Cynthia Harrison's Blog, page 6

Christmas Differences

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Seems like this close to a year, I should be updating Retirement Diaries. On the other hand, isn’t everyone doing the same thing? Staying home? Lots of people dying every day. It’s depressing. We’ve lost several in our Michigan community. Out of 100 or so people, five died within a few weeks. I’ve had to make an effort to stay upbeat, not let fear or depression swamp me. It’s hard. I think it is for most of us.

Al and I have always thought differently about Christmas. It was so difficult in the early years of our marriage. My mother made our Christmas mornings magical so I enjoyed everything about it and Al didn’t share my enthusiasm. He didn’t like the commercial aspects of the holidays. But he never woke up to a living room filled with toys not just under the tree but set up like little scenes. For me, there was the little table and chairs, with a doll in one of the chairs and the Easy Bake oven on the table. Everything sparkled. One year there was a guitar for one of my brothers and a drum kit for the other one.

I didn’t know that having a special Christmas with lots of toys was commercial. I didn’t think about that. But now I see what Al means and it doesn’t matter to me that we don’t give each other loads of gifts. But it mattered to me when my boys were little. Al and I had very different childhoods and it took a few years to understand each other and all the various family traditions. We got to know each other better just by talking it out over the course of ten or twenty years. LOL I’m not even kidding. But we’re fine now and I don’t expect him to have loads of presents for me under the tree.

Many years we’ll think of one big item that we both want and we’ll buy that. Some years he surprises me with a special piece of jewelry. This year, trying to declutter the house before putting it up for sale in the spring, my mind has been hammering home to me that I have way too much stuff. It wasn’t always that way, but somehow I have about twenty boxes of Christmas decorations. I’ve sorted them into donate/trash/keep piles. Then I had to do two piles, one for Christmas in Florida this year and one for Christmas in Florida when we buy our new home. Because our condo is cute, but it’s little.

We are leaving in a week and I’m excited despite Covid. I still love Christmas. So far we have donated two large loads of Christmas things, including a tree and ornaments. I used to shop at thrift shops and Salvation Army so I’m always happy to donate things I can’t use anymore, thinking “someone will like this tree.” I tell myself a little story about how there’s a person or a couple or a family who don’t have money for a tree and they happen to spot my donated tree for $5 or whatever the price. And they’re thrilled to take it home and hang ornaments on it, wondering what kind of person gives away such nice things.

Very early in our marriage I would say to Al “I can’t believe you don’t like Christmas! Who doesn’t like Christmas?” and he’d say “I like Christmas, but I don’t like the commercial aspects of it.” And I would roll my eyes, thinking he was Scrooge. But now that our life overflows with so much stuff, I see his point.

Connecting During Covid

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I thought I would be so much further along on my Covid marketing plan. But then I got sick. Not sure yet if I had the actual Covid or just a potent blend of sinus, cold, and flu. Getting blood test tomorrow. Getting results who knows when??? Still, even sick for a few weeks, I did manage to make this little promo image on Canva, and Linda, who you met last week when we swapped blogs, has promised to show me how to do more. Like a story.

Also I did my Facebook Author Chat. I was so happy my voice wasn’t nasal and I did not cough! It was fun and easy but not so fun or easy to upload the video to my site. I checked the link at the start of this paragraph and it will take you to the chat. (Maybe only if you are on Facebook?) I watched it after we stopped talking and noted that I did not mention my new book one time. Not once! I didn’t show the book cover or even mention the title. It was just talking with other writers. Pure fun, which is the best sort of promotion.

In case I have not said it enough due to Covid or whatever I had (my husband gave it to me, whatever it was) the title of my new book is Jane in St Pete. That link will take you to Amazon to buy the book, but you can also buy it on Nook and iPhone. I bought my first Kindle book (by Karen McQuestion) on my husband’s iPhone in 2007 because I didn’t have a Kindle or an iPhone and I was excited about this new KDP program Karen was talking about.

I kind of knew that promotion for this book at this time would not be a whirlwind of success. Besides getting sick and writing the next book in the Jane series, I am also taking care of doctor appointments that had to be postponed when I got sick. Doctors do not want you in their office if you even suspect you have Covid.

What happened after that was I had to wait a few additional weeks for another appointment. It’s an important appointment, additional tests necessary because the first test had a bit of a shadow. I knew I’d be worried (worried is my middle name) the whole time I was in Florida this winter if I waited for Spring to take that test. I’m sure it will turn out to be nothing. Anyway.

We were supposed to leave for Florida December 2. Yes, in two days, now postponed two weeks. My biggest book promotion was going to be in Florida, in St. Pete, where the book is set. That may not happen now. The venue where I was to have a book signing is closed. Due to Covid. I’m glad I gave myself a talking to before the book came out. It’s okay if this is not the book launch of my dreams, despite what my horoscope may have predicted.

There will be other books and other signings and probably even other video chats. Which I really wanted to embed right here. Maybe next time.

Blog Swap with Linda Sienkiewicz

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When it comes to writing, or any other creative pursuits, time used to explore possibilities is never wasted.  

How a Dead End Led to a Children’s Book

One of our family’s favorite activities when we’re on the beach in North Carolina is watching for ghost crabs, those skittish little creatures that live in deep holes in the sand along the shore. One year, my grandson, then three, was frightened by a large ghost crab that ran right across his foot. We promptly visited Village Books in Buxton to find a picture book about them for him. Surprisingly, we came up empty-handed. “Well,” my daughter said, “You’ll just have to write him one.”

So I wrote a story about a boy who visits the beach for the first time, and how his big brother’s story about ghost crabs scares him. What would happen if he then had to rescue a crab from a girl with a net? I sketched out pictures with markers and colored pencils, and printed it myself for my grandkids. 

The love of story kept me going

As a writer, I thought the story had possibilities. I fine tuned the text by putting my poetry skills to work and began querying children’s book agents. From what I understood, publishers typically select the the illustrator for picture books, not the author. That was okay with me. It had been a long time since I’d done any serious drawing, and this looked like a big project.

Don’t quit 

Finding an agent or publisher can be a long process though. While I queried, I decided I may as well try doing the illustrations, too. Why not? I had the skills, even if they were a little rusty. The biggest issue was I’d attended art school in the seventies, long before art was digitalized, and I felt this put me at a disadvantage.

I bought myself an iPad and an Apple Pen. That was the easy part, because I had no clue how to draw on an iPad, or even what app to use! It took me a year, a full year, before I finally got serious about learning how to use Adobe Sketch.

I watched a lot of YouTube how-to videos. I also had to study children, beaches, and crabs, which I’d never really drawn before. Have you ever considered how hard it is to draw ocean waves? They are tricky! 

Meanwhile, I kept getting rejections or no response from agents. 

Keep learning

Despite the rejections, I felt productive. In addition to fine tuning my drawing skills, I studied picture book layout, and learned what in the story to illustrate in order to keep the story moving ahead visually. I went to a conference on publishing children’s books and talked with an agent who suggested adding science facts at the end of book. 

A year or two later, I sought out a publisher on my own. I worked hand in hand with editor MaryChris Bradley, who’d published my novel, In the Context of Love, under a different imprint. She had excellent ideas for fine tuning the text. However, she told me my illustrations were too small to use! 

Ugh. I resized them, but in the process, they lost clarity, so I had to redo all the drawings for optimal reproduction. Not only that, after the book was laid out, there were three more pages to fill! I expanded the educational portion of the book with more fun facts and science. And more drawings.

That dead end created “The End”

At any point in this journey, I could have thrown up my hands and said “I’m not a children’s book author,” “I’m too far behind in my skills to illustrate a book,” or “Agents keep rejecting me!” Many times, I thought “This is too much work.” But I kept at it. I’m so excited to see how my early conception of a children’s book morphed into this final product. 

My grandson is seven now. I hope my grandchildren, and your children or grandchildren like this book. It means a lot to me.

Gordy and the Ghost Crab Book Trailer

Gordy and the Ghost Crab 

Gordy is afraid of the crashing ocean waves and a strange creature he sees skittering across the beach. It doesn’t help his fears when his big brother tells him it’s a ghost crab that will pinch off all his toes. What will Gordy do when he meets a girl intent on capturing a ghost crab? Will he stay away, or will he rescue the little crab? 

The story highlights empathy, problem solving and the value of caring for nature. The book also includes fun facts about different types of common crabs and offers a gentle conservation message.

Order: https://www.amazon.com/dp/1941523226/

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Linda K. Sienkiewicz’s poetry, short stories and art have been widely published in literary journals and anthologies. Gordy and the Ghost Crab is her first picture book. Her first novel, In the Context of Love, won four finalist awards, including the Hoffer Award and the Sarton Award for Fiction. She also has a poetry chapbook award, three other poetry chapbooks, and a Pushcart Prize Nomination. Her MFA is from Stonecoast at the University of Southern Maine. She volunteers at The Neighborhood House, a nonprofit social services organization.

Author Talk

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I’ve never done a Facebook Live author talk. These are the things we writers do now. I’m a little nostalgic for a book festival or a conference or a signing. That will all be coming back, just not for this book. Not yet. Linda and I have done a lot of that kind of promotion together. A few highlights: We did a book fair, an author signing involving 20 authors in a huge store full of beautiful furniture and clothing and other things, and at least one conference (probably more than one) when we were both in the same writer’s group.

Then there was the reader’s festival in Alpena, a cute little town northern Michigan with indie bookshops and lots of readers. We took our husbands on that trip and stayed at a rustic lodge and had dinner in a great restaurant in the middle of the forest. We took a horse and carriage ride to view elk. It was a fun weekend. Plus we were helping our books.

We did a signing together at one bookstore, then we were on a panel discussing topics of interest to readers at a second bookstore/gift shop. There was a Q & A. I love a good Q & A, especially with a friend.

This Facebook Live event came about being Linda and I both have books out now and we were talking about how in the heck we were supposed to promote them. We came up with a few ideas. Linda was going to set up a Facebook Live Chat, which is how she found Jenifer from Pink Panther Magazine, who kindly offered to host us.

Turns out, long ago, Jenifer was a creative writing student of mine. And she’s now a successful author! It was great talking to her again. Our official talk is on Friday and if you’re my Facebook friend, I invited you. Even if we aren’t Facebook friends (I don’t have my author page on FB anymore, but that’s another blog post…) you can sign up to view the event at 4 pm this Friday. So, as weird as this time is for everyone, including writers, good things happen anyway.

Hope to “see” you Friday.

More Covid Marketing

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— Cynthia Harrison (@CynthiaHarriso1) November 9, 2020

It took all weekend, but I managed to make a Twitter post on Canva! Then I uploaded it to Twitter via Canva’s direct “post to Twitter now.” That was a mistake as I could not add my buy link to my tweet post. A problem with Canva is you can’t put the buy link into a Canva design. Just pop it beneath the tweet. Or use the Word Press link or caption option if you’re blogging.

I hope you can see that I am not very far at all in my quest to master Canva. I would take a class if I could find one. I already looked for Canva for Dummies but there is no such book. I was only able to make the above tweet because I used a stock template and changed the words in the text boxes. So, really, I’m not Canva ready. I’m just bungling along.

Also, all last week, when my book released, guess what everyone was tweeting about? The election. Which, okay, that was way more important than my new book release. So I decided to use the time to learn Canva. It is clear I need more time. Much more time. Or a class. Probably both.

One tip I do have is to talk to your writer friends now, especially those with book releases about the same time as yours. What are they doing? My writing friend Linda told me to use Canva for tweets and Facebook. She also said we should do an online “two writers talking about writing” thing. I liked that idea, but I told her I know nothing about Zoom except how to click on the link the leader sends.

But darn if she didn’t only find out how to do it, she found a writer who wanted to host us on her online program: Pink Panther Presents Author Talk. Our talk will be streamed live November 20 at 4 pm and anybody can watch it for free. So, we are still dealing with Covid, but there are ways to market your new release even if you are a tech disaster like me.

I must mention that I have had a website and a blog since 2002 and I use them as my platform base. My son suggested I start a blog way back and he taught me everything I know about having an online presence. If you don’t have a good website (I like Word Press and I pay $100 a year so there are no ads.) that’s my #1 tip. Get a website and start blogging! When I need help with technical aspects of my site, I use Bakerview Consulting; they are wonderful and also Word Press experts.

Another writing friend, Barb, has a book coming out December 9 and we share the same publisher, the lovely Wild Rose Press, who tweeted out my new release last week. Barb offered to interview me on her blog and I said wouldn’t it be fun to switch blogs for a day? I’d write a blog for her site and she’d write one for mine. About our new releases, of course. So really the basics of marketing online are having a platform like a website, use it to blog, then link posts on social media. Also, you gotta have writer friends. Those are my top two suggestions.

Suggestion three is for people who are good at online design. Make all those great Twitter and Facebook posts and pin them. Just don’t overdo promotion on Twitter and Facebook. Pinning a marketing post is fine, but scheduling your lovely designed posts to pop up every hour is not cool. Social sites require social engagement in a meaningful way. That means don’t just tweet fancy ways to say buy my book. But, hey, if you want to, here’s my link: https://amzn.to/34MK3FY.

Jane in St. Pete Release Day!

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Jane fires her agent, retires from the art lecture circuit and moves to sunny St. Pete, all on a frenzied whim when her not-very-beloved husband unexpectedly dies. She fixes up her condo, meets her mom for lunch and finds new friends. When one of them is murdered, she uses her knowledge of art to help the local police solve the case. Also, she falls in love with a homicide detective.

Of course she falls in love. I have never written a book, published or unpublished, that does not have a love thread. And I’ve tried. That’s just where my heart goes. Talking with friends, trying to figure out if my new series is really cozy. We came up with edgy cozy. Because you do see a body in the second book (still writing), there is blood, and I have procedural characters. Edgy cozy. If it was not a thing before, it is now.

Read it on Kindle, Nook, iPhone or in print now. Meanwhile, I’ll figure out how to market my book online. I did one Zoom presentation a while ago, and I wasn’t entirely happy with it. I was not in control, I’d do it different. If I knew how. Also I’m learning Canva so I can post nice photos. Marketing during Covid sure is different!

[image error] My writing partners: Vernie, Bob and Tom. I’m next to Tom.

Seinfeld on Writing

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A book full of jokes is not nearly as funny as watching a comedian do his act. I bought this book because Seinfeld said in an interview, pressed on this exact point, that really it’s a book for writers. I’m probably the only writer who believed him and ordered the hard cover.

The book is divided by decade, beginning with the 70s. This is when Jerry began writing jokes. They were short.

Still, I persisted. Maybe, I thought, he would have a little commentary on how to write humor at the beginning of the 80s section. He did not. Just more jokes. The jokes got longer and more complex in the 90s and beyond, but I wasn’t reading them anymore. I was looking on every page for writing wisdom. Particularly, I wanted to amp up my humor.

My editor says my novels have a “subtle” humor. The trouble with being subtle is that quiet ironies may land a bit too softly for others to recognize. I looked at every page of Jerry’s book. Twice. There was no writing advice anywhere within. There were witticisms by the dozens, jokes on every page, and, although I laughed a lot, I received zero advise on how to prod others do so while turning my pages.

To give him credit, he never said it was advice he was giving the reader. It was jokes, specifically, every joke he’d ever written. I realized he was teaching by example. I prefer things spelled out. My stomach hurt from laughing; I almost stopped reading, but then I noticed how he set his jokes up. The early ones had three parts and as he got better the jokes became much more complex. Funnier. If Jerry was a bottle of wine, he’d age well.

The other thing I noticed was his page breaks. I am writing this post in block format. It’s what people are used to seeing when they read anything on the internet. Before the internet we had indentation, not a space between paragraphs. But Jerry chose neither of these forms. His jokes were, I finally noticed, printed like poems.

Most people, I assume, know what poems look like. The lines break in the middle of a sentence. Or anywhere. It can seem random if you are not a reader of contemporary poetry and/or do not have an MFA in English. But I finally recognized the poem pattern and it dawned on me. Jerry was writing in joke lines. The early ones from the 70s were the simplest. The first sentence or phrase would be the set up. The second bit was an elaboration. And the third was the punchline.

This was the lesson for writers. Genius, right? He was showing instead of telling. I tried using Jerry’s method in the first few paragraphs of this post and then threw in a few more. Trying to be funny is exhausting.

“Show don’t tell” is another thing writing teachers say to new writers. It’s not always true, because sometimes you need to tell. Everyone knows how to tell. Showing is harder, and I tried to do that, too. But I’m no Jerry Seinfeld.

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The first book in my new mystery series, Jane in St. Pete, is available now.  As a thank you for stopping by, I’m offering a free short story prequel. 

Modern Mythology

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Don’t know why I still read the New York Times Book Review every Sunday. I rarely am interested enough in a reviewed book to buy it. I get upset because they don’t review near as many books by women as they do men. And yet, there I was yesterday, reading NYTBR again. And being happily surprised.

One thing I like is that they recently added a monthly romance review column. They’ve had one for mysteries for years, so, about time! Anyway, I was also gratified to note that many of the romance novels they deigned to review were self-published. The Times, they are a changin’. I bought Spoiler Alert by Olivia Dade.

What hooked me in the review was the tie-in to the love story between Aeneas, a Greek god, and Dido, ruler of Carthage. Dido is said to be ugly, yet Aeneas, aided by Cupid, loves her anyway. This ancient storyline, like all the stories of Greek and Roman gods and the humans who amuse and infuriate them, can be found in the 1940 classic Mythology by Edith Hamilton.

Mythology was my first literary love. My first class, in 1973, in high school, whetted my appetite for those ancient origin stories. I went on to read many more of the original plays in college and grad school. Hamilton’s book, pictured above, is my third or fourth copy. I’ve referred to Mythology so often through the years (as I have this morning) that they fall apart on me after twenty years or so. My current copy has yellowed pages but the spine remains intact.

In Spoiler Alert a contemporary novelist retells the story of Aeneas and Dido. His mastery captivates fanfic writers online and nabs a Hollywood remake, which is as horrible as the massive series of tomes are wonderful. The guy who plays Aeneas is a hot and handsome star, who’s smart too. He has a secret. He’s one of the writers on a popular fanfic site. As is his online BFF, a woman.

That’s all I can say about the plot of Spoiler Alert without spoilers. Oh, except when the female online BFF of the actor playing Aeneas decides to out herself as fat (her word, not mine) all hell breaks loose with the Twitter trolls. I’m enjoying this wild brew, a mix of old and new. It’s a nice respite from the historical romances I’ve buried myself in since the pandemic outbreak in March.

Ha! So that’s why I continue to read The New York Times Book Review. It’s rare, but every once in awhile, I still find an intriguing book reviewed there.

Tropical Trilogy

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It’s getting cold here in Michigan and after six months of reading almost exclusively historical romance, I turned to the last in Elin Hilderbrand’s trilogy set in contemporary St. John in the Virgin Islands, where the sun always shines (unless a hurricane blows in) and it’s hot, hot, hot.

EH writes two novels a year and has been doing so for many many years. She publishes her Nantucket books every Spring/Summer and then does another novel Fall/Winter. Her books (and this trilogy is no exception) are light, fun, romance novels with more than a pinch of drama.

One of my favorite tropes in these type of novels is the betrayed wife. Husband dies and wife finds out he has a secret life. In this case, a mistress and child in a fancy (9 bedroom) villa on St. John. That’s the start of it, so it’s not a spoiler to say it. I think it might even be part of the back cover blurb.

One thing EH does that I’d like to do someday is have four or five points of view. So she has the betrayed wife chapters, and then the grown two sons each have their own chapters, and the father of the mistress and the best friend of the mistress…they all have chapters. I like reading those kind of books and I’d like to write them.

I am just a few chapters into my next book, the second in a series, and I have been thinking about trying it. My publisher is very open to things like that. I’m lucky that way. Meanwhile, I await my November 2 release of the first in my new series “Jane in St. Pete.” Pre-order on Amazon here.

The Way Writing Works

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I am no artist, but I do find it helpful when writing a novel to sketch out the main area of action for easy reference. Location in mysteries is important. Where was the body found? Where do suspects live? In my case I can’t keep an entire condo community that includes a bayou and nature trails and who can see what from their condo window all in my head.

I use watercolors my artist friend Ali sent me for Christmas a few years ago for two reasons. One, the use of color quickly locates the pool, for example, or shows orientation from one building to the others. I only put four condo blocks in my imaginary community just to keep things simple. The other thing is color cheers me up, no matter how sloppily applied to the paper.

At times, it’s nice to just switch over from writing to drawing. I spent a bit of time on the above masterpiece, as I used Prisma colored pencils as well as a regular No. 2 pencil before the final wash of watercolor. The Prismas make colors and shapes step a bit boldly to the forefront of the watercolor. Can you find my gator in the bayou? Top left corner. LOL this is NOT what I was going to blog about today!

So, back to writing and how to do it book after book year after year. You have to start and it won’t be pretty. I read an interview with Jerry Seinfeld and he said looking back on his early jokes, they weren’t very good, but those early words were the bridge to get him to where he is now. (Rich and famous.) He actually has a new book, a memoir, and he calls it a writer’s book. Because he shows how the placement and construction of his words make the jokes work.

So you need to start on one side of the bridge to eventually reach the other. Every day, writers open their notebooks or laptops and start at the beginning of the bridge. What helps is to have some little sliver of something in mind. I often wake up with a sliver and bring it to the bridge. It can be anything. Part of a conversation. An image. I usually know a little bit about where I’m going, and that’s all I need to cross that bridge.

Because when I start with that sliver, there is some kind of mechanism I don’t understand (maybe magic, grace, imagination, or all of them) that takes my fingers and types words. 3-5 pages a day on my very good days. The more you show up with your sliver, the more good days you will have.

This bridge/sliver/magic feels like flying. Not in a plane, or even like Superman, but just sort of your floating mind zipping along, keeping pace as your fingers cross the cosmic bridge. Does that sound fun? It is. That’s why I do it. It is SO fun. After 3-5 pages I blink and feel a long rush of deep pleasure. I did it again! And then it happens again and again, as long as I show up with my sliver and laptop.

It’s more complicated than it sounds. You should have a plot map of some sort for mysteries. Mystery Writing Plot Map may even even pop up on a search engine. If not, many many books show you how to make them. Characters, setting, murder details, clues help you dream up the sliver.

Then there’s the other thing. Every scene has to have a purpose. Either move the plot forward or show character development. Twists are good too, but not too many. I don’t worry too much about my scenes having purpose in a first draft. Reading through a completed draft, I check every scene. Does it need to be there? Why? I am sorry to say that you must do this on the sentence level and the word level too. How does this sentence contribute to the story? If it doesn’t, but it’s beautifully written or uses a cool word, you have to cut it.

Some famous writer called this revision process at the sentence and word level “killing your darlings.” Because sometimes you can write things you really love but they just do not serve the plot. Or, you could be a poet and not a mystery novelist at all. You get to decide. Everything is within your power. It’s your world, you made it. Maybe you even made a painting.

Seinfeld’s book is called “Is This Anything?” The interviewer, Mara Reinstein, asks why his fans might want to read his jokes instead of listening to him tell them. He said he wanted to show the crazy amount of time and work he spends crafting his jokes. Then he said “I think this is a book for writers.” I’m buying it.