Debra Gaskill's Blog, page 4

The urge

I get this way every winter. When the rest of the world is snuggled down and hibernating beneath its blanket of snow, alternately hibernating or begging for spring, I’m burning with creative fire.

Right now, I’m catching the weaving bug. Never mind that my private eye novel “Call Fitz” is burning up the keyboard and Fitz is one step closer to finding out who really killed Gina Cantolini.

Never mind that I’m halfway through my short story contribution for the SOWriters anthology.

Never mind I had a knitted cap I promised would be done by Feb. 15 for my daughter’s boss.

I want to weave!

It all started last week when I got the first of my 2015 yarns in the mail. Eleven luscious bumps of the last of my llama fiber mixed with some of my coarser alpaca, blended around a core of cotton, made by 84 Alpacas. It’s not the softest fiber, which is why I save it for rug yarn. But these bumps are just so gorgeous, starting in a dark hue and gradually moving toward lighter tones.

Aren’t they gorgeous? I’ve left the box of yarn in the living room so I can take them out and touch��them whenever I want. (I do have to keep the box closed however, to keep the cats from I moving in.)

I have to resist the urge to weave with this gorgeous stuff though- it’s inventory for the yarn festivals that are coming up in 2015. ��(And you can purchase one of these 50-yard bumps for $30) so I’m turning to what I have on hand to spark my creativity.

Tonight I found a bag of wool loops, the same kind of loops kids use to make those pot holders. I bought a ten pound bag several years ago and made several rugs, then lost interest. Tonight, after blasting through chapter 11 and beginning chapter 12 of Fitz, I found my bag of loops and began to string them together for another rug.

I’m still in the process of choosing my warp: should it be a mix of the colors that match the loops or should it be a single color, like black, to make the loop colors pop. Or should it be my gray wool warp?

I’m heading off to Washington D.C. to visit my daughter for her birthday, so won’t begin the project until I get back. I’ve got some good ideas so far: I want to rug to be at least 30��inches wide and probably at least 60 inches long, long enough to be a nice colorful throw rug in front of the bunk beds I recently bought for my grandchildren. ��Most of all, I want to use up every one of those loops.

And my loom, my beloved 36-inch LeClerc rug loom hasn’t been the only thing calling my name. Several years ago I bought I give foot triangle loom, made a number of lovely shawls (my friend Kim still wears hers) then lost interest and sold the loom. (Are you seeing a pattern?)

Stupid idea. Running across a Pinterest page for triangle looms, the lust has begun again. But where would I put it? I already have three looms- my LeClerc, a 24-inch ashford rigid heddle and a small medieval tape loom reproduction by Seidel. I do not have room for a seven foot or even five foot triangle loom.

Even worse, I found a square continuous warp loom that I just craved. ��Wouldn’t it be great to use it to make blankets, shawls, sections to sew together to make sweaters or jackets?

Stop it Debra. The triangle loom, as well as the continuous warp square loom will just have to wait for a while. There’s only so much space in the house… But that doesn’t mean I can’t get the rug woven.

There’s plenty of time during the day to both write and weave. Write in the morning, after cleaning out the llama barn, then after your walk (a writer’s gotta stay healthy, right?), write some more. Head downstairs after dinner (and cleaning the llama barn again) and instead of getting sucked into whatever mindlessness is playing on the television, weave.

And why not? What else are we going to do until spring sets in?

There we go. I’ll update you on my progress on both the novel and the rug.

 

 

Help me choose

On March 1, I’m releasing an anthology of all five Addison McIntyre novels, which I’m titling DEATH COMES TO JUBILANT FALLS, but I need your help. Which cover should I use? Gun or no gun? Newspaper or no paper? Give me your thoughts!

Because I appreciate you!

Because I deeply appreciate the folks who take time to read my little stories, I am offering a free copy of my (4.5 star reviews) eBook LETHAL LITTLE LIES today through Friday, Feb. 6 on Amazon.

Get your copy today at http://www.amazon.com/Lethal-Little-Lies-Jubilant-Falls-ebook/dp/B00D90JGV2/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1422995662&sr=8-1&keywords=Lethal+Little+Lies

Enjoy ��� and thanks for your support!

I write weird

There I said it.

OK maybe not the actual words I put down on paper, but maybe my process is a little different.

Some of my writer friends find it very difficult to share a work in progress (what we in the knitting world call a WIP) until it has been completed and polished and revised and revised some more and then polished again.

Letting someone read it beforehand ���gives away the magic,��� I���ve been told.

Maybe that comes from the whole writer-as-starving-artist thingy, where we see the writer eking out word by painful word in a dark dingy garret, agonizing over every adverb and participle.

You know those writers��� we���ve all seen them in an awful lot of past characterizations in movies, books and television.

Nope. Not me. Not this gal.

Maybe it���s my twenty years in newspapers, where we started each day with a blank page and collaborative put together the news ��� the stories��� of the day by a prescribed time each day in a process that was anything but magic. That daily routine made me a collaborative writer.

As a new reporter (I won���t say young, because I came into the business in my mid-thirties), I���d submit a story, and then an editor would mark it up (and, at the same time, eviscerate my soul���how many times did I run into the ladies room to cry when my buried lead was excised with little or no anesthesia?). I���d resubmit it, maybe several times until that mean old crotchety editor finally (finally!) sent it on to the copy editors, who tweaked it some more, and then on to the composition room, who fit it onto the page��� and, then, once again, to my agony, cut it if the story ran long.

In between all those steps, the story could or would come back, or be questioned or critiqued.

���Did you get the name of the dog the fireman saved?���

���You have the fire starting at 4:00. Is that AM or PM?���

���How many fire departments responded? What kind of equipment?���

���Verify the chief���s name please? Jesus, you���ve got it spelled three different ways. Which one���s right?���

Somewhere, somehow, by the time I was an old crotchety editor myself, and telling reporters ���Jesus, you���ve got it spelled three different ways,��� I began to write novels.

Something down deep inside made me do novels the same way I did newspapers.

I have a trusted group of folks in my critique group who function as those copy editors and line editors did, asking me the same questions, catching errors like the pros they are.

���Your hero has blue eyes through chapter 25 and now he���s got green eyes?���

���Look at your verb usage. She had bled? Just say she bled.���

���How authentic is that reaction? Would you react that way if someone had just stolen something valuable of yours?���

These comments come during monthly writer���s critique group that I chair. It���s a great group of people, some of who seek publication, some of who just want to express themselves more effectively.

I don���t think showing my work in progress gives away the magic. On the contrary, I think it grounds the magic more.

And that doesn���t mean I take everyone���s critique as gospel. There is method to my madness.

Generally, if I get the same critique (outside of just plain wrong grammar, usage or spelling errors) from two or more people, I���ll look at it seriously and most likely make the suggested changes.

If only one person has a reaction to something I���ve written, I don���t dismiss it out of hand, but I have to consider where the critique is coming from. I have to consider at that point the person���s experience, their knowledge of the genre I write in and, sometimes even their motive. I hate it when I have to consider their motive. Only then will I look at seriously changing something.

It seems to work for me. So what about you?

Be sure to get your free copy of my e-book Lethal Little Lies on Amazon from Feb. 2-6 and get Death of a High Maintenance Blonde for free Feb. 8-12. Watch for my newest e-book Death Comes to Jubilant Falls in mid-February.

Stepping into 2015

Halfway through January, I thought it probably a good idea to make up a list of writing goals for 2015.

After all, if you don���t have goals, how you gonna know where you want to go? And if you don’t know where you started, how can you know how far you’ve come?

For me, the largest goal involves increasing awareness of my books.

For every independent author, the responsibility for marketing falls squarely on his or her shoulders. I spend an inordinate amount of time talking to librarians, bookstore managers, and festival coordinators or combing the web for author events where I think my books and I will be a good fit���nearly as much time as I spend creating these stories. I spend money on advertising and give away a hell of a lot of books to garner the four and five-star reviews I have.

I have sold my books at author events, high school reunions, yarn shows, llama shows and fund-raisers for multiple sclerosis. I have sold my books, literally, out of the trunk of my car. Seldom do I go anywhere without a copy.

So why would I only have my eBooks available at one place?

It made sense then that my largest writing goal for the year involves moving my eBooks away from the exclusive Kindle Select Program on Amazon and onto some of the other platforms out there.

While it was a great program for me, limiting ones products to only one store can limit your sales. There is no doubt that Amazon is the biggest player in the sandbox and that the majority of my sales will still come from there, but it���s time to spread the wealth around a bit.

The first of the year, I moved Barn Burner and The Major���s Wife to Kobo, Google Play, Smashwords and Nook.

As my exclusivity with KDP ends on a book, I will move it to these other platforms.

On Feb. 1, the eBook versions Murder on the Lunatic Fringe will be available of Kobo, Smashwords, Google Play and Nook.

Ten days later, Lethal Little Lies will also be made available on those platforms.

While my exclusivity for my last books Death of A High Maintenance Blonde ends Feb. 12, I���m going to keep that with KDP until probably about May, when I plan to release a collection of all five mysteries in eBook format only.

(I like to have a bit of a free promotion on with some of my other books before the release of a new book and keeping at least one book in KDP will allow me to do that.)

If you haven���t purchased the Jubilant Falls series of mysteries, this collection will be a great way to get them all in one place.

And while all that is going on, I���m shooting for a July release date on my private investigator novel. This one is a little different for me and it���s going much slower than the others. Maybe I lived in my fictional world of Jubilant Falls, Ohio for too long. It���s time to stretch a bit and grow.

(I haven’t even mentioned the yarn stuff! In addition to the writing, come spring we will be shearing the llamas and alpacas, beginning the process of making and dyeing my yarns all over again! Not to mention going to llama shows… lots and lots of llama shows!)

My final writing project for 2015 is something I���m truly excited about.

For the last several months, I have been at the helm of a writer���s group in Chillicothe Ohio known as the Southern Ohio Writers and Readers Collaborative. It���s a very small group of writers whose experience ranges from beginner to seasoned professional.

I thought it would be a good idea for those new writers to gain experience in the publishing world, so we plan to put together an anthology of short stories and poems, with a target publication date of Nov. 1.

The eBook, whose title and theme are still being discussed, will be available for free and in time for the holidays.

Why don���t you come along for the ride?

Find me this year at:

April 24-26: The Indiana Fiber and Music Festival in Tri-County Shrine Club, 701 Potters Lane, Clarksville, Indiana. While it���s primarily a yarn show, I���ll have copies of all five Jubilant Falls mysteries with me for sale.

June 6: Just One More Romance author event at the Dayton Marriott, 1414 South Patterson Boulevard, Dayton, Ohio where I will sign books.

July: Loganberry Books Author Alley, Shaker Heights Ohio. Traditionally held on the first weekend of July, this is a celebration of indie authors like I���ve never seen and well worth your time. And there���s a street fair going on around us!

Sept. 18-20: The Wool Gathering, Young���s Jersey Dairy, Yellow Springs Ohio. Another great yarn show���and I���ll bring my books there, too!

Oct. 9-11: I���m considering bringing my books to my own hometown Enon Apple Butter Festival in Enon, Ohio. Why shouldn���t my hometown know I���m here, right?

Oct. 29-Nov. 1: Killer Nashville writer���s conference, Omni Hotel, Nashville.

Would you like me to come speak to your group about indie publishing or my mysteries? Drop me a line! I���d love to speak to your group!

Guilty as charged

I have been guilty of blog abandonment. I’ll admit it.

My friend Sharahn has been riding me this blog: “You need to work on your blog! You need to let people you’re out there! You need to build your brand!”

Yes, I do all those things, but I have to say, 2014 was an ugly year with a few bright lights interspersed along the way.

When I last published this blog, I had just lost my father-in-law, Richard ‘Shorty’ Gaskill tp kidney disease. My last entry was just days before his burial in Arlington Cemetery.

Over these past 12 months, I lost my stepfather, a WWII veteran, just before his 92nd birthday.

I have watched a long-term friendship founder and die���and because she was a newspaper editor I freelanced for, took a hit on my income stream as well. (I’m a loyal to the end, but freelance doesn’t mean free, even if I’m your best friend.)

My friends have struggled as well with serious illness (theirs and their spouses), injuries and surgery.

What are you gonna do? Some years just suck.

But there were some bright spots.

After struggling long and hard through the recession, my daughter moved to Washington DC, where she found a job with benefits and is thriving in an apartment of her own.

My son and his wife welcomed a second child in July. Miss Lena is a bright spot in all our lives. he also began his dream job, teaching audio engineering.

I have also reconnected with other family members in what can only be called wondrous and mysterious ways.

You never know when truth and blessing comes into your life. Maybe one day I can write about it.

My writing did not suffer, despite the long list of events in the year.

MURDER ON THE LUNATIC FRINGE was published in April, following extensive editing, and while it was being edited, I began writing the next book, DEATH OF A HIGH MAINTENANCE BLONDE, which came out in November.

The theme of HMB was how two people come back from professional and personal disasters to find love again.

Addison McIntyre is, as always, a character in the book, but the story centers on her new reporter Charisma Lemarnier, a reporter with a mysterious past, who is looking into two cold-case murders.

Everybody has known one of ‘those’ blondes, right?

There are blondes ��� and then there are high maintenance blondes. And Eve Dahlgren was a high maintenance blonde, even forty years ago in high school.

When Eve ends up dead, and Journal-Gazette publisher Earlene Whitelaw is arrested for her murder, it looks like an open and shut case. It���s up to editor Addison McIntyre to prove her boss didn���t kill her.

When those two story lines come together, the secrets of a small town get blown wide open.

I’m back to work on another novel. This one is a different direction. I’m writing about a private investigator named Niccolo Fitzhugh in a small Ohio steel town who’s investigating the murder of a hooker. I haven’t even come up with a title yet.

I felt like I needed to take things in a new direction, give my dear Addison a break and stretch my artistic/author wings a bit. It was just time.

The plan is to have the novel done by May���God knows I hope to have title by that time!

I’ve also taken on the leadership of a writer’s group in Chillicothe Ohio. Our project for the year is going to be an anthology of short stories written by the members, which will be published as an eBook near the end of the year.

Will I ever revisit Addison? I don’t know. Maybe that series, after five books, is done. I know I have several others plotted out and can return to it at any time. We’ll see. The newspaper business has changed so much that it has to be a part of the story as well.

But thank you for sticking with me and thank you for your interest in my little stories.

Lets make 2015 a fabulous year!

Guilt as charged

I have been guilty of blog abandonment. I’ll admit it.

My friend Sharahn has been riding me this blog: “You need to work on your blog! You need to let people you’re out there! You need to build your brand!”

Yes, I do all those things, but I have to say, 2014 was an ugly year with a few bright lights interspersed along the way.

When I last published this blog, I had just lost my father-in-law, Richard ‘Shorty’ Gaskill tp kidney disease. My last entry was just days before his burial in Arlington Cemetery.

Over these past 12 months, I lost my stepfather, a WWII veteran, just before his 92nd birthday.

I have watched a long-term friendship founder and die���and because she was a newspaper editor I freelanced for, took a hit on my income stream as well. (I’m a loyal to the end, but freelance doesn’t mean free, even if I’m your best friend.)

My friends have struggled as well with serious illness (theirs and their spouses), injuries and surgery.

What are you gonna do? Some years just suck.

But there were some bright spots.

After struggling long and hard through the recession, my daughter moved to Washington DC, where she found a job with benefits and is thriving in an apartment of her own.

My son and his wife welcomed a second child in July. Miss Lena is a bright spot in all our lives. he also began his dream job, teaching audio engineering.

I have also reconnected with other family members in what can only be called wondrous and mysterious ways.

You never know when truth and blessing comes into your life. Maybe one day I can write about it.

My writing did not suffer, despite the long list of events in the year.

MURDER ON THE LUNATIC FRINGE was published in April, following extensive editing, and while it was being edited, I began writing the next book, DEATH OF A HIGH MAINTENANCE BLONDE, which came out in November.

The theme of HMB was how two people come back from professional and personal disasters to find love again.

Addison McIntyre is, as always, a character in the book, but the story centers on her new reporter Charisma Lemarnier, a reporter with a mysterious past, who is looking into two cold-case murders.

Everybody has known one of ‘those’ blondes, right?

There are blondes ��� and then there are high maintenance blondes. And Eve Dahlgren was a high maintenance blonde, even forty years ago in high school.

When Eve ends up dead, and Journal-Gazette publisher Earlene Whitelaw is arrested for her murder, it looks like an open and shut case. It���s up to editor Addison McIntyre to prove her boss didn���t kill her.

When those two story lines come together, the secrets of a small town get blown wide open.

I’m back to work on another novel. This one is a different direction. I’m writing about a private investigator named Niccolo Fitzhugh in a small Ohio steel town who’s investigating the murder of a hooker. I haven’t even come up with a title yet.

I felt like I needed to take things in a new direction, give my dear Addison a break and stretch my artistic/author wings a bit. It was just time.

The plan is to have the novel done by May���God knows I hope to have title by that time!

I’ve also taken on the leadership of a writer’s group in Chillicothe Ohio. Our project for the year is going to be an anthology of short stories written by the members, which will be published as an eBook near the end of the year.

Will I ever revisit Addison? I don’t know. Maybe that series, after five books, is done. I know I have several others plotted out and can return to it at any time. We’ll see. The newspaper business has changed so much that it has to be a part of the story as well.

But thank you for sticking with me and thank you for your interest in my little stories.

Lets make 2015 a fabulous year!

A quick taste of what’s to come

In mid-December, I finally finished the fourth book, MURDER ON THE LUNATIC FRINGE. While the book is currently in the editing process, it feels odd for me to note be writing or revising any kind of fiction for the first time in nearly two years. So I thought I’d give you a small taste of what’s to come:

Prologue

Is this how it will end?

The steel exam table felt cold against my naked back and legs. My neck was cradled on hard metal headrest, immobilizing my skull. The back of my head felt soft, mushy and wet. Something pushed against my left eye and cheek. The room smelled like medicine… and death. At least a sheet covered me.

I was going to have children, then grandchildren. There was supposed to be big meals on Sunday with all of my family surrounding me and I’d end my days by dying in my sleep. I was supposed to spend my later years like Mother had, leaning out the window of our apartment, watching the young children play in street, walking to markets to get the ingredients for dinner. Our fire escape would be decorated with potted flowers and I would knit in front of the television at night, making mittens or hats or baby booties.

It wasn’t going to end like this. Not this way. Was it?

A man spoke. “Doctor, whenever you’re ready to begin documenting the case…”

Someone else sighed, then began to speak in a singsong Indian accent: “It is one forty-five a.m. on Thursday. We have a Caucasian female, approximately 32 years old. She is approximately five foot eight inches tall and approximately one hundred thirty five pounds. She has bullet wounds to her left eye and cheekbone, with exit wounds at the back of the skull…”

Is this what it’s like to be dead?

I hope to have MURDER ON THE LUNATIC FRINGE available in hard copy and as an e-book by the end of April. Hope you enjoy it!

Lessons on love and loss

It’s been more than just a long time since I’ve blogged here and I must apologize. When I began this blog, I promised myself that I would make a go of this blog for at least a year and, wouldn’t you know it, after I few months, I dropped the ball.

The truth is, I’ve experienced two huge losses in the last several months and it’s only been in the last few days that I’ve been able to get back in the emotional swing of things.

In the span of just a month, I lost my father-in-law and my favorite llama.

Richard ‘Shorty’ Gaskill died in Alexandria, Va., on Sept. 27, 2013 of kidney failure. He had been horribly sick for nearly a year and a half and my mother-in-law stayed by his side, caring for his every need.

His death was the kind that folks call “a blessing.” When I was younger, I never understood how permanently losing someone you care deeply for was something to be celebrated. Of course, as time went by and I saw how cruel disease, injury and mental illness could be, I learned how death really could be a blessing.

Shorty didn’t hurt any more. He didn’t gasp for breath, he didn’t spend hours out of every other day tethered to a dialysis machine. He was free from suffering.

So, on October 3, we gathered in a funeral home in Old Town Alexandria to say our goodbyes to Master Sgt. Gaskill. Those family members who couldn’t be there in person—family stretched from one end of the country to the other, thanks to military service—joined via Skype or listened in via open cell phone calls.

But before the service, as the family gathered in the funeral home for viewing hours, Greg’s mother Bonnie asked for a comb. Without thinking, he pulled it from his jacket and handed it to her.

As we watched, Bonnie walked up to the casket and carefully combed Shorty’s hair for once last time.

It had been an act she had done every day since his illness and one that exemplified the love she had for him. I’d been dry-eyed to that point—but after that, I wasn’t any more.

That’s the kind of love I want, I remember thinking to myself. I want somebody who is going to care for me up until the moment I die — and then beyond. And that’s what Bonnie did for Shorty.

During his illness, she received a card from someone extolling what a ‘good Christian wife’ she was being. The card truly galled me.

There was something in the tone that spoke to me of the “Look at me, I’m a Christian” that has become so clearly the reason why I don’t attend church and why I despise those who thump their chests proclaiming their love of Jesus while judging those around them, leaving families and children without food, healthcare or the chance at a decent job or education.

All I know is that Bonnie Gaskill didn’t spend the last 18 months caring for her husband, the love of her life, simply because she was a good Christian wife. She did it because she loved him and loved him beyond everything.

Who among us wouldn’t want that?

Three weeks later, on Oct. 24, we were getting back to normal.

I went up to Columbus to babysit my grandson, Louie. My darling daughter-in-law Whitney had just come home from work and we were considering going out to dinner together before I headed home.

Then my cell phone rang. It was Greg—he’d come home to find Sarah Ferguson, my big, fat, friendly, redheaded llama down behind the barn. She’d broken her left front leg and had lay in pain all day as the first snow of the year covered her.

She’d been diagnosed as severely arthritic in September, just before Shorty’s death and we were medicating her daily with Meloxicam. Arthritis had affected her front left leg, both her rear legs and her spine. We knew we wouldn’t have her for much longer, but we were going to make her as comfortable as we could for as long as we possibly could.

Fergie was my first llama, and that special all-around llama that would do anything.

Like people, every llama has a personality and every llama has things they do better than others. Some are great show animals, some a great guards and some are great performance animals.

Fergie was a rarity—she was all of those. She was affectionate, and loved to be petted, loved on or groomed. Anybody of any age could lead that animal anywhere—at 18 months, Louie did just that. My idea of pack training her was finding a used pack for sale at Lamafest and putting it on her back in the middle of the vendor aisle, crowded with people. She accepted the pack like she’d done it all her life.

Greg or I could pick up her back feet for trimming easily. We used her for performance classes, packing, PR, costume classes and showmanship. She gave me the confidence I needed to handle llamas and my alpacas. She also gave every 4H kid who ever took her to the fair that same confidence.

I don’t know how many parents asked me, when I was the leader of the llama and alpaca 4H club, “Are you sure that Fergie is going to be OK for my kid to use? She’s so big!” By the end of the fair, they were asking to take her again the next year.

And then, on Oct. 24 I went away for a day and I wasn’t there when she needed me most.

Friends came to help Greg get her into the trailer and the vet sedated her so she wouldn’t thrash around during the trip to Ohio State University’s vet school. His examination found that both leg bones had broken between her left shoulder and knee and she was hypothermic from laying in the cold. She would likely not survive the hour-long trip from our farm to Columbus.

I met him there and before he was done backing in the door of the vet hospital, jumped into the livestock trailer to see her one last time.

She lived. And when she heard my voice as I sat in the trailer, sobbing and cradling her head in my lap she wasn’t so sedated that she couldn’t turn her head, as if to say “It’s OK. Don’t be so hard on yourself. You’re with me now. Whatever happens, I’m going to be OK.”

In the end, we decided to euthanize her. There were two options: put a pin in the leg, which most likely become infected, or amputate the leg entirely. Either option, in the unlikely event they were successful, would place additional stress on her arthritic spine and rear legs. It was kinder to let her go.

And so, in the space of one short month, I have had two great losses and two great examples of what love is. I will carry the memory of both forever in my heart.

Putting Indies First

Skimming through the Twitterverse this afternoon, I found an interesting link via the blog The Passive Voice today and had to comment on it.

Here at http://publishingperspectives.com/2013/09/what-do-authors-owe-to-indie-booksellers/, it seems that independent writer Sherman Alexie, in the spirit of promoting Small Business Saturday on Nov. 30, has called for independent book sellers everywhere to populate their local independent bookstores to sell their books during that most sacred of American Holidays, the shopping period between Thanksgiving and Christmas.

It’s an idea that Alexie voices in a letter to the American Booksellers, which they published on their web site, http://www.bookweb.org.

Here’s part of the letter:

“Here’s the plan: We book nerds will become booksellers. We will make recommendations. We will practice nepotism and urge readers to buy multiple copies of our friends’ books. Maybe you’ll sign and sell books of your own in the process. I think the collective results could be mind-boggling (maybe even world-changing).

“I was a bookseller-for-a-day at Seattle’s Queen Anne Book Company when it reopened this past April. Janis Segress, one of the new co-owners, came up with this brilliant idea. What could be better than spending a day hanging out in your favorite hometown indie, hand- selling books you love to people who will love them too and signing a stack of your own? Why not give it a try? Let’s call it Indies First.

“Grassroots is my favorite kind of movement, and anyway there’s not a lot of work involved in this one. Just pick a bookstore, talk to the owner (or answer the phone when they call you) and reach an agreement about how to spend your time that day. You’d also need to agree to place that store’s buy button in a prominent place on your website, above the Amazon button if you have one. After all, this is Indies First, not Indies Only, and it’s designed to include Indies in our world but not to exclude anyone else.

“This is a great way to fight for independents—one that will actually help them. It’ll help you as well; the Indies I’ve talked to have told me that last year Small Business Saturday was one of their biggest days of the year, in some cases the biggest after the Saturday before Christmas—and that means your books will get a huge boost, wherever you choose to be.

“The most important thing is that we’ll all be helping Independent bookstores, and God knows they’ve helped us over the years. So join the Indie First Movement and help your favorite independent bookstore. Help all indie bookstores. Reach out to them and join the movement. Indies First!”

For me, the idea seems great! Independent bookstores, like anything that’s not backed by a creeping conglomerate of corporate crud, are struggling. It’s difficult for self-published authors to get our books into those chain bookstores. Why not bring the two together? Maybe we could bring a little success to both our camps.

One author’s response, published in Dennis Abram’s columns on Publishing Perspectives was anything but positive.

He writes: “News flash: Most of us actually can’t support ourselves writing full time. I, for example, teach all week and then try, between taking kids to soccer and grocery shopping and trying to keep the house from falling down, to write on the weekends.

“So you’re asking me to give up the only time I get to write in order to work in a bookstore. Well, I guess I’ll consider it. How much does this gig pay?

Because I don’t work for free. Writers shouldn’t work for free and neither should anybody else. It’s disrespectful of your time and expertise to even be asked to work for free. I mean, sure, you can volunteer for a worthy cause, and such organizations are registered 501(c)(3) nonprofits. Or if you want to do something bookish, go volunteer at your local library, which is actually a public institution operated for the benefit of the community. A local bookstore, on the other hand, is a for-profit enterprise, and unless they are paying me, they’re not getting any of my labor.

” Otherwise, I’m spending my day working to make money for someone else. And that makes me a chump.

“So, no, I’m not skipping a writing day in order to donate my labor to a local business. And neither should anybody else. What a weird, out of touch, implicitly classist, and insulting thing to ask.”

Wow. A little over the top, don’t you think?

Each July, I take part in an event in Shaker Heights, Ohio at Loganberry Books, called Author’s Alley. Harriet Logan, the owner of the store, has a small spot of land next to her business opened up for area self-published authors to set up tables and sell their books. She takes a portion of each sale and provides lunch, popsicles and ice tea for her authors. She does not charge us for the privilege of sitting up against a hot concrete wall for an entire sunny July afternoon during the neighborhood festival that’s going on around us. Before we leave for the day, she asks us for an autographed copy, which she pays for.

Yes, some of the books are unbelievably bad. Others re incredible works of art and cover everything from inspirational stories, general fiction, local history or children’s works. I may not always sell a copy of my book, but I hand out a lot of book marks and make a lot of contacts and sometimes when I get home the next day, there’s an uptick in my e-book sales numbers or an e-mail asking me to come speak at a library or a book club.

This July, I say next to a woman who had collected jokes for twenty years and just listed them one after another. Her books flew off the table.

The point is, it’s an incredibly supportive effort for someone who is in business to make money and doesn’t have to do anything to support independent authors, but chooses to do so. So as an independent author, I believe we should do so as well and support those independent bookstores.

Like many folks, I also work, but as a freelance writer. The amount of my paycheck is reflected in the length of the story and/or the photographs printed. I have other obligations: a llama farm with a barn that needs cleaned twice a day, animals that need fed and cared for, and family obligations too numerous to list here without sounding martyred.

In short, when I’m taking time off to peddle my book, I may not be making money either, and odds are, somebody else is stepping in to feed those llamas—and I’ve got to pay them. It’s a risk I’m willing to take.

I’m also taking a long view: Every contact I make could result in a sale at some time in the future. Maybe somebody will buy a copy and pass it on to a friend, who will then buy an e-book copy. Who knows?

I just know I’m not high enough on the literary ladder to refuse anyone’s offer to help me move up. I’m going to contact my local bookstore and see if they are willing to put Indie First this holiday shopping season. Maybe we’ll both profit.

Find my latest book, LETHAL LITTLE LIES,, on amazon.com, Barnes and Noble and Kobo.