Marie at 1 Write Way

On the First Day of NaNo . . .

November 2nd, 2013

Katie Sullivan is an amazing blogger and this post is full of links to other great reads. If you have time for only one blog to read, then read this one :)

The D/A Dialogues

On the first day of NaNo, my true muse gave to me. . .

A family that’s dear to me.

It came to me, yesterday, how I could blog and NaNo at the same time (because NaNo is a verb, now). The reviled and/or beloved holiday song, The Twelve Days of Christmas, was to become The Thirty Days of NaNo.

That was, until I had an unfortunate flash of prescience. Or perhaps it was foreshadowing. That, or it was simple, dumb luck (to be said with Dame Maggie Smith’s accent and intonation when she admonishes Harry and Ron in Harry Potter).

The circumstances around the prescience are mundane. Needless to say, never should I utter the words, even in type, ‘barring catastrophe.’ It is like saying ‘bring it’ to the Universe.

Three days later, and my family has made two trips to the Emergency Room. My father…

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The Insanity Has Begun: NaNoWriMo 2013

November 1st, 2013

I will be drinking lots of caffeine.

Although I may need more than just caffeine to meet my daily nutritional requirements.

Wish me luck :)

RCC Update: 1WriteWay for … the last few months :)

October 31st, 2013

From the Rome Construction Crew website, here’s a long-overdue update on goals I had set way back when:

Is it November yet? OMG, it’s almost November! Yes, I’ve been lolling in the luxury of not having to meet a WORD COUNT for the past few months but November (meaning NaNoWriMo) is so close I can taste it (whatever November might taste like). So as long as I’ve been without that albatross around my neck, I’ve also been a little less active on my blog. Of course, some of my friends (that is, the nonblogging friends) think I am very active, until I explain reblogging to them. Then they’re like, “Oh.” In anticipation of another month of insane writing (but what other kind is there, really), I decided to revisit my RCC goals. Yes, I know the last time I did this was … ahem … August. Well, tickle me with a feather. Better late than never. And so it goes …

My Goals

(1) Get off my own back. I am definitely much better at this now. Ironically, it’s because of my day job that I’ve loosened up a bit. You see, recently I received a promotion. I’m very happy about this because I know I earned it (why do I say this? long story for another time). I work with a great group of people who simply bring out the best in me. As I said to my supervisor once, my duties include “anything you tell me to do.” I think that’s when she decided to promote me. But my work also makes me very tired, and I’ve learned (since with a promotion comes more responsibilities) that I simply have to “get off my own back” if I want to get anything done. Same with my writing. Berating myself only slows me down, so enough of that already.

(2) Set up a schedule of posting that gives me time to write, but doesn’t make followers think I’ve fallen off the face of the earth. I might not be doing as well with this goal as I would like. I haven’t contributed to CSB of late, and aside from my Mondays with John Howell, my blogging is spotty. But I’m getting there. I’ve started scheduling posts to publish while I’m otherwise engaged (like this one ). So, I’m getting closer to this goal, too.

(3) Get organized. Dream on.

(4) Just keep writing. That’s what I’m doing! Every word I type or write down is just that … writing. Just because it doesn’t fit into a neat little poem or riveting short story doesn’t mean it isn’t still writing. It. All. Counts.

So how is everyone else doing with their goals? Remember, it’s the journey that’s important. And if you like the idea of consorting with like-minded folk who support each other regardless of whether they even have goals, consider joining the Rome Construction Crew. Details at http://www.romeconstructioncrew.com/about/

Remember to get Catalysts for Halloween!

October 30th, 2013

Perfect for Halloween !

Legends of Windemere

Your daily reminder to pick up a copy of Catalysts for Halloween! This new horror novella is a gripping scare for 99 cents. Be sure to search by the book title and author name, so more people will learn about it. This is how books end up on the ‘Also Bought’ and ‘Also Viewed’ lists that you see on product pages.

Don’t forget to search Amazon for more of my books such as the Legends of Windemere fantasy series and Bestiary of Blatherhorn Vale, each one for 99 cents.

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QUENTIN HIDE FREE UNTIL NOV. 1ST

October 30th, 2013

Free book!!! I got mine. Now, go get your free copy!

My Knitting, My Self

October 29th, 2013

As many of you know, I am a knitter. I’ve knitting for roughly the same number of years as I’ve been writing, and my writing marathons often alternate with knitting marathons. My first memory of knitting was when I was 9 when I was given a kit for a pink knitted minidress. The kit came with acrylic pink yarn, huge wooden needles (comparable to a US size 17) and instructions. What I managed to knit was not a minidress, but some kind of tangled mess.

And yet, I was hooked (so to speak) from that day forward.

Over the next ten years, I knitted with whatever I could find (we were a family of few means), even some spools of synthetic yarn that a high school friend discovered in her basement. If people gave me yarn, I would knit them something. While that sounds awfully generous of me, keep in mind that I was still learning to knit (I am self-taught) and so I’m not sure that my “gifts” were always appreciated or desired.

I’ve have several peaks and valleys with my knitting (just like with my writing) over the past 40-odd years. One Christmas, when I was still a teenager, I went crazy and knitted, crocheted, or needlepointed a Christmas gift for every one in my immediate family. Ahhh, the good old days when I was a mere college student and had time enough to knit, read, and write.

During a brief sojourn at a private college, I took a spinning and weaving class. So then I had to add spinning and weaving to my hobbies. The best education I got out of that particular college was learning to spin and weave. Rather than return for another quarter, I left college and bought a 36-inch floor loom with what would have been my tuition money. But these were mere detours along my knitting path. I enjoyed weaving immensely but in spite of even bringing the loom with me all the way from upstate NY to Oakland, CA, I could never embrace it as I did my knitting. With knitting, all you really need is yarn and a needle (I say a needle because I work almost exclusively with circular needles). Weaving requires much more preparation before you even start weaving. By contrast, spinning is also “simpler” if you buy your wool already carded and you’re happy to sit and spin with a small spindle. Eventually the loom and the spinning wheel were sold to a friend, while I continued to buy every possible length and size of knitting needle.

Fast forward to where I live now. Still knitting by choice, but my knitting has changed quite a bit. I don’t like sewing up the pieces of a sweater: easing the top of the sleeve into the armhole; trying to sew the sides together; and then finding holes in the seams. I’ve knitted cardigans, the bane of my existence because not only do they require piecing together but they also have (shudder) buttonholes to contend with. It’s not that I can’t knit well enough; I just find finishing to be annoying. When I’m done knitting, I want my knitting to be done and immediately wearable. So now I knit socks, shawls, scarves. Occasionally I’ll see a pattern that looks intriguing enough that I’ll give piecing another go. As with this shrug:

The pattern (Kimono Shrug) was quite easy, but the yarn (Noro Silk Garden) was actually a bit difficult to work with. It’s a blend of wool and silk and silk isn’t elastic like wool; that is, it doesn’t yield as nicely to being pulled and looped. Sometimes I felt like I was trying to knit with rope. But the effect of the yarn, the colors and the pattern, are worth the effort.

I’m sending this shrug to a friend who lives in California. She’s an artist (mixed-media). I’ve knitted for her before. In the distant past, we even bartered a few times, my knitting in exchange for her illustrating some patterns that I wrote and tried to sell. In all honesty, I didn’t set out to make this shrug for her, but, once it was completed, I just kept thinking of how much Jennifer might like it. How it might keep her warm when she’s working in her warehouse studio. How it might flatter her (and me) if she wore it to one of her openings. So I wore it twice to confirm that, yes, it does drape nicely and is warm without being too warm. But it’s off to Jennifer, and I hope she likes it.

So what hobbies do you have? What else do you look forward to doing, besides reading and writing? Do you like to restore antique cars? Brew your own beer? Cross-stitch? Sew? Let me know in the comment section ;)

Top Ten Things Not to Do on Halloween

October 28th, 2013

Here is the Seventeenth installment of Ten Top Lists of What Not to Do by Marie Ann Bailey of 1WriteWay at http://1writeway.com and John W. Howell of Fiction Favorites at http://johnwhowell.com. These lists are simu-published on our blogs each Monday. We hope you enjoy. This list is in recognition of Halloween which will be celebrated this week.

10. If you decide to dress up for Halloween, do not take this opportunity to show the world parts of your body that should be kept completely private. At best the parts that are visible will only lead the viewer to believe you are older, more out of shape, or hairier than you really are. At worst you end up trying to explain to a judge why you don’t need psychological care.

9. If you decide to take your kids trick or treating, try to refrain from going through the treat bag for the sole purpose of pulling out all the full size Twix and Snickers bars. Oh sure, you can pretend to inspect the candy for safety, just don’t get caught with that Hershey bar in your back pocket.

8. While trick or treating with the kids, try to refrain from making comments about the treats being handed out. When you least expect it, the spouse of the person handing out the treats will be behind you trick or treating at their own house. At best you may not know they are there. At worst you’ll find yourself groveling in front of your own children.

7. While handing out treats at your own house, refrain from asking the bigger kids about how old they are. It could be one of them is a parent accompanying a child or, worse, a disturbed teen just looking for an excuse to let the air out of your tires.

6. If you are invited to a Halloween party and the invitation clearly says “please come in costume,” refrain from ignoring that part of the invitation. Showing up and explaining that you are dressed for work won’t go over well with the hosts. Of course, the only exception to this would be if you are unemployed.

5. When dressing up for Halloween, refrain from wearing a costume that could interfere with the triage process at an emergency room. You never know what may happen but you certainly want the emergency room personnel to believe you are human and not a piece of food.

4. If you should run out of treats on Halloween, do not try to pass off leftovers, boxes of cereal, or fruit of any kind as your offering for trick or treat. If you try, at best you will look like a cheapskate. At worst you may need a power washer to get all the soap off your windows,

3. If you decide to set up an elaborate scheme to haunt little kiddies as they come to your house to trick or treat, try to understand that a child’s digestive system will take only so much surprise. After this amount is exceeded, the natural tendency is for the body to lighten its load to prepare for the flight response. Just dropping bags of candy will probably not be the sole items of evacuation.

2. When you decide to carve your pumpkin for Halloween, refrain from carving words that you would not be proud to carry into next Sunday’s church service. Although it is pretty fun to invent new things to say on a pumpkin carving, little minds may have way too many questions for their parents about what you have written and the parents may come to you for answers.

1. When helping the children trick or treat, refrain from drinking every drink that is offered to you by friendly neighbors. Time does get away from us while having fun and more than an ounce of alcohol per hour tends to impair certain judgment factors such as: when to go home and where to sleep. At best you may spend time stumbling around. At worst you may forget where you live and have to ask your kids for directions.

Interview with S.K. Nicholls

October 23rd, 2013

Great interview with S.K. Nicholls, author of Red Clay and Roses.

Kristen Hope Mazzola

Tonight please give a warm welcome to the lovely S.K. Nicholls!!

Do you write under any other names? Not yet.

What are you currently working on? A crime novel/murder mystery that is turning into a bit of a psycho thriller and a sort of autobiography.

How many (if any) books do you have published and what are their titles? Only the one, “Red Clay and Roses”.

What inspired you to write your first book? Finding the ledger in 1992 was the impetus. Having a racially mixed granddaughter and being concerned about the society that she will grow up in and the history of her culture was another. I am also very much interested in promoting civil and women’s rights, and women’s reproductive rights and responsibilities.

Do you have a specific writing style or one that you prefer? I write stream of consciousness style, and though I have worked on developing…

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Guest Blog: Medical Case Studies and Nineteenth-Century Literature

October 23rd, 2013

Interesting post on the development of the “medical case study,” but also a chilling look at “mental illness” in the 19th Century.

Interesting Literature

By Kimberly Robinson, The University of Arkansas – Fort Smith

The rise of the asylum is shrouded in mystery and uncertainty, and, in the absence of facts, the Romantics obsessed over wrongful institutionalization, but the bureaucracy that handled the treatment of the insane is more tangible than most people might expect. Culturally speaking, the Romantics represented, among other competing ideologies, the shifting realities for what individuals could feasibly expect in exchange for their time and effort in labor markets. These markets were driven by national and industry agendas where people who were unable to work were often forced into institutions and then labeled insane. In France, there were significant improvements in psychiatric treatment over what had been happening in England. However, because England lagged behind in dealing with disenfranchised populations, grass root tensions forced legislative changes in the way asylums were being operated. These laws shaped the cultural movement toward…

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Interview with Kevin Brennan, Author of Yesterday Road

October 22nd, 2013

Welcome to an interview with Kevin Brennan, author of Parts Unknown, Our Children Are Not Our Children, and the recently released Yesterday Road. Kevin also has a blog at http://kevinbrennanbooks.wordpress.com/ where he takes his readers along on his sometimes funny, sometime harrowing road to self-publication.

M: Kevin, thank you so much for agreeing to be interviewed. I’m excited to be able to talk with you about your current book, Yesterday Road, as well as your other books.

KB: Glad to do it, Marie. I’ve been following your blog for a few months now, and I’ll be rooting for you during NaNoWriMo.

M: Thanks! I’ll need the support. It was nice of you to beam yourself all the way out here from the West Coast. Fortunately, our weather is finally showing signs of the autumn season, so let’s sit out on my porch. Would you like something to drink?

KB: Only if you want to shake up a nice dry martini.

M: Indeed and I’ll make one for me too! Now, as I tell everyone who visits, don’t mind the cats. They tend to be well-behaved, though, among strangers.

KB: They seem… benign.

M: (Yup, for now they are.) Kevin, since you’ve just released Yesterday Road, let’s start there. This is a novel about an older man, who has problems with his memory but who takes off on a journey to find his daughter. Along the way he meets a young man with Down syndrome and a middle-aged waitress who takes both men under her wing. How did you come about to put these characters together on such a journey?

KB: It started with the littlest fragment. I had a note that said, “Woman with dementia hits the road.” Then I started fiddling with it, changed the woman to a man, gave him a particular goal, and then Joe Easterday showed up. He’s the young man with Down syndrome. From there, it just became a road picture, like Hope and Crosby. (Do people remember them anymore?)

M: I remember Hope and Crosby :) How has your experience in self-publishing Yesterday Road been so far?

KB: Well, there are two angles to all of this: production and promotion. For the most part, the production has gone pretty smoothly, with the small exception of ebook formatting. It’s a little tricky, and even though there are a lot of people out there who you can pay to do it for you, you might not get exactly what you expect.

On the other hand, I had a seamless experience having my cover done. I went to a freelancer’s directory and found an artist with sensibilities that seemed to fit the book (Max Scratchmann of Glasgow, Scotland), shot him over my source image, which he then manipulated, shot back a couple of revisions, and boom — it was finished. And not expensive!

The promotion side of things has been more complicated. I’m learning as I go along. Frankly, I’d been avoiding Twitter ever since I heard about it. Facebook? More like Faceblech. Blogging has been fun (I had a political blog a few years back), but what I’m finding is that it’s very hard to find readers through these tools. Other writers seem to fall from the sky like the frogs in “Magnolia,” but readers? I’m not sure how to get to them without spamming left and right and making more enemies than friends. Then there’s the problem of literary fiction. Most online reading communities are geared toward genre writing.

M: That’s a great point about how easy it is to find other writers, not so easy to find readers. You know I wish you the absolute best in sales and hopefully this promotion will do that for you.

Now, you also have a novel that was traditionally published, Parts Unknown. This novel too has an interesting premise with the main character, Bill Argus, having a late “mid-life crisis” at 63 and deciding to return to the small town and family he had left 40 years before. Parts Unknown was published in 2003. Could you talk about that publishing journey for a bit?

KB: For that book, I did everything the old-fashioned way. Queried agents. Landed one. She was able to sell the novel very quickly (and called to give me the good news on my birthday!), then working with the editor was smooth and painless. She didn’t ask me to do too much to the book.

Ironically, I enjoyed the pre-publication stuff more than the whole post-pub thing — readings, book clubs, radio, all that. That’s where you learn that your little novel is not on most people’s radar, even if it’s the biggest thing in your entire life.

Since then I’ve been writing more books, always trying to go the traditional publication route, but frankly the business has changed a lot since 2003. For the kind of books I write, it seems like self-publication might be a better way to get the work out there. The old clock on the wall is ticking, after all…

M: I would really like to know how these two journeys—traditional publication and self-publication—compare. I imagine both have their pros and cons. Can you say at this point whether being traditionally published was more advantageous for you than self-publication?

KB: The advantage of traditional publication is sort of built-in: a publisher thinks your work is good enough to publish. That said, for midlist novels, they don’t do a heck of a lot of promotion, unless the sales force really gets behind it. They do send out advance copies, which can translate into reviews, and through that route I got a couple of terrific print reviews in big newspapers. But in terms of events, I managed to set up a lot more things myself than they did. Mostly regional, but somehow I got myself onto a panel of “Emerging Voices” at the BEA that year. I think they were kind of stunned that I landed that one. Michael Chabon was in the room, believe it or not, and Daniel Halpern of Ecco Press.

The advantages of self-publishing are mainly that you are in charge. You’re the editor, the designer, and the marketing executive on top of being the author, so you need to be aware of — and good at — a lot of different things. And, if you do well, you get 70% royalties on Amazon. That’s not bad.

M: And your other book, Our Children Are Not Our Children, was self-published to test the waters of self-publication. It’s a wonderful collection of very short stories, odd slices of life where the parents might be emotionally abusive or neglectful or very supportive in a weird sort of way (I’m thinking here of the nudist dad). Please talk a bit about these stories. What inspired you to write them? Were any of them based on real slices of life, or were they musings that you simply took as far as you could go?

KB: I first put them together to submit to literary magazines, possibly as the start of a larger project along the same lines. I think I had the piece called “Baby Teeth” in mind at the outset, based loosely on the childhood experience of someone I know. Then I just started brainstorming other crazy-parents tales, though I will say that “Day Care,” about a couple who lock their toddlers in a closet all day while they go to work, came from a true story. The theme that kids are at the mercy of their parents’ sensibilities is very strong. Dickensian. I tried to set these tales to a kind of objective tone that I hope makes them feel absurd but powerful at the same time.

M: Even though you’re in the midst of promoting Yesterday Road, are you still writing as well? You’ve mentioned on your blog that you are self-employed. How do you find time to write? What needs to happen for you to say that you’ve had a productive and satisfying writing day?

KB: I haven’t been writing much in recent months. I’ll have a book ready to publish in the spring, but as far as new material goes, I’ve been focusing almost 100% on building a platform for Yesterday Road.

Luckily, self-employment gives me complete flexibility in terms of writing at a set time every day (when I’m writing new stuff, anyway), plus I can stay in my sweat pants till noon if I want. And I do.

In terms of what makes a successful writing day, I’ve always had the habit of reading the prior day’s output before moving ahead, so if I’m happy with what I did, I guess I had a good day. That method seems to propel me into the story with a little momentum.

M: Earlier you describe the fiction you write as literary. Do you mean it is more character-driven than plot-driven? Most self-published authors I’ve met write in a specific genre, such fantasy or romance. Do you have any advice for writers, especially writers of literary fiction, who aspire to be published authors?

KB: I usually describe my stuff as literary, or as a hybrid, like literary comedy or literary chick lit (as my next book is), and you’re exactly right, because it’s character- and theme-driven. I’ve never been attracted to plot-oriented novels, probably because I find plot very hard to do well. It seems suited to genre writing because there really are formulas and conventions that have to be met, or the reader isn’t happy. With literary fiction, it’s more of an “anything goes” thing — at least as long as it works.

I would advise writers of literary fiction to find something more fulfilling to do with their lives. Or, if you must write literary fiction, please do it responsibly.

Just kidding. You always hear “it’s a tough market,” and it really is, but if you write literary fiction you owe it to yourself to try to break through and get a book out. I guess the best advice I can offer is, if you think you have the stuff, hit the traditional system hard. Things are tight, but there are also small presses like Two Dollar Radio and Tin House, so all is not lost if FS&G passes on you. And now there’s self-publishing waiting in the wings, which is very fulfilling in its own way. Like complete control of the product.

M: Kevin, that’s wonderful and down-to-earth advice. It’s truly been my pleasure to talk with you today. Thank you again for taking the time for this interview. I know I am one of many others who are look forward to reading more of your work.

KB: I’ve enjoyed it, Marie. That was a pretty acceptable martini. And I hope you don’t mind if I shower you with thanks as I slide out from under these cats.

M: Thank you about the martini! First time I ever made one :) I think I have a lint brush somewhere …

***

Well, that’s it, folks! My interview with author, Kevin Brennan. Be sure to follow Kevin’s blog at http://kevinbrennanbooks.wordpress.com/ and pick up a copy of Yesterday Road. Please stay tuned for more interviews by Marie at 1WriteWay.

To get your own copy of any of Kevin’s books, visit any one of these links: