Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 57

Something New

For a really long time, I didn’t post reviews on Amazon. Part of that was because I was a professional reviewer, used to getting paid for my reviews and any old enemy can post a snarky review on Amazon. I thought it was just a bad way to handle book reviews.

But I know when I’m licked, and while I quit reviewing professionally years ago, I started to review again on the blog, on Goodreads, and yes, on Amazon. Since I’ve been hanging out with writers on social media sites, that’s been a big topic of conversation. You need Amazon reviews. Lots of them. “Verified Purchase” if possible.

That hasn’t worked out so well for my author self. At least not yet. I get review envy for writers like Niecey Roy who has about a hundred reviews for her romantic comedy Fender Bender Blues. And the only way I know how to cure that jelly is to move toward it, not away. So, I’m posting reviews on Amazon first, then linking them to my 5 Star Review page.

I do love trying new things, and I for sure love writing reviews any way I want to instead of following a magazine’s format. Plus on my blog birthday month, I always try to spiff things up. And I didn’t forget about that giveaway. It’s coming…soon.

Mixed Signals

In the novel I’m working on, tentative title Luke’s #1 Rule, people misunderstand each other’s motives all the time. Chloe’s mom, Ursula, thinks her daughter and grandkids are leaving the state to get back at her for moving a few hours away, and for not continuing to provide Chloe with free housing, home cooked meals, and babysitting.

In Chloe’s mind, nothing could be further from the truth. She knows it’s time to stand on her own feet and raise her boys by herself. Her mom’s decision just urged her to do what she knew all along had to be done. Staying with your mom when you’re thirty-something is not Chloe’s idea of success. But her mom made it easy, her sons were happy, and she knew they were being well cared for as she re-entered the working world.

Now Chloe has the opportunity of a lifetime and she’s taking it even though it will move her far away. Chloe needs to provide for her children, and this job has great health care, benefits, and a salary twice the size of her current position. Her ex-husband is a loser without a job. He’s also got a drug and drink habit fit for a rock star. Chloe wants to get as far away from him as she can. She doesn’t want her boys exposed to her ex’s dysfunctional and destructive lifestyle.

The chess pieces are on the table and the players have no idea what move the other will make. Ursula pulls a bold move with the help of a friend, setting Chloe up with her pal’s handsome son. There are too many mixed signals between Chloe and Luke to count.

Luke is a bit of a mystery man. What’s his motive? Chloe isn’t sure. He keeps her off balance, because his emotions are in turmoil, too. Nobody quite knows what anyone else is up to. Even her ex has a strategy to thwart Chloe’s ambitions.

And isn’t life like that? Some people may not even be conscious of the reasons behind their behavior. Like today, when I wrote about my novel-in-progress instead of the novel that’s just been published. Mixed message. Honest mistake.

My current release, Blue Heaven, also has a couple, Eva and Daniel, who send each other mixed messages on their path to true love. One character deliberately sets out to manipulate Eva. She can’t be sure who has betrayed her, she just hopes it’s not Daniel. Blue Heaven is on sale exclusively at Kindle for three months and, best of all, will be free the first five days of October.

Tim

My son Tim’s birthday is today. I almost said his age, but I erased that paragraph. It’s bad enough having a mom who blogs about you without her also blabbing your age. So many memories today. Tim was the best baby in the world. He had big blue eyes and the sweetest smile and took loooong naps. That lasted well into his teens. Some weekend days he’d be sleeping at 1 o’clock, even 2 pm. I’d think, should I wake him? But I never did. I figured his body knew what he needed. Sleep!

Tim’s married and has a dog. It’s a big black dog and Tim really shied away from big black dogs after Al’s Doberman nipped him on the nose and drew a bead of blood when Tim was just a little guy. When Tim’s wife rescued Bosco, he was a small puppy. Then he grew. And grew some more. And a little bit more. Tim and Bosco are buddies. They do lots of things together. They even visited the Grand Canyon.

Now Bosco has a cousin. Murphy! They are best buds. Well, besides Bosco and Tim.

Happy Birthday Tim ♥

Team Promo

The biggest problem I have with promoting my work is a dire lack of reviews. I know so many people on Twitter and FB and they get hundreds of reviews. One of the first things I heard about finding reviews was to ask people who read the book and liked it to post a short review on Amazon. Ha! I love my friends, but most of them, even if they read the book, are never going to do this.

Just to insert, I do have a few friends who post reviews. You know who you are and you have my eternal gratitude.

So step two is finding reviewers. There are tons of them out there. For my last book, my publisher sent galleys to maybe 20 review sites. I got 2 reviews. I think I might have 8 reviews on one  book, and I don’t know all the reviewers, or I’d send them a big thank you. They could be friends, they could be someone who stumbled upon me by accident.

There’s work to be done to court reviewers. You need to 1. find them 2. ask them 3. send them a galley. And I can’t send to any of the reviewers my publisher sends copies to. That’s called overkill. So there’s a bit of checking and so forth. Does this sound difficult or like a lot of work?

It’s not, it just takes organization and time. I can pay someone hundreds of dollars to find reviewers or I can take a couple hours and dedicate myself to the list I’ve made of reviewers who like the kind of books I write. Contemporary. Small town. Fairly steamy. So finding the right reviewers is like finding the right publisher. Gotta do your homework.

Oh how I wish I had more time to devote to this, but right now I’m wearing two hats. (And my kitchen is a mess. We didn’t even eat at home yesterday so how’d that happen?) BUT happy happy, a new group of people have formed. A small, exclusive group. And I am one of them. We all have a major thing in common, so I know they can be trusted.

I love my new supergroup because these women are team promo. We all have the same goals. Some of us (all of them)  know a lot more than others (me) about the promo game. That’s something I’d tell a new writer: find a group with similar goals to your own and bond. Become a promo team, cheering each other on in various ways.

Special September 6

 

Many years ago, on this day, I gave birth to my first child. Michael was (and still is) perfect. My sweet boy and I did everything together for two years until his baby brother was born. While Dad was at work, we two developed a special bond that I still feel now. We were tight. Better than best buddies. A world of just us.

My life was entirely devoted to him. He didn’t have a babysitter. I didn’t trust anyone (except on rare occasion my mom) with my little treasure. Everything he did was wonderful to me. One of my favorite memories was the first time he saw dust motes slanting in with the sunlight through a window. He reached for them and looked at me with delighted wonder as they swirled, so tiny and out of reach.

With boys, it’s hard to know when to pull back on the sentimentality. I think now is probably good. Mike is his own man now, with a house and a career and, best of all, a wife who loves him well. They recently visited for five days and I didn’t hear one cross word between them the whole time. And his wonderful life is all I could have wished for him way back when he was born on this very same day.

 

5 Star Reviews

As promised, I’m starting a new venture for year 11 of “A Writer’s Diary.” Things change all the time in cyberland and I change with it. I have interviews with authors and book reviews scattered everywhere on this shaggy blog. There was a time that I didn’t post reviews to Amazon, because I was a professional staff reviewer on this or that magazine. But I’ve been doing them for awhile now. I want to make note of these books, and my reviews, here. I review under my real name, Cindy Harrison.

I’m not a professional book reviewer anymore, but most book lovers have opinions, and I have lots of them:) Please don’t send me free books to review. I sometimes buy and review books I love, in my own time, on my own schedule.

Cindy’s Indies is fairly new and reflects my love affair with indie novels. 5 Star Reviews will be traditionally published & e-publisher novels. The space is sparse right now. Day job is kicking my butt (and I have not even started my second class yet!) and I’m putting mega behind-the-scenes energy into promoting my new release Blue Heaven, which (I may  have mentioned a time or ten) will be FREE on Kindle exclusively October 1-5.

I’ll likely be adding to both review sites as I slow down on Goodreads. I have 247 reviews there, folks! Mostly for books that do not need the publicity. I’ve got to re-tool how I operate on Goodreads. I want to chat more and review less when I visit.

Final note, thank you for all the wonderful emails and comments about my 11th year. It means the world to me that you care enough to stop in. xo

A Woman’s Wisdom

This English reviewer is the wise one, not I. Her site is full of beyond common sense thoughtful posts, lots of great reviews, and today, she’s hosting me! Check it out!

Valentine to 11 Years

This month marks 11 years here at A Writer’s Diary. In my life, I’ve achieved so much more than I ever thought possible. I was a high school drop-out who became a college teacher and the published author of five books. How’d that happen?

As a young woman, I didn’t have aspirations above getting married to a guy I loved, having kids, and being a homemaker. It was a weird dream for a freak, which is what people called kids like me back then, in post-hippie days. It wasn’t a put-down. We proudly flew our freak flags.

So I should have been joining a commune or something. Instead, I hitch-hiked all over the country my junior year and then begged to be let back in school for my senior year. I didn’t think they’d let me skip a grade, but I guess they wanted to get rid of me:) I graduated with my class.

I married my true love the same month: June ’73. A year later, we were divorced and I was licking my wounds in Key West, a 19 year-old divorcee on the run. Key West was different then. It was, put simply, paradise. But I was heart-sick over some stupid rebound guy, and didn’t ever fully appreciate its wonders. Mallory Square was just people holding beer bottles heading down to an empty area where we watched the sunset. No stores, no performers, nothing to distract us from that natural beauty.

Then the bad ex-boyfriend begged me to come back to Detroit, and like an idiot, I did. I’m still here, but he got the boot a long time ago. I promptly moved in with a musician boyfriend ten years older than me. When I saw his sister’s new baby, I was struck with unexplained baby lust. I wanted one. Really, really bad.

The muso said no, as he should have, and after I left him for the next husband, took off for California with another girl. I got married this time with all the special things my first group marriage by mayor didn’t have. And in the 7 years we were married, by the time I was 25, I had 2 sons, who remain the best things I ever did in this life. They grew into amazing men.

My divorce from their father, when I was 28, made me reassess my life. I had almost no college, except for a creative writing class I took. Because I was always a writer. I had my diary, I wrote journalism in junior high, graduated to poetry for the next ten years, and when I was pregnant with my first son, wrote my first novel.

This was all stuff that happened in the most natural way. I am a reader. I have always been a reader. But what slowly dawned on me was the fact that I was a writer, too. And I reasoned that teaching was a good job for a single mom writer for three big reasons: June, July, and August. Also, I was off school when my kids were. Perfect!

Ha. Teaching the kind of alternative kids that I had been was the hardest thing I have ever done. I applied to grad school and did that at night while teaching stoners with small attention spans during the day. Then I applied to teach at college. Then university. Then started taking chunks of time off to write.

I wasn’t a single mom for long. Marriage #3 has lasted 28 years this month. My sons were 5 and 7 when I married Al. They don’t remember me being married to their dad. They don’t remember I spent 5 years as a SAHM before the bug to move on bit me again. It was more than a bug, it was a troubled marriage. Almost 30 years later, I’m exploring divorce and child custody (as well as addiction) in the novel I’m writing.

So, how did this dream life come to me? Well, sure I did the footwork. But it’s been a pleasure. When you do what you love, life has a way of working out.

Runnin’ Down a Dream

Yes, I am a die-hard Tom Petty fan. His lyrics often reflect how he deals with creative juice. That and Love capital L are his two stand-out themes for me. There is a kind of love brewing in me now. It wants to spill into the novel I’m writing, or maybe take me off-track altogether. I just don’t know yet, because I haven’t let out the words.

As a writer who has published five books, I know how to put my nose to the grindstone. It’s never easy for me to write the sad stuff, the bad stuff. The last time I left off, I’d just had my character hit bottom. Now he’s heading for a confrontation with his ex-wife over custody of their children. And all I want to do is write about Love.

The ex-wife is in love, she’s got it bad, but she’s totally torn. She doesn’t see a way to have a future with this man who has her heart. So, I’m thinking, let the new lovers have a little interlude of dizzy pleasure before everything goes to hell. What’s the harm? Readers, especially romance readers, love the romantic parts of novels. That new love feeling is difficult for me, since next month I’ll have been (mostly happily!) married to Al for 28 years. Or it was until I met someone from my past who made me remember what it feels like to be in love.

So, since in real life I’m not going anywhere,  I can sublimate my recently ruffled feelings by putting them on paper. Just like Tom Petty, I’m going to listen to my heart. It’s gonna tell me what to do as I run down this dream the only way I know how. By making it happen in a book.

Tricks of the Sentence Trade

There are teachers who write and writers who teach; we are separate species. I’m a writer who teaches, but that doesn’t mean I don’t care about my day job. It means it’s a job, not my life’s passion. It’s an interesting job for a writer, too, since I’m helping college freshmen learn tricks of the sentence trade.

I would not advise any writer who must make her own living to become a teacher. I’ve had many jobs (retail, restaurant, secretary) and every single one of them offered more free time to write than teaching does. Despite June, July & August. When I taught full time (and to support yourself, you must teach full time, probably summer, too) I wrote a book every summer. When I took time off teaching just to write, I read my summer books with horrified eyes before throwing them away. They weren’t even worth revising.

I know of a few full time teachers who manage to write decent books in their spare time. Top notch mystery writer Amanda Cross is the pseudonym of a (now deceased) professor. Then there’s Eloise James, who’s still raising children while writing Regency romances and teaching Shakespeare. So it can be done, just not by me.

So why do it? Except for writing, teaching is the most rewarding job I’ve ever had. I enjoy the challenge of it. But to do it well, I spend precious hours preparing lessons when I could be writing a novel. In fact, I didn’t write at all last week, the first week of classes. I am hoping things settle down and I’ll be able to work on an almost completed draft, but I’m not counting on it.

And that’s okay, because this winter I’ll  be writing instead of teaching. I am able to do this because my dean is very good to her adjunct faculty and because my husband has an excellent job. Also, both my kids are out of college and have really great jobs of their own.

If you’re a writer and you need a day job, I’d say choose anything but teaching. But if you’re a writer and you don’t have to foot all the bills yourself, becoming an adjunct at a college in your area is a nice option. And they are always hiring.