Zetta Elliott's Blog, page 5

looking back

My latest newsletter went out last week (you can read it here). I’ve considered hiring a virtual assistant to do the tedious tasks that take up so much time—like putting content on social media and sending out quarterly newsletters. But a couple of years ago I hired an accountant to do my taxes and I still spent at least a day gathering receipts and adding up the numbers; then I paid her $500 to take those figures and plug them into tax preparation software, which I could have done by myself for half the price. I’m only putting out newsletters twice a year and that seems sufficient; I don’t blog as much as I used to and I guess social media is to blame. I post on Instagram almost every day and try to take photos regularly to make sure I have enough content to share; now those photos are the archive I consult to figure out just what I did each month. I used to do an end-of-year slideshow but that seems pointless now. I think I’m sharing enough!

My life is pretty basic. Aside from my trip to the UK and Ireland last month, this fall has been fairly quiet. The horrific war in the Middle East spurred me to write two new picture books this month. This 1890s photograph I came across on Facebook lit up my imagination and now I’m building up to a thousand words a day on my prequel. I visited two art galleries last week for more inspiration but since I’m home most of the time, I’m catching up on my DIY To Do list. Went to the hardware store today to get foam so I can properly winterize my back door. The paint supplies that have been cluttering my office for *a year* are now gone because I finally finished the job I started last winter. Half my Xmas decorations are up, I started listening to holiday music yesterday, and I’ve decided to try my friend’s recipe for gingerbread this year instead of baking my usual cookies. I ordered a live tree online from Home Depot that will be delivered next week and spent over an hour online searching for a strange little elf that used to be part of our home decorations when I was a child—not quite “elf on the shelf” but close. Couldn’t find the exact same elf so bought a little Black one to sit on the shelf above my stocking—and I had to buy a pet stocking on Etsy because human stockings are ginormous. I only want to fill mine with the treats we got when we were kids: chocolate coins, lip balm, and mandarin oranges (I’ll skip the slide puzzles from the Christian bookstore). Not sure why the holidays make me so nostalgic…it’s my favorite time of year and with everything going on in the world, maybe I’m just reaching for all the comfort I can find.

I still don’t miss Brooklyn but lately I’ve been remembering all the ways I used to stretch a dollar back in the day…walking home after class to save the $1.25 I would have spent on a subway token. I could then put that money towards the $3.50 it cost to buy a veggie roti from this little Bangladeshi spot in Bed-Stuy. Since I had my turkey dinner for Canadian Thanksgiving last month, I went to a nearby Indian restaurant today and tried to recreate my favorite budget meal from back in the day. The price was ten times higher but worth every penny! I’ve come a long way since moving to Brooklyn as a young woman in the 1990s. A friend in Brussels asked me today when I’ll be back in Europe, and I couldn’t say—the future is foggy. I’m going to gather soon with my west coast friends so we can collectively set our intentions for the winter solstice. After three sessions with my occupational therapist, the compressed nerve in my left arm seems to be recovering. I’d like to start the new year with a clean slate and a clean bill of health. Plenty to be thankful for as the year draws to a close. Hope your holidays are full of comfort and joy…

cake #2

Last week I baked a cake for myself for my 51st birthday. Today I went for a run for the first time in three weeks…then I came home and baked another cake! Definitely stress-eating. I should blog more often because my head has been full and my heart has been heavy. Now someone’s trying to start something with me on Instagram but I’m not taking the bait. The numbers given by anti-racist scholar Ibram X. Kendi (left) have gone up because the bombing of Gaza hasn’t stopped. October is over so I’m no longer writing a poem a day but I did start a new picture book this morning. What can I offer the hungry, frightened, grieving children of the Middle East? A story.

It’s National Novel Writing Month and I *do* plan to finish a novel by the end of November but I’ve still got Ireland on my mind. So I’m doing a little research on the Irish presence in Nevis, and then I’m spending a bit of time on my new picture book story, and THEN I turn my attention back to The Oracle’s Door. A thousand words a day gets me a finished prequel by the end of the month. While I was in Dublin, I heard from an agent that I queried last summer. But after drawing the Tower card during my birthday tarot reading, I wonder if I should even be trying to find representation—again. I haven’t had an agent in over a year and that means I haven’t been able to submit my work to editors at the corporate publishers (the ones that pay the biggest advances). Maybe continuing to operate outside of “the system” makes more sense than trying to break back in. But that means reducing my overhead and finding another way to earn a living. Taking a stand for the people of Palestine may cost me some professional opportunities. I sent the agent my best picture book story and they said they read it over and over, the writing was so beautiful…but ultimately they didn’t feel they could sell it in today’s “highly competitive market.” The corporatization of the publishing industry makes writing like mine less interesting to the teams of editors, marketers, and salespeople who only greenlight projects that are most likely to make money for shareholders. Quality of writing doesn’t even enter into the equation anymore…

The “irrational optimist” I referenced in my Sutherland lecture seems to have struck again; for the third time in three years I have been nominated for the Astrid Lindgren Memorial Award. I’m grateful—it’s definitely an honor—but I’m realistic about how awards work. That’s something I discussed in my Sutherland lecture, the excerpt of which is available now in the print edition of Horn Book; the digital version should be online soon.

Today’s a stay-home-and-write day so I hope you have a good weekend and can find a healthy way to find comfort as we navigate these sad, stressful times.

breathing in, breathing out

I *almost* booked a day trip to Galway but decided instead to stay in Dublin tomorrow. I’ve got a migraine coming on and know I need to write, to breathe, to process all the information I’ve gathered and experiences I’ve had over the past week. It was good to see friends in Glasgow and when Storm Babet canceled my trip north to Inverness, I instead took the train to Carstairs; my first known Scottish ancestor, Thomas Stark, hailed from Carnwath and a short trip on a very fast minibus took me to that neighboring village. Here in Ireland my ancestors come from a few different areas; Galway isn’t too far from Terryglass but I’m just too tired to commit to a thirteen-hour day trip. I can reach Tipperary in a couple of hours by train but the guides seem to be in the north of the county and without a car, I can’t easily get up there. But I have booked an appointment for Wednesday morning with a genealogist at the Emigration Museum and afterwards I will tour their Entangled Islands exhibit to learn about Ireland’s involvement in the Caribbean. I picked up a few books today so can start reading up on Irish mythology and I may even try my hand at a Halloween story since it’s that time of year and the holiday originated here in Ireland as Samhain.

My weekend in Oxford was wonderful. Seeing my book featured in the “Gifts and Books” exhibit made me proud—and I reread The Ghosts in the Castle the night before I gave two talks at the library. I met some folks who were interested in self-publishing and I gave away the books I’d brought to three lovely women who run the local prison family reading project. Everyone at the Bodleian was lovely and the exhibit curator Nick set up an informal meeting afterwards with half a dozen undergraduates who had just finished reading Mother of the Sea for their fairytales course with Prof. Alex Paddock. We talked about book bans in the US, the latest Disney adaptation of “The Little Mermaid,” and how far we’ve come with diverse casting in fantasy films and series. I had hoped to get over to Oxhill to visit Myrtilla’s grave but couldn’t make it work. Took an early bus to Heathrow instead and then flew to Dublin. Now I’m ready to read some Irish fairytales and already have an idea for a magical story—my tour of Trinity College this morning included two giant deer! They went extinct long ago and many males were preserved in peat bogs here in Ireland but the female deer are rarer…they stood about seven feet tall. I’m sure I can work a giant deer into my story somehow…

searching for words

I watch the news—a lot. Too much, really, but not this week. The death and suffering of so many children is heartbreaking. Coverage of conflict in the Middle East has never been good but what I’ve seen lately is appalling. Normally I watch a number of channels (Sky, DW, Al Jazeera, France 24, NBC, PBS, Amanpour & Friends) so I can see what’s being covered, which story leads, and which countries are being ignored. I keep thinking about Nat Turner’s rebellion and how anxious (mostly White) abolitionists were about Blacks arming themselves and killing enslavers in their fight for liberation. African Americans and Indigenous people here in the US know what it’s like to be called “savage”—and we know what happens when your oppressor declares you to be subhuman. The title of Patrice Cullors’s memoir also keeps coming to mind: When They Call You a Terrorist. It puts you beyond the pale. It makes empathy impossible and critical thinking unnecessary. I’m limiting my news consumption and only following certain folks on social media: Jewish Voice for Peace and Social Justice Books. I appreciate their posting of this link for educators looking for books that affirm the humanity of Palestinians.

It has been a stressful couple of weeks on the book front and I was congratulating myself on not letting the stress manifest as a migraine but apparently I spoke too soon. This is Day 3 and it’s been raining for hours with more rain forecast for tomorrow. Luckily I have a surplus of medication and refilled my prescription so I’d have extra pills to take on my trip. I leave for the UK on Monday and 3 of the 4 books I hoped to publish are now available on Amazon (the paperback editions can be ordered in bookstores). I’ve used KDP for almost ten years (since it used to be CreateSpace) but I won’t be working with them again. Not after they refused to publish Blue Boy until I changed the cover and fixed this “problem.” Can you see it? Neither could I, which is why we wasted two weeks trying to follow their instructions to adjust the book’s margins. I finally wrote an irate email and learned they were holding up publication because the paint in this one illustration doesn’t reach the edge of the page. This so-called problem wasn’t flagged in the paperback; for that edition, they insisted I change the cover design. Now, the paperback and hardcover are the SAME BOOK. So if there’s a problem with one version, it should be flagged in the other. The whole point of self-publishing is to have control over the book-making process but now their reviewers can stop publication for idiotic and inconsistent reasons. Which is just the nudge I needed to part ways with this platform…

I decided to write a poem a day for the month of October; the poems from this past week are fairly grim. But it feels good to be writing again after so many weeks of dealing with annoying administrative stuff. And good things have happened—my sensitivity reader sent me an affirming three-page report on my representation of Kaylee, a transgender teenage girl in The Ship in the Garden. Since I selected the UK as my primary market, I was able to order and ship books to folks in the UK quickly, often for free, and without filling out the customs forms required by USPS. I meant for the libraries to get hardcover copies of Blue Boy but until KDP gives their approval, that can’t happen. At least the paperback got approved in time. I heard some good news last month but wasn’t able to share it until last week: The Enchanted Bridge has been selected for the Illinois Reads Program! That’s one thing I can say about war—it puts your petty problems in perspective and makes you appreciate all that you have…

surrender

Sometimes you push and push to make things happen, and sometimes you just have to let go. I’ve reached that point with my Scotland books. We have a shareable digital proof of Blue Boy; I sent it to a small group of people, got some rave reviews, and one reporter in Scotland interviewed me two weeks ago. But the article didn’t run over the weekend as expected, and part of me doesn’t even want to follow up. My illustrator wants to change some of the art, and I will need to amend my acknowledgments page—again—if I finally find a Black disabled sensitivity reader. I’m not giving up but boy, it’s been hard. We finally have a finished cover for the time-travel novel—which I love!—and last night I spent over an hour listing FIFTY issues that have to be corrected. And that’s *after* my freelance editor friend Laura went through the manuscript line by line! Laura’s the only friend to read the book through to the end…and she loved it but I still wonder why no one else shared their impressions. Too busy? Too bored to finish the book? I just made a video for some kids in VA who sent me questions about my writing process: “Who helps you make a book?” As I was listing all the people involved in the Dragons in a Bag series, I thought about the many hats I have to wear when I self-publish a book: author, editor, art director, publicist, marketer. Doing TWO at once means twice the work and so I finally had to accept that I probably won’t have the books ready by the end of the month. I leave for Glasgow on the 16th and expect to have everything available online by then, but that wasn’t the original plan. I can’t make people meet deadlines or respond to emails, and at the end of the day, no one else is responsible for my work. That’s the scary part of self-publishing—you get all the praise and all the blame. Trying to take some deep breaths and not force the process. I just heard back from a potential sensitivity reader so fingers crossed she doesn’t find too many issues with our blue boy…if she does, I’ll have to step back and figure out how to proceed…

The Bodleian Library is having a family day on the 21st and I’ve been invited to present! So I changed my travel plans and will go to Glasgow first before returning to London, taking the train to Oxford, and then flying over to Dublin for my first trip to Ireland. I’ll be back in Chicago for my 51st birthday and don’t have any plans so far. After hibernating for most of August, I’m gradually getting back into the world…I met a wonderful group of families at Glenview Public Library last week and took a bus tour of the South and West Side on Friday after being interviewed by historian Essence McDowell earlier in the week for a film she’s making to promote Lifting As They Climbed: Mapping a History of Trailblazing Black Women in Chicago. I haven’t written anything new since finishing The Ship in the Garden in early August and that’s weighing on me…the historic sites on the tour were super inspiring so hopefully I can turn these Scotland books in and turn my attention to one of the many novels I keep vowing to finish…

new look, new direction

Welcome to my new and improved website! I’ve been juggling a few projects this summer and wasn’t sure I had the bandwidth (or the budget) to update my website, but I couldn’t be happier with this refresh. My friend and fellow indie publisher Matthew Smith-Gonzalez launched a new consulting enterprise—if you’re thinking of updating or building a website, or if you need support with self-publishing, Matthew’s the man to call. You can find out more about his services at Indie Pub Doc. My website is built using an outdated WordPress theme from 2008 but Matthew found ways to fix or work around all the glitches. I wanted something with a completely different color palette but the same overall structure—and a touch of magic…and that’s exactly what I got! As the dragon series comes to an end, I’m looking ahead—and back—to the projects I shelved when my little dragons took flight. I’m not done with kid lit but I do want to get back to writing for adults, especially The Hummingbird’s Tongue. I’m almost ready to self-publish my two Scotland books (cover reveal soon!), and hope to spend my birthday in Ireland after stopping in Glasgow, London, and Oxford. My new genealogist just submitted her first report…I’m not sure where to search next. Or if I even want to search further…this memoir is difficult to grasp because I don’t want it to have a standard form yet I keep producing “typical” forms of writing. And the more I travel, the more I write things that aren’t directly related to the memoir. But I’ve spent all of August at home and feel ready to take flight this fall. Looks like we’ve got one more heatwave coming next week (groan) and then hopefully it will start to feel more like autumn…

If you’re in or near Chicago and plan to attend the Printers Row Lit Fest, join us on the 9th at 10am for “Magic, Myths, and Mysteries”—a panel featuring yours truly, Keir Graff, and Karla Valenti. I’ve been on panels with Karla and Keri before and they’re great conversationalists…

 

The War of the Witches

It took a while for us to reach the end but we’re almost at the finish line…Book 5 in the DRAGONS IN A BAG series will be published in January 2024! I didn’t do a big cover reveal but Katelan Thomas did a great job–front and back:

We’ve got Jax, Ma, and Sis on the front…and Ranadahy/Ol-Korrok battling the Scourge on the back:

You can pre-order your copy here. It’s been a rocky ride at times but I’m so thankful for all the readers who kept this series alive. We’re nearing half a million copies sold! I’m deep into my Scotland stories right now, hoping to have both Blue Boy and The Ship in the Garden published by next month, but then I will turn back to the Dragons in a Bag prequel…

posthumous apologies

I met with a psychic for the first time last week. It’s something I’ve always wanted to try, and there’s a shop around the corner with one of those neon palms in the window advertising $10 readings. An Ifa priestess reached out to me on Instagram saying she’d been contacted by my guides but there are a lot of scams on IG so I didn’t respond. But when a friend mentioned that she found a psychic through her cousin, I figured the woman must be legit. I often write about ghosts and believe I saw one as a child so despite childhood warnings from my mother to avoid ouija boards, I made an appointment and kept an open mind. There were two options for the session—she’s a medium and I guess some folks only want to communicate with loved ones who have passed on. Not me. I wanted the second option—a chance to ask about my future—but I agreed we could admit any ancestors who happened to “stop by.” And before we even began, my father apparently started knocking on the psychic’s door. I wish I could “see” what her mind looks like. We started out on Zoom but had to switch to the phone after encountering technical difficulties. She would close her eyes, press a finger to both her temples, and listen before opening her eyes and reporting back to me. It took a little while to figure out who was speaking, which made me wonder if the dead just wait on the other side, desperate to find someone who can see/hear them. My father seems quite enlightened now and I was happy to hear that he had reconciled with his own father. He apologized more than once—something he NEVER did in life—and I wrote everything down but still felt somewhat annoyed. As in life, my needs seemed to come second to my father’s; stopping by to say “hello” or “I’m sorry” is one thing, but I didn’t think he’d dominate the hour and definitely didn’t expect to be tasked with finding my estranged brother—whose estrangement stems at least in part from the abuse he sustained at my father’s hands when he was a boy. I’ve searched for Denzil myself in the past and always said I would hire a private investigator someday. But because of my session with the psychic, that day was today! I don’t know what she’ll find but my expectations are quite low and I’ve set a cap on what I’m willing to spend. The psychic said she could see my father holding a birth certificate and he repeated the need to trace family, even take a DNA test. During the session I thought about my favorite film adaptation of Dickens’s A Christmas Carol when Marley’s ghost laments his inability to help those he might have helped in life. It’s a good reminder to do what you can for others and say what you have to say while you can…

Juneteenth

In 2020, I wrote a poem for Juneteenth, which was later acquired by LBYR; our picture book, A Song for Juneteenth, was meant to come out last month but in March we learned that the illustrator had been arrested and so everything changed. The publication date has now been pushed to 2026 and award-winning illustrator Noa Denmon will be generating new art. Last year I wrote another poem for Juneteenth; I included it in Perennial and thought I’d share it today. It’s a tricky holiday for me…and one I’ve never celebrated. I’m writing another difficult poem today, hoping to clear some things before the summer solstice on Wednesday. If you celebrate Juneteenth, I hope you’re enjoying your festivities. You can find a conversation about my second Juneteenth poem over at Diverse Verse.

 

Alaska…

…was amazing. I’m exhausted and the airlines were a hot mess coming and going, but overall it was a wonderful way to end the school year. My hosts at the Juneau Public Library were lovely, the students were great, and community members were open to the idea of self-publishing as an act of “love & resistance.” I saw a pod of orcas, hiked through the Tongass National Forest, and toured two museums featuring incredible art by Native women. WordPress isn’t allowing me to upload any photos for some reason, but a librarian took this picture during my talk last Tuesday. You can see my photos and videos on Instagram. I slept for most of the day after landing at O’Hare at 4am yesterday and feel ready for a nap right now, but hope to get back into a writing routine so I can finish my time-travel novel this week. I’m on the very last chapter and found a talented artist in Fife to do the cover. My illustrator in Inverness is making progress, too, so next on my To Do list is to send her some notes…

The surprising thing about Alaska was how Canadian I felt while I was there. I’m writing a poem a day for the month of June but struggled to explain my affinity for the landscape and the Native art. My mother took us across country from Toronto to Vancouver by train when I was five or six years old. I don’t have any photographs but my memories feel quite clear. I remember the mountains and the towering trees, the rocky seashore, the totem poles and distinct Haida aesthetic. Juneau isn’t that far from Vancouver; there are definitely overlapping cultures, histories, and geography. I still felt moved by the beauty all around me in AK but it was also familiar—and I must have driven my hosts nuts with my constant references to Scotland. Amelia even pulled down a globe while we were at the elementary school to see whether Glasgow is about the same latitude as Juneau. But for the extensive deforestation of the Highlands, their landscape would look much like Alaska’s. Scotland has just reintroduced beavers and I saw firsthand in the temperate rainforest how the clever little creatures transform the environment. I lucked out and had two sunny days during my week but generally the sky is gray and there’s rain. I brought my Isle of Skye gear and so managed to stay warm and dry. I love being prepared (it’s one way I manage my anxiety) but maybe I need to try going somewhere that will be totally unfamiliar—if such a place exists. I suspect I would find connections to my childhood anywhere I went. Another reason to finish this novel so I can start organizing these thoughts into my memoir…

Mural of Tlingit civil rights activist Elizabeth Peratrovich by Crystal Kaakeeyáa Worl (Athabascan, Tlingit)

My May 5 Sutherland lecture is now available on YouTube. If you’re looking for tips to teach about Juneteenth using poetry, please head over to the Diverse Verse blog for my conversation with fellow poet Padma Venkatraman. The Dragons in a Bag boxed set will be available on June 13. Those are my announcements! Let summer begin…