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Published on 3 Comments on You, Too, Can Be The Steph Curry of Writing

I was watching a Warriors NBA game recently. You probably know the one.

I freely admit I'm usually not a big NBA fan. I prefer watching the highlights rather than the entire game. But the hubs and I had been watching the Warriors recently because Steph Curry was getting close to breaking the 3 point record and we both thought it would be kinda cool to celebrate that with him from afar. We lived in the Charlotte area when he was playing for Davidson and got drafted into the pros, so we had been aware of him and his career for a while. And I mean, even if you're not a basketball fan, how can you not enjoy watching someone who is clearly not of this earth show us mere mortals what it's like to be superhuman?

Couple things I love about this half-dozen seconds of sports history. I love that he hit the shot, then kept moving (running backwards, no less) to the other end of the court like hey we gotta game to play, let's get back on defense, NBD. I love that he made the record-breaker in front of the Knicks home crowd. I didn't realize the Knicks had the pick right after the Warriors when they drafted Curry, and he wanted to play for the Knicks, and they apparently couldn't be bothered to trade up for him. As Doc Holliday says in the Tombstone movie, that's a 'reckoning'.

After Curry made his shot (from somewhere out in the parking lot as per usual), Under Armour ran a very profound tribute to their star. Here's the link to the full spot. I bring it up here for a very specific point (har, har) Curry makes:

To know what a perfect shot feels like . . . you have to earn that. The real work is what people don't see. Hours and hours of reps. Perfecting that craft.

Sure, he's talking about basketball. But it hit me that this philosophy, this grit, applies to anything. Specifically, it made me think of my fellow writers. My critique group. The gang who shows up for Anne Hawley's daily writing sprint Zooms. The writers who wake up at 5 a.m. to squeeze in a half hour of writing because they have kids and a day job and that's the only time they can do it. The writers who keep at it, drafting and editing and submitting because they absolutely, positively, will not give up.

I salute you, my friends. Hang in there. Perfect your craft. I look forward to the day when I celebrate your writing successes, just as I celebrated Mr. Curry's.

Click-O-Rama

Curry's achievement really got me thinking about the nature of excellence.

  • Secretariat wins the 1973 Belmont, and with it, the Triple Crown, by absolutely DEMOLISHING the small field of only four other competitors, winning by more than 30 lengths. I love that the camera has to keep backing up because the lead grows so big, they can't keep both Big Red and his closest competitors in the frame.

And in case you're thinking running races for a living doesn't take that much extra effort if you're a horse, WRONG. Racehorses spend the the latter two of their first three years training daily, usually from 6-10am. Daily, people. They have to learn other stuff besides how to run fast. The equipment, the jockey, the starting gates, the crowd noise, the other horses, which leg to lead with and when (yes, this is a thing). They work hard for their money.

  • Diana Nyad finally succeeded in her fifth attempt at swimming the 110 miles from Havana, Cuba to Key West, Florida. She was 64. I'll be 64 soon, and I consider it a win to make it from one end of the pool to the other.
  • I love this domino analogy. Stuff doesn't happen overnight. You gotta chip away at it. So many writer friends have done this without even realizing. Others know full well, and are doing a stellar job as a result.
  • I recently heard a snippet of this podcast and now can't wait to read Omar El Akkad. The piece on the new Kenny G doc was pretty good, too! But this quote from El Akkad really got me thinking. He was joking/not joking:

"The only reason I'm still in this racket is because other people drop out. It's not because I'm any good."

Writer friends: don't be a quitting quitter. Remain in the army of writers breathing down Omar El Akkad's neck. Work your buns off for that moment of 'overnight success'. You too, can be the Steph Curry/Secretariat/Diana Nyad of writing.

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Published on Leave a comment on The End Justifies The Means

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The theme of my current WIP has been on my mind a lot lately. And not just because I'm sunk in the swamp of editing a saggy middle build. Thanks to several great craft articles like this one, I was able to settle on a theme for my trilogy some time ago. My theme is 'the end justifies the means'. Sometimes I use a little more casual shorthand: 'sometimes you gotta do bad to do good'.

You don't have to look very far to find examples of this philosophy in real life. I've been listening to the most excellent podcast Presidential by Washington Post writer Lillian Cunningham. Presidents often make decisions for us that I feel fall into the 'end justifies the means' category.

  • Perhaps the first example that comes to many minds is Harry Truman's decision to drop the nukes on Nagasaki and Hiroshima during World War II. Numbers vary, but hundreds of thousands died. However, Japan surrendered soon after the second bomb was dropped. Developing and using the atomic bomb achieved Truman's goal of ending the war.
Image of Hiroshima via National WWII Museum
  • Abraham Lincoln chose to prosecute a bloody war to preserve the union. A Union victory also meant the abolition of slavery. The Civil War cost more than 600,000 lives. But I believe/hope most would agree preserving the union and ending slavery was worth it.
  • Dwight Eisenhower was an early supporter of intelligence services. It makes sense. He saw plenty of death and destruction in his military career. In his mind, if there was a way to resolve controversy without going to war, he was all for it. Hard to say what he would've thought of covert operations taken to their extremes - assassinations, coups, torture.
  • Richard Nixon's active role in attempting to cover up illegal activities by his re-election campaign staff, known as the Watergate scandal, eventually resulted in ending his presidency. In their minds, the end (winning the next election) outweighed the means (breaking many laws and compounding that mistake with trying to cover it up). I'm not sure if Nixon and his cronies ever considered the possibility of failure. Hubris is often a huge factor with presidents.
  • Bill Clinton's similar approach to a sex scandal worked out a little better for him. He gambled on splitting hairs, word salad, and other forms of verbal obfuscation rather than come clean about his extramarital relationship with a White House intern. Unlike Nixon, however, Clinton's gambit was successful. Apparently the end (staying in office) justified the means (spewing a bunch of nonsense and looking like fool in the process).

It has been pointed out to me, and I agree, that 'the end justifies the means' is a slippery slope to anarchy. Anarchy is not something I aspire to in real life. But in my fiction, I'm totally fine with a little chaos.

In my story, the main character starts out as a nerdy follower of the rules. By the end, he embraces breaking them. But he also learns that no matter how carefully you evaluate your options and make tough choices, you cannot always accurately predict the outcome. Robert McKee calls this wildcard component the 'gap'. I call it 'life'.

p.s. You may be wondering why I haven't mentioned the current occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. I am choosing to include topics I have heard while listening to the Presidential podcast. Their last episode so far is the one covering our 44th president, Barack Obama. I have no doubt there will be much applicable material on this topic when and if they ever release an episode on 45.

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Published on Leave a comment on Liberate Your Lexicon

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I love to read. I love talking books with people who love to read. They are my tribe.

There is a subset of our tribe: people who enjoy reading the same book more than once. Apparently they return to their favorites every so often just because they enjoy the story or the style or some such.

As you may have surmised, I have never been one of those people. I'm all about the Ooh, Shiny. What's new? What's next? What's a book I've always meant to read but haven't gotten around to yet? When I read a book that I absolutely adore, I usually buy it in hardback and put it in a place of honor on the bookshelf. But I rarely re-read them.

Until now. Until I read Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian. Now, I kinda get it.

I need to take a minute here and give props to my kids for steering me in this direction. It got on their radar. Then, a guy in our local library book club was raving about it. I had read The Road, and had seen the film version of No Country For Old Men, so I was vaguely familiar with McCarthy's work. But I hadn't read this one.

Granted, Blood Meridian is not exactly the type of book you cuddle up with as a bedtime story. The formatting is a little wonky. There is no HEA; at least, not that I could tell. It's brutal. It's violent. It's so dark, I feel a little weird as I'm gushing about it to others, worried I might end up on some kind of a watch list.

What's got me hooked is not so much what happens in the story, even though it's quite a tale. It's McCarthy's style. The dialog. The description. But most of all, how he's absolutely, confidently, fearless about word choice.

I'm pretty sure McCarthy doesn't give a hoot about reading levels, or taking the reader 'out' of the story because they have no idea what a 'thrapple'* is. I looked up more word definitions in the week it took me to read this book than I have in the last year. And that's not even counting any of the Spanish (which btw can I just mention I was able to read most of the Spanish on my own, thanks to it being fairly rudimentary, and thanks to mi maestra Roxanne and the free Spanish classes at our local library).

Some of the words, I gave myself a pass for not knowing. I'm a city girl. I don't know much about livestock. I know there is such a think as hobbling an animal to keep it from running off. But I didn't know the knot and rope style used to hobble an animal is called a spancel. I know what spurs are, and in fact am in possession of a pair that used to belong to my grandfather. But I didn't realize the spinny-pokey-thingie is called a rowel. In both of these examples, a lesser author would've probably just used 'hobble' and 'spur'. Not McCarthy.

I learned that planet Anareta is an ancient astrological reference to a harbinger of doom; and that Tasmania used to be called Van Dieman's Land. I freely admit I needed a refresher on the meaning parricide (I knew something was getting killed; just not sure what), and the lesser-known meaning of filibuster as a profession rather than a political strategy.

Just to be clear, I didn't learn these terms because the author explained them in the book. Oh, no. He disperses them as daintily as pumpkin spice on a latte. I appreciate him respecting his reader like that. But I still had to look them up.

And the cool thing is, I didn't mind taking the ten extra seconds to Google. The more I read, the more comfortable I became with the occasional rabbit holes. McCarthy could've used 'handle' instead of 'helve'. But once you see, and say, 'helve', it's undoubtedly the better word. If he had used 'moccasins' or 'slippers' instead of 'pampooties', where would be the fun in that?

There were a few head-scratchers. He rarely missed an opportunity to indulge in obscure geological jargon during one of his lengthy paeans to the otherworldly landscape of the desert southwest. I am still not sure what he was trying to accomplish with his use of 'manciple', even after I looked up the definition.

Reading Blood Meridian was a challenge. But it was a challenge I thoroughly enjoyed. I'm already looking forward to re-reading this literary nonpareil to see what I've overlooked. And we didn't even talk about the sentence structure yet!

* thrapple is the neck and throat area

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Published on Leave a comment on Eating Is Such Sweet Sorrow

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In a previous post I mentioned several of the books that inspired me to write my current YA trilogy. One of them was Michael Moss' Salt Sugar Fat. It was in SSF that I learned about the Monell Chemical Senses Center in Philadelphia.

This sculpture by artist Arlene Love greets visitors to the Monell Center. The piece's official name is 'Face Fragment', but everyone calls it 'Eddy'.

(In case you haven't noticed, my favorite part of the writing process is the research. Hands-down. No question. In my next life, I'm coming back as a professional researcher.)

But I digress.

At Monell, scientists focus on the mechanisms by which humans (and a few other species) process and interpret sensory input. Specifically, how we smell and taste things, and how that input affects us. Research done at Monell is why we know all sorts of interesting stuff, like:

  • cats are unable to taste sweets
  • olive oil contains anti-inflammatories
  • why smoking pot gives some people the munchies

They're also responsible for more serious discoveries, like the mechanics of detecting the taste of sugar (it's complicated). Monell researchers identified the specific receptor for sweet/sugar. It's also very complicated, but basically when this receptor encounters something sweet, it sends a signal to the brain, and the brain does its thing. Also complicated.

In a perfect world, we would be very appreciative that we have produced so many smart humans and they are doing such good work for us at Monell. But, alas. That dreamy scenario is complicated by a couple of important facts:

  • only about half of Monell's operating budget is provided by more or less neutral taxpayer dollars.
  • the other half is supplied by far-from-neutral corporate donations.

Corporate funding means sometimes the donors get an early look at test results. It also buys the donors access by asking the Monell staff to create bespoke experiments specifically designed for an existing or proposed product of said donor.

This is not to say the staff at Monell is on the take. There is no indication anyone has ever skewed test results to please the Krafts and Nestlés of the world. But that doesn't stop Big Food from spinning test results to suit their needs. For example, when test results indicated the preference for things that taste sweet could be identified in newborns, Big Food spun that result to say liking sugar was 'natural', to offset negative publicity about the risks of eating sugar to excess.

Or that time in the 1970s when a Monell study discovered that children and African Americans had a higher preference for salty or sweet foods than other segments of the population. Some corporations (like Frito Lay, for example) interpreted this as a green flag to crank out as many salty-crunchies as those markets would bear.

Sometimes the Monell staff are appalled at the perversion of the data they have worked so hard to produce. One look at the public health crisis, not just in our country, but world-wide, tells you who is currently winning that PR battle.

The spooky face fragment sculpture at the entrance of Monell is supposed to represent the awesome power of the human senses. But I see its ravaged visage more as a cry for help. If the scientists at Monell can come up with a method for resisting the siren call of the salty-crunchy aisle at the grocery store, then I'll be really impressed.

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1

Published on 1 Comment on Said is Dead, Baby

Conventional writing wisdom dictates we stick with 'said' for attributions. I don't know about you, but I get a little sick of 'said'.

Props to The Writer's Beat for a useful page which I stumbled upon recently, entitled '200 Words Instead of 'Said''.   I borrowed the idea, rearranged them alphabetically, pruned a few that made no sense and replaced them with a few of my own so that we stick to the 200 number.

The highlights are mine - these are words I would definitely consider using instead of 'said'. Some of these may not be perfect as attributions, but work great as a set-up. For example, I probably wouldn't ever use 'yawned' as an attribution like this:

"What time is it?" Shelby yawned.

but I would consider this:

Shelby yawned. "What time is it?"

So here they are. Any additions?

200 Words To Use Instead of 'Said'

abnegatedaddedadvisedagreedallowed
announcedansweredapologizedarguedasked
assentedassessedassured
bandiedbarkedbawledbeganbegged
bellowedbitblastedblatheredbleated
blurtedblusteredboastedbreathedburbled
cackledcalledcarpedcaterwauledchallenged
chantedchattedchewedchirpedchirruped
chucklescoaxedcommunicatedcommandedcomplained
concludedconfessedcontinuedcounteredcountermanded
coweredcriedcursedcussed
decideddeclareddeliberateddelivereddemanded
denieddisagreeddrawleddribbleddripped
egged onelocutedencouragedexaggeratedexclaimed
faultedfinishedflirtedfretted
gaspedgiggledgloatedgoggledgrimaced
gripedgrizzledgroanedgrumbledgrunted
gurgled
harpedhesitatedhintedhissedhowled
holleredhoundedhuffed
impliedimploredinformedinquiredinsisted
interruptedinsinuatedintoned
joked
lamentedlaughedlecturedlied
mewedmimickedmoanedmournedmumbled
murmuredmuttered
naggednatterednegated
objectedobservedofferedogledoozed
ordered
persistedpesteredpleadedponderedprattled
prayedproclaimedproddedpromisedpronounced
proposedprotested
queriedquestioned
raspedrattled onrecalledreflectedrelated
remarkedrememberedreminiscedrepeatedreplied
respondedripostedroaredroastedrumbled
sangscoldedscreamedshoutedshrieked
simperedslurredsnappedsnarledsneered
sobbedspelled outsplutteredspokesputtered
squeakedsquealedstammeredstartedstuttered
sulkedswore
teasedtemptedthreatenedthoughttittered
toastedtoldtormentedtwittered
urgeduttered
wailedwarbledwarnedwent onwept
wheezedwishedwhimperedwhinedwhispered
wonderedwooed
yawnedyelled

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Published on Leave a comment on All Rejection Letters Are Not Created Equal

As I was cleaning out my writing files, I came upon a folder containing an article I submitted to Highlights For Children magazine. Back in the day when I was first breaking into writing for children, getting an article accepted by Highlights was the Holy Grail of submission success. 

Highlights didn't accept my article. But they sent me a wonderful rejection letter. Not one of the form 'It is not suited to our present needs' things. Oh, no. This rejection letter is a beauty.  It's full of very specific details on what exactly was discussed by the reviewers, and how it could possibly, someday, with a little more work, actually suit their present needs. I'm posting a copy of it at the end to give props to their reviewers. They obviously spent valuable time reading my sub and giving me very valuable feedback. When's the last time you got this level of feedback on a rejection letter? Yeah, I thought so.

I'm also posting it to share their input with any of you who are submitting to children's magazines. Hope it helps.

My hat's off to Highlights. I appreciate the time and the info, even though you didn't publish my article.  

To wit: here's the article I submitted:

All About Apples

On many fall afternoons you can find Nancy Jacobson leading a group of school children on a tour of her family’s apple orchard. She tells them all about apples and how they grow.  The children usually have many questions, but Nancy has the answers. Nancy knows all about apples. She should – her family has owned the orchard for more than forty years.

The orchard sits on more than three hundred acres of gently rolling hills in eastern Minnesota. The Jacobson family home is still on the site. It is part of a building complex that includes a large apple storage and processing facility, bakery, and gift shop. Elsewhere on the property are strawberry fields, a pumpkin patch, and a corn maze.

Nancy’s parents and five siblings still work at the orchard. Nancy does the hiring and gives tours. Each of her brothers and sisters work at things they enjoy. One brother takes care of the apple trees. Another runs the wagon rides, gift shop and corn maze. Nancy’s mother oversees some of the baking, and her father fills in where needed. There are even some Jacobson grandchildren involved in the orchard operation.

Enjoying a beautiful fall day at Aamodt's Apple Orchard

The orchard is busiest during the fall. They harvest apples from August through October. Seven days a week, people come to buy fresh apples, pies, and donuts. Families choose the perfect pumpkins for jack-o-lanterns in the pumpkin patch. They take turns finding their way through the rustling paths of the corn maze.

“A lot of children think if you have an apple orchard, you’re busy in the fall,” says Nancy. “But we work all year round.” During the winter each of the 8,000 apple trees are pruned. Dead and crowded limbs are cut away to let in more air and light. Pruning helps the trees live longer and produce better apples.

Spring is a critical time for the orchard. Fragrant flowers appear on the apple trees. In order for apples to grow, the flowers must be pollinated by bees. “We can’t just rely on the bees that are roaming around in nature, because it is such a critical time of year for us. We bring in colonies.” They use about one colony of bees per acres, and they have 80 acres of apple trees.

“Bees are fussy creatures,” Nancy says. “If it’s wet, windy or cold, they won’t come out and work. The bees are furry. They’re after the nectar inside the base of the stem. They dive into the blossom to get the nectar and get that yellow pollen on their furry backs. They fly to another blossom and get that pollen all over their furry backs.” The pollen collects on the bees’ furry bodies and is deposited on other trees each time they land someplace new. “It’s all by accident,” Nancy says.

The orchard grows about twenty different types of apples. “A lot of the varieties we grow were developed by the University of Minnesota, so they are good cultivars for our climate,” says Nancy. “Haralson is a  great apple. It is a real workhorse. It grows well here and people can use it for lots of different things.” The orchard also grows some old-fashioned varieties. “Duchess is a really old-fashioned green pie apple. The day we opened up we had people waiting in line for Duchess. They remember that’s the apple their grandmother used to make pies.”

Nancy’s parents bought the orchard when she was a little girl. She enjoyed growing up on an apple orchard. “I had my own apple tree. It was right outside the back door of the house so I could hear my mom call.” It was the perfect tree for climbing, and had some branches perfect for sitting. “I knew that tree like I knew my own bedroom,” Nancy says. “When I had a rough day at school, I could go out and climb the tree and everything was fine.”

Nancy and her brother John also enjoyed riding on the picking trailer during the harvest. “When the pickers were picking the apples, the trailer would follow along and pick up the bushel boxes. There was always an empty box in the middle for my brother and I. We’d each have our own little box we’d sit in, and they’d pick the boxes up and fill them in around us. The trailer would start out empty, then it would have a few more boxes, and a few more boxes, and then you were in the middle of a big trailer that full of boxes filled with apples. Then they would unload it, and we would go back out and do another run with it.”

Some activities weren’t so fun. One job Nancy didn’t like was hand-thinning the apples. When the apples grew to the size of golf balls, they had to be thinned by hand.  Using a small set of shears, she and her siblings worked their way through the orchard, cutting away excess apples. “We left one apple for every 6 inches of tree limb,” Nancy says. This was a hot and tedious job. But it was necessary. Thinning is one way to produce the best quality apples and help keep the trees healthy.

One afternoon as Nancy finished a tour for some school children, one of the students  raised his hand. When called on, he said, “Nancy, this place is all about apples!” Nancy thinks he is absolutely right. Even though there is hard work to be done year round, Nancy and her family love working at the orchard. “Growing up in this environment, it gets under your skin. You learn that work can be fun.”

Now that you've read the article, here's the rejection letter, as promised. Isn't it great?

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2

Published on 2 Comments on The Goodreads Revelation

Like many writers, the lion's share of my marketing efforts is directed at Facebook and Twitter. But the focal point of my recent engagement efforts has added a third leg to the marketing stool: Goodreads. It's not as if I've mastered the other two - I certainly haven't. But when another writer friend mentioned I hadn't set up an author presence on GR (thanks, Matt!), I did some checking and realized I was overlooking an important piece of the marketing puzzle.

As an avid reader, I've been enjoying Goodreads for years. It's a great way to organize reading lists and find book recommendations. Turns out it's also a great way to network with other readers. More readers mean more reviews. More reviews (even if they're not five stars) are better than no reviews.

In the process of setting up my author presence there, I discovered I had never invited my Facebook and Twitter friends to befriend me on Goodreads as well. This was a simple click that grew my GR friends from 60 or so to 350+ and counting. Investigating some of these new GR friends' profiles, reaching out via GR's email function, and joining special interest groups has already led me to some wonderfully generous authors who have shared some great tips with me, like Susan May. Thanks to her cogent explanation of how and why to use Goodreads, I am committed to making GR an equal partner in my social networking efforts.

By now I hope I've convinced you to include Goodreads in your engagement strategy. How much time, you may be wondering? On a recent day, this is how I spent the time I apportioned to marketing/platform:

  • I selected a page of Goodreads friends, around 30 names or so.
  • I clicked on each name to view their profile. 
  • I reached out via GR and introduced myself. 
  • If they had written any books, I selected at least one as Want To Read. 
  • I noted their Twitter handle and made sure I was following them. 
  • Ditto their Facebook page. 
  • If they had a website, I visited it. 
  • If they had a blog, I read a few posts and commented if I had something relevant to say. 
  • I subscribed to their website. 
  • I shared any posts I thought fit into my platform. 

This cost me nothing in actual dollars and cents, and took about one hour of my time. With over 300 friends on Goodreads, working through one page of friends per day, I estimate it will take about two weeks to complete this project. Once I'm caught up, I hope to stay current as I add friends, rather than doing them in batches.

If there are any programs or apps out there that will show me the social media info of people I already follow on Goodreads or Facebook or Twitter, please let me know what they are. I know you can invite FB and Twitter friends to GR, but I don't know of any way to do the reverse other than manually.

Let me digress (and it just wouldn't be one of my blog posts if I didn't digress, now would it?) and thank all of you who place your social networking gadgets in a prominent place near the top of your website. Hunting and gathering for links is the number one time waster in this whole platform/engagement endeavor. I can't tell you how many times I had to go searching manually for authors' Facebook pages because there was no indication on their website they the had ever heard of FB, much less set up a page there. But when I clicked over to Facebook on my own, just to double check, and typed in the author's name in the FB search bar, lo and behold! There was a perfectly nice FB page, all up to date with current posts and lots of likes and everything, just waiting to be discovered. People, for the love of all that is holy, please keep your websites updated with live links. If I hadn't been in OCD mode, bound and determined to track them down, I would have done the BOTH and zoomed on to the next author's site. That is all.

The Brushing Of The Hands (BOTH)

Being engaged is a good feeling. Human interaction can be a lot of work, but also very gratifying. I'm enjoying working with Goodreads. It's a nice change of pace from FB and Twitter, which, let's face it, can be something of a cricket echo chamber. And here's the requisite CTA: I hope you will take a minute and follow me on Goodreads. I follow back.

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Published on Leave a comment on Rare, or Ripoff?
Cabeza de Vaca is Spanish for "looks good in hats"

So I get an email from Amazon the other day, saying someone bought a copy of my biography of Cabeza de Vaca and I was to ship it to them forthwith. Cool, right? Honestly, I hadn't sold one in so long, I had forgotten I even had them listed for sale.

When the book was published, I purchased extra copies, intending to include them as incentives on school visits. Having some left over, I listed them on Amazon and moved on to other projects. The book is OOP now (Out of Print), so I guess I have cornered the market. It was originally listed at $9.95 from the publisher. Mine are a great value at $4.99 plus shipping.

Imagine my surprise to discover a few other random Amazon book sellers are offering my book, the very same book, for $70 and higher! Each! I guess because it is now OOP, they feel justified in charging a king's ransom for this little paperback. Really curious if they actually have any in inventory as listed, but I don't want to pay $70 to find out. Doubly curious if they have sold any!

If you're like me and spent your entire K-12 public education never hearing of this guy, let me take a minute and fill you in. When I finally learned of him (thank you, UTA Special Collections!), it blew my mind that someone so cool was so, well, undiscovered. That's what inspired me to write about him.

Some fun facts about Alvar Nunez Cabeza de Vaca (actually, he may not have considered them 'fun'):

  • He was one of only four survivors of the Narvaez expedition, which set out from Spain headed for Florida in 1527 with more than 300 (mostly) men.
  • He was the first European to cross the North American continent, from Florida in the east to Mexico in the west.
  • Most of those nearly 3000 miles he traveled on foot, naked and starving.
  • He earned a reputation as a healer among the natives by improvising some techniques patched together from his Catholic upbringing. He freely confessed he thought it was nonsense, but the natives insisted.
  • We can add 'writer' to his long list of achievements. One of the first things he did when he returned to Spain is write a journal detailing his experience. He is considered one of the first ethnologists of the New World, thanks to the meticulous documentation of some of the natives he encountered.
  • My favorite 'fun' fact about Alvar is that after eight years of wandering the desert southwest, surviving many near-death experiences from cannibals, starvation, slavery, hurricanes, and pirates, and finally making it back home to Spain, he didn't curl up next to a fire with a decent plate of tapas and live out the rest of his days. Oh, no. He demanded reassignment for another expedition to the New World. He wanted to go back! And he did!

So far I've been able to resist the urge to double, triple, or even quadruple my sales price, so spread the word, folks - you can get a great deal on my book, directly from the author, and save a whopping 88%! Hurry, before I succumb and can no longer resist those greedy impulses.

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4

Published on 4 Comments on You Gotta Start Somewhere

I've written a little bit previously about what inspired my current writing project. I'd like to fill in a few blanks today. To recap, it's a YA trilogy. Here's my logline:

An unsuspecting teen is drawn into a resistance movement determined to expose a powerful but secretive group that is controlling the public through the food supply.

I guess I should clarify that it is fiction. But the more research I do, the more I wonder if I should also include an 'inspired by true events' line in the front matter of the books. Because it certainly is.

For the past few years, I've been on a processed food intellectual journey of sorts. I started at Curious, then quickly transitioned to Informed. Eventually I got to a level of Angry, which almost immediately morphed into Fury Of A Thousand Suns. Today I guess I would describe my present state as Inspired. Sorta in the same way that a blast furnace inspires coal to become steel.

Here's how I got to now.

Curious

Several years ago, I watched Morgan Spurlock's now-infamous 2004 documentary, Super Size Me. If you haven't seen it, you should (watch here now for free). Spurlock pledged to eat nothing but McDonald's food every day for thirty days. He could order whatever he wanted, as long as he ate each item on the menu at least once. I won't spoil it for you. But let's just say, I found it inspiring.

At the time, I was still a fan of fast food. I knew in my heart that McDonald's made the best french fries. I frequented drive-throughs often enough that I had 'my usual' at Taco Bell (Burrito Supreme Combo), Whataburger (#7 with jalapenos), and Sonic (#1 with jalapenos and tots). And yes, I agree Whataburger has better burgers than Sonic, but until Whataburger goes nationwide, Sonic's tots make them a perfectly acceptable substitute IMO. It's probably no surprise that at that time, I was also 15-20 pounds overweight and on the verge of needing medication to treat high cholesterol.

Super Size Me spelled the end of my McDonald's trips. I mourned their fries, but their other food was always mediocre IMO. My kids had long outgrown the Happy Meals marketing juggernaut. So it wasn't too hard for me to slam that door shut.

Next up, a copy of Skinny Bitch entered my orbit. I found it hilarious in parts, if a little extreme. If animal cruelty is a trigger for you (and if it's not, what the heck is wrong with you?), you have been warned.

Informed

Clearly there was more to this business model than charming old-school marketing strategies like venting fast food kitchens in such a way that the aroma of burger patties and fries lures customers in like grizzlies to a salmon run. In Eric Schlosser's eye-opening Fast Food Nation, I learned much about the industry, not the least of which is that we wouldn't even be able to stomach their mediocre fare, if it weren't for a handful of chemical factories located off the New Jersey turnpike working their asses off to improve the taste of low quality food.

Angry

In Michael Pollan's most excellent The Omnivore's Dilemma, I learned about the political shenanigans in the 1970s that drove thousands of small farmers out of business (and caused more than a few to commit suicide); and the (very obvious in hindsight) link between today's processed food behemoth and the obesity epidemic currently overburdening our health care system.

Can you tell I was building up a head of steam?

Fury of A Thousand Suns

By the time I discovered Michael Moss' Salt Sugar Fat, I was ready to go to war. It is truly despicable the lengths the processed food industry goes to to addict and entrap us into unnatural consumption patterns. From Moss, I learned that many food industry execs migrated from the cigarette industry. Is it any wonder they are all about addiction, and value their bottom line over the health of the consumer? And the hypocritical icing on this very unhealthy cake: I learned many food industry executives will not even consume their own products. Oh, the infuriating irony.

And here we are today, in the midst of a global pandemic that is especially devastating to folks who are already in poor health, perhaps because of poor diet. A poor diet often foisted upon us by greedy corporations more than willing to sacrifice consumer health at the altar of the almighty dollar.

So I crushed my fury into a tiny, tiny ball and compressed all that mad energy into determination to do something about this wretched state of affairs. But what can one person do against an army of corporate and political will?

Not much, I guess. I stopped drinking soda. I stopped eating fast food.

I started writing a book.

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6

Published on 6 Comments on Want Writing Success? Just Push That Button

Here at the Johnston household, we're beginning Week 5(!!) of mostly total self-isolation (by choice; no health issues, thank dog) during the Covid-19 kerfuffle. Some of us are losing our minds (yes, extroverts, I'm looking at you). Others are making hay while the sun shines, baby! I've finished the first draft of the second book in my current WIP trilogy, and have begun Janice Hardy's most excellent 31-day DIY revision workshop. I've used it before and highly recommend.

Image by @clarktibbs via Unsplash

If you're having trouble getting inspired because of all the other craziness going on, I feel ya. Here's a handy trick I use when I'm having trouble getting motivated to write: nothing brings me out of a writing funk like a great success story. Specifically, a writing success story.

I've put a few of my favorites together for you. There's a variety of genres here, but they have a few things in common - not the least of which is BIC time (Butt In Chair). So what are we waiting for? Read this, get inspired, and get busy.

Fantasy

Amanda Hocking - my favorite line from Ms. Hocking's experiences: she wrote constantly, took writing classes, and marketed her booty off, 'only to be rejected until she was already a self-made millionaire'. The self-made millionaire part resulted from her decision to e-publish her stories. They have since been purchased by St. Martin's Press and are available in traditional paper format as well.

Kid Lit

Rachel Renee Russell - Russell began writing in middle school but gave up her dream after being told by a writing class teacher she had no talent. She took his advice, got a law degree, raised a family. But after a mid-life dumping by her (now ex-) husband, she returned to her passion and submitted a manuscript. Bam! The Dork Diaries were born (Simon & Schuster).

WhoDunnit

Kerry Wilkinson - perhaps the most nonchalant backstory ever. Wilkinson's detective story e-books topped Amazon's e-book sales for 2011. Wilkinson claims he simply turned 30 and decided to do something with his life, so he wrote a story. After he finished the story he noticed a 'publish your book with us' button on his computer screen, so he pushed it. And the rest is hi$tory. Now why didn't I think of that?

Romantic Suspense

My favorite part of this podcast is at about the 41' mark where Marie Force talks about the difference switching to indie publishing made for her. 80,000 books sold. In ONE YEAR, people! Cha-CHING!

Here's hoping you are making the best use of the unexpected excess time you may or may not have on your hands now that most of us are doing our part to battle Covid-19 by staying at home as much as possible. Your Future Self will thank you.

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