Laurie Boris's Blog, page 44

Wicked Awesome Indies: Vote and Win!

Have you voted yet for your favorites in BigAl’s Books and Pals Readers’ Choice Awards? Fear not. Voting continues until March 31.

You may have (ahem) voted for a certain novel in the contemporary fiction category, and I thank you for that down to my toes. But there are lots of other categories, and each vote gives you a greater chance in the drawing for a $50 Amazon gift card.

For instance, K.S. Brooks has been nominated in the childrens’ book category for Postcards from Mr. Pish:  East Coast Edition.

About the book: Mr. Pish, the lovable Jack Russell Terrier, leads readers on an expedition down the East Coast of the United States in Postcards from Mr. Pish Volume 3. With each new discovery, the traveling terrier sends a postcard with full-color photographs and engaging text geared to promote outdoor learning and literacy. Mr. Pish’s enthusiasm inspires young and old to read, explore and learn in a fun way.

In the Short Story Collections/Anthologies category, my author and editor friend, LB Clark, has been nominated for her anthology, Music Speaks. It’s a pretty fabulous undertaking for a charity that helps musicians, and it includes short stories by two of my favorite writers, JD Mader and David Antrobus. Learn more about the book and the foundation here.

A pretty commanding author and editor himself, David Antrobus also received a solo nomination for his outstanding memoir, A Dissolute Kinship. Read my review here.

Have you read Lynne Cantwell yet? She’s been nominated in the Speculative Fiction category for Seized, the first book in her Pipe Woman Chronicles. I’m well into this fascinating story and eagerly anticipate starting on the rest of the series. This book is currently in the running for an ABNA award.

Voting automatically enters you into B&P’s giveaway. You can learn all about that here. Voting ends at midnight, April 1, and final results will be announced the morning of Wednesday, April 3.

Thank you!

[Voting notes: The form doesn't like Internet Explorer. Once you get to the site, log in with Facebook or your e-mail address. Click on the downward-facing arrow in each category to see the books nominated. Click the open circle to the left to make your selection and "Enter" to register the vote. Clicking on the title will give you more info about the book.]

Challenging Your Preconceptions

Eunice Scarfe, a Canadian author and professor, led (and presumably still leads) a popular workshop at a women’s writing conference I used to attend regularly. We were given prompts: a few words, a sentence. We were to write whatever spilled from our brains and when time was called, draw a line beneath what we had written. Under that line, she asked us to write what images, emotions, and conclusions that exercise had stirred up.

One prompt she gave was “my mother’s hands.” Start with your own hands, she suggested, and drift back through the generations, to your mother’s, and her mother’s. I looked at my little paws and thought about my mother’s hands, the relief river map of the crisscrossing tendons and blood vessels, the elegant fingers, the carefully-coiffed nails. And then I looked back at my own. I had a hell of a time getting inspired. So I wrote about my mother’s hands, and the strength within them no one would suspect, and what the years and the Florida sun and had wrought upon her skin. But the words came in lumps and had no connection to my ten digits.

Eunice called time. I looked at my paltry prose, my weak words, and felt…uninspired. So that’s what I wrote below the line. Uninspired. Nothing. Feh. And I looked at my hands again. Still nothing. My hands are small, unlined, with squarish palms and utilitarian nails kept short through years of training on piano keys, typewriters, computer keyboards. Then Eunice invited women to line up against the wall if they wanted to read their wanderings to the class.

I chose not to. I listened, still thinking of my below-the-line comments, when I took another look at my squatty little hands. I realized why I had not connected with this exercise. My hands more closely resembled my father’s. And that was my biggest revelation of the week. Even though our faces, our noses, our eyes, our hair, so much the same that nearly everyone gasps and says, “Oh, you are your mother’s daughter,” I am more like my father than I’d ever considered.

What am I writing below the line for these few freewritten paragraphs? That it’s good, every so often, to have your conclusions about yourself challenged. Good as a writer, good as a daughter, good as a human.

Drawing Breath a Nominee for Readers’ Choice Award: The Voting Begins!

Some of you may know this already, but among the world of indie authors, getting a review from BigAl’s Books and Pals is no small accomplishment. According to statistics released by the site, “In the twelve months ending February 28th, 2013, BigAl and the Pals received over 1,400 books to consider for review. Almost 300 of them were selected, read, and reviewed.”

I’m completely humbled down to my toes to know that two of those titles were mine, and one of them, Drawing Breath, has been selected as one of the books they felt stood out as an exceptional example of indie writing. (Their words, not mine, and they’re enough to make a girl do a Snoopy dance and then collapse upon her fainting couch. Smelling salts, anyone?)

B&P divided these books into eleven categories. Drawing Breath has been nominated for Contemporary Fiction. Starting at 10:00 Eastern Time on Monday, March 18, you can vote for your favorites in each category. I hope you’ll swing by and give me your vote; I’d appreciate your support.

I’m also doing a Snoopy-dance for my author and editor friend, LB Clark, whose anthology, Music Speaks, was nominated in the Short Story Collections/Anthologies category. It’s a pretty fabulous undertaking for a charity that helps musicians, and it includes short stories by two of my favorite writers, JD Mader and David Antrobus. Learn more about the book and the foundation here. David Antrobus also received a solo nomination for his outstanding memoir, A Dissolute Kinship.

Voting automatically enters you into B&P’s giveaway. You can learn all about that here. Voting ends at midnight, April 1, and final results will be announced the morning of Wednesday, April 3. Winners get some great exposure on B&P’s website, and, of course, a shinier badge. Drawing Breath is a story very close to my heart, and I would love to bring it into more peoples’ lives.

Thank you!

[Voting notes: The form doesn't like Internet Explorer. Once you get to the site, log in with Facebook or your e-mail address. Click on the downward-facing arrow in each category to see the books nominated. Click the open circle to the left to make your selection and "Enter" to register the vote. Clicking on the title will give you more info about the book.]

A Wicked Good Cause

Most of you might have seen video or print coverage of the devastation wreaked by Hurricane Sandy on the metro NY tri-state area last fall. Some of you have lived it. Some of you are still living it, long after the reporters packed up and went home. Heck, some of us up in the Hudson Valley are still recovering from Hurricane Irene, which literally wiped two small towns off the map in August 2011.

Yes, lives were destroyed. Businesses. Homes. Schools.

Libraries.

Who really thinks about the libraries? They’re just…self-perpetuating, right?

Turns out that raging floodwater, mud, and books don’t mix so well. Imagine how multiple branches of a large metropolitan library system would fare.

Last November, author K.S. Brooks, now stationed in an undisclosed part of the Pacific Northwest and who once lived in these parts, had an idea. She founded Indie Authors for Hurricane Sandy Libraries.

“This is a great opportunity to connect libraries in need to authors willing to donate books. We work closely with the library systems to make certain they receive the genres they need,” says group founder K. S. Brooks.

Along with almost a hundred other vetted authors from all over the world, I was happy to be able to donate copies of Drawing Breath and Don’t Tell Anyone to the cause of rebuilding the libraries’ inventory.

Learn more about Indie Authors for Hurricane Sandy.

It’s Boomer Lit Friday!

Happy Friday! Once again, it’s Boomer Lit Friday. Every Friday, a bunch of us who like such things post snippets from our “Baby Boomer Books,” and the lovely Shelley Lieber has graciously offered up her blog where you can see what other authors are up to. Here’s a teensy bit of Don’t Tell Anyone. Please hop over to the Boomer Lit Friday blog and read and comment on the other participants. Enjoy, and I hope you have a lovely weekend.

——

 

“You’ll do it,” Estelle said.

“Me?” A fist tightened around Liza’s stomach. “Oh, no. I’m not—”

“Adam and Charlie won’t. They’re too softhearted. Good boys, but weak-willed, like their father. May he rest in peace. So you’ll have to do it.”

“What are you saying?” Liza glared at her. “That I’m cold-hearted enough to…kill a person? Is that what you’re saying?”

“Oy, no, of course not. I’m saying you’re practical. You’re a practical girl. At least that’s what Adam says about you. You’ll know how to do it.”

Liza threw up her hands. “So what do you want me to do? Push you out a window? In front of a bus? Hold a pillow over your head?”

Estelle appeared to consider her options. “The pillow would work. I saw Cary Grant do it in a movie. Or you could get me pills. People take pills. Marilyn Monroe took pills. Some people think it was the Kennedys, but I know it was pills.”

So You Want to Be on a Competition Reality Show?

An actual Madagascar hissing cockroach. In case you’ve been wondering.

If you’ve ever watched a reality show contestant choke down a Madagascar hissing cockroach smoothie or bungee-jump off a bridge, and thought, “I can do that,” maybe you’ve considered applying. ‘Cause it looks so easy, right? Sure, from the safe, plushy tentacles of your sofa. But you’ll need more than good hair and an inspirational backstory to succeed at these modern versions of Lord of The Flies. Before you create your Survivor audition video, choose your partner for The Amazing Race, and make an appointment for full-body waxing, consider these other things you ought to do as well:

Learn how to read maps. This is the downfall of many an Amazing Race team. They can’t figure out the directions, and they circle the same pitted roads in their tiny, Eastern European clown-car sedans, looking for the flag that marks their next task while everyone else is on their way to the pit stop. Practice by trying to find a random address in New Jersey in a set time period with nothing but a gas-station road map and any local you can cajole into giving you directions. (Note: they love to help out-of-towners, and you don’t even have to tip them American dollars.)
Get in shape. Not just decent shape. Not just “losing that spare tire around your gut” decent shape. No. If you want to compete with this crowd for that million-dollar prize, and people like this, you’ll have to be agile enough to balance on a four-inch piece of wood twenty feet over a lagoon in the hot sun. Strong enough to pull yourself up a cliff by a rope. Fast enough to beat out another team in a footrace with a thirty-pound pack strapped to your back. Get a gym membership. Bench press your children. Take Pilates, yoga, Tai Chi or whatever else will help you strengthen your core and find your center. Just don’t make your competitors practice with you. They hate that, and they will vote you out. And for Pete’s sake, if you don’t already know how, learn to swim.
Learn at least one foreign language. If you can’t do that, learn “please,” “thank you,” and “where’s the airport” in a bunch of foreign languages. It’s extremely helpful if one of you can speak Chinese.
Learn how to drive a stick. Seriously, do you think any of those tiny, ancient, Eastern European sedans have automatic transmissions? Hah hah hah hah. No. You’ll be lucky if they have transmissions.
Get over your fear of heights. With the right therapy, it can be done. You don’t want to become known as part of the team that lost the million dollars because you couldn’t go down the giant waterslide, even with your floaties on.
Watch all the previous episodes you can get your hands on. The biggest rookie mistake is repeating the same stupid crap someone else tried to get away with in Season Three. Like:

Swearing the truth on your dead grandmother.
Getting voted out when you’ve got TWO immunity idols in your pocket. Turns out they weren’t so happy to see you.

Good luck, don’t forget your passport, and remember to play fair: karma will always get you in the end. Or in another part of your body.

A Better Place to Be

If you’ve ever read any of author Chris James’ blog posts, you know that he normally ends with a video of one of his favorite songs. Normally this is something from Genesis’ discography. I think he has a side deal with Peter Gabriel, but I could be wrong. This week, he ended with a songwriter close to my heart: Harry Chapin singing “Cat’s in the Cradle.”

I’ve adored Harry Chapin since high school. He was a New York guy; he and his brothers, Tom and Steve, were born upstate near Watertown and some of his family still lives there. I’ll get to them later. Harry eventually landed on Long Island and that’s where he died, playing chicken with a truck on the Long Island Expressway. My father and stepmother were huge fans and still are, so I got the privilege of hearing him perform live three times: at a college in Newburgh (he loved playing colleges), at the Civic Center in Poughkeepsie, and at the Hudson Valley Winery in Highland.

At the winery, three days before my seventeenth birthday, is where I finally got to meet him.

After the performance—spectacular, by the way, and he played the extra-extended version of “30,000 Pounds of Bananas” but only after the audience begged—we stood in line to meet him and get autographs. My parents had been involved in fundraising for Pete Seeger’s Sloop Clearwater Project, among other causes, so I’d been to a fair number of small-venue concerts by then. Enough to know if the guys in the band didn’t really give a crap about meeting fans, that it was just an obligation because you paid for your ticket and it was good PR to act like you cared. Some didn’t even hang around long enough to do that. Harry Chapin didn’t have to stick around and meet fans. He’d played in London. He’d played Carnegie Hall. He’d been on Johnny Carson. But he hung around. He cared. He shook hands. He listened to stories. This was what, he’d said, inspired the songs he wrote. He traveled around and listened to peoples’ stories.

Meanwhile, as I waited with my father, I sneaked glances at Harry, cowed and amazed at the easy way he engaged with people, like he was born to it. Like that one person he was talking to was the most important one on the planet. When it was our turn, my dad shook his hand and thanked him for his music. I think I might have said something, but I was terrified. I think I asked for his autograph. He signed the front of my T-shirt (collarbone level, no straying hands), made an innocent-yet-slightly-naughty joke and smooched me square on the lips, right in front of my father.

Then I bought all of his albums.

Three years later, he died.

Almost exactly a year after that, I met a guy from Upstate New York. His last name was Chapin. Yes, they were related. There are a lot of Chapins running around up there, in that Watertown/Black River area. Some look exactly like Harry, I mean a freakish resemblance, down to the cleft chin and twinkling eyes. The hole in the family still pulsed, a raw wound. The cousin I met listened to my albums so frequently I thought I’d have to replace them, and I was not allowed to speak while Harry sang.

The relationship did not end well and the less said about it, the better. But for a long while afterward, I could not listen to Harry Chapin. I’d let my sweet, lovely memories be subverted by some bad associations. And one day, years later, I found a cassette tape of his greatest hits in a box long forgotten.

My car was old and still had a cassette deck, so I popped it in and cried all the way through. Not for the Chapin cousin. But because I’d denied myself the pleasure of Harry’s songs and stories for so long. And because fate and a tractor-trailer denied us more of them.

Here is one of my favorites. Thank you for reminding me to focus on the good memories, Chris.

Stupid Human Brain Tricks and Your Productivity

I love being a writer. It’s one of my main reasons for living, but it’s tough sometimes. Okay, it’s tough a lot of the time. Sometimes the enemy is my own brain. Even the most facile thinker can have problems bouncing from project to project, reorienting his or her brain toward the required task. You’re tapping away at your magnum opus, when BOOM, the phone rings— your best client needs to talk to you right away about Madagascar hissing cockroaches. You scribble down notes about revisions to the project and go back to your computer to find fifty new e-mails, a handful of which require your immediate action.

So how can you shift your focus and apply your best self to each task?

Discipline, yes. Those things you’re supposed to do, like keeping a to-do list, blocking out spaces of time for each project, returning messages promptly… those Highly Effective Steps all of those Highly Effective People use every day.

But there’s much more to the task of balancing tasks than mere paperwork or better productivity software. According to Dr. Nick Hall, internationally recognized psychoneuroimmunologist, (try fitting that on a business card) we can work with our own biology to become more productive.

For instance, some studies show that our brain hemisphere activity cycles every 90 to 110 minutes. This is a brilliant method the brain uses to manage its energy throughout the day. The trick is to harness and work with your gray matter’s natural rhythms.

The first step is to figure out which brain hemisphere happens to be switched on.  According to Dr. Hall, you only need to pay attention to your breathing. More specifically, your nostrils. Sit very quietly, inhale through your nose a few times (blow your nose if you’re congested), and note which nostril feels less constricted as you breathe. As I’m writing this, my left nostril is definitely doing more than its fair share of the work. Using Dr. Hall’s hypothesis (cribbed from ancient India), my right-brain is more active. So it’s a good thing I’m using my right-brain language skills now. And in about 90 to 110 minutes, I should switch to my left-brained tasks, like sorting out my inbox or updating my contacts list. Theoretically, this will make performing all types of tasks more efficient.

Another way Hall recommends you improve productivity is to match your breaks to your tasks. After spending 45 minutes composing a proposal (language skills), don’t hop on down to chat with your friends at the water cooler (or the virtual representation of the watercooler) for a break. Okay, this is not really a break. This is a continuation of language skills. Sure, we need breaks. But if I hang out on FaceTwit for fifteen or twenty five or ten minutes and then return to that proposal, my brain is already tired and hasn’t rested. Probably a more effective break would have been a quieter activity like fetching a cup of tea, going for a short walk, or taking a few deep breaths. Then I can go back to my linguistic pursuits refreshed.

One method I use is to work with my biological rhythms. I am peppier and more creative in the morning. That’s when I do the bulk of my fiction writing or tackle tasks that require more energy or focus. After lunch, I work best at editing or revising. At around four or five o’clock, though, my mental energy plummets. This is when I normally exercise. And from banging my head against the wall time and time again, I’ve learned that the part of my brain that makes sentences checks out after about ten o’clock, so I have no business writing then. Better to perform a more rote task, or even better, chill out and get ready for sleep.

You probably know when you’re at your best for certain things and not for others. It’s much easier to fit your tasks around your rhythms than trying to muscle your way through something your brain is not up for.

But I know what you’re thinking: “I’m at work, and my report is due in two hours. According to my ‘nostril clock,’ I’m on the right side of my brain. So I’m screwed, right?”

You might not be. Some studies have suggested that you can change which side of your brain is “switched on” by closing the currently active nostril and forcing the other to do the work. I’ve been playing with this trick for a couple of years, on and off, and it has worked for me about fifty percent of the time. Maybe you’ll have more success.

What are your favorite productivity tips that don’t involve your nostrils?

It’s Boomer Lit Friday!

Happy Friday, everyone! Today I’m participating in a different sort of blog hop. Each week, the Boomer Lit Friday blog hop will feature snippets from a variety of “baby boomer” novels. Make sure to check out excerpts from other participating authors, too.

Today, here’s a bit from The Joke’s on Me:

“Bad workshop?” Joey shook his napkin out of its complicated arrangement, set it in his lap, and returned his full attention to me.

“It’s Ethan.” I let out my breath. “He came home high last night. Courtesy of his father’s stash. He said it was a one-time deal, but I don’t believe him. I’m pretty sure Jude’s oblivious. Lev probably thinks it’s a big joke. And poor Aunt Frankie’s trapped in the middle, laying out all the terrible things that could happen to him and threatening to tell his mother if he doesn’t shape up.”

“And poor Aunt Frankie never partied with the burnouts in the Drama Club way back when?”

I raised an eyebrow.  “We only pretended to inhale. So what are we supposed to do when Junior asks why Mommy and Daddy look so stupid in all of those old pictures?”

“Hope and pray good sense skips a generation.”

“Hey.” I pretended to take great offense. “I do the jokes. You’re supposed to be the straight man.”

He regarded me with great seriousness. “Frankie, if I’m not a straight man, one of us is at the wrong table.”

This Week: Is It Spring Yet?

The skies have been a little gloomy in my slice of the Hudson Valley, but if it’s time for Daytona and the Oscars, spring can’t be far behind. Although I’m not having as good a week as Danica Patrick, it’s still pretty sweet around here.

I don’t know if you caught this, but the lovely and effervescent Dames of Dialogue let me stop in for tea and a chat.
Have you heard of Baby Boomer Lit? With America’s largest age cohort knocking on the doors of, well, aging, this is a genre whose time may have come. Author Claude Nougat, on the heels of her new book, A Hook in the Sky , has started not only a Goodreads group devoted to the idea but also possibly a movement. Lynnette Schneider, a book blogger and member of this group, gave Don’t Tell Anyone a very nice five-star review.

Lots going on with the Indies Unlimited crew to report.

The rockin’ fabulous K.S. Brooks has been very active with Indie Authors for Hurricane Sandy. On Sunday at 4:00 p.m. Pacific Time, you can hear what she’s been up to and how you may be able to help.
Krista Tibbs posted this terrific article, showing us how the old writing canard, “show, don’t tell” actually works.
Our resident scam-buster, Rich Meyer, stirred up some interesting discussion about crowdfunding for indie writing projects. What do you think? Practical method of fundraising or begging for dollars?
Science fiction author and all-around nice guy Chris James just published the second novel in his Second Internet Café series, The Second Internet Cafe, Part 2: The Cascade Annihilator . If you’d like to grab yourself a free copy, check out his website for details.

Last but not least, in one week I’ll be trying not to panic taking Don’t Tell Anyone out for its first public appearance, at The Golden Notebook, a local independent bookstore in Woodstock, New York, where I launched The Joke’s on Me. Jackie and Nan, the lovely women who run the place, are great to support local indie authors. If you’re in the area (Saturday, March 2 at 5:00 p.m.), I’d love to see you!

I hope YOU had a good week!