Sandy Nathan's Blog, page 3

Yoo-hooo! Calling my Tribe – Where Are Youuuu?

MY PLATFORM AND HOW I GOT IT

I received a message from a fellow author wanting to know how I, as a successful person (and assumed, successful author) built my platform. She loved what I was doing and asked for advice on what to do to gather her own tribe and have her message resonate with potential readers. She mentioned a bunch of stuff she was doing, in addition to writing her book and sharing it widely. What else should she be doing?

I thought to myself, I can answer this in two ways: Give her the truth, or make up a bunch of **** and sell it as a seminar.

Truth or consequences? I may end up doing both, but I’ll start by telling the truth. Here’s the basic question, authors: If you aren’t already making a living with your writing, do you need to for some reason? Some people make big bucks as authors. That’s cool. But if you are struggling to make a living with your writing, thinking any day will be the big break through––I would suggest that you change professions. That’s even if you did take a course on following your dream and living your passion. Writing is just a dismal, hard way to earn a buck. I wrote a blog article somewhere about the tens of thousands of Bureau of Labor job categories where you can earn more than with writing. Pick one of those and write in your spare time.

If you already make tons of money with your writing, cool. If you don’t currently rake in the dough and don’t need to make a living with your writing, you won the jackpot. You can have lots of fun without spending too much, and maybe make some money, if you pay attention to what I say below. If you don’t pay attention, you’ll end up crazy, ,just like authors trying to make living at the dismal occupation. (The unofficial name for economics is “the dismal science.” It’s not as dismal as writing.)

I used to be an economist. It was easy: just earn straight As for at least a BS and an MS, and a PhD if you can. (Though I only did a year of the PhD.) While in school, wow your professors with your erudite and insightful grasp of the subject, so that they enthusiastically recommend you to their friends, who are in a position to hire you. (Remember the days when a person got out of school and there were jobs?) After getting a job, I found success was a simple matter of analyzing the **** out of whatever my bosses pointed me at. And presenting it at professional meetings and to local governments. I did that, and my bosses loved me and so did their bosses, and even people like economists at the RAND Corporation and National Science Foundation. Easy peasy.

Not so with writing as a career. The woman who asked me “What do you do to build your platform?” does not want to know what I did to succeed or for how many years I did it. I did everything, for years and years. Enough so that when the IRS audited our literary adventure and I told them what I had done to be a commercially successful author, they fell to their knees, sobbing, “Oh, you poor baby.” No, the IRS does not do that. But we won. Anyway, I did everything that the major books about what you should do to succeed as a writer in terms of marketing and all that **** say to do. (My, I’m in a spicy mood this morning.)

After years of study and doing everything, I have formed the following basic principles about succeeding as an author that I’d like to share with you. Buckle your seat belts, compadres: my maxims pack a wallop.

1. FORGET YOUR MARKET. ALSO FORGET YOUR TRIBE. THINK ABOUT YOURSELF.

All the marketing/authoring pundits say the opposite. Great. They aren’t you and they don’t live in your skin. If you feel lousy because you’re hanging your well-being on your Klout score, your writing will stink. I need to amplify that.

I write Visionary Fiction (Amazon calls it Metaphysical Science Fiction and Fantasy. Amazon will call it whatever wants. That’s the thing about a monopoly.) To me, Visionary Fiction is fiction–made up–writing with a moral core. That means that right and wrong, good and evil exist and the book is about the struggle for right over might. Doesn’t mean good will win. In addition to having a moral core, my kind of Visionary Fiction has at least a few characters who reach a higher level of human development. I’m not going to say the species elevates to the woo-woo sphere, because I see no empirical evidence that our species is on anything but a dive into the nasty. But to be my kind of Visionary Fiction, some people in the book grow in spirit and consciousness.

This type of writing is more demanding of the writer than, say chick-lit (most likely. I’ve never written chick-lit, nor have I written romance or other addiction-based genres. Yes, that’s me being judgmental.). I write with my soul. To write, I need to have my soul cleaned up so that it coughs up verbal sparkles of enlightenment. Chiefly, this means taming my major addictions and being whole spiritually. What does this mean in concrete terms?

If I’m in good shape spiritually, I feel the outlines of my body, a solid core. I feel my heart beating. It radiates, light, love and good will. That’s what hearts do. It’s state pulsates outward. I feel my chakras, those pesky energy centers that no one can see but are there anyway, lined up from my tail-bone to the crown of my head. My energy is pulsating and I can feel all of it. Nothing disturbs my equanimity, my peace. I’m not reaching out trying to grab for something, living in a state of lust. I’m not attached to getting anything, nor am running in terror or any kind of aversion from anything in my world.

“Detached from aversion and attraction, the yogi lives in peace with a silent mind.” (The Bhagavad Gita says something like this. Google wouldn’t find it for me.)

You can write some killer visionary fiction from that state. Any kind of fiction or nonfiction, too. My Stepping off the Edge, a cross-genre nonfiction memoir/self help for writers and everyone else, was written in that state and higher. (Meditative states have an infinite up side.) I expect that regular writers do their best work from that sailing “wheeeee” that accompanies the state I just described.

Say I read a  book about “growing my tribe” or the hottest marketing plan? How about I start charting my sales figures or looking at them every day? What happens?

I lost my tribe, before I found them. And my sales . . .

Your chakras will deflate in an instant. If you’re hanging on people, numbers, friends, or likes, you will cripple yourself as a writer of spiritual fiction or any kind of work that requires “soul clarity and truthfulness.” You might be able to cough up a salable book or two, but they won’t be of a caliber that will satisfy any spiritually developed person. Spirit sings. Also spreads its bliss.

This upside-down thinking is new to me. I used to play “She with the most FB Friends wins.” “Every five-star review is a step closer to heaven.” I used to get really upset if my books didn’t sell the way I thought they should. In other words, I used to think marketing, platform, selling first, Sandy second, or maybe fifth. What I did with that was run it hard enough to make myself sick.

My hands are on their way to wrecked from spending so much time on the computer. My brain was fried. I was crabby, exhausted. Snapping at everyone, mostly my dear husband. I thought obsessively of going to Venice, the one in Italy, not the one near Los Angeles. Escape.

About a week ago, I made the inner flip that resulted in what you’re reading here. I’m changing my behavior so that how my body feels and the joy I feel with my profession is the barometer to success. I want those chakras flaming! Spinning! Frolicking! And I want to write and sell a lot, too.

How does my brave new world work, relative to the opposite? I have no clue, other than to say that I had just made the transition to putting my soul and my physical well-being first when that other author contacted me about my great platform. Just a coincidence?

WHY YOU SHOULD BE INTERESTED IN SPIRIT I started making these Maxim cards when putting out the second edition of Stepping off the Edge. The book bristles with these. I may make a picture book out of them, who knows. Was this the result of a marketing idea building on the platform of my book. No. The idea just came to me.

2. LEARN TO WRITE

Looks like this will be a series of articles. I’m already at 1,400 words, but I can’t quit without adding this crucial bit. I have more than 700 books on my Kindle. Most of them I got through BookBub, ENT, Blurb-a-minute, or Read-Me-or-I’ll-Die–the emailed, juried lists of new, cheap, or free books that fill our in-boxes every day. Those arbiters of mass taste and harbingers of our success as authors are hard to get on. You may have to beg. But what they can do to your sales, often for a week or more.

So, as a self-pubbed author, you devise the perfect book cover and two sentence blurb, hustle up fifty great reviews (use magic here, black or white) and you are accepted by one of the big book advertising sites. I see the ad and your efforts snag my attention for the approximate ten seconds needed to download your tome. I get it. And forget it. But say I open the book for some reason.

I read two pages. Blecch. Delete. Bad writing shows up that fast. A book has to  hook me in a page or it’s off my Kindle. I don’t give bad reviews. I don’t like slamming people’s stuff. Four stars is as low as I go, with maybe a three once in a while for ludicrously bad work.

Writing fiction is not the same as professional or academic writing. I did LOTS of both. Here’s an example from a study I participated in with the RAND Corporation. (My previous married name was Tapella.) Here’s an amazing example from my MS thesis in economics: 

The determination of the cost of sprawl is based on the differing responses of service providers to increased demand for services from contiguous and noncontinuous new urbanization.

That was an easy sentence. If you’re going to have anyone read your stuff, it can’t read like that. (However, that sentence and many more like it got a master’s degree that got me a job that earned me more than 90% of the population of female workers, including writers. So, go figure.)

Though I’m pleased with the way my work reads now (and so are my reviewers), it took me nineteen years to attain my proficiency. In 1995, I had the big YOWSER spiritual experience that I write about in my Author’s Notes that started me writing full time. From there, it was work, work, work. I was in one writing group run by a local poet for nine years. It petered out and I joined a group of traditionally-published professional writers led by a professor of literature for two years. (In the following article, when we discuss controlling your PTSD in writing groups, I’ll go into this more.)

After eleven years in writing groups–let that sink in: eleven years–I had a giant breakthrough and met my current editor. She is reputed to be a niece of Freya, the Norse Goddess of War, and does her edits with a golden machete. I love her. She’s tougher than the lit professor was and does not let an extra word slip by. It’s all: action, action, one word of dialogue, climactic action. that’s the modern novel. She delivers her dissected manuscripts in such a kind way that I seldom sob for more than an hour after receiving one. I’ve been working with her for eight years. I don’t claim to be the best writer in the world, but what I’ve become, I owe to her. I’ve internalized her voice, so that when I begin to write words like “price elasticity of demand,” my fingers refuse to type.

So, if you spend nineteen years working and learn to throw out everything but verbs, you may develop a writing style that guarantees success.

In future articles I will divulge my other secrets.

All the best! Don’t forget: put yourself first! If you feel lousy, your work will stink.

Sandy Nathan: Remember, You Come First

Sandy Nathan

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WHERE’S MY TRIBE? THE SERIES YOU WISH YOU’D READ FIRST.

This lil’ article kicked up a fire storm for me. Here are a few topics for later posts:

TO RESONATE WITH YOUR POTENTIAL READERS, JUST RESONATE. They’ll find you.
FORGET FOCUS GROUPS AND BETA READERS AND MOST PARTICIPATION ON LINE. Don’t forget editors, copy editors, and proofreaders.
DON’T BE AN IDIOT. If it seems too good to be true, it is. This is a predatory industry someone who wants to take your money and will promise anything to get it.
IF YOU HATED SENDING IT OUT, OTHER PEOPLE HATE RECEIVING IT.
GIVE UP YOUR MESSAGE. Whatever your message is–save the planet, get everyone enlightened, treat the breweries right, kill the immigrants, or a least their parents (these are real messages I’ve seen on FB)–it is wrecking your writing. Stop it. Or write it, put it in a drawer, and write something else. If you have a real message, it will come through your words without effort or thought on your part.
DON’T PARTICIPATE IN SOCIAL MEDIA TO “FIND YOUR TRIBE.”  Finding your tribe is a good concept: connect with people similar to you who like the same stuff. Maybe you can help each other, or, if not, have a good time. How many people are currently selling seminars, running FB groups, or trying to teach you to “find your tribe”? It’s overdone, like vampires. Time has come and gone for tribes and bloodsuckers.
DON’T PRETEND YOU’RE INTERACTING WITH PEOPLE ON-LINE BECAUSE YOU WANT TO BE FRIENDS. YOU WANT THEM TO BUY YOUR BOOK: THE FRIENDS BUSINESS IS A PLOY. ONCE YOU’RE HONEST ABOUT THAT, THE POSSIBILITY THAT THEY MIGHT BUY OPENS UP. Trying to be friends to get soemone to buy your book is phoney and rude. That’s the key to success on Twitter and everywhere else.

 

 

 

Stepping off the Edge: A Roadmap for the Soul – Coming at you!

Are you ready to step off the edge?

Stepping off the Edge: A Roadmap for the Soul  is the new edition of my spiritual classic. Why should you be interested in Stepping off the Edge? Do you have an on-line addiction that is threatening your job, relationship, and sanity? Do you feel that you don’t know who you really are–in the big sense of  what you’re doing on the planet and in the little sense of why am I here? In Podunkwalla USA? In this skin and particular life? Have you lost something important–a spouse or kids or everything you owned? Is life a pain, or even worse, dull as sawdust? Would you like to go somewhere where you could learn something worth learning with people worth knowing?

I have just outlined what’s in my book and why it’s for you. Stepping off the Edge is a roadmap for navigating the hardest, most important journey you’ll ever make: your life. I wrote Stepping because I wanted to share what I did that facilitated my life working out. The book is a memoir, a very personal series of stories and vignettes that illustrate spiritual principles. It’s not a text book, though it does contain theoretical material. It’s not a how to book, but it does contain exercises you can use to apply concepts. Above all, it’s not a 1, 2, 3 guide to how to be spiritual. I don’t sit you down and teach you how to meditate or pray. (Some things, a person has to figure out for herself.)

My life has worked out and that’s my primary credential in writing this book. I’m sixty eight years old and an happy! That may be the most important thing. I’m happy, content, and in love with my husband of forty years. I love my work–writing for you–and live a beautiful California horse ranch surrounded by animals and people I love.

These are the gates to the estate on which my family lived. We didn't own the whole thing, it had been subdivided years before. We had an acre of paradise.

My life wasn’t always like that. When I was eighteen, my father was brutally slain by a drunk driver. At that time, I had a charmed existence. My parents owned the tenth largest residential construction company in the USA. We lived in what is now the third most affluent town in the country. I showed horses and water skied on weekends.

Within months of my father’s death, I lived in a tiny apartment at below poverty income. I won’t talk about how that happened, but it did. My brain still thought I was upper class, Why aren’t you doing more charity work, Sandy?

I was seriously depressed for a decade after my father’s death. I didn’t know it and it didn’t slow my down; I earned two master’s degrees and part of a PhD. I was the Santa Clara County economic analyst. Big titles, big jobs, while my soul labored to keep me moving and darkness drifted just out of sight.

Darkness nipped at me

A huge breakthrough occurred when I attended one of the giant enlightenment seminars during the 1970s. One of the participants wore a blanket around her hunch shoulders. She shuddered and cried the entire weekend, a living plea for help. The seminar leader gave it to her, stripping her to her truth. He showed her and everyone else that she was identified with physical illness and in love with the attention she got as a sick person. He also helped her expose what her sick act had cost her: a husband had walked out on her; she’d lost her kids. She got it, at least then.

Some people really have sickness down. They may be "sick" all their lives, oh, eighty five years or so.

Someone in my life was like that. I had assumed that her “sick act” was as immutable as the fabric of the universe. A Mount Rushmore of the soul. I was also forbidden to feel/express any resentment or be anything but kind and empathetic. The seminar leader showed me that the woman’s behavior was an act, an unconscious but very powerful role that had taken over her life.  As an act and not the real her, it could be changed. I saw. Even if that person who was impacting me so much couldn’t change, I could. 

How did I get from that moment to now? It’s all in Stepping off the Edge Took thirty-nine years. I did everything from getting an MA in Marriage, Family and Child Counseling to spending thirty years with a meditation school based in India, to coaching negotiations at the Graduate School of Business at Stanford, to working on myself every way I could.  Stepping contains the fruit of my spiritual pilgrimage.

I’m pulling out the stops in getting the word out about Stepping. You can buy it as a paperback and as an eBook very soon. I’m puttin’ the message out in other ways, via Facebook albums and Pinterest boards and who knows what else I’ll think of. These new social media offer terrific ways of sharing content and giving readers a very clear look at what a book is about. Like this:

Bliss accompanies spirit. If you're thinking about studying with someone don't feel blissful around him or her, you're in the wrong place.

My intent is to get  your attention. What Stepping is about is very important: you and who you really are. Want another teaching aide? Check this out. I’m having a bunch of these “Maxim Cards” made up on key points from Stepping. The three presented here deal with the basic issue: What is spirituality? What is spiritual? I’ve got cards made up in nine other areas, ranging from What is your true identity? To How to establish a personal spiritual practice? All the way to Spiritual traps and dealing with evil.

I like things presented so everyone can understand them. Take a living person. Then look at a dead one. The difference is spirit. No spirit, no life.

One of the things about being an older person is you know you don’t have forever to do whatever you came to this earth to do. That’s one reason I’m putting the new version of Stepping off the Edge. It’s behind my push to get these materials to you. They’re beautiful, impactful teaching aides giving you jewels of spiritual exploration. What do they cost? Nothing, at the moment. I am discussing selling them with a retailer. So, download while you can. Contemplate and apply always.

How to you fully experience your spiritual nature? Contemplation–attention fixed on an object–is a very good start.

Want more than pictures? How about music, color and movement? A video! Let this run through once to buffer. It’s HD so you can watch it full screen. Enjoy!

 

Here’s where you find these Maxims from Stepping off the Edge: A Roadmap for the Soul:

Sandy Nathan/Vilasa Press on Facebook, my professional page:   My albums from Vilasa Press. All the Maxims are in there. Please “Like” my page!

Sandy Nathan/Author on Facebook, my personal page:   My albums. Lots of them. You can look through the ones on Stepping and all the rest. If we aren’t FB friends, send me a Friend request and I’ll Friend you.

My Pinterest boards are here. The Maxims have boards of their own and you’ll find lots of other interesting stuff. Feel free to borrow and repin.

All the best,   [I'm not quite sure what the Facebook badge below does. May take you somewhere where you can get to the Maxims faster. Below the badge is some info about Stepping off the Edge. What it's won in contests and so on.]

Sandy Nathan



Promote Your Page Too

The text of the second edition of Stepping isn’t much different that the first edition. I didn’t change the book very much for a bunch of reasons. Reading it again told me that nothing has changed; in fact, spiritual life has gotten much worse for many people in the last. More on-line addiction, more seeking and striving and killing one’s dear self to attain success as a commercial writer, more of everything I talked about back in 2007 when the first Stepping came out. What’s to change?

Also, not many people read or even heard of Stepping off the Edge, even though it won the most prestigious awards of my multi-award winning books. When the first Stepping was pubished, it won:

2007 Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist in New Age (Spirituality/Metaphysics)
Bronze Medal Winner in Self Help, 2007 IPPY (Independent Press) Awards
National Indie Excellence Awards 2007: Finalist in THREE Categories: Autobiography/Memoir, New Age Non-Fiction & Spirituality.
Best Books of 2007, USA Book News, Finalist in Autobiography/Memoir

The Benjamin Franklin Awards and IPPY Awards are probably the most prestigious, largest, and oldest contests for independently produced books. This was my first book and I didn’t realize what a big deal those wins were. Now I do.

For more about the original Stepping off the Edge, check out my website.

 

London Houses, Country Estates, Royalty, Etiquette, Polo, and Golf – Will the Leroy Watches Jr. We Love Survive?

Leroy Watches Jr. & the Badass Bull - An Award-winning Contemporary Western

Leroy Watches, Jr., the hero of Leroy Watches Jr. & the Badass Bull, is getting to be known and loved.  He’s receiving fan mail. People mention him in emails. “He’s my favorite of all your characters,” someone said. “I’m in love with him,” someone else said. “What’s it like to be surrounded by gorgeous men?” [That referring to Wesley of Mogollon  and Leroy.]

Why shouldn’t they say stuff like that? I’m in love with Leroy, too. What’s not to love? Leroy Watches Jr., you got to know him as the polite, incredibly tall (6′ 8 1/2″) hunk with supernatural powers and great rodeo skills. He’s Grandfather’s (the shaman of Mogollon and Numenon) only blood relation. He is an enrolled member of Grandfather’s Nation, thus Native, African and European American all at once.

In Leroy Watches Jr. & the Badass Bull, Leroy emerges from a warm, loving, and full life that stunted him in many ways. He was raised on his Nation’s reservation in New Mexico, the site of the giant spiritual retreat/riot in Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem. More recently, he lived on his father’s cattle ranch near Yosemite, CA. Not much call for sophistication in either place. Or formal table manners, knowledge of etiquette, or anything but shamanic practices and herding cows.

In my upcoming Christmas book, In Love by Christmas, the unfortunate man finds himself dropped into high society, not just high–royal–society, in the UK and other (undisclosed) places. Poor thing. That’s what happens when you’re a figment of my imagination.

I have been researching things like correct deportment [behavior], use of silverware, and how to address nobility and royalty. Along with foxhunting rules and how to play polo. It’s been a hoot.

I have a secret: I once knew all that stuff, and not so I could write a character in a book. I was once a princess, as I spell out in my new, truthful bio on my Amazon page. Yep. I was raised in one of the hallowed neighborhoods of the San Francisco Peninsula. As a matter of fact, it was right here. My parents had been very poor during the Great Depression. They made up for it by being very successful. When I write about  Will Duane, the richest man in the world in my Bloodsong Series, his cronies, buddies, and neighbors, I know what I’m talking about.

My dad could have been the prototype corporate founder/CEO/captain of industry. I spent the best hours of my childhood/teen years riding my horse in Woodside, where the CEOs of almost every Silicon Valley corporation now live. I lived in Woodside for fourteen years, and in Atherton for more than that. I also hung out in Palo Alto. That’s where Steve Jobs lived, the garage where Hewlett and Packard “founded Silicon Valley” is, the fictitious Numenon International Headquarters is sited, and my husband and I resided for seven years.

These are the gates to the estate on which my family lived. We didn't own the whole thing, it had been subdivided years before. We had an acre of paradise. Lindenwood was formerly the Flood estate, the Floods being leaders from the robber baron era of Atherton.

Living in such neighborhoods is not all formal teas and basking by the pool. No. Rules exist. If you don’t know them, they will. The people you’re trying to get to accept you know the rules. So do their servants, their dogs, and most of the large shrubs in their gardens. Everyone indigenous to the area will know the difference between a pickle fork and a butter knife. Everyone will know that a man must wear a cummerbund with his tuxedo, that a woman who shows her bare legs under a skirt has no taste. Even worse, a woman who wears a tank top with her bra straps showing is worse than than a trollop. She’s nothing. outside the pale of civilization.

Hundreds of such rules exist, and if you came up in Atherton when I did, you had to know them if you were going to be taken seriously. Everyone I knew had had years and years of dancing lessons, cotillions, blah-dy-blahs, to prepare us to be debutantes or their escorts. Making one’s debut in society was cracked up as the highlight of a girl’s existence. Coming out in San Francisco was much more elevated than being a Peninsula deb, but, hey, who can be choosy?

Was I a debutant? No. My father was a liberal Democrat. No way he’d let me practice expensive, upper-class puberty rites. Besides, the only “coming out” ball that really mattered in the United States was in New York. What my friends were so excited about was the the minor leagues.

Several friends were debutants; I was invited to partake of the introductory festivities, formal teas, and such, that their parents sprang for in preparation of the Big Whammy Ball. Ask me about the time I was at a deb party on a yacht at the San Francsico yacht club and got locked into the ladies room. [Known as the "head" in some circles.] It was a potentially socially ruinous experience where the warped wood of the door stuck in the jam. I could not get it open. The only way I could escape was to raise my voice. [Known as "yelling" in some circles.] That would have been worse than spending the rest of my life locked in the head. That prospect gave me super powers and I yanked that door open like one of the X-men, escaping into the festivities beyond. The Royal Canadian Mounted Police were also involved with this, as party guests.

With the influx of tech money, almost all standards of decency have disappeared. Everywhere. I cringe every time I see a woman with a spaghetti-strapped top with her bra straps blatantly showing. This is wrong.

Leroy Watches Jr., a man any of us could love, and would, if he was real.

I may sling the jive here, but if I walked into a mansion occupied by truly upper class people anywhere on the planet, I would toss off my carefully affected casual demeanor, tuck in my bra straps, and behave like Leroy is going to have to. Or will he? And why?

Will we lose our primitive, incredibly attractive Leroy, the one all of us wish our daughters would marry? Or that we’d like to marry ourselves? Will he change when exposed to an unrelenting barrage of proper English and cummerbunds?

 * * *

That’s why I’m researching polo and foxhunting. Some authors torture their characters with chains and hot tongs. I prefer formal teas and golf.

Searching on-line, I’ve found a series of true gems my search for deportment and proper dress.  Wonderful sources of information for the upwardly mobile, or for all those Silicon Valley geeks who are rolling in money but not culture. Or, for those who worry about suddenly finding themselves in Downton Abbey, knowing that they couldn’t qualify for the lowest housemaid position.

Here is a series of articles which will solve your problems, especially if the issues above concern you:

William Hanson, etiquette consultant, broadcaster, and social commentator, has written about the etiquette faux pas in the various episodes of Downton Abbey. I know you don’t think any exist, but they do. Mr. Hanson, I am not poking fun at your work. Readers, you may think this is unnecessary. But what if that bit of software you’re working on hits it big and you get to move to the neighborhood of your dreams?  What then? There still are people who know about white and black tie and why cummerbunds matter. They know all about what Mr. Hanson discusses and they live in the neighborhoods you aspire to invade. It’s true. So suck in those bra straps and listen up:

While you're learning about etiquette though Downton Abbey, I'll add a bit in the sidebar. Leroy Watches Jr. & the Badass Bull was a finalist in the 2014 National Indie Excellence Awards in the Western Category. I'd call it a visionary western, replete with rodeo and shamans.

 

 

Dounton Etiquette Explained – Series 3 Episode 1

Downton Etiquette Explained – Series 3 Episode 2

Downton Etiquette Explained – Series 3 Episode 3

Downton Etiquette Explained – Series 3 Episode 4

Downton Etiquette Explained – Series 3 Episode 5

Downton Etiquete Explained – Series 3 Episode 6  Tons of great info throughout, but Hanson’s commentary here is stellar, as he explains proper white tie dress. I must raise a nit. In the Chicago Manual of Style, the novelist’s bible, the very few words are upper-cased. I would rather see white tie than White Tie. But my editor may say something else.

Downton Etiquette Explained – Series 3 Episode 7

Downton Etiquette Explained – Series 3 Episode 8

 

You can find the most wonderful things by Googling. A while ago, I found Rick Mora, Native American actor, model, and activist by Googling “beautiful Native American man.” Half the image results that came up were of Rick. I shot off the famous email that started everything, and now, he’s not only on the cover of my new book, Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem, I think we’re Facebook Friends. Are we Rick?

So, I found William Hanson by Googling some etiquette-related topic.  And I found the marvelous Black Tie Guide | A Gentleman’s Guide to Formal Wear, where you can get straightened out on the difference between proper black tie and white tie apparel. Alas, the author was critical of President Obama’s formal dress. I make it a point not to criticize heads of state, especially those who control drones.

Leroy Watches Jr. Will we lose our Leroy? Will he turn into this?

Which brings us to the point of all this: you can rise as high as you can, be as smart as you want, and be the first of your race of sex to achieve the ultimate, but if you don’t get your cummerbund right, someone will take pot shots at you.

I point this out time and again in my writing, and I do it in large print in In Love by Christmas. Will Leroy change from the informal, manly guy we know to something like the fellow to the left?

Suave, sophisticated, properly dressed?

Lord, help us.

My, I’ve gone on. I should sell this post as a Kindle short!

Sandy Nathan

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About Stepping Off the Edge–A Roadmap for the Soul

Stepping Off the Edge

Last Tuesday, Native American model and actor Rick Mora and Rev. May Leilani Schmidt were on Leilani’s radio show, Universal Spiritual Connection. I called in and chatted for a minute. We discussed spirituality and other topics. Out of that, Leilani scheduled her shown on Tuesday, June 24th 2014, as a three way discussion between Rick, herself and me, Sandy Nathan.

We’re going to talk about spirituality and our personal backgrounds: how did our lives influence the way we are? How did experience shape us? [June 24th is a highly auspicious day: my dad's birthday and that of my meditation master. What magic will play?]

I thought, We’ll be talking about spirituality. I wonder if people would be interested in my book  Stepping off the Edge: Learning & Living Spiritual Practice? That’s really about spirituality. Stepping was published in 2006. For my first book, I wanted to write something significant. Something that really mattered. I wanted to help people. I also wanted to tell my story.

And thus, Stepping off the Edge was born. It’s the first and only book in the memoir/self-help/New Age/spiritual/religious/applied psychology genre. It’s good, too. The darn thing won six national awards out of the starting gate.

Rendered me speechless, which is hard to do.

Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist - I've got bunch more stickers like this. I'll spare you a show and tell.

 

2007 Benjamin Franklin Award Finalist in New Age (Spirituality/Metaphysics) The Benjamin Franklin Award is one of the largest and most prestigious awards for independent presses.
Bronze Medal Winner in Self Help, 2007 IPPY (Independent Publisher) Awards The IPPY Award contest is the largest and oldest for indie presses.
National Indie Excellence Awards 2007: Finalist in THREE Categories: Autobiography/Memoir, New Age Non-Fiction & Spirituality.
Best Books of 2007, USA Book News, Finalist in Autobiography/Memoir

 

After its triumphant birth, Stepping off the Edge was eclipsed by my passion for writing fiction. It’s moldered on the Amazon site since, inexplicably rising to bestseller status in Applied Psychology every once in a while. I have no idea why; I’ve never promoted it.

Is now the time for Stepping to shine? I have no idea, but  two designers are working on new a cover and interior. It’s well on it’s way to a triumphant return as Stepping off the Edge: A Roadmap for the Soul. Will the new book emerge before the June 24th show? Beats me. I’m working on it.

Here’s the new Author’s Note which will go in the new book. There’s some repetition from the above, but folks most likely won’t have read this blog post:

ANOTHER NOTE FROM THE AUTHOR

Sandy Nathan 5/18/2014

The original Stepping off the Edge bears a 2006 copyright. It was my first book. I thought I should start my career with something meaningful. I wanted to create a work that was  deep and significant, expressing eternal truths. I wanted readers to see who I was and remember that when they read my future works. Stepping did that and much more: the darn thing won six national awards, quite a surprise for a first time author.

The 2014 version of Stepping off the Edge is very similar to the 2006 one. The thing about eternal truths is that they’re eternal. Reviewing the manuscript showed me that while my personal issues are different today, probably more people are struggling with the material in the original Stepping than when I wrote it.

The nasty eBay addiction I studied meticulously in the first Stepping is tamed, but millions more people have discovered the joy of spending 90% of their time in front of a computer screen, grabbing at shiny trinkets. They’re/we’re like rats in some experiment, trying to reach nirvana one pellet of food at a time. Call it gaming, participating in social media, book marketing, personal branding, or plain ol’ eBay addiction, the possibilities for destroying the meaning of your life on-line have multiplied over the years. You can still apply what I say in Stepping to dig yourself out of your hole.

Same with writing. Much of the first Stepping is about my struggle to see my work in print. I go on and on about achieving my dream of becoming a famous author, making millions, and eventually dominating the world. No. Wait—that’s what they do in gaming.

Today, millions more share my literary agony. I know: they’re self-pubbing like crazy, flooding the market with books that compete with mine. No need to change the bits in the old Stepping that concerned the Author’s Path.

Stepping off the Edge is awash with Native Americans. Its design has a Native theme and chapters and chapters take place at a spiritual retreat held by this country’s First People. Bill Miller (Mohican/German), my all time favorite musician, artist, and speaker, was the spiritual leader of that retreat. He gifted me with an interview and testimonial.

Want to know why a San Francisco-born, Silicon Valley-raised woman is so obsessed with Native Americans? I’d suggest reading my bio, which is somewhere in this book. It talks about my fall from American royalty into the desperate condition of being a regular person. Recovering from that fall has formed most of my life and turned me into a writer. I wrote this book and then a few dozen other books and manuscripts from my angst.

I dubbed my first fiction series the Bloodsong Series. Why? It’s written in my blood. After I’d drafted a few thousand pages of the Bloodsong books, I had this giant Ahah!

At least half of the characters were Native Americans. Why? I lived on the San Francisco peninsula. I don’t think I’d ever seen an Indian.

I realized that I had lived the lite version of what happened to Native Americans. They had the kingdom — the entire continent — and lost it. I know how that feels. They were treated abominably for centuries, and had the worst abuse hurled at them. Then they were asked, “What’s the matter with you? Why aren’t you doing better, you lazy bums?” I know all about that, too.

One more thing: I do not sit you down in this book and teach you how to meditate, pray, or figure out what’s sacred to you and what you should do with your life. Some things you have to do for yourself. This book is a roadmap containing everything that actually helped me heal and move forward. Some of it is from my years in school, while other portions may be highly personal spiritual experiences. That’s what I offer you. You have to apply your mind and heart to what’s in this book and transform it to fit your circumstances.

Having set the stage, here’s the Author’s Note to the original Stepping of the Edge. It’s as valid now as it was on the first go round.

 * * *

I want this book to touch you and heal you. I’d like my writing to open your heart so that the love inside flows out and transforms your life. I want my words to make you laugh and cry and feel and become the person you were meant to be. I want to move so many people that the world of hopes and prayers becomes real and we live together in paradise.

Negotiation coaches tell you to set your aspirations high. That way, you’ll have a better chance of achieving them, or at least you’ll get closer than you thought you could. My goals are set out above: You can tell me if I attain them when you’ve read this book. Right now, I want to tell you about it.

At first, I wanted to write a book about a Native American spiritual retreat called the Gathering. As I wrote, I realized that what I was writing about was bigger. I was writing not just about a particular retreat or spiritual activity, but also about how we can become mature, spiritual beings.  What must we humans do to grow up?

If that is too big a question, how did I grow up? I’ve grown up over thirty years of spiritual seeking. I can tap into my inner well of bliss. I’ve got a great life. My husband and I have been together for forty years and are still in love. My family’s wonderful. And I still experience my old crud now and again, but that’s not the norm.

How did I achieve this?

By what I do and how I live. Spiritual practice made me the woman I am. So I wrote a book about spiritual practice. This is a real “show me, don’t tell me” volume, because you don’t learn spiritual practice from reading a book. A book can tell you about spiritual practice, but doesn’t give you its fruit. Trying to learn spiritual practice from a book is like trying to train a dog without having one. Spiritual practice is alive and requires a living body committed to learning. Given this, I used my favorite demonstration tools, my soul, body and life, to illustrate the road to spiritual maturity. (A few of my friends chip in their stories, as you’ll see.)

This book is a trip. I cover the bases of prayer, meditation, worship, spiritual retreat, dedication of one’s life to experiencing the divine, taming the mind … I write about many things, using stories and examples that anyone can comprehend. I hate books that are so highfaluting that the average person can’t understand them. Life is hard enough without me making it worse with intellectual pretension.

I suggest that we get going. Who knows how much time we have for our journey? None of us will come out of this earthly voyage alive: We’d better start now.

Sandy Nathan

My website

My new interactive website

My Facebook author page (Please like!)

My Amazon author page

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I didn’t win in the 2014 IPPY Awards – neither did 4,900 other people

Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem (Bloodsong 2)

It’s amazing how the Universe reaches out shows you what really matters. I was getting all anxious about whether or not I’d win anything in the 2014 IPPY (Independent Publisher) Awards. I put my new book Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem in maybe four categories, doing a shotgun approach and entering it in any category that it might conceivably win. I thought I’d win something. In the past, I’ve won Gold, Silver, and Bronze Medals in the IPPYs with other books. I know my stuff is pretty good, and I think Mogollon is the best I’ve written. The cover is amazing.

These concerns were swept aside when my hands began REALLY HURTING in the days before the 2014 IPPY winners were announced. Do not make the mistake of thinking that itty-bitty joints will only have itty-bitty pain. They can have REALLY BIG PAIN.

I have been blissfully abusing my shoulders, arms and hands for almost twenty years, since I began writing full time in 1995. I wrote in eight-hour marathons, producing torrents of words, book upon book, with no physical problems.  Yes, my shoulders would occasionally refuse to move after a writing session, but nothing prepared me for the full scale physical rebellion that occurred as the 2014 IPPY Award contest approached its close.

When your hands REALLY HURT and you’re wondering how you’re going to produce the ten or so books you’ve got as drafts on your hard drive, or if you’re going to be able to keep doing what you love most in life, how you did in a friggin’ contest pales to insignificance.

* * *

A realization threaded through the tenderness of my painful pinkies: if I pulled a big zero, so did approximately 4,900 other entrants! We are the majority! Even though my focus at the moment is on my digital woes, I realized that many of those 4,900 people might like  a pick me up about the whole thing.  Fortunately, I have an article about losing in contests prepared and ready for you. [I've lost before! ]

If you feel badly about spending a bunch of money and getting nothing back but heartburn, read and enjoy:

While winning is fun, you can learn a lot from losing. Maybe even more than from winning. The last time I lost big in the IPPYs, I wrote a lengthy true story about what I’d learned from losing in horse shows. I’m linking it here and above.  I’m gonna do a short recap below. I think I’ve got about ten minutes more typing in me for the day. (No, my hands haven’t stopped hurting.)

* * *

What you can win from losing: I’ve ridden horses most of my life. My family operated a  ranch where we bred, birthed, raised, trained and showed horses for twenty years. We still have five, even though we’re in retirement mode.

To show horses and win, you have to be a killer.  Getting a horse trained and in shape for showing, getting yourself in the same shape, learning to ride well enough to perform in the show ring, and handling everything that goes on at a show [your nerves and the horse's] is a HUGE job. Huge. You have to really want to win to master all that. You need to develop “one-pointed consciousness” like meditation masters and martial artists. A horse show championship is the black belt of riding.

The Monterrey Trails Classic Peruvian Paso Horse Show was one of the most prestigious shows in the Peruvian Paso breed. One balmy day, I found myself in the arena mounted on Vistoso, one of the best horses we’d bred in twenty years. A gorgeous bright chestnut (think the brightest red Revlon hair color ), Vistoso was an amazing horse. Beautiful head carriage, collection. Gait up the wazoo. Plus I had a jacket that exactly matched his coat. We were on as we cruised around the ring. That horse did not take a false step the entire class.

AZTECA DE ORO BSN & I AT MONTEREY This isn't me on Vistoso, this is me on his full brother, Azteca. Don't have a pic of Vistoso.

I figured we had it made in the shade. The class was ours.

The announcer began calling out the winners. The way Peruvian shows go, everyone who didn’t win is dismissed first, then the awards are announced lowest place to highest: fifth, fourth, third. Second.

For some reason, they called my number. I got second. What!? Impossible. We were perfect. More than perfect. Way better than the winner. She was a petite woman I knew from hanging out at shows. Her horse was a small liver chestnut. Liver? Yes.

She won. I got royally pi**ed. And stayed that way.

Later that evening, the dinner dance that the show hosted was rockin’. Food, drink, everything. And everyone. Threading my way through the crowds, I ran smack into the judge. She beamed at me and said, “Boy, you really rode that horse this afternoon.”

I’m not a  wimp. I’m a liberated woman. I’ve taught assertiveness trainings. I fired back, “If you thought I rode so well, why didn’t you give me first instead of second?” My eyes were not shooting daggers, they were machetes.

She rocked back and said without pause, “This is a really good show. A second here is the same as a championship somewhere else.”

I left, glad I’d asserted myself. I felt righteous.

* * *

Fast forward to the end of the show season. I was at Griffith Park in Los Angeles, the mega-horse park where our National Championships were held that year. That competition was too tough for me; I didn’t make the first cuts in my classes. With nothing else to do, I watched the show from the stadium. My back went up when that woman, the one  who stole the class from me in Monterrey, rode in on that rotten little liver horse.

I leaned forward, a growl turning over in my throat. She was a petite, slender woman with rich brown hair. Her spine was erect, perfectly balanced as she sat the horse. She held her hands low, almost touching the front of the saddle. Her equitation was plu-perfect.

Her horse, the grubby little thing I’d dismissed, wasn’t so grubby when I looked at him carefully. Liver chestnut is actually a rich medium brown, very correct and conservative. The horse was small and fine, elegant, like its rider. They were a brilliant match of type and style. The animal moved along, relaxed, but alert, and precisely gaited.

Riding is one sport where the better you are, the less you do. You can see dressage riders in the Olympics whose horses are doing unbelievable things, but you can’t see the rider doing anything. The pair before me were like that. Exquisite. There’s good riding, and then excellent riding. This was riding touched by angels.

My mouth fell open. My hands went cold. I didn’t win that class in Monterrey because I wasn’t good enough. I couldn’t see my competition because I was busy riding my own horse. Seeing that woman in that arena told me that she and that little gelding were world class. (In fact, they would win the National Champion of Champions Performance Gelding title later in the show.)

I remembered what I had said to that judge. My cheeks flamed.  I had been so rude to that nice woman. I am still embarrassed about what I said.

* * *

So there it is: I didn’t win because I didn’t deserve to. I didn’t know I wasn’t the best because I was busy riding my own horse and couldn’t see the others.

Addressing my fellow 4,900 “losers”, am I saying that our books didn’t win in the IPPYs because they weren’t good enough? Well . . .

Let’s take a look at that. When you enter your book in a contest, it’s like entering the arena on Vistoso that day in Monterrey. You can’t see the competition. You don’t know how good the other entrants’ books were. And you’ll never know. Remember me mouthing off to that judge when you feel like screaming over your placement. Don’t do something similar and embarrass yourself.

Let’s look at book contests. You’ve zeroed out at the IPPYs this year. What should you do? Here are some options:

1. Never enter a book contest again. This is a pretty good option. Book contests are expensive. Aside from the cost of editing, proofreading, having my book designed and printed, along with the nineteen (yes, nineteen) years of my life I spent writing my book, Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem, I forked out perhaps $300 for the categories I entered.

Here’s a big question: do indie authors need awards from book contests to sell their books? Let’s look at some of the most successful authors––indie or traditional––of our time. Take John Locke, the first indie published author to sell one million ebooks. What did that get him? A lot of money and a contract with Simon & Schuster, one that he designed that meets his needs.  And then we’ve got Amanda Hocking, who parlayed her young adult series into millions of book sales and dollars, and a contract with St. Martin’s Press. Darcie Chan, who published her book as an eBook after being rejected my the major publishers. She’s probably getting close to a million eBook sales by now and is a NYT Bestselling author, not to mention having a lot more loose change. What list of successful indies could leave out JA Konrath, the father of the “you can do better publishing it yourself” movement.

Did any of these people use awards from book contests for independent presses as their springboards to success? No. Did any of them enter such contests? Not that I know of. (I don’t think they do blog tours, either.)

From these success stories, it looks like not entering book contests may increase your chances of success. Figuring out how to effectively sell your book is way to go.

2. Say you want to win prizes and enter more contests. What then? I’m like that. A compulsive competitor. I like to say, “Hi, I’m Sandy Nathan, award-winning author. I’ve won . . .” I like stickers and medals and certificates. I like to increase the number of wins I’ve got and post the new totals all over. Look at my website, for Pete’s sake. If that isn’t ever conspicuous flashing of glitz I don’t know what is.

You’re like me, you didn’t win the IPPYs this year, but you want to try again. Read the linked article and do what it says. This is my famous “What I do to win book contests” article. Do all that and enter your new book next year. [Caveat: you don't need to include press kits anymore, so putting together a winning entry isn't as awful.]

Or–change contests. The IPPYs are a huge, prestigious contest, like the National Championships I described above. Are you up to that competition? If you don’t think you you can make it in the rarefied atmosphere of the IPPYs, pick a different contest. My article on how to win book contests has links to some very nice smaller contests. Maybe one is just perfect for your book.

3. If my recitation of what you actually get out of book contests tells you there’s no sense at all in entering, try picking a contest with really good prizes. Good prizes are a reason to compete even if you see no reason to enter anything after my little pep talk above.  The National Indie Excellence Contest has killer prizes for the top books in the competition. Check ‘em out on their web site. They have regular winner and finalist prizes for the various categories, but the overall winners get stuff like thousands of dollars of services from top publicists.

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy (Earth’s End 1) This is The Angel's original cover, which won the Gold.

4. What does winning  mean?

A winner! In 2011, I was thrilled and delighted when my book The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy won the Gold Medal in Visionary Fiction at the 2011 IPPYs. I’d won in previous IPPYs, but never a Gold.

The Angel & the Brown-eyed Boy is the first book of the Earth’s End series. The series is a fantasy/sci-fi/visionary fiction tale about people pushed to the literal ends of the earth. In The Angel, nuclear holocaust looms as the characters work to mend their past “business” and figure out how to survive the destruction of the planet.

The Angel is a good book. It’s an important book treating the possibility of nuclear weapons destroying our world, as well as what can come from an economic disaster which is not successfully resolved. It’s beautifully produced and has a killer cover. I like this book very much.

 

 

Lady Grace & the War for a New World

A loser! Lady Grace & the War for a New World is the second book in the Earth’s End series. I entered it in the 2012 IPPY Awards. Lady Grace sets out what happens to a small group of survivors of the nuclear war as they begin to create a new world. Every book professional who has touched Lady Grace has told me that it’s not just better than The Angel, it’s way better.

“Your pacing, the plotting, the characters––all are terrific. This is the best writing you’ve done.” That was my editor, who is one tough cookie. Others have said the same sort of thing: I’ve hit my stride with Lady Grace. I knew it, too.

A woman who told me she’d hated everything I’ve written called me babbling in rapture after reading Lady Grace “It’s fantastic, Sandy. It’s the best book I’ve ever read. How did you do that? Where did you come up with all that?” And more, she went on and on. I loved it.

However,  Lady Grace’s original cover sucked. It was a case of me directing my designer too much and in the wrong direction. We changed the cover and title. Voila! A repackaged book that’s way better that the Winner! But it’s still a Loser!

 

Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem (Bloodsong 2)

Another loser! Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem is the best book I’ve written, in my opinion.  My little band of fans also says it’s the best book I’ve written. It’s got a killer cover with Rick Mora, a famous Native American actor, model, and philanthropist on the front.

 

So what about judging? I’m not doing the snotty thing that I did to that poor judge in Monterey.  I don’t know what the competition was in 2012 or 2014, or what the competition was in 2011 when The Angel won the Gold.

It’s just really weird to me that a lesser book should win the competition and a superior ones not even place. Did the judges read it? Maybe totally different judges were working in 2012, and they had different preferences. A lot of things could have happened, and some of them must have.

What does the judging mean? What do you win when you win? Are the winners really the best books? What does an award mean?

The more I think on these things, the more I tend to agree with my husband. Maybe twenty-four awards is enough.

So, to the 4,900 friends and fellow campers who did nothing in the  2o14 IPPYs, we’ve finished our romp through Book Contest Land. I don’t know if I made you feel any better after your non-award, but maybe I made  you more thoughtful.

Sandy Nathan

My New, Interactive Website

 

Will Duane in his own words – Meet Will then vote in my contest

WILL DUANE #1 Will’s a happy camper here. Why not 50 billion and the largest corporation ever to exist.




     
WILL DUANE #2 Here’s our second contender. Handsome, white haired, but is   he Will?





WILL DUANE # 3 Looks like it’s “Happy Times Are Here Again” for Will

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I just loaded the articles showing guys that I think could be Will Duane, the hero of my novel Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem. He’s sort of the hero. A bit crusty and hard to please, but heroic in his heart.

I loaded all these pictures and realized you may know nothing about Will. “Let me … acquaint you!”

Here’s the first chapter Mogollon. Here’s Will in his own words as the book opens:

Chapter 1

Will Duane stared out of the motor home’s tinted window, scowling. The Ashley, his luxurious RV and the hallmark of the Numenon caravan, jolted across the desert in fine form. Will wasn’t doing quite as well.

He turned away from his view, not wanting to face the light. That damned New Mexico sunlight had done something to him. That and all the space. The desert had too much space; it made him feel weird.

He felt as if the core of himself, the hard center that was him, had cracked. He blamed it on the damn light. All day, they’d passed through that bright emptiness. Who he was began to melt away. His control, his purpose, all of him was being undermined.

The terrain did the same thing. All day long dirt, rocks, and cacti surrounded them. Plus those stupid round trees that dotted the landscape like lice. They weren’t even eight feet high. Will hated New Mexico more than he thought possible. They can’t even grow a proper tree.

Will rubbed his chin, feeling a screamer coming on. He would not give in to it. He would stay in control.

“Mark, how much longer?” he shouted.

“It’s right up ahead, Mr. Duane. Over that rise. See the cars.” The driver pointed at a ridge a short distance away. For the last few miles, phalanxes of junker cars from the 1970s had dogged them. Those were their fellow retreat attendees. It was 1997. What kind of people drove cars that old?

Will could see laden vehicles disappearing over the crest. Other cars returned, obviously having dumped their loads. They turned left and entered an enormous parking lot just outside the Mogollon Bowl. Light reflected off the vehicles and hit him like bullets. The parking lot was a junk yard of wrecks with alligatored vinyl tops and mottled paint. He clenched his jaw.

Will sat in his command seat, directly behind the driver, with his back against the cabin’s rear wall.

Looking to his left, Will observed the anxious faces of Betty and Gil. They sat on the banquette that ran along the Ashley’s wall, twisting to see through the big picture window behind them. The opposite wall was covered floor to ceiling with cabinets stuffed with electronic gear, the super computer being the most important. The super computer was the most advanced in existence. Numenon’s technology had been ahead of the pack since the late 1950s when Will founded the corporation.

Will furrowed his brow. Why were Betty, Gil, their driver, and he the only ones in the cabin? When they started, the cabin was almost full. Now there were just four people. Where were the others? He felt so fuzzy; he couldn’t remember what happened five minutes ago.

Sunlight reflected off the chrome of one of the vehicles outside. It struck Will’s eye and he rocked back in his seat. His eyes rolled back and quivered.

Red rock walls rose high above them. He was running, breathing convulsively, sobbing. Thrashing on the ground, fighting. Something crushed him into the rock.

Will blinked, coming back to himself. Something had happened in the desert. He could recall it dimly, like someone else’s dream. Their drive wasn’t just across the desert floor. There had been a canyon, and red cliffs.

He put his hand on his chest. The day before, his doctor told him the tight sensations he felt were nothing. His heart was good. He was okay.

Will rubbed his chin again and tried to remember.

Something came out of the buzzing, disintegrating void inside of him. The old shaman had appeared in the desert in front of them in a golf cart. Will had walked out to him and the light surrounded them. Light had come off the old man, even more than from the sun it seemed. Will had broken down for some reason; he had fallen at the holy man’s feet, sobbing.

Why, why? His disintegration had accelerated since then.

“We’re here,” Mark called. The Ashley pulled over the bank. Will jumped up and grabbed the back of the driver’s chair.

“What is it, Will?” Betty asked. She and Gil moved forward, straining for a look at the sacred place where they would spend the next week.

“Oh, my God,” she said.

The others were speechless.

* * *

Betty peered through the windshield. The Mogollon Bowl spread out before them; as far as she could see, a writhing mass of people were interspersed with camping equipment. Well, some of it was camping equipment. Shabby tents and tarps on poles. Shade canopies on aluminum legs. People unloaded cars and headed back to the parking lot outside the Bowl. Other cars inched around, searching for a place to camp. The Bowl crawled with movement.

That’s all it had; no trees, no lawn, and no structures existed except two derelict buildings in the distance. The Indians’ hallowed  sacred ground looked like the desert they’d crossed, but less interesting. It was rocks and dirt and chaos.

This was the legendary Mogollon Bowl where anyone could become psychic and all of your problems disappeared? Betty thought of all the work she’d done to prepare her brief on Grandfather, the famous shaman who led the retreat, and on those closest to him. On Indian history. On the Bowl itself. For this?

She looked at Will, knowing what his reaction would be. Will only stayed at five-star hotels. Living in the luxurious Ashley was his idea of camping. Her boss’s face grayed with horror. He turned to her, his mouth gaping.

Before Will could speak, Doug Saunders charged out of the bedroom. “Will, I will not stay in this dump! If we have to stay here for a week, I quit.”

Betty glanced at Gil Canao, who looked out the window in glum silence. She opened her mouth to echo Doug’s sentiment, when Will grabbed Doug and hugged him like a grieving father.

“I thought we’d lost you,” Will cried.

With that, the memory descended upon her—what had happened on the drive in. Will lying in that canyon, covered with blood, bones bent at impossible angles, squashed. Really, squashed flat. Doug lay next to him, foam coming out of his mouth, his body bent backward in a crescent arc. Blue and bloodless, both of them.

Her sobs took her by surprise. Her hands went to her face and she doubled over. Will, Gil, and Doug jumped toward her. Will caught her in his arms, and the other two men joined the hug. The minute they touched her, her backbone stiffened. She pulled herself erect, trapped in the circle of solicitous males.

Tears streaked her face. “Oh, I’m sorry. I can’t …” Will handed her his handkerchief. She snatched it gratefully.

“It’s okay, Betty,” they said at once.

But it wasn’t okay. They almost died, all of them. A flash flood would have killed them in that narrow ribbon canyon. Floods happened right now, in early spring. It had been a horrible, horrible trip. But Bud Creeman had saved them.

“We have to find Bud and thank him again.” She looked up at Will. “He was so good to us. Let’s find him, and then let’s leave. Okay, Will?”

Will’s brow lowered and his jaw tightened. “I’ll get you out of here tomorrow, I promise. I’m going to stay.” They stared at him. “I have to stay here—I have business to complete.”

Betty pulled out of her despair enough to stammer, “But, Will, you told us that the mine deal was dead.”

“It is, Betty. I promise you.” He glanced out the windshield. The Indians were beginning to cluster around the Ashley. “I have personal business with Grandfather.”

She had heard so many of Will’s empty promises that she didn’t know what to think. “I want to go home to John.” The tears came again. She wiped her face, conscious that she’d shed more tears in public in the previous five minutes than she had in twenty-eight years of being the head of Will’s secretarial staff. Private tears didn’t count.

“I’ll make arrangements for all of you to leave. You don’t have to deal with this …” Will’s arm swept the crowd outside.

Betty looked out the window. Indians wearing hats and jeans and shirts of every color surrounded the RV. Faces. Braids. Bodies, short and tall; fat and thin. Some were very dark, almost like African Americans. Others were as light as Gil Canao. Their eyes grabbed hers. Black to hazel, those eyes bored into the Ashley, trying to see past the tinted windows. Trying to see them. But they couldn’t, of course.

Not one face was friendly, not one mouth smiled. They stared, a half circle of intense eyes, brown skin, dark hair. The first ring was followed by another, and another. Some began to point at the Ashley and laugh. Two Indians dashed out and stood in front of the vehicle, posing. Others took their picture. They ran back to their friends, laughing uproariously. Another pair came forward for a souvenir photograph, and then another. The crowd roared.

They were laughing at them! The representatives of the largest corporation on the earth. Not representatives—the founder of the largest corporation in history and the richest man in the world, and his top staff.

Betty would have been more offended, but she knew why the Indians were so hostile. Grandfather was retiring from public life in a week, and this was his People’s last chance to spend time with their shaman. And here they were, Will Duane and his fancy Numenon crew, crashing it.

If they dislike us so, what must they think of Grandfather for inviting us? 

More Natives gathered, forming a circle around all five vehicles in the caravan. Betty couldn’t see where the crowd ended.

Will looked out the window. “Drive over them, Mark.”

“I can’t, sir.”

“Why?”

“There’s someone at the door.”

There’s Will and the gang portrayed as they arrive at the Meeting, the retreat run by Grandfather, the famous Native American shaman.

The other articles in this series can be found through the links:

Introduction to Who is Will Duane?
Will # 1
Will # 2
Will # 3
Chapter 1 of Mogollon

Sandy Nathan

Website #1    Website # 2, the Interactive One!

 

Will the real Will Duane step forward – and you can win a free copy of Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem

Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem (Bloodsong 2)

My new book Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem offers many interesting characters. One of them is on the cover. The guy on the horse is Rick Mora, the fabulously beautiful Native American model and actor. He fits my mind’s eye image of Wesley Silverhorse, the dreamboat portion of the Mogollon cast. Wesley’s in his mid-twenties, the typical age for dreamboats. Are breath-taking hunks limited to a few years after adolescence, or can they be older? Or much older?

Mogollon’s leading man,Will Duane, is the richest man in the world. He is a dreamboat for sure, even through he’s sixty-two years old. For one thing, add fifty billion dollars to any old fart and he becomes a dreamboat. Will’s got fifty billion dollars. But he was a dreamboat long before he grabbed all the moolah.

My character, Dr. Elizabeth Bright Eagle, meets Will Duane at the Meeting. (That’s the Native American spiritual retreat Will and his executives and staff attend and where Mogollon takes place.) Elizabeth is an internationally known physician and philanthropist who is also a top spirit warrior.  Elizabeth is a very classy lady and has the opportunity to take a very good look at Will when he hurts himself. From Mogollon:

“The doctor was able to see what a very good-looking man Will was. His chest had a thin mat of white hair. His pectoral muscles were clearly defined, as were his abdominals. He had no excess fat. Most thirty year olds don’t look like this, she thought. You’re a real stud-muffin, aren’t you, Will? Hostility streaked through her.”

But what does Will really look like? We know he’s tall with a lanky runner’s build, and has blue eyes and white hair. He’s so gorgeous he doesn’t have to even try to woo women.  He’s used to having his orders obeyed instantly. He can smile and be friendly, for a while, but that’s not his natural pose. He’s aggressive, serious, super-smart, and very competitive. He’s the richest man in the world, and he didn’t get that way by being a nice guy.

I’m trying to get an idea of the real Will because I like to do videos for my books. At the moment, Mogollon is without any visuals but the cover. I’d like to flash Will on Pinterest and a few places. I’d like to get to know him better, and I’d like you to get to know him. I’d like to get your opinion on which guy I should use for Will in my videos and maybe even the next cover. Here are my three candidates for Will:

WILL DUANE #1 Will's a happy camper here. Why not? He's got 50 billion and the largest corporation ever to exist.

 

Here’s Will #1. He’s not as handsome as the description of Will in the book might lead you to expect, but he’s majorly masculine and looks like a very successful businessman.

Some other shots of him show him doing things that Will would definitely do: yell at employees, for instance.

I’m going to link a WILL # 1 GALLERY here so you can see more views of this Will in action.

This is a comp from Shutterstock.com. You can download comps from all the stock photo companies to try them out, what we’re doing here.

 

 

 

 

WILL DUANE #2

 

Here’s Will #2. He’s got the white hair, he’s good looking, but does he have the chops to be the Real Will?

Here’s a WILL # 2 GALLERY here so you can see more views of this Will in action.

This is a dreamstime.com comp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WILL DUANE # 3 Looks like it's "Happy Times Are Here Again" for Will

 

Here’s Will #3. White hair, definitely a businessman, looks great in a tuxedo. But is he Will Duane? This image shows that while Will is very tough and aggressive, he’s capable of partying as hard as he works. He’s a  genuine party animal, an over the top party animal. He likes the ladies maybe too much.

Here’s a WILL # 3 GALLERY here so you can see more views of this Will in action.

 

This is a dreamstime.com comp.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

WILL DUANE # 1.5 Here Will #1 wears the hair of Will # 3 and blue eyes by Photoshop.

WHY YOU SHOULD NEVER DO YOUR OWN GRAPHICS: Many people, me included, learn a little bit about Photoshop and go, “Whee! I’ll do my own book covers! And Facebook Banner! I may even paper my car with my Photoshop art!”

This is not a good idea. Although you cannot see it, your homemade efforts will embarrass you if you ever wake up enough to see what they actually look like. I’ve suffered from an inflated view of my design abilities and displayed them publicly. And I do it here.  Will has dark blue eyes and white hair. I liked Will #1 the best, but wanted to see him with the blue and white bits added. So I cranked up my Photoshop skills and did this:

Will Duane # 1.5  He looks like a white-haired Ken doll.

I will definitely get my cover designer to do Will’s hair and eyes.

 

 

OK. Check out the albums for the three Wills:

WILL #1 is here. More pictures of our hero.

WILL #2 is here. More of Will 2.

WILL #3 is here. Will #3 at his finest.

And then leave a comment below stating your choice and why you think he’s best. I’ll send my favorite an eBook copy of Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem.  You don’t have to agree with my choice. It’s the most interesting explanation that will win Will and all of his friends.

WRITE A COMMENT ON THIS BLOG POST. TELL ME WHICH WILL YOU LIKE BEST AND WHY. YOU COULD WIN A FREE EBOOK OF MOGOLLON!

Good luck!

Sandy Nathan  

Oh! Here’s my New Website. It’s interactive!

And my new blog, which is wild and crazy and not all the way up yet.

 

Will Duane #2 Tell Me Why You Like This Guy Best and Maybe Win an eBook of Mogollon!

Here we are with Will #2. Life is a process of learning. On Will 1, I couldn’t get the pictures of Will 1 to load right without adding text to pad the pics. (You got to read Mogollon’s first chapter about Will, though.) Through my powers of intuition, I think I can get around that here.

WILL DUANE #2

Here’s another guy (again, shown as a comp from Dreamstime.com. I use comps from Dreamstime.com, 123rf.com, and Shutterstock.com. For the “real” version of Will, I’ll buy the images and give proper credit.) that looked like Will to me. Good looking. White hair that didn’t need Photoshop. Doesn’t have blue eyes, but that can be fixed. I’ll show you some more:

Will Duane and his staff at the Numenon Headquarters

Despite his personal shortcomings and tendency to explode, Will’s employees are extraordinarily loyal. He’s good to them and has jumped in way beyond the call of duty to help employees that are facing calamities. He has no prejudices based on race, gender, or sexual preference. He’s brilliant, providing a role model for everyone in Numenon. He can work harder and longer than anyone, and has done it for forty years.

The only problem is, if he blows his top at you, you’ll never forget it or get over it.

Will's competent on a computer, but not a real jock

He doesn’t know everything about computers, even the ones he builds. That’s why he has employees. Millions of them, all over the world. He’s a serious guy and works a lot.

Will may not smile much

This is as laid back as Will gets

This guy has pretty much the right look. He’s not as tough as I’d like. No pics of him beating employees, but there are wonderful images like this:

Will Duane rules the world. He darn near does, you have to admit it

Here we Will in his element. Creating empires and running them.

OK Will #2. If you think this guy seems most like the Will Duane in your head, go to this page and DROP ME A COMMENT ON THIS PAGE. I’ll go through the comments, pick the one I like best, and send the winner a free eBook of Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem.

Table of Contents:

Introduction to Who is Will Duane?
Will # 1
Will # 2
Will # 3
Chapter 1 of Mogollon

Sandy Nathan

Website #1    Website # 2, the Interactive One!

Will is shown as a comp image from Dreamstime.com. I use comps from Dreamstime.com, 123rf.com, and Shutterstock.com. For the “real” version of Will, I’ll buy the images and give proper credit.)

 

Will Duane #3 Tell Me Why You Like This Guy Best and Maybe Win an eBook of Mogollon!

And here’s Will Duane #3. If you think this guy seems most like the Will Duane in your head, go to this page and drop me a comment. I’ll go through them, pick the one I like best, and send the winner a free eBook of Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem.

WILL DUANE # 3 Looks like it's "Happy Times Are Here Again" for Will

This Will has the prerequisite white hair. He’s tall, he’s handsome, he has great teeth. He looks jaunty and self confident enough to be the Will that everyone knows. Looks great in a tux, too.

Will's life is not all fun and games. Even on a spiritual retreat, his enemies are after him

In Mogollon, we feel the storm clouds gathering, but we don’t  have the faintest idea how bad it’s going to be.

Things in Numenon get worse

Will’s not one to take adversity lying down, but sometimes, people break.

Will breaks, but you won't believe what happens

This guy has some great shots showing Will in despair. That gets ahead of Mogollon, but you can see it coming in the book.

Again, Will is shown as a comp from Dreamstime.com. I use comps from Dreamstime.com, 123rf.com, and Shutterstock.com. For the “real” version of Will, I’ll buy the images and give proper credit.)

OK Will #3. If you think this guy seems most like the Will Duane in your head, go to this page and DROP ME A COMMENT ON THIS POST. I’ll go through them, pick the one I like best, and send the winner a free eBook of Mogollon: A Tale of Mysticism & Mayhem.

You should look through all the Wills. They have different strengths. This one shows Will in emotion pain as well as being on top of things. Number 1 shows him pulling a screamer. Number 2 fits the bill and shows how he rules the world. Which one is the real Will Duane?

Table of Contents:

Introduction to Who is Will Duane?
Will # 1
Will # 2
Will # 3
Chapter 1 of Mogollo

Sandy Nathan

Website #1    Website # 2, the Interactive One!

 

Talk to me! I’m on Universal Spiritual Connection today 6 to 8 PM PDT

UNITED SPIRITUAL CONNECTION RADIO

YIPES! It’s just an hour and half. I’d better hurry! I’m going to be on the Universal Spiritual Connection with my good friend and host, Rev. Leilani Schmidt.

You can reach the station right here.

If you click here, you reach a chat room where you can contact me while Leilani and I are talking. If you click the listen now button at the top of the page, you can hear the program!

The call in number is 480.389.1399  Call that number and you can call into the show directly. I would love to talk to you!

Leilani’s show is one of my favorites. She puts a spiritual glow on everything … No, she IS a spiritual glow.

Tonight, we’re going to be discussing my new novella, Leroy Watches Jr. & the Badass Bull. This little book is about Leroy Watches,  who is a minor character in the first two Bloodsong Series books, Numenon and Mogollon.

He is the shaman Grandfather’s grandson. By birth, he’s a powerful healer and upcoming shaman. Except that he doesn’t quite it down in Leroy Watches. He goes to a rodeo in Las Vegas to help his dad, and all h*** breaks loose. Or rather that badass bull does. This is a farce: everything goes wrong and Leroy ends up the FBI’s Most Wanted, branded a terrorist, and has to run for his life.

It’s funny and sweet, except for poor Leroy, who’s running with a very strange posse behind him.

We’re also going to discuss my Christmas book, which will be out by Christmas. This book follows Leroy farther, into his search for the woman of his dreams. She’s Cass Duane, the richest man in the world’s very messed up daughter. She’s so messed up, it’s a wonder she’s alive. It’s not totally her fault. She was held captive by the devil incarnate for a long time.

Leroy has to find her before … well, before she dies. If she does, she’ll end up in eternal damnation.

This is a Christmas story, just a very unusual one.

Leilani and I may talk about more than that, so please listen in. 

Sandy Nathan