Kathleen M. Basi's Blog, page 6

Time for a Reset

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It’s time for a reset.

2021 has been–well, a whirlwind. The long, choking oppression of the pandemic is lifting, and we’re busier than ever: soccer, baseball, color guard, 4H, scouts, marching band, concerts (hallelujah!), even church choir. Committee meetings. Oh, and there was that minor detail of a book release this spring. Pitching, promotion, recording podcasts, writing guest blogs and Q&As.

I sent my next novel to my literary agents shortly after launch. For a while after that, I stayed busy online, responding to commenters and well-wishers sending pictures of books from all over the country (***”A Song for the Road in the wild!”). Having lovely conversations with friends I haven’t talked with in years.

I came up for air a couple weeks after book launch and realized that after an endless 2020, 2021 was nearly half over. !?!?!?!?!?!?! Two spots in my landscaping beds never got planted. I never treated for moles, and last summer’s crabgrass pulling seems less productive with mole tunnels all over the place.

I recognized that I needed some long bike rides and a couple hours at my Breakfast Cafe by the Missouri River–but by then, we were in a pattern of all-day downpours, and weird school schedules that prevented me from getting out for Introvert Recharge time. I intended to take one week off work–two, if I was feeling it–post-book-madness, and I had a long list of projects I intended to do in it. Would you like to know how many I accomplished? Yup. Not a one.

Even before school was out, I was starting to feel like I couldn’t breathe. The entire week between regular school and summer school was booked solid with appointments. Nine appointments in five days, people. N.I.N.E. Not counting baseball games! Now, some of those were play dates/social, some were medical, some were mental-health related, and every one was both necessary and productive. Nonetheless, that sense of slowly suffocating grew all week. There were kid conflicts. There were external conflicts. Big ones.

It didn’t help that midweek, we discovered a major–and I mean major–problem that I won’t go into except to say it involved too much screen time without limits. I went from feeling suffocated to thinking, “I hate my life! Hate, hate hate! Why does everything have to be SO HARD?”

That was the turning point. I looked in the proverbial mirror and went, “Dude. You released a book LESS THAN A MONTH AGO. You’ve finally achieved this thing you have literally been working toward for FIFTEEN YEARS, and this is how you’re feeling? Something is very wrong here.”

That was the moment at which I realized everything had to change.

I am in the midst of a reset right now. Thankfully, summer school started, and so I carved out Tuesday for a bike ride and Wednesday for a “sit” out in the country. As I sat being still in the presence of God and reflecting, I recognized that part of my negativity came from burnout after pushing hard on multiple fronts for so long, and that part of it was because I’d gotten out of balance, and part was because I am successful when I have lists to fill and goals to achieve, and at the moment I’m engulfed in haphazard scrabbling at disorganization.

We’re currently developing a whole new structure for our family life. Will my kids like it or hate it? We’ll see. Meanwhile, I’m working on finding a counselor, which I’ve long known I needed to do but kept procrastinating. It’s time now. It’s a hard thing, reopening after over a year of anxiety for the health of a child. Longtime readers know that my daughter nearly died of a respiratory virus when she was six weeks old. So as you might imagine, the last year has been hell. My daughter is now vaccinated, and I’ve been able to relax (cautiously) more quickly than I had feared I might. Still, when you struggle with anxiety, it’s not like you can just flip a switch and be back to normal. You can’t just turn off those reactions. So: counseling.

Meanwhile, over at Intentional Catholic, I’m starting a new focus on gratitude, to work a different angle.

And I spent my Monday morning by the river writing a long list of things to do, to start getting organized again. On that list was a blog post about resetting.

Check.

I feel better already.

Big Things, Small Things

Many of the authors I know spend their launch days hopping from one online event to another. Me? I took my kayak to the lake just up the road from my parents’ house.

I felt kind of weird about it, actually. Like maybe I was Doing Things Wrong. But I also looked at my calendar and thought, I’ve put in a ton of prep work, and I have no events until evening. What am I going to accomplish, sitting at home by myself? Besides, it was two days after Mother’s Day and my parents were returning that night from visiting my sister. I decided I’d sneak in and leave flowers and then head on up the road to the lake.

Now, in my ordinary life I use that phrase all the time: “just up the road.” Normally, this means a few miles. In the case of the lake, it’s less than one. We lived on “the causeway road,” and from the pond at the top of the hill north of the house, the causeway road went downhill all the way to the lake—first a short drop, then a slow descent, then a precipitous plunge, across the lake on, well, a causeway and a big bridge, and then nearly vertical up the far side. Terrifying by bike and way more terrifying in the driver’s seat of a car.

At least, this is how I remember it. This lake, and specifically the bridge that crosses it, loom large in my memory. My dad farmed land north of the lake, so we had to move lots of equipment over it. Imagine driving a tractor across it. And a truck, with implements hitched behind, slamming into the hitch, causing the truck to lurch against the brake as I tried to go slowly down the hill. When I broke my arm and was asleep having it set, I dreamed about the school bus crossing this bridge. It exploded.

Now, keep all that in mind, and then look at this. Because this is that bridge.

Neither big nor terrifying…

Growing up, we only once actually got ON the lake. We walked down there, clambered around under the bridge, visited the World War 2 paratrooper who lived on the steep hill and mostly ate fish he caught himself. But this isn’t really a lake people do a lot of boating on. I was shocked, once I got on the lake, at how small it really is. Suddenly it occurred to me that my whole life I never actually saw a boat on the lake. I mean, there are docks, and there’s a launch, so people must put boats on the lake, but it’s really not that big.

My goal on Launch Day was to kayak to the head of the lake, where Sugar Creek empties into it, and paddle upstream as far as I could. Sugar Creek flowed down through the woods that bordered the field across the road from my house. After rainstorms I’d sometimes stand outside and listen to the roar of the water. Once in a while my sisters and I would wade through the field, stretch the barbed wire enough to duck through, and tromp down to the creek. Once, we set out to walk the creek all the way to the lake. We gave up and came back out of the woods and found ourselves exactly one property closer to the lake.

Perhaps, given all these stories, it’s not that surprising that the size of everything was so much bigger in my memory than it turned out to be in real life.

But it really struck me as a writer, since I was discovering this on Book Launch Day. How many of the events that loom large in our childhoods are actually pretty mundane, the drama in our own heads? I mean, for sure some people have really horrible traumas connected with childhood. But an awful lot of us just have your average, run-of-the-mill, well-adjusted-child dramas. We think they’re enormous, and they send ripples down the years. But sometimes, when we actually take the time to go back and look, they’re actually not that big.

I don’t know—am I being ridiculous? What’s your take on all this?

In the meantime, here are some photos of that magical, overcast paddle up Sugar Creek.

Me on the “Best of Women’s Fiction”

https://www.bestofwomensfiction.com/episodes/52-kathleen-basi

It’s been a whirlwind couple of weeks, and I actually do have plans for a blog post that’s NOT about A Song For The Road–but today I wanted to share one more podcast episode I did to help promote the book, which is newly-released today.

Lainey Cameron is the author of The Exit Strategy, which was a real page-turner and a “woman power!” kind of book that I really enjoyed. More to the point, she is one of the kindest, most effusively generous people I have ever met, and dedicated to spreading the love among her fellow women’s fiction authors.

She hosts a great podcast called “The Best of Women’s Fiction,” and this week’s episode is all about A Song For The Road! If you’re a podcast listener, you can find the episode (and subscribe of course!) on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Anchor.fm, and all kinds of other platforms (full list here).

If you’re not a podcast person and would like to just see it video, then here’s that option, too!

Release Day Fun!

It’s release day, folks!

Tonight we’re partying virtual-style–music, a reading, a chat between me and author Barbara Claypole White, time for audience questions, and a champagne toast given by my husband. So make sure to come with a libation of your choice! Click here at 7p.m. Central to join in the fun!

I am going to be all over the electronic universe for the next few weeks, but here’s one that’s available…

TODAY ONLY!

It’s a fifteen minute interview; I hope you’ll take a listen!

And of course, grab a copy of A Song For The Road!

IndieBound
Barnes & Noble
Amazon
Target
Wal Mart

It’s preorder time!

It’s THREE WEEKS until Publication Day and I could not be more excited to share A SONG FOR THE ROAD with the world! It is the story of a church musician who, a year after losing her entire family in a car accident, embarks on a cross-country musical road trip to honor their memory. It’s a story of hope and rebirth, of motherhood and daughterhood, friendship and forgiveness. Author Kerry Anne King said, “In a novel filled with music, heartbreak, and surprising laughter, Basi takes us on a journey that encompasses both unimaginable loss and the powerful resilience of the human heart. A book club must read.”

Many people don’t know that PREORDERS MATTER. They are added to a book’s release day sales numbers, and the strength of that number drives the book’s visibility (how much it gets “pushed”) on online retail sites.

So I have a favor to ask: if you are planning to buy a copy of A SONG FOR THE ROAD, would you consider doing it now, rather than waiting until release? (It’s a great mother’s day present for a book-loving mom!) As a thank you, I’ll send you a Spotify playlist I created that includes all the music mentioned in the book. It’s a diverse playlist, covering everything from church to Taylor Swift to classical to Argentine folk.

A SONG FOR THE ROAD is available at all your favorite retailers, but I’d love it if you’d consider purchasing from my local indie store, Skylark Bookshop. Brick-and-mortar bookstores add so much to their community, and I want to support them as much as possible. So as an extra bonus, any books preordered from Skylark Bookshop, my local indie, come with a bonus: your copy will be signed!

Just send me a note on email (kathleenbasi (at) gmail (dot) com with an order confirmation. And if purchasing is a financial hardship, consider requesting it at your local library. I’ll take that, too!

(And yes, you may feel free to share this post. Share widely!)

The “Daily Buzz”

One of my daughter Julianna’s IEP goals for this year is to learn to express herself in writing. We’ve always had trouble getting from her what is going on in school; she needs help learning to bring what’s in her head, well, out of it. Her absolutely fabulous teacher identified that as a real need for future vocational opportunities, so she instituted the “Daily Buzz,” which Julianna is to fill out and share via Google Slides with us every day. She has been getting better at these and we get some pretty hysterical moments. Yesterday was no exception, so I thought I’d take a minute to share.

(I was out of town for three days for a family funeral. Woohoo! Mom’s important enough to make the Daily Buzz!) She did include a name. I erased it for the sake of privacy.

It’s fun to see her sense of humor and her quirky way of talking coming out through these Daily Buzzes. It’s been a very illuminating year. I could say much more, but it’s a busy time and I think I’ll leave other reflections for another day!

Of Stress And Gratitude

Photo by SharkBite on Pexels.com

My sophomore year in college, I entered my first flute competition. As the fall wore on, I found myself lying awake at night, exhausted yet sleepless, every breath an effort. It took me a ridiculously long time to piece it together. One day the light bulb went on. “Oh!” I said. “I’m stressed!”

And then, unfortunately, I stopped digging, assuming it would go away after the competition.

Which it did.

A week after that, I felt the pain in the backs of my hands and went, “Um… this is not right. Um… come to think of it, this has been going on for quite a while. How did I not notice this sooner?”

That was in the fall of 1993. Today I am still dealing with the hand/arm/neck/back issues I caused that semester by an excess of poor usage. I still have to be aware all the time of tendinitis flareups and the potential for recurrent carpal tunnel. If you ever see me doing repeated weird head motions, it’s because my neck stretches are crucial to my daily functioning.

I’m thinking about this these days because I am now experiencing the reality I’ve heard about for years in the writing community: preparing for a book release is wonderful… and stressful! Don’t get me wrong, it’s good stress. So is the stress of juggling kids’ activities, writing another book, writing music, and making plans and preparations for summer travel, both professional and personal. Plus planning date nights with my husband—because we finally can!

That’s an amazing list. I am so blessed. But it’s a lot.

Stress these days manifests in things falling out of my brain. Missed appointments, things misremembered, leading to minor embarrassments, because I am not that person! I am the uber-competent person you can always count on. Always. I’m that person who GETS THINGS DONE.

Stress also meant, for a few days, some really profound crankiness.

It’s all quite humbling, which, in the big picture, is no bad thing. Years ago, I prayed that God would make me humble. Even then, I knew I wouldn’t like the process. So sometimes I can be philosophical, i.e., grateful for personal growth. But other times, all rational thought flees and my insides writhe for days, viewing my minor mistakes on slow-mo replay.

I realized quite recently that unlike the stress of that college competition, this stress has no expiration date. Book promotion is part of my new reality. So that means I have to figure out how to mitigate it, or at least, deal with it in a healthier way. Maybe when when kids stop having revolving-door days off school and it stops raining every other day (six inches this week = trails too muddy for biking) and the weather warms up enough to use my new kayak, I’ll find that time outdoors will provide the equilibrium and mental stillness I need.

In the meantime, I’m reminding myself to be grateful for this stress: it is a sign of a rich life and a huge forward leap in my career as a writer. But on top of that, it’s an opportunity for growth. Existential light bulb moments always spark spiritual exploration, which is always something to be grateful for. And hey, conveniently, it’s Lent–a time designed for self-reflection! Woo-hoo!

But also, I kinda wish it would just go away.

Publication -10 weeks: Green Bank Telescope

I am officially ten weeks away from PUBLICATION DAY!

A Song For The Road is the story of a musician on a road trip across America, following a smart phone app written for her by the daughter she lost. Planning the road trip was, hands down, the most fun I had writing this book, but most of the cool things about the places Miriam stops really didn’t have a place in the book. So I thought it would be fun to count down the weeks by sharing about the places you’ll see when you read!

First up: the Green Bank Telescope. Photo credit: string_bass_dave, via Flickr

I don’t even remember how I learned that this place existed. I just know that there was no question this needed to go on the road trip.

The Green Bank Telescope is the world’s largest “fully steerable” radio telescope. It’s so sensitive, it sits in the center of the Radio Quiet zone. I’m told by friends who live within range of the RQZ that the restrictions on signals get more and more stringent the closer you get to the telescope. At the edges, she told me, radio stations can broadcast, they just can’t broadcast toward the telescope. The town of Green Bank itself has no wifi service. Period. And no cell service, either. (This is my kind of place! Most people who know me have heard me say that I am a conscientious objector to the smart phone revolution. In other words: I don’t have one.)

In fact, on the grounds of the Green Bank Observatory, you are apparently not even allowed to HAVE a cell phone. Like, you can take a picture from the deck by the science center, and then the thing has to be shut down. And the maintenance trucks are decades-old diesel engines, because something about newer cars also messes with the radio signals.

My main character, Miriam, knows nothing about any of this when she follows her daughter’s “Great American Road Trip” app into town. Here she will wrestle with why she’s on this road trip at all, and she’ll meet a person who will totally change her life.

Stay tuned!

Giving away an advanced readers’ copy!

Head over to Instagram to enter a giveaway for an advanced readers’ copy of my novel, A SONG FOR THE ROAD!

A peek behind the curtain: revision

I had a lovely writing day yesterday. The Women’s Fiction Writers Association has been amazing on every level–community, networking, professional development, skill building. But just when I thought I’d discovered every way I could tap into its resources, I started attending virtual writing dates. I never used to need other people to motivate me, but in COVID world it was the only thing that worked.

Yesterday I participated in two virtual “write-in”s. (I mean, my kids didn’t see much of me, but nobody broke an arm, and I even got one of them to the library. So that’s a win, right?).

I’m revising my wine country novel, which is fun on a whole bunch of levels! Revision is a funny thing, though. I love this part of the process–far more than writing the first draft, which is among the scariest things in my writer’s universe. But there’s revision, and there’s getting READY for revision. It took me over two weeks to take the 1500 words of notes I had made about things that needed to be addressed and figure out exactly where and how to do so in the manuscript. My finished first draft came in at just over 100,000 words and I have at least 10-15K of revisions to add. That is, um, intimidating, since the final book needs to be around 90!

But now that I have done the really hard work–creating an entire story out of nothing and figuring out the broad strokes of what needs fixing once I get it on the page–the fun part begins. The farther I get into the nitty gritty of implementing my organizational work, the more confident I feel. It’s not that the book is perfect–not by a long shot. But I’m not wandering in the dark anymore. I’m getting the lay of the land, and I feel fairly confident that I can now embark into the wilderness and I have an idea where I am in space, such that I can find my way out.

This is the part where it gets fun!