Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 18

Marketing Ideas Galore

[image error]You may recall that several months ago I made a vow to really pull out all the marketing stops for my new release. I was thinking BIG. I told my husband I might have to break into my 401K and I didn’t care. Frankly, I wanted to give the book it’s best shot and spend money. Well, I didn’t want to spend money, but I was prepared to do so in the hope of my book being read by actual people. It only took ten books for me to realize I had to step up and “treat my writing as a business” as one marketing article says. I don’t know who, it was on Twitter and you know how easy it is to get lost on Twitter with all the RTs and links and so forth.

[image error]So I read that article. Plus three books. Plus the entire marketing plan my trusted publicist, hired just for this campaign, had written. I participated in a book marketing class online. With the marketing plan, I didn’t just read it, I took all the actions. Mostly online so far. The online part is easy but I shall be going out in the world and doing things. I already have. I went to the print shop and made nice copies of the sell sheet Dora designed. I plan to visit the bookstores she recommended and go to a conference, the biggest conference ever.

Bouchercon is the biggest mystery writing conference in the world. I’ll be flying from Michigan to Florida for that in less than a week. Murder on the Beach Books is selling my book there. I’m also doing up a nice basket of books and bling from my Michigan Sisters in Crime group. Lots of people have donated books and the board gave me a coffee mug. So I will really be doing the people marketing thing there. I feel bad because all this is on my Dad’s birthday and he lives in St Pete where the conference is being held. Also Dad is recovering from surgery. He almost didn’t make it. Somehow I’m going to see him on his birthday despite all the Sisters in Crime stuff (a breakfast and later a workshop) happening on Dad’s birthday.

I hear that at some of the Sisters in Crime events, members will get a chance to talk about their books. Which reminds me, I went on television and talked about mine. Television! Me! This is a major feat as I have stage fright something awful but my friend has a cable show and she said it would be just like us talking as they pre-record, so I did it. In the real world, not online. Online I thought I was doing pretty well according to the marketing plan. I have an ad on Amazon my publisher set up and one on Facebook, too.

[image error]I’ve been tweeting (not about my book!) and meeting new people. I came across one guy who was just so fun, inviting people to friend him, his response thread went on forever and all the people tweeting him back were hilarious. I have not had that much fun on Twitter since, well, ever. One lady had a gif of a corgi typing. I followed her. I followed a bunch of new people. I didn’t mention my book as I know that Twitter is a social channel and you’re just there for the fun of it. But every once in awhile you can post on your own page about your book. But mostly not, mostly interact and make new friends.

I fixed up my Facebook fan page too, that’s in Rachel’s book, and it’s still not great but I’m trying. Some people’s fan pages look so good. Mine is better than it was. I pinned a post to the top of the page! Did not know I could do that until I read it in one of the books. I have my regular Facebook page with my friends but I am trying very hard not to post anything author-related there or Facebook just might kick me off. They let the Russians post, but me and my new book, no. Anyway, that was a joke. I can tell Mark Zuckerberg feels bad about the Russians.

Really, I did all that and my book was looking like all my other books. That is, no where near #1. So it was a fortunate coincidence that Book Bub wrote me an email congratulating me on my new release and telling me about their new ad program. Book Bub! Writing to me! Inviting me to do an ad. I had to hear them out. It was confusing, the ad thing. Apparently you bid on keywords and there are some other things that seem like what my publisher is already doing. But they still have their famous deals. I couldn’t do the new release deal, as you can’t apply after release date. But there was still the other deal for books on sale. I consulted friends and my publisher because I know Book Bub is pricey and everyone said go for it. So I submitted a deal. Not sure if they will accept me.

I did one Book Bub many moons ago when free books were a thing. I got a ton of reviews and my book went to #1 on the free list. But it was free, so I couldn’t say “Amazon bestseller” because you know if it’s free it’s not sold. Still it was pretty cool and I got more reviews than all my other books put together. 80+ on Amazon and 100+ on Goodreads. I realize for some people that is peanuts. But I currently have four (or is it five?) reviews, not all in one place, for my new book.

[image error]Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Another unexpected thing happened online. I am such a reader. I read 200 books a year. I read book reviews online. There was one gorgeous page and it was women’s fiction central, which the New York Times Book Review is not. The page drew me in and so I wrote to them with my pitch for an essay. I figured if they said no, it would make good blog post. But they said YES! So you see it is good just to go on Twitter and have fun because you never know what will happen there.

I hope you got some marketing ideas from this post. I’m afraid you’ll have to leave your desk and the safety of the internet because you should also speak at bookstores (real ones) and libraries (also real). I plan to do this after Bouchercon. I was going to visit a certain indie bookstore in Detroit this week but now I have an essay to write!

The single most obvious thing (not to me, obvioulsy) I have learned after writing ten books is that it’s okay to take some time and money (but make those $$ choices wisely) and go out there into the world and sell your book. It doesn’t have to happen all on the day, week, or even month your book comes out. Just keep going places where people expect to hear about your book. No matter what.

 

Life Lessons on Race Relations

I remember when schools were first integrated. I remember adults being really pissed off about it. Then, we got like one black kid from Inkster in my high school and all the ranting calmed down. Inkster. Do you believe that’s the name of a black community? Dearborn’s racist mayor didn’t want black auto workers living in his town so he established Inkster just the other side of Taylor. Encouraged blacks to move there, with a little help from redlining and realtors.

Back to that black kid. I didn’t know him, but I knew how he must have felt my first day at Marygrove College when I was the only white person roaming the halls. I hadn’t known Marygrove was a predominantly black school when I enrolled. I only knew I’d received a badly needed scholarship. I wasn’t that surprised as the school was on Six Mile. One of Detroit’s mayors had drawn the color line at Eight Mile and was known for shouting that white people would do well not to cross it.

Which was strange because me and my friends went downtown all the time. We went to the ruined splendor of the Grande Ballroom and Eastown every weekend for concerts when we were teens. The dealers would line the staircase up to the frayed velvet seats and chant their wares: Pot. Acid. Speed. ‘ludes.  Most of the pills were a dollar. A joint was fifty cents. We got a bit older and switched out drugs for alcohol, concerts for art district installations and poetry readings in our 20s. In our 30s we took our kids to Tiger and Red Wing games. In our 40s there were the free concerts on the river and by our 50s downtown had the best restaurants, art, culture, and music in Michigan.

So white people did not stay north of Eight Mile; we went into the neighborhoods to party and visit friends. Rent was cheap in Detroit. Plenty of people got places there after high school. One of my best friends Suzy had kids with Greg, a black guy who was part of our circle of friends. I visited her in the apartment they had in Detroit. Once I started at Marygrove, I went to house parties and bars with my black classmates. Most times, I was the only white person, but almost everyone was friendly or at least polite. I got along just fine south of Eight Mile.

There were a few exceptions.

Once, at a club, I was buying a round and the bartender called me peckerwood and asked why I was doing in his neighborhood. He was smiling when he said it. I told him we were celebrating finals being over. I had no idea what a peckerwood was; when I asked my friend Lorna she went over and yelled at him. She just said it was a negative term for white people. Okay. We went back to dancing and everyone laughed (even me) when I had too much wine to learn the Hustle. Yes, I was a sterotype.

Another time, everyone in Black Literature, even the professor, cracked up when I said that maybe the “white  witch” in the poem wasn’t a person, maybe it was heroin or cocaine. But it wasn’t rude laughter, it was kind of how people laugh when a baby tries to take her first steps. Another class, Black History, nobody laughed when the lecture came around to the way white southern women routinely used their female slaves as nursemaids to their babies.

“White people is stupid,” one woman said.

That confused me. I knew about verbs and black English;  it didn’t faze me even though I was an English major. I even agreed with her that white people who kept slaves and entrusted their babies to them were cruelly contradictory. Entrusting a slave to feed your baby, but not trusting them to learn to read was messed up. Slavery was messed up. But the word IS seemed to me like she meant present tense. Like right at that moment white people like me (I was the only white person in that class) were stupid. Still. Her words meant all white people, not just slave owners.

It felt worse that the professor didn’t respond to the remark, just let it go with a nod of his head. A few people came up to me after class and said they hoped I was okay, that the student had been wrong to say that. Nice, so many of my black classmates were nice. But still, that was the moment I woke up. Not everybody at Marygrove was cool with white people. Some were angry at the entire pale-faced race and talking about slavery enflamed them even more.

I do understand that, now. But I was younger then and I took those words of that one student too personally. She didn’t know me. And what I didn’t know about black people could fill a book. A bunch of books. What I didn’t know at the time but have since learned is that systemic racism slaps black people in the face the way I’d felt slapped in that class so long ago. Sometimes, it even shoots them in the back. And they die.

Pieces of Me: Creating Lily White

In a racially divided city a black cop and a white PI team up to solve a double homicide. What they uncover leads them closer to the truth, and to each other.

There were so many things I wanted to avoid when I started this book. I knew there would be violence and death. I knew I’d have to reckon with race, and I knew it would be difficult to get that part right, but I didn’t think I’d have an interracial couple on my hands. I was writing psychological mystery and deliberately decided from the first words on the first page that there would be no romance. Ha.

I knew there would be PTSD. What I didn’t know is that twice as many women suffer from PSTD than men. That shocked me. We think of PTSD as a war affliction, but cops get PTSD, rape victims, too. Anyone who suffers an overload of trauma is subject to PTSD.  One of the effects of PTSD is extreme anxiety that can play out in many ways: panic attacks and mentally crippling phobias are the two symptoms I have personally experienced.

It was both difficult and freeing to write about these mental conditions that have shaped much of my life. For a long time I didn’t know what was wrong with me. I knew I was different. Wired wrong. I did not know what the hell was wrong with me. Yes, sure, bad things had happened to me. As a teen, I’d been sexually assaulted by people I trusted, like my boss, like a close friend, like a relative. I was homeless a number of times from age 15-19. My parents, who had married in their teens, had their own complex issues and I was shoved aside, shoved out of the family home.

Many friends and relatives, including my dad, took me in for short periods of time. But I lived in an abandoned car for a few weeks, in my family’s garage for awhile. Slept on the beach in Key West. People wouldn’t treat their dog the way I was treated as a kid. Children who experience trauma at a young age are more likely to develop PTSD. I have never been diagnosed with this condition, but the anxiety and panic are nearly constant companions. Before I was diagnosed, I used to cool the stress with wine. Lots of wine. I was embarrassed by my inability to control my fear. I never wanted anyone else to know how it felt to be me.

Sometimes even wine didn’t help. I ruined parts of my beautiful honeymoon in Maui because I could not be a normal passenger driving up to see the sunrise over the volcano or winding up the road to Hana. My husband is the calmest person I know. I think that’s why I was attracted to him and married him. He was my opposite and I wanted to learn to be like him. I could tell how disappointed he was in Maui when I cowered on the floor of the back seat of the car with my eyes closed to the beauty surrounding us. Shortly after the honeymoon, I had a serious car accident. I’d had one just before the wedding, too. Now it wasn’t only high places, bridges, mountains, cliffs, winding roads, or closed-in spaces that made me panic, it was just driving down the road in a car. Any road. Any car.

My husband was eventually rattled by my actions. I would beg him to slow down, pull over, drive in the slow lane, take a back road, let me out of the car. One day he said “What the hell is wrong with you? Do you think we’re going to die?” And I thought about that. My heart was racing so hard I felt it would burst out of my chest. I said YES YES I DO! His reply was that I needed a shrink.

I’d had therapy before, in another marriage. But it was not about my phobias and anxiety. I hid those even from the therapist while I tried to figure out a way to save my marriage all by myself because my ex said I was the one who was unhappy so he didn’t need to go to therapy with me. I was ashamed to even tell the therapist about my anxiety.I’d been treated so horribly by so many people that I didn’t think there was anything wrong with his decision. I went to therapy alone for two years and at the end of it I learned that I should not be married to that person. Nothing was going to fix us because for him everything was fine.

But Al was different. He loved me enough to realize that everything was not fine and he wanted to make things better for me. He saw that I needed professional help for my acute anxiety and the sheer terror that is panic. One in ten women will at some point in their life will be mentally and emotionally damaged by trauma, especially if the trauma is sexual assault or rape. A traumatic childhood just makes it that much more likely the accumulation of damage will result in chronic anxiety, phobias, or even PTSD.

I got help with my problem and I’m fine. I use medication as needed, but meds are much better than a gallon jug of cheap wine or tiny bottles of emergency vodka for when only a shot will do. These damaged parts of me are also in Lily, although I’ve fictionalized everything except the way anxiety, panic, and PTSD feel.

Lily White in Detroit is available now.

 

Long Distance Love

My son and his family are visiting from Seattle. It’s been so lovely to have them here with me, but I miss them fierce when they’re gone. I live about an hour from where I grew up. One of my brothers still lives in Taylor, our hometown, and the other lives in a neighboring town. My mom lives close to them. None of us strayed far from home.

My dad’s an adventurer. He traveled all the time for his job as a construction electrician. He’s seen the country and loves the sun. He’s retired now and lives in Florida. He and mom are still married. I admit it’s strange, but it works for them. They visit back and forth, but as they get older, it has become more difficult for Dad to drive up here for the summer or for Mom to fly down there in winter.

She was just there, as my dad has had a health scare, and needed surgery. She hated every minute of it but she’s his wife and she wanted to take care of him. They love each other, they really do. They just prefer different climates. I want to move to Florida full time as soon as Al retires, so I understand how Dad feels. My only thing is I am not going to move there without my husband. It comes down to this: I love him more than I hate the cold.

This visit my son told me that grad school was just an excuse to go to California. He got the advanced degree, married in Malibu and moved to Seattle for work. There, they started their family and formed a tight bond with several other couples who are married with kids. I see my grandchildren less than I’d like. The plan is to move to Florida and spend extended periods of time visiting Seattle and Traverse City.

And they’re good about visiting us. Especially in Florida. We’re in St Pete, only two hours from Disney World. Florida, for many of us, is “God’s Waiting Room” but for our grandchildren, Disney World is a little bit of heaven, too.

How to Soothe Pre-Book Release Jitters

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My new novel is coming out in ten days. The same week, I’m hosting a family party for my son, daughter-in-law and two delicious grandchildren. They are staying with me but everyone else is coming here for the picnic next Saturday to see them, especially one-year-old Julia June, whom they’ve not yet met. Also my husband will not be here for the party, so I’m doing this solo. While preparing for my book release.

I learned of this convergence of events a few months ago, so I called Dora Badger from the Woodward Press and asked her to put together a marketing plan and prepare a press release. The plan is working and the press release has been sent.

For reviews, Dora did the research and provided links, all I had to do was contacted book bloggers. Done! I’ve already gotten some responses requesting ARCs, even an interview on one blogger’s site.

Good luck (and the graciousness of a friend) enabled me to tape an interview (did that last week) for local cable news that will air on my release day. Next on the marketing plan is scheduling guest blogs and a book tour. This makes me more nervous than being on TV for the first time, but I will do it. I know I need to front-load as much as possible because the kids are coming and of course I want to devote my time to them.

Luckily I signed up for Bouchercon 2018 a while ago hoping my book would be out and I could sell it there. The largest mystery conference in the world is in St Pete this year where I own a tiny condo, so it seemed sensible that I try to be there. My books will be on sale and I’m gathering a basket of books and other goodies from Michigan Sisters in Crime for the silent auction. (If you are a member of MiSinC, email me to get your book included.) I’m also checking out the only indie bookstore I know of in Detroit, Pages.

A few days ago, I did a little work on the landing page of my website, which I overhauled months ago to reflect the new direction into crime novels my writing has been taking me. Dora designed a new header then, so now she’s tweaking things using that to design and order book marks. She’s also putting together a press kit. I didn’t even know what a sell sheet is, but apparently it goes in the press kit. I saw her design of that, and love it. Dora’s going to have a complete press kit on my website soon. And I’ll have copies to include when I send ARCs.

So this is how I am managing to stay half-way sane during the run-up to publication day, with Dora’s help and also the input of Rachel Thompson author of “Book Marketing Challenge.” Rachel discusses a blog title check on CoSchedule.com It’s an effectiveness calculator and after five tries my title today scored a 72. Rachel says anything over 70 is good-to-go. My first title came in at 20-smething, so I’m glad I finally went there and tested my ability to create headlines that might actually bring people to my blog, which I love writing but is also pre-marketing.

To stop my nerves, jitters, and worries, I’m doing work I enjoy and it takes my mind off ruminating about whether people will like my book or if anyone will even read it. I can’t be the only author who gets the jitters and gives in to self-defeating thoughts just before a book becomes public.

Turns out instead of worrying, there’s plenty of work you can do to stop those self-defeating thoughts come true. Also, rewrite those thoughts into positive ones. “I am doing everything I can to prepare for the success of my book’s release” is my mantra now. Being confident and positive is just as important as all the other book-related stuff.

And now, I need to do laundry.

Writing Awards & Rewards

I lost it. It is nowhere in my office. Not in my hundred or so paper files. Not in the cabinet where I store my business cards,  stationary, printer paper. Not in my pre-internet writing portfolio where I keep all my early successes, clips and awards. All those early accolades except the book award, the one that matters most.

Or does it? I’m pretty sure I won’t mention being an award-winning author when The Weam Namou Show tapes my interview with Weam. (That’s Weam and me in pic first time we met; we were seated next to each other at a book event.) Not even if that piece of parchment paper shows up. I’ll be on television to talk about my upcoming release, not walk down memory lane amidst the little victories of the past that led me to where I am today. I do have stories about the highlights of my writing journey and that first book is among them, but not because of the award.

While searching out the certificate, I decided to purge my files. It had been several years since I’d done it, back when I stopped teaching and threw away all that mess. For unknown reasons, in the last purge, I held onto all the print copies of my manuscripts, revisions, and notes. Now I pitched them all as I have the actual books on my shelves, which was the aim when writing those thousands of pages in the first place.

I spent the day going through old papers and listening to other interviews Weam has conducted via YouTube. I’ve never been on TV before and wanted to know what I was getting into. As for cleaning out my writing files, I didn’t get any of that magic feeling Marie Kondo talks about in her book on tidying up the Japanese way. I did get three large garbage bags, the kind you use in the fall after you rake leaves, crammed full of pages and pages of stuff I didn’t need anymore but had to look through to make sure the certificate wasn’t there.

One of Weam’s guests talked about vision boards. I do those for my work and for personal goals. I knew I had a photo from the vision board I did for Lily White in Detroit. Maybe she’d want to use it as a visual on her show. So I sent that and some other photos to her. We are taping Tuesday and the show will air on my book’s release day in two weeks. I asked for that day, and Weam somehow magically made it happen. She’s much better at magic than Marie Kondo, in my opinion.

After searching my house high and low, I decided to give up on the certificate. It was important to me as a personal achievement, but I’d just ditched thousands of sheets of paper. I could let that one more piece of paper go. I put a line about winning a MIPA in my new author CV  and that would be that. My publicist will use it in the press kit she’s putting together for me.

I was curious about the award though. What place had I won? Not first, I’d remember that. Had I won any place or was I relegated to “finalist” like so many other competitions I’d entered back then? I kept an eye out for the certificate in little nooks and crannies. A basement drawer, a high shelf in my bedroom closet.

During the search, I came across my vision notebook, like the one Weam’s guest had talked about.  It was synchronistic how we both had done the large cardboard posters and then did smaller, many page versions. I like the big cardboard posters for my books. But my personal vision book is for other goals, be it a new sofa, a publishing contract, or a trip to somewhere sunny in winter.

I hadn’t looked through my personal vision book for awhile. It’s always fun to see how many of the goals I wish to manifest come true. Each time I revise this book, it is because almost everything I wanted to happen has come to pass. That’s how I found my publisher, how my office came together and how I got a home in Florida. So, I pulled the book off the shelf and opened it to the first page, where the certificate I’d been searching for floated out and into my hands. Magic!

Connecting to Characters

[image error]Building a new character from the ground up starts with a name that may or may not change. Or maybe an occupation. Not sure which came first for me with the work in progress, but I had those two things very early on. There was no reason I chose my main character’s occupation other than I thought it would be a great job and it would fit into my plot. I knew there’d be research, but it would be research I’d enjoy.

I don’t know much about art, but my character does. How I made that relevant to the plot is that the murder victim is an artist. One thing I do know about art is that I like it. Not all of it, but I feel a strong connection to some artists and their work. The art world and the literary world are similar in that both disciplines require the pupil to separate the artist from the art. I’ve never been able to do that. I am as fascinated by writer’s lives as I am their works. Also musicians and their music. I want the whole picture. It’s a way to connect on a deeper level.

Writers need to connect to their characters in a similar way. A main character who has depth is always preferred to a stereotype. The way you give your character depth is to inhabit their space, physical, mental, and emotional. The new character grows and gains depth as you add to her store of knowledge and her way of navigating in the world. Sometimes, the writer must search this out and sometimes it drops into our laps like good luck.

That happened to me today when I watched Hannah Gadsby’s stand-up comedy show “Nanette.” Hannah, like my character, is an art history major. She jokes in her show that she wants to quit comedy because her self-deprecating comedy feels safe, like she’s keeping her self-hatred in a box. Hannah has a whole fascinating and tragic backstory she slowly reveals in her show through jokes. And sometimes passionate angry shouting. She deconstructs comedy by illuminating its two-part system. First, there’s the tension (the set up) and then there’s the relief (the laugh). She says this is connection. Her way of connecting to other human beings. She does it very well.

One of her recurring jokes is about quitting comedy (tension). That’s always the first line, but she changes the rest of it with each bit. Once after she says she has to quit comedy she then ponders how she’ll make a living if she’s not a comic (more tension) because she’s an art history major and there are no jobs in that (laughs). Then she goes on to joke about Van Gogh and Picasso in a witty resonating way.  She’s not just witty. She’s deep. She goes into her history of “soaking in self-hatred” and takes her audience with her as witness, summing up by saying “There is nothing stronger than a broken woman who has rebuilt herself.”

Suddenly I had new questions to ask myself about my character. How had she been broken? Had her career dried up? Had she decided that her career required too much swallowing of bile? How would my character rebuild herself? Would I show her brokenness in flashback? I tend to not like flashback, so how could I insert this breaking and healing into the smooth linear narrative I prefer? I’ve just given myself quite a bit of homework. Quite a few chapters begging to be written. Depth to be added.

Isn’t it funny how books are a smooth narrative and life is a bumpy ride? That’s probably why I almost prefer books, both reading and writing them, to my actual life. Character driven writing is the straightest line of connection for me. Hannah talks a lot about connection, too. About her need to connect and how she found that for a time through comedy. The biggest part of life, for most of us, is about finding ways to connect. And for writers, connecting to a  character in a deeply meaningful way leads to connecting to readers who are also searching for connection, thus completing the circle.

How to Survive a Write-In

The eloquent George Thorogood said it best, though he was talking about alcohol, not ink. I write alone, with nobody else. You know when I write alone, I prefer to be by myself. One of the myths I believed when I was a young starry-eyed writer was that working alone had integrity. Took grit. Was tough, but I could take it. Then I came to depend on it. I didn’t want to write even if someone was in the same house.

That’s not how write-ins work. At a write-in, you write with other people. Like the people who go to coffee shops to write. Or when your teacher gives you a timed writing assignment. Other people are key to the write-in, which is why I never bought it. Too many distractions. Serious writers work alone. I still believe that’s true–for me. Maybe not or everyone, say Natalie Goldberg or Jennifer Weiner, who famously wrote in coffee shops and went on to sell billions of books.

Because I write alone, I never went to any write-ins. I thought these things were crazy, or maybe it was me. But then about a year ago I joined a brand new writing group and yesterday they hosted a write-in after their board meeting. In Big Boy. I love Michigan Sisters in Crime and not just because they gave me a coffee mug. One thing new writers hear all the time is “join a writing group” and I took that advice early on. Join a group that fits where you are (or where you want to be) in your writing career.

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I’ve belonged to four or five groups through the years, depending on where I was with my writing. A writing group helped me find my publisher. Well, one person in that group. We got to talking and she said “You should try The Wild Rose Press.” I did, we’re together now, and it was because I was in a writing group, at a meeting. It’s not enough just to join, you need to attend meetings. Sisters in Crime is a national organization for crime writers. They have 52 local chapters. It’s the chapter meetings where you’ll find your peeps (and maybe a lead on a publisher or an agent).

I am so grateful to my writing group. They do so many things to help my writing. Like our visit to Jackson prison sparked an idea for the plot I am slowly building around my work-in-progress. I’m preparing for a book release in a month, so I don’t have my usual daily novel writing time. These days it is all lining up the publicity and checking promo to-dos off my list. I have hired help plus I’m retired from my teaching job, and still, right now, finding novel writing time is hard. Thus, when my writing group held a write-in, I packed my supplies and went.

The write-in started promptly after the board meeting. Nobody (there were eight of us) talked for an entire hour. I wrote steadily, because I’ve been thinking over this scene since the visit to Jackson. I also had a prop, a postcard I bought there that fit neatly into my story. You can see from the postcard there’s a lot to describe, so I got two warm-up pages out of that. My character has just received this postcard and sees it as a threat. He has good reason to look at it very carefully and therefore I do, too. After that, he had two conversations about the postcard with two different characters, so there was dialogue and tension and thwarted desires and all the other business that makes up the words in a book.

I got six pages in an hour. And I said so! A few people said wow or seemed impressed but nobody else said how many pages they got. Maybe it’s not cool to announce your page count. Or to say, as I did at the cash register “I guess I won.” I maybe heard someone mutter “yes you did” but I’m not sure. Everyone was nice, but still, I think probably announcing your pages is not a part of a write-in. What got me those six pages was a combination of being prepared with my favorite top bound spiral notebook and Dr Grip gel pen. Also thinking a lot about the scene I wanted to write before I wrote it and having a prop to get me started.

There were some distractions. It was Big Boy. Music from the 80s. Not too loud. Someone humming. The person bussing tables stopping by wanting to chat about writing because her mother reads books. We all stopped writing and listened politely to her. Everything else I just blocked out. Even when I liked the song, I kept writing my sentences that built my scene. And because of the write-in, I have something for the August meeting of my small critique group, which is meeting three days after my new release, so probably I’d have been too busy to write the scene if I hadn’t taken a time out for a write-in.

Anxious Characters

[image error]After ten novels or so, I imagine writers begin to worry about repetition. Did I use this plot device before? Have I named a minor character this before? I have always been careful not to repeat myself. Or so I thought. Last week I found out different. I was listening to the audio file of Love and Death in Blue Lake. The main character suffers from anxiety. Really? I was mad at myself. Anxiety is too close to PTSD, which is what my current main character in Lily White in Detroit is in recovery from. There’s only one book between these two novels. I should have remembered.

Looking back, anxiety wasn’t even relevant to Courtney’s character. The plot didn’t need it, there was so much else going on. I could have taken it right out of the book; my editor even mentioned that. Smart woman. My editor is extremely kind. So she probably said something like “Does Courtney need to be anxious? Where is this coming from? Maybe delete it or fill it out more so the reader understands.” So I dug in deeper, at least enough to please my editor, but now, looking back I realize I gave Courtney anxiety because I was going through a terrible phase of acute anxiety and having regular panic attacks during the time I wrote that book.

I had a good source for Courtney’s profession–she was a psychologist. Yes, a mental health expert with a mental health problem. But this happens in real life. The first time I knew I had panic disorder, my husband had about gotten fed up with my weird behavior in the car. Basically I freaked out every time the road wasn’t straight and dry. Curves, cliffs, bad weather (snow or rain or the dreaded black ice) even sharp turns all made me so fearful I’d beg him to slow down or stop the car or whatever. We hadn’t been married much more than a year and it had been clear to him for a while that I had this problem. I had no idea why I was so afraid sometimes when he was driving. Why sometimes I couldn’t drive.

He wasn’t super patient with me as it rattled his nerves to have a nervous passenger. One time he said “What do you think is going to happen? Do you think we’re going to crash and die?” And I said “Yes! I do!” He suggested I go to a psychiatrist, actually he said “You’re nuts. You need to see someone.”  The psychiatrist knew right away what was wrong with me. I was having anxiety attacks, later upgraded to panic attacks, probably because I’d been in one too many very scary car accidents and then there was my family history in phobias and panic. Basically I inherited my illness and it was exacerbated by experience. Anyway, this psychiatrist put me on medication that gradually erased my symptoms. It was like a miracle.

No amount of talk therapy can cure what I have. But she had to see me once a month for an hour in order to dispense the drugs. We used to swap stories of driving while anxious. She admitted to me she was also afraid to drive in certain conditions. Her way of coping with snow was to turn on her emergency lights and drive very slowly despite people honking at her and passing her. She didn’t care. If driving 30 mph on the freeway would make her feel safe, that’s what she’d do. She seemed to enjoy telling me these stories, but they made me a little anxious. Then one day I was cured. We said our goodbyes and I went on my merry way.

What I didn’t know then was that I would probably never be cured. But at least I knew what I had and how to deal with it. I’ve had a lot of therapy but I am not willing to drive over the Ambassador Bridge several times a day every day or lock myself into a small space, so aversion therapy is not for me. Cognitive Behavior Therapy (CBT) is of minimal help when anxiety mounts and turns into panic, but nothing stops panic in its tracks like my particular cocktail of prescription medications.

As it turns out the character of Courtney came from an experience with my real life therapist while also being a therapeutic tool for me at that time in my real life. Because writing (for me) is therapy and always has been. I’m not sure this is true for all writers, but for me, writing is a terrific coping mechanism. Still, note to self: no more fictional character who suffer from any type of anxiety disorder.

 

Astrology for Writers

[image error]July is an active month in the stars this year. There are two retrogrades and two eclipses this month, and they affect everyone, some more than others. If you were born in July you’ll feel these heavenly upheavals the most. I had the good luck to be born in March, but Mars (who rules Aries, my sun sign) has been in retrograde since June and will continue there until August 27, so I am not exactly jumping for joy. Retrogrades, and there’s a double whammy this month, with Mercury retrograding July 26-August 18, tend to slow things down, mess with plans and throw communication glitches, for writers that means your electronic tools may misbehave. So, you know, that’s not perfect for someone (me) with a book releasing on August 15. Or let’s say you have a deadline but your computer crashes. Hope you backed up that manuscript on an external drive.

General advice for retrogrades is to not plan too much, be flexible, and expect the unexpected. So for writers, you don’t want to begin querying agents at this time. The caveat is that if you are already in talks with an agent, or you already started any project, you’re fine. It’s mostly NEW things that might hiccup now. I love retrogrades for revising a manuscript. I get quiet and go into my writing cave and work. However, I am working on a first draft, so my Mercury retrograde revising plan won’t work.

I’m distracted by my book release next month. Before June 26 (when Mars retrograded) I hired a publicist to help with local promotion and (also before June 26) I started conversations with my publisher and their marketing team. I wanted to make sure I got my ducks in a row early, setting things in motion now to roll out on and after August 15. Retrogrades are easier to get through if projects are not brand new and if you have already laid the groundwork. Which I have, so I feel pretty safe as far as my new release goes, with one possible dramatic upheaval due to the eclipses this month.

Two eclipses this month are thrown into the mix. Eclipses average four a year, so two in one month along with two retrogrades (there are also lesser retrogrades but Mars and Mercury are the big ones) is quite unusual. Everybody loves a solar eclipse, when the moon covers the sun and parts of the world go dark in broad daylight. The heavens have one scheduled for July 13 this year. The lunar eclipses are a bit less dramatic, although this month it is a blood moon eclipse. During a lunar eclipse the earth stands between the sun and full moon, making the moon invisible in the sky and, in a blood moon, gradually turning the moon red. We in the USA won’t see the blood moon, although the UK and Africa among other countries in their vicinity will.

Blood moons are very dramatic, and lunar eclipses affect many people, making a mark on their daily lives. Some folk will feel the effect of eclipses up to a week after. Eclipse events tend to be abrupt and out of the blue. The universe conspires to turn your world upside down or, best case scenario, point you in a brand new unexpected direction. Relationships end suddenly. Careers meet turning points. For writers it could be landing a book contract or moving into a new genre. It could also mean being dropped by your publisher. Whatever the change, it will give you a big push forward into the next stage of your life, whether you want to go there or not. Fallout from eclipses happen fast.

Things happen on the global stage, too, but for an individual, so much has to do with your personal astrological chart, because eclipse and retrograde periods have greater or lesser effect depending on exactly where and when you were born (down to the minute) and where the stars in the zodiac were at that time. It’s not that difficult to learn how to chart your own horoscope. I did it, and while it takes a bit of time, it’s vastly intriguing because it’s all about YOU. Typical Aries thinking. “OF course it is all about me!”

To learn more about myself, and my life path, I used The Only Astrology Book You’ll Ever Need by Joanna Woolfolk. There are lots of places online that will cast  your chart (sometimes for free, but I think you pay for what you get.) My favorite astrologer is Susan Miller at Astrology Zone. Today (July 2) she’s still working on her free monthly horoscopes, and that’s because July forecasts are going to be huge.

I’m relieved these eclipses are in July and not in August. I’ll have time to absorb the news they bring by the time my book is released. As for the retrogrades, I just need to be patient and flexible. They’re coming to an end shortly after my book’s release and that is very good news.