and revise my posts instead of doing them half-off as I am now. We’ll see.
Oh, and what about the classes I’m taking? Well, the Modern Poetry class is a no-go for me. It’s too fragmented: too many links to follow, an audio here, a video there. Each week brings an email (or two) with several embedded links. In contrast, a class I started a long while ago (on a lark), through the same platform (Coursera) has a very simple syllabus, with all content accessible through my iPad app. The course is historical fiction and very interesting so far. I can (and have) happily watched a video lecture while knitting. I’ll say more about that class in a later post. I’m still looking forward (with eagerness and dread) to the Fiction Workshop that will be offered free through the International Writing Program. That will start on Thursday, September 24. And, no doubt, you’ll hear all about that as well.
Until then a little eye candy for all you cat lovers: my green-eyed boy Junior. Why buy a fancy cat bed when an old basket and a couple of magazines make him happy?
Hello, dearest Reader. I feel like I’ve fallen far off the grid, and yet it’s only been a week and several hours since my last post. The real difference is I haven’t visited any of my friends’ blogs. I’ve been busy, which is quite fitting since today is Labor Day in the US.
Guernsey style infant sweater and hat. Yes, the buttons are cat faces :)
I still have the baby blanket to knit, but at least I’ve completed the sweater and cap. I have my doubts about this pattern, though, and it’s the second time I’ve knitted it. I used to knit sweaters a lot, adult sweaters for friends, me, and my husband. The baby things have only come about in the last 14 years, since my nephews started having children. Then a good friend gained a granddaughter and coworkers started having babies. For a long while I was knitting baby blankets, occasionally throwing in a sweater or socks or a dress. The thing is … I hate sewing the pieces together, especially when the stitch pattern is anything other than stockinette stitch. I recall only one time in my knitting life when I sewed up the seams of a cardigan so well they were almost invisible. (And when I say “sew,” I mean taking several inches of the yarn and a large blunt needle and weaving the seams closed.)
Knitting is much like writing for me. I love the process. I love seeing the pattern unfold through my fingers as much as I enjoy seeing a story take shape on a page. I love the feel of soft wool against my skin as much as I love the intimacy I develop with my characters. But I don’t love having to put the pieces together as much as I don’t love having to revise and rewrite. The problem is self-doubt.
Whenever I knit for someone else, I’m more critical of my work than when knitting for myself. I will rip out a finished sleeve and start over if I find a mistake. Even when I’m convinced I’ve done the best I could, I still find “defects” in my knitting: a slight gap where I twisted a stitch one way instead of the other; a telltale seam along the back of the hat. It’s the same when I think of other people reading my writing: Melissa’s breakdown is too melodramatic; the setting too vague, too Anywhere, USA. Typos and grammar can be fixed by an editor. Poor revision cannot (well, not unless I’m willing to spend $$$$$$$$$$).
So it goes.
Shortly, things will be even busier. I’ve managed to register for two free online courses: (1) Modern & Contemporary American Poetry offered by the University of Pennsylvania; and (2) How Writers Write Fiction with the University of Iowa, the same folks who offered the poetry course I took a few months ago. The poetry course will start on Sept 12 and the fiction course on Sept 24. And I still have my day job.
Am I insane? Is there a padded cell in my near future? I keep taking things to the limit. Cue The Eagles.
Hello, dear Reader, and Happy Monday (or whatever day upon which you are reading this). I thought it would be good to share a few things you should know about me. Now, if you’ve been following my blog for a long time, maybe these items won’t surprise you. If you’re new to my blog, these items might make or break whether you ever come back. Such is life. I do try.
What you should know:
I’m in the process of knitting a baby set (sweater, hat, and blanket) for a dear friend’s daughter-in-law. The baby shower is in a couple of weeks. I started knitting today so my fingers need to fly on the needles, not the keyboard.
As I’ve closed some social media accounts (Tumblr, LinkedIn, Instagram), my presence on others is rather spotty. You might say random. I don’t know when I’m going to show up on Facebook or Twitter or even WordPress. So if you see me and think to message me, don’t be surprised if your message seems to fall into a black hole. I’ll try to get back to you, but lately when I do jump off social media, I don’t return for many hours, sometimes even a whole day … or two.
I’ve been reading more. I finally finished Kingsolver’s Lacuna and started reading Gulp by Mary Roach. I’ve been having some intestinal troubles lately and think her book might be as informative (or more) as a visit to my doctor. I’ve also been reading essays in Harper’s and Poets and Writers and Creative Nonfiction. When I’m reading this much, I’m writing very little. And yet I feel like I’m writing because these are essays that make me think about writing.
I’m learning a new web-based reporting system at work which is interesting and actually stimulates my little gray cells enough that I sometimes forget about blogging, checking email and other things.
I will be continuing this blog for the foreseeable future. I have plenty of posts in my head; it’s just finding the time to sit down and write them. For those who know me very well, I don’t like writing off the cuff, as I’m doing with this post. So Time is important. I try.
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Marie at 1 Write Way 