Sometimes the best things in life are free … at least for this weekend! If you haven’t read Kevin Brennan’s latest novel, here’s your chance for a free copy. But only for this weekend so get snappy … and don’t forget to leave a review, the lifeblood of writers.
Heads up! All weekend long, Eternity Began Tomorrow is FREE! I hope you’ll forgive my constant marketing for the next three days, but I’m hoping to move a lot of copies and that those copies garner a lot of new reviews. Still sittin’ on six reviews, gang. Anyway. Tell your friends who have Kindles. And […]
I’m thrilled to have my review of Deep Creek by Pam Houston published in Brevity’s Nonfiction Blog!
By Marie A Bailey The first time I saw Pam Houston was in 1991 or 1992. I was a graduate student in English at Florida State University. The university was hosting a creative writing conference and Houston was on one of the panels. I had not read her story collection Cowboys Are My Weakness in […]
On Saturday I mentioned to my 96-year-old mom that I have a new hobby: picking up trash. Usually I have no “news” for her since my life is pretty much the same day in, day out. The cats are getting older even though Junior still acts like a hellion. Nothing new with my husband’s back (it still plagues him although he manages to work around it). And, yes, he is still enjoying retirement. I don’t tell her any more about my aches and pains because why should I? She who never has such complaints takes it pretty hard when she sees or hears her children struggling. So I tell her about my new hobby instead, and she chuckles.
Picking up trash is becoming a bit of an obsession for me, although not quite in the league of David Sedaris who might spend 3 to 5 hours a day picking up trash. But I can no longer go on a walk without my grabber and a couple of bags (13-gallon kitchen trash bags which actually are not the best choice because they tear easily). The one time I tried, I wound up taking a dog poop bag from a dispenser in the park and used that to pick up bits and pieces of plastic.
I’ve added purple heavy-duty household cleaning gloves to my tools. They’re a bit awkward but, since so much trash I find is along ponds, they keep my hands protected as well as dry. Today, my husband gave me a small case that I can clip on to my belt and use as a kit to hold my gloves and trash bags.
He’s also had the patience to go with me and recline on the grass while I make my way around the perimeter of a stormwater pond … or two. I don’t ask him to help because of his back, but I like having his company.
Here’s two views of one particular pond called “Lake Le Marc.” Seriously. It’s a stormwater pond facility (my husband, the engineer, says) but if Tallahassee wants to call it a lake, who am I to argue? You’d have to zoom into the photos to see all the plastic bottles floating on the surface. If you can’t zoom, just trust me. They are there.
This was some of my haul from Saturday’s walk and pick-up.
I pretty much filled the 13-gallon bag, had it all nicely tied when I found a broken plastic hanger. Yes, I did, with some patience, untie the bag and fit it in. But then that was it, and, believe me, it was really hard to walk back home and not pick up any more trash.
Picking up trash is not just a new hobby. It’s a new obsession.
This photo is from last weekend. Me trying to stand like a hunter with my trusty rifle grabber, my buck bag at my feet.
Thanks for reading. As a reward for looking at photos of trash, here’s one of Wendy, or her bum anyway.
When temps get below 70 degrees, these Southern kitties seek out warmth. The fleecy blanket is the one I brought her home in, 6 and 1/2 years ago. It’s her “blankie.”
I have a favorite pond near where I work. It’s small, roughly a half mile in diameter and shaped like a stretched-out kidney. It often plays host to dozens of pond sliders (turtles), minnow-like fish, and large birds such as blue herons and egrets. The pond sits across the intersection, diagonal to my office building. When my knee was in better working condition and I could go for daily long walks, I’d always start off at the pond, taking the asphalt nature trail (there’s something oxymoronic about an asphalt nature trail, isn’t there?) past the overly expensive McMansions and along the larger pond which they call a lake and then back down to my office.
When my knee was better, I walked with a fairly fast stride. These days, not so much. As my stride slowed, my awareness of litter increased. That awareness was also peaked by two writers I follow, one through WordPress and one through Medium. Jan Priddy describes picking up trash amongst little pretty things like sea glass on the beach near her home: https://janpriddyoregon.wordpress.com/2020/01/03/gathering/ Tammy Hader muses about what she can and can’t control, noting “All I can do is pick up the trash and keep on walking”: https://medium.com/journal-of-journeys/one-person-at-a-time-starts-with-me-6058bece64b0
Inspired by these two writers, I set about to grab a grabber and a trash bag and see what kind of difference (if any) I can make to the pond. My first time out resulted in this interesting haul.
My first haul picking up trash around the pond.
It was a windy day so I had to use pine cones to keep the bag from flapping around while I took the photo. My hands were also bare and, since so much of the trash was mucky, I chose not to play around with the contents. But you can see the rather large lager can, prominent among the muck, my prize, if you will.
At the time, the water level in the pond was low, making it a perfect opportunity to get to trash that would otherwise be under water. While I was dismayed to see the beer can, my heart was truly broken by all the bits of plastic I found. I’m sure most of those bits were blown in by the dumpster from a large apartment complex that sits on the other side of the pond.
My heart was broken but my spirit was strong in its resolve to continue the practice, especially since I filled almost two-thirds of the 13-gallon trash bag. I brought that bag home and put it in our own bin, not trusting the bins around my workplace to be secure enough.
I imagine I was an odd sight, shuffling along the water’s edge, grabbing bits and pieces of trash. A coworker on a walk stopped to see what I was up to. I mentioned the turtles and fish and my fear that all this trash was harmful. He smiled and said it was a nice thing I was doing. I think he was sincere as one time, when he and I were literally crossing paths, we stood together for a few moments to admire a hawk in a tree.
An elderly man also stopped. I recognized him from previous encounters when he’d be walking one of his dogs and he would talk to me about looking out for poisonous snakes. He’d make a point of killing a snake if it were poisonous because people, especially children, might get hurt. He came over to tell me to watch out for snakes. I assured him that I was and he moved on and let me get back to sweeping the tall grass with my grabber.
I suppose the best part of this experience was finding and removing all the junk I found. There was something else, though, something deeply felt but not seen. Walking the edge of the pond, carefully placing one foot in front of the other as my eyes focused on the water and the muck and the grasses, looking for anything that might bounce light from the sun, I lost sense of time. I felt myself recede from the world I have to inhabit most of my waking hours and emerge into another one, a world of tiny objects like cigarette butts but also of insects, of algae, of water that’s green and brown. My world slowed down along with my breath. I only knew the time, and the fact of when I needed to return to the other world, because I wore a watch. Without the watch, I wouldn’t have known if I had been out there for ten minutes or a full hour.
I’ve become somewhat addictive to this process now. A few days later I went out to the pond again, this time with smaller, grocery store bags. I went around the pond’s perimeter and was disappointed to find myself filling those bags. I did scan some bushes on the other side of the trail and found a couple of beer bottles, but most of what I found was along the pond’s edge. Including a rubber ducky.
My second haul from the pond. Yes, that is a rubber ducky in the middle.
I don’t know if the turtles appreciate my efforts, but it does my heart good to see them around the pond with a little less danger of getting trapped in a plastic bag.
So it seems I have a new mission in life. The third time I went out, my knee was feeling better so I took a regular walk, picking up trash as I went. Most of it was paper but it still filled my grocery bag. It was still worth picking up and hauling away.
I’ve since treated myself to a new grabber, this one with a longer reach.
My new weapon for my #makeAmericabeautifulagain campaign.
It’s 40 inches, six more than my original grabber which I’ve gifted to my husband. Given that I’ve risked falling into the pond twice, a longer grabber is necessary.
I know I can’t control what other people do, but I can control what I do. If I can’t stop people from littering, I can pick up the litter and dispose of it properly. What do you do to give yourself a sense of control over a problem when you know you can’t control the problem itself?
Wendy wishes she could control my camera and shut it off.
Some time ago I finished reading Pam Houston’s Deep Creek, a collection of essays about her ranch among other things. A review will be forthcoming, but for now I’m thinking about how Houston “retethered” herself to the earth when she bought a 120-acre ranch in the early 1990s. She describes the ranch as opening her heart “like a tin can.” She is surrounded by wild things there as well as some domesticated. It is her home, the place she returns to after every cross-country or worldwide trip.
I feel like I’m still looking for a place to tether myself. Perhaps it would be a retethering in that I once I had a place that tugged at my heart. It was my neighbor’s house in my hometown, a place I spent the better part of my childhood. The house had been built around 1905 by my neighbor’s father. Ted was born in the house I was told; at least, it had always been his home until he moved in with a friend and signed the deed over to my mom who eventually signed it over to my brother who quickly “renovated” the old house until it was unrecognizable. Then there was a flood and both my childhood home (which my mother also had renovated so only the upstairs rooms could spark memories) and Ted’s home were destroyed, condemned, and then razed.
I had left home years before, lived in San Francisco and other cities in the Bay Area, then Tallahassee, Florida, where I still reside. I had untethered myself when I left but, deep down, I always wanted to believe I had something to go back to. I’m still struggling with that even after living nearly 30 years in one city, 29 years in one house. I don’t feel tethered to the city I live in.
I like our house. It has a very nice floor plan, and my husband has turned our backyard into an oasis. The walls don’t hold echoes of children, but they retain the plaintive cries of hungry or bored cats, or the human lamentations after one cat is stilled. It’s a comfortable home with furniture mistaken for scratching posts and litter scattered everything.
We live on a side street (30 mph) at the bottom of a hill that drivers like to race down. We have friendly neighbors. We used to be involved with the neighborhood association but stopped going to meetings a long time ago. We keep to ourselves which is our preference.
And maybe that’s why I don’t feel tethered to this place. Except for those moments when we’re out at St. Marks Refuge or exploring a nature trail, there seems to be no “there there.” I don’t know what I want. I can’t return to the past, even if Ted’s house was still standing, its original architecture intact. This city–Tallahassee–nor the state itself has opened my heart like a tin can.
So I’m searching … mostly through Zillow and off-hand comments from my husband about what might make sense for an aging couple on a (soon to be) fixed income.
But I’m listening too. In his preamble to the Winter 2019 issue of Orion magazine, H. Emerson Blake wrote about a birding trip he took to Florida a couple of years ago. He and his friend found what they think is the spot where the now-extinct Carolina parakeet was last seen in the wild. He wrote:
Standing there, I found myself listening hard for what the land had to say and for any suggestion the land itself grieved for the parakeets. […] Many people today, if they were told that they should try to listen to land, would find that idea odd, if not flat-out weird.
I like to think I listen. Even when I walk with my earbuds tuned to music or an audio book, another part of me is listening and looking. And so one day, while taking my usual constitutional on a nature trail near my work place, I saw this …
I stopped dead in my tracks, really expecting the hawk to fly off. After a few seconds, I decided to risk a few photos, as long as I took time in between to enjoy the sight with my own eyes.
Seriously, he’s not moving. He doesn’t seem to care that I’m getting closer to him.
Well, now he can’t say he didn’t see me. We look into each other’s eyes. I can tell he’s not impressed.
Now I’m worried that he’s sick or injured. Why else would he let me get this close? Except I can see his talons quite clearly now. They look very pointy.
I had to stop at this point. Seriously, another few steps and I would have been standing directly underneath him.
I worry when wild things get too used to humans and don’t run or fly off when they’re approached. I think this handsome guy knew what he was doing, though. His talons and beak could have done serious damage to me if I had threatened him and he probably knew that.
I backed away after a few more seconds of drinking in his beauty and watched him from the other side of the trail until he decided to decamp.
It’s moments like these when I feel tethered to something.
And I definitely feel tethered to the very domesticated creatures below.
Sleeping in on New Year’s Day.
What gives you a sense of place, or a sense of being tethered, like you belong where you are? Asking for a friend :)
I’m thrilled to have Kevin Brennan as my guest today. Many of you already know Kevin as the author of several novels, including his most recent, Eternity Began Tomorrow or EBT as it is affectionately known. EBT is kind of a road trip/political thriller/romance-type novel. In other words, it has something for every kind of reader.
EBT tackles the crisis of climate change, a very timely subject, as well as the current political scene. I asked Kevin how this novel came about and how it changed or didn’t change as he revised and prepared it for publication while history rolled on.
I’d had the idea of a John Truthing kind of character a long time ago and sat on it for years. Then I was looking for something to work on and this kind of story seemed right for the times. I started about a year ago now, mid-October ’18 and had the first draft done in March or so. One of my faster first drafts.
Then, as I revised, I kept plugging in things that were happening, like the Mueller report and the Dem campaigns and Greta Thunberg, and I kept doing that right up to the time I uploaded a final manuscript. I knew this wouldn’t work for traditional publishing, since I’d have to waste months querying, then, if I was lucky enough to get a contract, more than a year before it could be published. (Ha, as if!)
By the way, I went for the surprise ending because it felt like I needed something that was more absurd than reality. I was reading an old Kurt Vonnegut novel at the time and I just thought, go for a shocker. What would Kurt do? So the book’s definitely not meant to feel realistic but more like “beyond-realistic” because real life is too damn strange and scary right now!
Why “Eternity Began Tomorrow”? It’s kind of a mystifying phrase.
That’s one of those things that “just comes” to a writer, you know? The phrase popped into my head and I started thinking about it. In the context of climate change, I think it suggests a paradox: that it might be too late but that we can’t not act. We could be screwing up the planet forever if we don’t act. It might already be screwed up, but we still have a little time to do something about it. Tomorrow is a hopeful idea. At least as of today.
How did you decide to write from the POV of Molly “Blazes” Bolan?
My earliest notes for the book had cast an older, crusty-but-benign man as Blazes, but when I resurrected the story I thought I’d update things so I changed him to a her—specifically a thirty-something, San Francisco girl with ambitions—and the original print newspaper to an online news site: Sedan Chair. It felt more timely.
I’ve written from female points of view a lot in my work, starting with Nora from Parts Unknown and carrying through to Sarah in Occasional Soulmates (those in first-person), plus a number of third-person female narrators. Usually I do it either because the original idea comes to me through a female character, or because the way the story wants to be told feels like it won’t work as well with a male protagonist.
I don’t think writers should be forbidden to write from their opposite gender (or one of the many genders available these days) any more than should be forbidden to write about any “other.” In fact, I just read a great piece by Zadie Smith in The New York Review of Books, lamenting that there seems to be a trend lately toward absolute “correctness” about identity in fiction. To my mind, fiction offers an eye-opening approach to empathy, so telling a black woman, for instance, that she can only write about black women would shut the door to her exploring what the world is like for other identities. I’m with Zadie on this. Fiction is really about individuals, not types.
Any other novels you have in the works for your groupies fans?
I’ve been trying to get an agent for three different books these last couple of years, so I’m holding those back instead of publishing them in the indie market yet. One of them has a transgender man as protagonist—apropos of the answer to your other question. Another of the three is a baseball/prison book set in the Depression, and it’s a little like The Natural meets The Shawshank Redemption. And the third is about a uniquely screwed-up family trying to work out their shit, with the 1973 Watergate hearings as a backdrop. Dysfunction on two different levels.
I’m also writing something now that might not pan out because it’s a weird mashup of real life and fiction. My mom is in it, along with a bunch of her neighbors. And me. I think of it as a study in how fiction is anchored in real-world foundations even though it’s completely made up.
We’ll see what happens with that!
It’s exciting to know that we have more of your writing to look forward to. How do you work on your novels? That is, do you work on them sequentially, not starting a new one until the current is finished? Or you work on a couple at a time, using one to take breaks from the other?
Mostly I work on a book until it’s finished, just because I immerse myself in that world and don’t want to let some other world smear into it. Once in a while, I’ll start some notes on a new project while I’m still working on a novel, but for the most part I want to stick with something till I’m done. The three books I’m holding onto were all written sequentially at different times, but I set them aside when I started indie publishing because I held out hope that I’d be able to get an agent for them eventually.
Sometimes I run into an obstacle in a book that I can’t quite get around, so I’ll put it on pause and work on something else. And sometimes I never do go back to the paused one. Then, occasionally, like with EBT, I dig one up years later and find a way to finish it.
***
Well, Readers, I hope you enjoyed this interview with Kevin Brennan and take this opportunity to pick up an ebook copy of Eternity Began Tomorrow by clicking here.
To show our appreciation for reading to this point, here’s your treat!
In a perfect world, I would spend as much time reading as I spend writing, or as much time writing as reading, depending on the day. Reading inspires me to write and often when I’m reading, I yearn to write. Reading also teaches me how to write. What is it about that first page, first paragraph, or even first sentence, that makes me want to curl up with the book for a long afternoon? What is it about that poem that makes me linger and read again as something tugs at my heart.
I’ve got books on my mind. A book of poetry, a memoir, and a novel to be exact.
A Book of Poetry
Earlier this week Nightingale & Sparrow published my review of Birdy Odell’s chapbook, Cemetery Music, which you can read here: https://nightingaleandsparrow.com/review-of-cemetery-music-by-birdy-odell/. I’m usually hesitant to review poetry because I feel rather ignorant about it. It was not my favorite genre when I was studying literature a few centuries ago. Now, however, thanks to poets like Merril D. Smith, Luanne Castle and Jane Dougherty, I often feel I can’t get enough of it. So when N&S put out a call for reviewers, I raised my hand.
Here’s a snippet from my review:
Anyone who has spent time in a cemetery, particularly ones where the dead have lain for centuries, will read Odell’s poems as those epitaphs etched into granite, sandstone, or marble, some so worn by time and weather that words seem “rubbed with the balm of love.”
Cemetery Music should be available soon (forthcoming December 10, 2019). Click here to read more about Birdy. I also hope you pick up a copy of her lovely chapbook. I definitely want a print copy because, included with her poems, are lovely “whimsical little birds with silly hates and balloons.”
A Memoir
Cinthia Ritchie’s new memoir, Malnourished: A Memoir of Sisterhood and Hunger, has arrived … at my house!! This is a long-awaited memoir, and I am so thrilled for Cinthia. I pre-ordered directly from Raised Voice Press (here’s the link) which, I believe, is why I received my copy before the official release date.
I am so excited to support Cinthia, one of my favorite peeps in my writing community. I fell in love with her through her first novel, Dolls Behaving Badly, and been looking forward to another opportunity to hold one of her books in my hands. If you don’t already know Cinthia, head over to her website here. Order Malnourished through your favorite local bookstore, through Indiebound, or directly through Raised Voice Press.
Here’s a snippet from the Prologue:
Memory is a funny thing, isn’t it, how it adds and subtracts, takes something as simple as watching a whale swim along the shore and mixes it up in your mind so that your sister is there beside you, even though she’s been dead for years. Still, this is what you remember: the wind and the smell of the marsh, the silver-blue tint of an Alaska twilight spreading the water, and beyond it all, the small and simple feel of your dead sister’s hand slipping inside of yours.
A Novel
By now anyone who hasn’t been living under a rock should know that Kevin Brennan recently released a new novel called Eternity Began Tomorrow. EBT is kind of a road trip/political thriller/romance-type novel. In other words, it has something for every kind of reader. Of course, I snatched up a copy, as I do with all of Kevin’s books, and wrote a review: https://1writeway.wordpress.com/eternity-began-tomorrow-is-that-one-true-thing-bookreview/
You’ll want to get a copy of your own, of course, and you can do so by clicking here. But stay tuned for more! I’ll be posting an interview with Kevin later this week, and you’ll learn all about what went into writing such a timely novel. While you’re waiting to read the interview, take advantage of EBT being yours for just 99 cents. Yup, when you click this Amazon link, you’ll find an offer you can’t refuse.
Thanks for reading! If you’re anything like me, you might be groaning at the thought of more books to add to your leaning tower of TBR. But, if you are anything like me, you’ll also be excited to find new books to buy and read.
And here’s your bonus gratuitous cat photo … The Three Amigos: Junior, my husband, and Maxine.
This Thanksgiving my husband and I went on a walk at the St. Marks Headwaters Greenway which opened in late January 2018. It was our first visit, but it won’t be our last. [Note: elsewhere I’ve referred to this area as the St. Marks River Preserve State Park. Eh, technically the Greenway is separate from the state park. My bad.]
We were on our own for the day of feasting since we don’t have family nearby, which–to be honest–is okay with us. We’re happy to just take a long walk, me snapping pictures with my iPhone, my husband waving around his butterfly net, hoping to find some interesting insects.
[Aside: I called my mom later that evening and we both noted how people probably think we’re boring but at least we’re not bored.]
At an absolute minimum, the sky never fails to surprise me.
Thanks to friend, poet, and historian Merril D. Smith, I often have my eyes on clouds. This configuration is new to me!
This post is all about the “real Florida,” not that paved ugliness often mistaken for progress. We were out in the mid- to late afternoon on a sunny day. Light and shadow were playful.
I do miss the true explosion of color that is fall in the northeast, but …
In Florida, this is what we call a “riot of color.”
… we’ll take what we can get here. Fall colors in Florida are nothing like the fall colors I grew up with in New York, but after 30 years living here, I have to say this is pretty colorful.
I hope you enjoyed these photos. For those of you who celebrate Thanksgiving, I hope you had a wonderful holiday. For those of you who don’t, I hope you still had a wonderful day.
Don’t worry. I’m not writing this post from my bathtub. No, I’m well-covered up in comfy clothes (including a wool cardigan), preparing another post of this and that and the other thing. Sigh. Where do I begin?
I sometimes think I should write my blog posts one thought at a time.
A while ago I wrote that I was knitting a lap blanket for my 96-year-old mother and was afraid I wouldn’t finish it before she left for Florida (yeah, she’s one of those snowbirds). You can read about my anxiety here. Well, as things have turned out, she’s still in New York for another six weeks at least.
My mom’s trip got derailed because she got a UTI. She wound up in the hospital only because one of my cousins insisted (and I quote from another cousin) that “it wasn’t normal for her to be in bed at 4:30” in the afternoon. My mom loves her bed, but, hey, there’s a limit.
Turns out my mom had had the UTI for awhile, but because she wasn’t in pain, she didn’t see the need to seek medical help. My mom would argue that her longevity and good health is due to her deliberate effort to avoid doctors. Her argument didn’t pass muster in this case. So she wound up in the hospital feeling lousy and thinking that this might just be “It.” She’s 96, I remind you, and she’s buried most of her siblings and two husbands.
The good news is the UTI got cleared up, her mood perked up, and she’s back in her double-wide, wondering what the fuss was all about. I called her the day after she came home.
Me: Hi, Mom! How are you?
Mom: I’m fine. (Pause). Who am I speaking to?
Me: Marie. Your daughter. (Pause). Remember me?
Mom: Vaguely.
I almost fell off my chair laughing. That’s my mom’s sense of humor. Smart-ass. Wise-ass. Wise-cracker. Whatever you want to call it. She thought I was being a smart-ass for asking if she remembered me, so she gave me one back.
The bad news is she still plans to come down to Florida. No, I’m not happy about that. The only reason why she got this UTI cleared up was because she’s heavily monitored visited by my cousins and my sister in New York.
In Florida, she stays with my other sister … eh, let’s just say my mom wouldn’t have the same network of support in south Florida that she has in New York. I’m about a six-hour drive from where she stays and that’s when traffic is light and the weather is perfect.
But let’s look on the bright side: I have more time to finish the lap blanket. I panicked last week because the instructions called for the border to be knitted separately and then sewn on. Sounds like one of my worst nightmares. Not to fear, though. I figured out I could knit the border while picking up a stitch along the edge, securing the border without sewing. Yay! Life is good! Now I just have to go on a knitting marathon to finish the blanket before the end of the year.
This is the last lap blanket I’ll ever knit. I mean that.
While all this was going on with my mom, I was taking every opportunity to get out and walk and find solace in nature, especially during my work week. In no particular order, here are some scenes from the nature walk that feeds my heart and soul.
A white egret and a blue heron at the same time!
Turtles!
Spotlight on the blue heron.
Wood storks grazing.
I don’t know the name of this plant, but it’s poetry in motion (except it’s not moving).
Ibises at work
An anhinga sunning itself.
I love these branches. They remind of a love knot.
By the way, for those of you who might be wondering about my often-talked-about novel … you know, the one I’m supposed to be working on right now for NaNoWriMo … well, I’m still working on it, but in a musing kind of way. You can read about my musing on Medium, in this article: Turning a True Crime Story Into Fiction. I’m sharing the Friend Link so you can read without subscribing.
Thank you for reading. To show my appreciation, here’s a gratuitous photo of Junior. I did not pose the cat pillow nor the cat.
For extra fun, here’s what I think of when I hear “Splish, Splash”:
As many of you know, I’ve been writing on Medium. It’s an interesting experience given that I actually earn some dinero from my efforts. Un poco dinero. Muy poco dinero. Not to discourage anyone from trying, but given the work I put into my writing, the payout is disappointing. But such is life, right? Writers are flocking to Medium now because everyone wants that chance to make thousands of dollars a month. I’d be happy with tens of dollars a month.
Still, I keep writing because I’ve become addicted to “publishing.” There’s a number of publications on Medium, some developed by Medium editors, some by individuals carving out a niche. I’ve found that my odds of gaining new readers increase if my story is published by one of these publications, rather than if I self-publish. Interesting. Who knew that would make a difference?
Medium recently changed their earnings algorithm, weighing read time more heavily than other forms of engagement like clapping (which is akin to WordPress’s Like button). So now I have to worry about whether anyone is actually reading my stories … lol.
Medium also wants to gain more readers. To that end, we writers are being encouraged to share our stories using the “Friend Link” so that non-Medium readers can read our stories without it counting against their limited access. Medium is hoping these non-members will become so enthralled with the great writing on Medium, that they’ll pony up the $5 per month to read more and more.
In other words, we Medium writers are becoming marketers, which is totally in keeping with my personality. Not.
But to show what a good sport I am, I will share two of my Medium stories, using the Friend Link so any of you non-members can enjoy my stellar prose for free. But, seriously, I feel honored whenever anyone reads my work right down to the last word.
My mom turned 96 in October and, while she still sounds healthy and even vigorous, I worry. Some in my family are joking that she’s likely to see 100. She might, but she might not, and I’m realizing that I won’t be ready … ever.
But, wait! Let’s not end this post on a sad note. Here … let Wendy put a smile on your face.
Marie at 1 Write Way 