Up and Down the Roller Coaster

Dear readers and writers:

Fiona Robyn, whose new ebook, The Most Beautiful Thing, was the focus of a blogsplash yesterday, became the number 1 free ebook in the UK for that day and 20,000 people ordered it.  Up the roller coaster with throat-burning speed indeed.  But then, today, it went back to a very reasonable price instead of being free, and only one copy had sold.  Down the roller coaster with a jerk and a whirl of wind.  She was understandably thrilled yesterday and disappointed today.  Life as an author is not easy.  If you self-publish, then it's up to you to promote your book and giving it away free, even to many people, doesn't lay new carpet.

What really impressed me was Fiona's response.  She explained all this on her blog, Writing Our Way Home, and then she referred us to some beautiful readings, which I won't scoop.  One of those who responded, though, brought up Gravy by Raymond Carver, though.  If you haven't read that, do it now.  Here is the link. What really matters, the carpet or the joy of writing, the joy of connecting with so many readers?  She knows.

Lisa Solis DeLong Interview on Blood Brothers

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Dear Friends of Reading and Writing,

My friend Lisa Solis DeLong, another member of The Last Sunday Writers, has written a beautiful and courageous memoir of her experiences with first one son being diagnosed with leukemia, having a respite for a while, and dying, and then a second son being diagnosed with leukemia.  No one could cope with such terrible disasters easily, and Lisa has struggled as anyone would, but has some hopeful words to offer others in dark valleys in life.  Here is her interview with me.


  Lisa, do you think it was harder for you to deal with the tragedy of your first son’s death because of your background in nursing, or was it easier?  

My nursing experience prepared me for the reality that bad things happen to good people.  I was not naïve to death when Justin, my first, was diagnosed but and I was able to accept his diagnosis and treatment.  Nothing could have prepared me for his death.

You have a great “eye” for details, taking the reader along with you to medical venues and to your house.  Do you have any advice for writers who are trying to remember enough details of a place they’ve been only once or twice to recreate it in writing? 

I do a lot of journaling and have done so for most of my adult life.  I was able to recall details after reading my journal entries even though I didn’t always include setting details, reading my entries brought me back to locations and I could then remember surprising details.

 When I imagine how it must have been to write this book, it almost makes me cry, yet your writing doesn’t anticipate the negative, doesn’t dwell on pain, doesn’t end up with a message of misery but one of hope and love.  Are you basically optimistic or what do you do when it’s almost too much to bear the pain you’ve been given? 

I definitely am an optimist by nature.  In real time, I practice seeing the positive in life but do get worn out by negative responses of people around me.  Sometimes I retreat to being alone but can’t do that for too long as I have a healthy 12 year old son who keeps me laughing and that’s good.  I have learned from my boys that a day outside of illness and hospitalizations is a very good day—one I refuse to waste.  When the weight of grief and life stresses become too much to bear I dance.  Seriously, sometimes I’m so down and out that I just want to run away but instead I retreat to a couple of ballroom dance places.  Entering the ballroom, seeing aged grey haired folks gliding like youngsters, hearing Michael Buble’s “Feeling Good” and I really do feel good.  I dance twice a week, would do more if I could, and do a lot of walking.  Hanging out with my kids when we can just relax and watch documentaries about finding Big Foot with Jacob or Adult Swim with my 23 year-old daughter Jess, on TV and laugh is another favorite.  Jojo, my 18 year-old basketball player at Willamette University in Salem, Oregon is also a great joy magnet.  Seeing my surviving children thriving takes me away.

 Recently you posted an anecdote about your second son’s worn out shoes that really summarized for me your approach to life.  Would you share that with the blog readers? 

Oh my goodness, those shoes make me cry!  Jacob returned to public school one year ago after being on chemo treatments for three and a half years.  He came home from school the other day showed me a hole on the soles of his shoes and said, “Mom, can I get a new pair of shoes?”  This is the first time in his 12 years of life that he has worn out a pair of shoes.  This may seem strange but he has never been able to be active enough to do so.  Jacob has not had this many consecutive months of health in six years.  I asked him how he wore them out and he said, “I think it’s from shuffling,” as he slid his feet forward and back to demonstrate. Would it be too weird to bronze them?  Frame them?  Man, worn out soles—good news!

No, I’d agree they deserve that bronze!  Lisa, what has surprised you the most about becoming a book author?  

I had a woman accost me at a book signing because she was angry that I shared her adult daughter’s story.  I was very careful to get permission from the parents of children whose lives I shared but neglected to do so with this woman as her daughter was of age and I wrote only positive things about her.  I felt horrible, completely devastated by her in-my-face public display of anger, (she asked me to step outside at the book store).  I eventually worked through this and had her daughter’s story edited out for the sake of my own piece of mind.  Sure, didn’t see that coming.  

Was it pretty much as you expected?  There have been more positive experiences than negatives for certain.  I’ve found that it is far better for me to share my story with people in the right niche.  Today I attended an End of Life Nurse Education Consortium conference and was swarmed by nurses hungry to read my story.  Wow!  That felt good.  I’ve discovered that because of the sensitive and powerful nature of my story, it is important to find the right venue for effective book sales.  I have not tapped into online blogs and sites nearly as much as I should but find it difficult to find the time. 

What did you do to help people who might need to read your book to discover it?  I am a bereavement facilitator and nurse so I tried to get the word out to my contacts directly.  This has been the most effective use of my time for sure.  I’m not very tech savvy so I get frustrated using sites and programs I can’t navigate easily.  I do use Facebook and have had some positive results there.

Has your perspective on yourself changed since your book was published?  You know, I hadn’t thought about it much but now that you ask, I must say there are times when I am very proud of my accomplishment and others when I feel the weight of the world on my shoulders to sell it.  I swing wide here.  I am working on letting go of measuring its success monetarily and enjoying setting it free—kind of like having another child. 

  Do you feel like a standard bearer for parents of kids with leukemia at all?
         I definitely do, which is ironic because when Justin was first diagnosed, being the poster mother for    leukemia kids was the last thing I wanted but I learned a long time ago to embrace my story.  Sharing it has connected me with “my people”:  writers, mothers, medical professional who care about sick kids and fearlessly kind people. 

Do you have any writing tips to share with the blog readers? 

A lot of people ask me how I was able to write about such painful aspects of my life.  Journaling has become second nature to me.  I need to get my thoughts on paper often or become too fretful.  Writing often, even if it is not being share publicly is good therapy and exercise.  If you decide to write publicly you can tap into your journals as needed for inspiration and information.  

How did you keep going long enough to produce and rewrite a whole book, even though reliving some of these events must have been very painful? 

I couldn’t give up on Justin, his strength, his story and the same for Jacob.  Every time I felt like quitting, I thought, You know, Justin never quit, and neither did Jacob.  So what if I cry when I write.  Shut up and write.  I also took lots of naps as emotional stuff is exhausting to share.  I’m a really good napper!

 Any other thoughts you’d like to share? 

The best thing I did for myself is to create a writing community.  Mine is centered around The Last Sunday Writers.  As you know, we meet once a month to read our work out loud, share information and encourage one another.  This group has grounded me.  Every time I attend, I feel like a real writer and that is so important as the task of writing is so lonely.  Create community!  Take classes, attend workshops, begin with whatever you can afford and keep showing up.

Do you have any blogs you’d like to recommend? 

Our TLS blog for sure! (Read it at: http://tlswriters.wordpress.com/).  I also have my website blog:  www.lisasolisdelong.com  but I must be honest here and say it is sorely neglected.  I do hope to blog regularly in the near future.  Thanks for the inspiration!

Thrills of Being an Author

I've been proud to say, under the guidance of Libby Grandy the magnificent, that I AM A WRITER, for about four years now.  But having a book published moves me a yard farther down the field to being an AUTHOR, which is a whole different dimension.  I don't count writing a text book, although that too was a thrill at the time.  But now, this isn't my take on science I put out there for anyone with $14 to read, it's MY LIFE in science, and my attempts to keep my family life and my life of science discoveries in a rewarding, balanced state.  And, I tried to write it using the methods of fiction.  Not making up facts, but using colorful language, dialog, writing in scenes as much as possible, keeping an eye on suspense and conflict, the techniques of a novelist.  So, when someone who is not in science reads the book and writes a review showing that she really gets it, it feels like a real pat on the back.  I felt that way with every good review on Amazon, and now with Susannah Burke's review on her book review blog, Sooze Says Stuff too.  If you'd like to read it, it's here: http://sooozsaysstuff.blogspot.com/2011/04/book-review-breaking-through-spiral.html  or if you prefer a tiny URL, here:http://tinyurl.com/44hs54c I'm so thrilled that she hung in there in spite of the science bursts and saw that it was more about how women can overcome societal obstacles.  Kudos to Suzannah!

The Embarassment and Glory of Self-Publishing

I am self-publishing my memoir.  I hate to tell people that.  It reminds me of the stigma of vanity presses, the idea that you alone, in your delusion, think your book is worthwhile and so you pay someone to publish it.  In fact, the reality today is a little different.  I had submitted my book widely and received some interest.  It was "in the queue" at a university press for over two years.  Then they pulled the plug.  But why not keep submitting it?  I responded to my desire to let women know right away that they can "have it all," balancing family and a career in science.  I responded to being invited to give talks on my life in science, the reality that people were interested right now to hear more about it.

And I found a great variety of choices.  PublishAmerica, where I would pay nothing, would format, create the cover, and publish it, but they would decide the cover style and price. The price, considering its length, was probably going to be $26.  That was one end of the spectrum for me.  The other end was Lulu.com, also willing to charge me nothing, but asking me to do all the design work in formatting the text, designing the cover, etc, albeit with their wizards to help. Lulu's advantage was that they let me set the paperback binding and the cost, $14, to make it affordable as a supplementary text for a course in women in science, one use I'd always envisioned for the memoir, because it's an existence theorem that you can have it all as a woman in science.  These companies are very matter of fact and deal with authors with fast responses.  I found them quite businesslike and didn't feel like a creep with shiny teeth turning to them to publish my book.  But every now and then, when someone asks if I self-published, I fall through the floor into that abyss of self-loathing and mumble, "yes."  I should steel myself to say "yes, but today self-publishing is not so bad.  Authors cross the line between publishing and self-publishing in both directions these days."  That's the way it will be more and more, it seems to me.

Spiral Ceiling on its Way

Hi friends,
This is the cover of my almost-ready book, a memoir about how I overcame bias and barriers to become an American DNA Scientist studying aging, all the while being married with children to love and care for. The book will be released this spring, and I'll announce it and tell you how you can find out more and order a copy if you wish. I've published a text book on genetics before, in fact I describe in Spiral Ceiling how I filled the time after my first husband died suddenly of a heart attack with writing the text book in the evenings after my son was in bed. But the release of this memoir is much more exciting to me, and I hope a lot of you will want to take a look at it and ask me questions about what happened in my life. Stay tuned for more details as they become available.
cheers,
Laura

Interview with Michael Jaime Becerra

LH: Michael, how did you get interested in writing?

MJB: My mother fostered my love of books with weekly trips to the library. It didn't matter what we were reading, so long as we were reading something. Left on my own, my childhood reading diet consisted of science fiction, comic books (Frank Miller's Daredevil runs were a favorite), movie-adaptation novels, and Mad Magazine. When I was in the fourth grade, I started emulating the kind of stuff I loved to read through a contest called The Book Fair that my elementary school would hold every year. When I was in junior high, my Book Fair entry was a story about a skateboard contest in outer space. It was a poor combination of influences--Thrasher magazine, Douglas Adams, and The Last Starfighter as I recall it--but through a fortunate series of events the book placed at the County Fair that year. Seeing my book, outside of my immediate world, in a glass case with a ribbon on it, had an immediate and lasting impression on me.

LH: Was that your first success?

MJB: While the junior-high skateboard book certainly qualifies, my first published work was a poem in Mosaic, the journal edited by the undergrads at UC Riverside. That poem was about a small moment--the narrator getting a beer for his father during a football game--but the publication gave me the confidence to continue writing about the world I knew: working-class families, Southern California, the meeting of Mexican and American cultures.

LH: What kind of things do you most enjoy writing?

MJB: I write literary fiction primarily, sotries set in my native El Monte, California, though I've been known to branch out into Mexico onoccasion. I feel most comfortable when the story has a start in reality and then quickly takes on a fictional life of its own. Those are the most enjoyable moments for me, using a real-life setting in a completely fictional context.

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.

MJB: My agent took a look at my manuscript at the suggestion of a client, and I feel quite lucky that she saw the promise of my work. Arriving at the point was difficult, in some ways the most difficult part of the process because so much of it was beyond my control. I always tell people that the agents will always be there, and that they shouldn't be approached until the work is truly ready to be published. It also seems crucial that one research the agent(s) to whom they are sending work. Who else does this person represent? What sort of work do they sell on a regular basis?

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?

MJB: I think the best martketing occurs in person, meaning that an audience may be more likely to connect with a writer and that writer's work if they have a sense of honesty, approachability, and understanding from the writer. I genuinely enjoy doing public readings, meeting with reading groups, visiting classrooms, etc. From a marketing standpoint, each of these appearances is an opportunity to build one's audience, to build one's brand as well.

LH: If you could go back in time and start over, tell us one thing you have learned that would help you to succeed better/faster/with less struggle.

MJB: With my novel, I would have started out with a better sense of direction than I originally did. My first year of so was spent starting and retreating, and restarting and retreaing again. Had I sat down and outlined the opening chapters of the book, as well as doing some more defining of my characters, I feel that I could have saved myself plenty of time and trouble. For me, such planning gives me the sense of having a road map into the book.

At the same time, I think one should remain open to the unforeseeable. If the characters and their story demand something that the author did not envision for them, the author has to be open to elling the story as truly as possible.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?

MJB: Character is king, or queen, as the case may be.

Here is a sample of a novella I wrote: http://atlengthmag.com/?p=75

Here is an interview I did with Willow Springs a few years back:

http://www.ewu.edu/willowsprings/interview/becerra.html

LH: Thanks for letting us have your thoughts about writing, Michael.

Interview with Catherine Ipcizade, children’s author

LH: Hi Catherine, how did you get interested in writing?

CI: I’ve always been interested in writing. Poetry was my first love. The first time I remember actually being recognized for my writing was in elementary school. I was in the third or fourth grade and I wrote this poem called A Fluffy White Feather. It was terrible. But my grandmother saw it, loved it, and called the Phoenix newspapers to tell them they HAD to publish my poem. She declared that a star was born and I was the star. Talk about motivation! I was far from a star, but my grandmother’s faith in me inspired my writing from then on. Oh, and in case you’re wondering, none of those papers published my poem.

As far as my career in children’s publishing, I started dabbling in writing books for kids in college. It wasn’t until I was pregnant with my first child though, that I set out to make a career of it.

LH: What was your first success?

CI: My first success wasn’t with book writing. I found success first as a freelance writer. My first publication was a piece called My Turkicans for The United States Turkish Times newspaper. I then went on to write more articles for them, as well as blogs for sites like Families.com, and articles for other publications including Chula Vista Living, Avenues, Ladera Ranch Magazine, and STOMP Fashion Magazine. I also dabbled in writing greeting cards for Leap Greetings and started writing web content—all while pursuing my main love—writing for children. My first book success was my picture book, ‘Twas the Day Before Zoo Day. After its publication, I began writing a lot for the educational market. By the end of the year, I will have 14 books in print—one from Sylvan Dell Publishing, and 13 from Capstone Press.

LH: What kind of books or articles do you most enjoy writing?

CI: I enjoy so many types of writing. I love writing funny, quirky picture books. I also enjoy writing somewhat serious contemporary novels in free verse. For articles, I prefer clever parenting articles that show the “real,” often fallible nature of life.

LH: Do you have an agent? Tell us about your experiences with/without agents.

CI: No, I am not currently represented by an agent. It’s not imperative for a picture book author to have an agent. Would it be nice? Sure. When my current novel is complete, however, I do plan to begin searching for agent representation.

LH: What are your thoughts about marketing? Do you have any great tips on how to do it well?

CI: My general feeling about marketing is to do all that you can. This is a given when you publish for a small or independent publisher. But even when you publish with a large publisher, doing your own marketing can mean the success or failure of your book. With big publishers, people assume they handle the marketing for you, that they push your book. Sadly, this isn’t often the case. Publishers push the books they think will sell really well. With the others, marketing efforts falter. If you want to gain a wide audience for you book, it’s best to start early, before the book even comes out. Here are some things to consider:

1. Do you have an online presence? This could include a website, a blog, a presence on Facebook or Myspace—anything that gives you a link to the outside world.

2. Do you want to do bookstore signings? If so, become friendly with your nearest independent bookstore. This doesn’t mean you shouldn’t approach the large chain stores—you should, but an independent book store is likely to give you and your book the attention you both deserve. And because some stores book authors up to a year in advance, you’ll want to get a jump start on this.

3. Can you find a niche market for your book? For example, my zoo book lent itself easily to doing visits at zoos or animal parks. If your book has a specialized focus, hone in on that.

4. Have a contest! People love to get things for free, and hosting a giveaway contest on your blog or website will help generate interest for your book.

5. Have a launch party. If your book is out and you want to re-energize sales, have a re-launch party. These can be anywhere. Invite family, friends, and anyone else you think might be interested in your book.

6. Consider school visits. Many children’s book authors make a living doing school visits. There are some logistics to be worked out when pursuing this, but you may find it’s well worth your time, especially if you enjoy kids or teens, depending on the genre of your book.

LH: If you could go back in time and start over, tell us one thing you have learned that would help you to succeed better/faster/with less struggle.

CI: I wish I would have known that there is a support group out there for children’s writers. With organizations like SCBWI and online sites like http://www.verlakay.com/ (check out the Blueboards section), aspiring and established children’s book writers aren’t alone! So much of this business is trial and error. If I could do it again, I would have asked for help sooner and not been afraid to approach those who knew how to navigate the scary, scary world of publishing.

LH: Any other thoughts to share?

CI: Just that I teach online for UCLA Extension. I currently teach Writing for Children: A Beginning Workshop. In the winter, I’ll also be teaching a general non-fiction for the youth market course. Stop by my website at http://www.catherineipcizade.com/ to learn more about me, my books, and my upcoming classes.


LH: Thanks for telling the blog visitors about your interesting experiences with writing, Catherine!