Sherrie R. Cronin's Blog, page 55

x0 on 1670 people’s to-read list!

Like most independent writers who have decided to not go the traditional publishing route, I am always looking for effective ways to promote my three novels. I don’t have training in advertising, and in truth I would much rather write than sell. However, if I am going to spend some time trying to get folks to read my books, I would like that time to be as productive as possible.

So far, my best results seem to have come from advertising and doing give-aways on Goodreads.com. After about six months of steady effort, I am happy to see that I now have 77 ratings and 43 reviews (mostly good), and over 2700 different people have selected one or more of my books to go on their shelf of books to be read.

I have been promoting x0 for the longest, and so not surprisingly it has the most reviews and most would-be readers. It’s true that some ratings appear to be random from people who have just joined the site and haven’t read my books and I have no idea why someone would do that. (These people seem to grab about 50 random books all on the same day and often give them all the same rating, be it three stars or five.)

Others, however, have taken the trouble to provide thoughtful reviews with both compliments and criticisms and their efforts are greatly appreciated by this author and hopefully by the possible readers who they help inform.

Check here for news on z2 out in paperback and here for news on y1 making it to the semi-finals of a contest.

 

What if I really do know what you are thinking?

My husband and I had a telepathic experience the other night, the kind that couples frequently have. Something special was needed for dinner and the cupboard was bare. “Wait we could have…” he began.  “We sure could,” I agreed. Dinner was prepared without either of us once mentioning the wonderful Nantucket Bay Scallops we’d frozen at Christmas. It was a warm, fuzzy mental exchange.

But do I really want to know everything he is thinking? Everything you are thinking? Worse yet, do I want you to know everything I am thinking?  Recent discussions about privacy and national security have bought up the argument that those who have nothing to hide should not be alarmed when their innermost secrets become known. Deep inside, no one I know agrees with that.

I do very little if anything that is illegal or even unethical. But some times I do or think things that embarrass me. Or things I think can be hurtful. If I sneeze too hard I pee in my pants. I think you’re kind of cute. I called a person in another car a “fucking asshole” on the way to work today. Whatever. I’m not perfect and yet I care that I’m not and therefore I don’t want you examining every flaw of mine. I don’t even want you to have the opportunity to do so. And frankly I don’t want to examine your flaws either.

In the novel x0, telepathy is a gentle skill, usually conveying emotions and seldom conveying specific information. Telepaths are considerate, they mind their own business. And even the unaware can put up walls to protect themselves.  It’s telepathy the way I’d want it to be.  Not very invasive.

As to everyone’s increasing ability to use technology to follow my behavior, and even perhaps to misinterpret my actions or my intents? Sigh. ….. A world with telepaths is starting to look like it would be the least of my privacy issues.

For more thoughts on “what if” check out my z2 blog post on what if this could last forever?  And see my y1 blog post on what if you could look like anyone?

How things change: veggie burgers

Visit violets vegan comics

When I stopped eating meat the summer after my freshman year of college, I pretty much lived on cheese omelets and french toast.  In my defense I was working at a 24-hour breakfast place and those were the options. I now occasionally eat meat, but my husband does not, and I am happy for the far greater variety offered to him these days and for the healthier eating choices that we are both able to make in restaurants.

So, I was puzzled when I read about the Red Robin ad that touted their garden burger as something for when “your teenage daughter is going through a phase.” Yikes.Talk about insulting your customers. About ten per cent of all Americans are vegetarian, and many more choose to eat less meat. Why would you make fun of them? Of us?

Then I came across another blogger’s take on the whole idea of exclusionary humor. In a wonderful post called Just a Joke: Confessions of a “Humorless Vegan” she provides one of the best analyses I have ever read on how little jokes marginalize anyone who is different and how the threat of appearing humorless keeps them (whoever they may be) from objecting.

Her solution? Try to put yourself in the shoes of the person telling the unfortunate joke, and remember that they are likely not nearly as hateful as they seem to you at this moment. She even quotes Gandhi. I love this lady.

Empathy is certainly the central part of this blog, and my heart does go pitter patter when it shows up once again. Empathy is the solution. When I stopped eating meat after my freshman year in college, I hardly ever heard the word empathy used. Now, it is the answer to rude drivers, rude relatives, and rude advertisers.

Some things never change. As society evolves, we keep finding new folks to make fun of.

Some things do change. We work together better to find ways to take the sting out of the joke. Yay us.

For more on how things change with time, visit my z2 blog here for thoughts on human trafficking and Broadway musicals. Also visit my y1 blog here for thoughts on gay psychiatrists and my hoarding disorder.

Watch what you wish for

An old friend gives me a hard, meaningful stare. It is April 2012 and I’ve just published my first book, x0 and I am telling him about the plot.  His response?  “Careful what you wish you.” Then he adds in in a warning tone “Life imitates art.”

Icarus: click for print

The visit has not gone so well and this friend is already well on his way to becoming a former friend. His odd response to my story of a telepathic loner who discovers kindred spirits through her unusual mental talent finally clinches the deal. The implication behind his warning has always irritated me.  Don’t reach for your dreams or you may lose all. Our culture is full of fables of backfired wishes and the assorted smiting of those who reach too high.  The very myth of Icarus warms those who would chose to take flight and touch the sun.

Not that I don’t get the “cherish what you already have” side of this issue. It’s about balance. Again. Savor the moment and reach for the stars.

So what happened once I started to reach? Did my former friend’s dire warnings come true and have I found myself fighting off strange telepathic urges, kept up in the night by the sounds of countless souls? No, I found myself joining writer’s groups on the web and reading a lot of other blogs. It turns out that, just like in real life, I don’t have all that much in common with many of the aspiring writers out there fighting for attention on all the sites. And I am not terribly compelled to join in the countless threads of conversation on every blog I visit.  I’m a loner, even online.Maybe especially online.

visit the farmlet

But it also turns out that there are folks out there with whom I share commonalities. I met a wonderful writer named Bob Craton who has penned a series about four pacifists fighting to save their home world. I met a wonderful blogger named Christi Killien who tells a fascinating tale every week about life on her self sustaining farmlet. I’ve had people review my books who seem to get what I am saying far better than people who know me well. Wahoo!

And just this past week I’ve had a reader contact me to complain about all the mistakes in x0. Mistakes? I was horrified. The book has been professionally edited and proofread within an inch of its life. Okay, she offered.  Let’s call them “puppies” so you do not get so defensive. I knew as soon as she proposed using a new word, that I had the good fortune to meet yet another kindred spirit online. She is now in process of showing me what she means, taking some of the more difficult passages in x0 and rewording with a light touch that makes the concepts clearer. I will be using her input to give x0 a gentle tweak someday soon, and the second edition will be better for it.

As she and I exchange ideas, I think of the other remarkable writers, readers, and bloggers who have touched my heart and mind since I published x0, and then I think of my former friend’s dire warning. Now I know what I wish I had said.

“Life imitates art? Really?  You promise??” I am so lucky that he was right.

More ways to read

More ways to read.

flash fiction contest with real prizes

Meet Micheal Brookes. He is the author of “The Cult of Me” and “Conversations in the Abyss” and has been featured and interviewed on my y1 blog here and also on my z2 blog here. He has started a contest for flash fiction writers on his own blog and has asked me to help spread the word. He is handing out real prizes (that is, Amazon gift cards) for those who can produce the best stories of 500 words or less based on a photo.

Interested? Click here.  If you let me know that you did, I’ll watch for your entry and give you a little extra publicity myself if you win.

And the winner is …..

Open the envelope.  Award the trophy. Quickly commend the losers who participated and thank the spectators and the organizers. Then, cut to the interviews with the winner. We get background pieces for color, and praise from the experts.  Finish it all off with a final shot of the victor or victors waving their prize with the stark joy of success etched onto their faces.

We love the formula, whether it involves singing or acting, playing tennis or hockey, driving a race car or riding a race horse. We love a winner. We hate to lose.

The man I share my life with doesn’t write fiction like I do, or create in any of the more conventional senses of the word. Rather he puts his creativity into how he lives. Almost every day brings some new idea that leaves me wondering, how did he think of that? Clearly, I like this about him.

One of his most recent ideas involves three letter words. There aren’t so many of them and he is on a search to find the most meaningful and thought provoking three letter words in the English language. He’s got folks making lists and arguing for their favorites. He and I are on a road trip right now, electing to turn an eighteen hour drive into a three day journey using back roads and having leisurely nights. Our conversation in the car is better too and he announces that he has thought of a new one, and it is one of the best yet.

I know exactly what he is talking about, and he challenges me to think of it.  It begins with the letter “t” he says.  Okay. Top. Good one but no.  How about try? Better, but no. Tug?  He likes tug, thinking that sometimes we all need a helpful tugboat to keep us in the deepest part of the channel as we come into the bay and head to the harbor. But tug isn’t the word either.

I’m starting to get frustrated.  I hate losing these little games even if they’re silly and I’m only playing against him or myself. So he insists on giving me another clue. The word has two vowels. Well that certainly narrows it down. Too? Tea? Tau? Tie?  I’m not getting a lot of deep meaning out of any of these.

“Tie,” he says. “It’s a great word. Think about it.”  I’m thinking. My mind goes to tying up your livestock and moves on to fifty shades and finishes off with uncomfortable men in neckties. Really?

“Think about it,” he insists. “A contest without a winner and without a loser. A tie. We used to have them in football, in lots more sports in fact, but over the years we’ve added overtime and tie-breakers everywhere because no one likes the idea that this particular time around nobody won.”

I get it. It’s wonderful when you or your side wins. Even losing can bring renewed determination, new strategy, better training. But maybe we could use  a few more contests that end in ties. Aren’t concepts like “nobody did significantly better than anyone else” or “these two did here did equally well” concepts worth embracing too? I think that they are.

So, of course, is the knowledge that not everything is a contest, and the wisdom that not every contest matters. In truth, we’ve got win, lose or draw, and we’ve also got “didn’t bother to keep score” and the ever popular “Huh? We were playing a game?”  Each one of those deserves its own place in the grand scheme of things. Maybe especially the last one.

 

(It looks like I am fond of this title …. I used it on my blog for the novel z2 back in February and forgot all about it! Check it out here to see the same title go a whole different direction.)

small world shrinking

I’ve been interviewed and x0 has been reviewed by two fascinating young women from India, who ask great questions and make excellent points in their review.  Please check out their blog “The Pensive Phoenix” here.

And the object of the game is ….

I’m giving some thought today to negative stereotypes associated with India, particularly those held by my fellow citizens of the USA. There are plenty, let’s face it. We paint a comic insult cartoon of every other nation on earth, although some caricatures, like the stuffy Brit, do imply a bit of fondness. I wonder if every other culture does the same. I think I am going to go with yes on this one, and guess that all caricatures of us are not that fond either.

Several years ago a good friend of mine was told his job was being outsourced to India.  The friend is an electrical engineer who spent years writing in machine code to tell your car’s more intelligent parts exactly how to behave. It was a high level skill and he was very good at it, but he was told that his company had a found a kid in India who would do the job at a fraction of the cost and, as his last assignment, my friend was to train his replacement. Yeah right. Guess I’m just not going to remember a whole lot to teach him, my friend laughed. I sympathized.

And then, he started to talk to the young man, who turned out to be smart, eager and happy beyond belief to have gotten this job.  It was going to make him one of the richest people in his village.  One of the most successful members of his family ever. He and everyone he knew were rejoicing at this incredible good fortune. So of course my friend started to remember more and more to teach him, and before he was done he had passed along every trick and shortcut he knew. The young man was so grateful and once he took over my friends job I’m told that he was very good at it.

So was my friend successful, or not? That depends on how you define success. Remember board games?  The directions always started out with “The object of the game is……” Surely I’m not the only person who has wished that real life came with such clear information. If the object of your game is to make as much money as you can, as easily as you can, then my friend failed.  And, let me add that if such is your object, you should consider something other than writing self-published novels. They are exhausting to write, they take forever, and you can probably count on a few dollars a month in return.

But what if success is having a more interesting life? Learning things you never knew you never knew? I firmly believe that the internet has brought the world together in ways we are just beginning to understand, and it has done this for anyone who gets online. But writing and self-publishing three novels has taken this to a whole new level for me. I now share ideas and information with readers and fellow writers in a global community that would have astounded my seventh grade self, a girl who could barely contain her excitement at being allowed to study world geography. Today, copies of my three books exist in over twenty countries. I’m pleased beyond belief.

And later this week, I’m going to be interviewed on a blog written by two young women in India. I’ve done a fair amount of such interviews already, but this one is different because I didn’t go to them. They found my book, read my book, liked my book, and sought me out. All the way from India. Is that cool or what?

The young woman I’ve been corresponding with works as an instrumentation engineer and she also has aspirations to write. She wondered how I manage to raise a family, have a technical career and find time to be an author. I told her that I didn’t manage all at once, rather the writing started once the kids were older and job demands lessened. I offered advice on any of the above if I could ever be of help. I suspect that she has plenty she could teach me as well.

Did I mention that my my friend the electrical engineer learned quite a bit from the young Indian man he instructed? Well he did, of course, for in the best of circumstances knowledge flows two ways. Not every outsourcing story ends so well, but in my friend’s case his employer was so impressed with the job that he did training this kid, and with the new skills he picked up while doing so, that they decided to keep him on also. He trained a few others for them and then he went back to happily writing machine code, using all he had learned to his advantage. Your car may run better because of his story.

So what’s the object of the game? Some days I think I know, other days I’m not so sure. But I am am pretty certain that my friend’s story is a success story, in more ways than one. And I do know that I gained far more than I hoped for when I picked up my laptop and started to write my first novel. If gaining more than you hope for isn’t success, what is?

A Lot of Pissed-off People ………. (thoughts from Belgrade)

Check out my thoughts from Belgrade on my z2 blog here.