Tudor Robins's Blog, page 10

New World

Some of you will know our family spent March Break in Vermont. I did mean to write a blog post about it … but I didn’t. Maybe in the middle of the summer, I’ll get around to writing a blog post about our ski holiday at Jay Peak but, for now, suffice it to say we were in the U.S. and we watched some U.S. TV.

This was interesting for two reasons: 1) U.S. commercials are different from Canadian commercials, and 2) at home we PVR everything and never watch the ads, but there we had to watch the ads (or go make a hot drink while they were on).

There was this one ad, for Charles Schwab, that I saw a few times, and each time I felt like yelling at the TV – “Nailed it!”

It was like my entire experience with publishing summed up in about twenty seconds.

Here it is:

Did you guess my favourite lines?

If you guessed …

Father: (chuckling at the silliness of his son) “That’s not the way the world works.”

Son: (putting Dad quietly in his place) “Well, the world’s changing.”

… you were totally right.

Well, the world’s changing.

Love it.

Thank you for saying it.

Fun Review!

I love it when I learn something about my own books from readers / reviewers (it happens more often than you might think).

So, when I saw this review, titled “5 Things to Know About: Join Up” I was so excited. What are five things I need to know about Join Up? I was genuinely interested …

Here’s number one, and you can go visit Marian Elizabeth’s blog to read the rest:

1.  Lacey Strickland has the COOLEST SUMMER JOB EVER! Why’s that?  Because she’s teaching horseback riding at a summer camp.  Her goal is to earn enough money to pay for her first semester of university.  She knew that it was going to be a lot of work but with the camp food being bad, drama with her friend Carly, and the weird tension she has going on with Fitch (the camp owner’s sun), she’s in for a wild ride!

Yes, that horse pun was very much intended. 

For numbers two through five, click here …

Nurturing + $1 = A Cup of Coffee

( although, it would have to be cheap coffee …)

Let’s talk about nurturing. It sounds nice, doesn’t it? (Actually, it’s starting to sound annoying to me, but some people still think it sounds nice). It sounds like somebody holding your hand:

“A Pair of Hands – Holding Hands” – a Creative Commons image by RichardBH

And holding hands is nice, right?

There’s still this weird myth out there that one of the reasons you really need to resist self-publishing and, instead, repeatedly fling your manuscript (and, possibly, your sanity) up against the firewalls of traditional publishing, is that if you miraculously make it in, you’ll be nurtured.

Your hand will be held.

There are so many stories about this, all the time. I’ll just pick the most recent one I saw, on The Huffington Post, where they say a self-publishing con is that “You have to do all your own promotion,” whereas, if you become traditionally published, the publisher will do some of that for you.

This story is actually better than many, in that they admit the publisher will only do “some” promotion for you. Then again, the story is terrible in that it still says, “Once you sign with a publishing company …” Ha! As if! How about, “If you’re one of the one per cent who signs with a publishing company …” – seriously, folks, I cannot say it often enough – it is not a choice between self-publishing and trad publishing – it’s a choice between self-publishing and pursuing the faint possibility of trad publishing. To say otherwise is wrong and misleading … but that’s a story for another day.

Back to nurturing …

As many of you know, I (a trad-pubbed author who now proudly and happily embraces the self-pub career path) started a collective called Horseback Reads. This includes me and six other authors – some of whom have previously been trad-pubbed, but all of whom are now actively self-pubbing.

The other day a comment was left on our generic web form by a publicist from an imprint of one of the “Big Five” publishers. She was pushing a horse book. At least I think she was. There was no introduction, no “Hi, how-are-ya.” There was no explanation of why she had come to our site. There was just a synopsis of the book dive-bombed into our comments form, followed by her contact information.

On the one hand, I guess you could call this nurturing. Here is an actual real, live publicist (I wasn’t sure they actually existed) “promoting” a book. Cool, right?

Well, here are the reasons I think you don’t want this kind of “help” at all – not even for free – and especially not when you’re taking the massive hit on royalties the author of the “promoted” book is:

1) Effort. Like I said, there was no preamble, no pitch, no introduction. What were we expected to do with this information? There was no hint. Does the publicist want us to review the book? Is she asking if the author can do a guest post? What? I have no idea …

2) Research. If the publicist looked at our site, she’d see we’re seven authors promoting our own books. We do, actually, promote other people’s books from time-to-time – it’s part of what we believe in – but there needs to be a compelling reason to do so (like we LOVED the book). We need to believe the book offers value to our readers. See point #1 – what is the pitch to us, that will make us want to feature this book?

3) Quality. While I’m not revealing the imprint, publicist’s name, author’s name, or title (to protect the somewhat innocent) I will copy the following sentence into this post: “Please reach out if you have not would like a copy of the book.” This is high quality promotional support from a major publishing house …

4) Follow through. Although I initially felt silence was the best reply to this poorly crafted effort, in the end I decided to reply, just for fun. And when I did, guess what I got? An Out-of-Office automated reply. That’s right – the publicist ramped up this “great” campaign for this author’s book and then promptly got out of Dodge. So if I had decided I “have not would like a copy of the book” I guess it wouldn’t be coming anytime soon …

5) Irony. I mean, really, it comes down to how weird it is that the big machine of publishing is asking a bunch of self-published authors to promote their books for them. I can’t fully go into all the reasons why that’s weird … it just so IS.

Bottom line, with promotion like this, you’d be better off with obscurity.

And, please don’t forget, this “promotion” costs authors. Dearly. I keep seventy per cent of my self-pubbed royalties. I earn more on a $2.99 sale of Appaloosa Summer than I do on a $12.95 sale of Objects in Mirror. Much more. It’s all the publicity, and promotion, and nurturing.

I decided a long time ago, I don’t need to pay anybody to hold my hand.

You don’t either. Really, you don’t.

Recruiting new Readers!

Hi loyal readers! Great to have you out there reading the blog.

You know what would be good for me – and good for you, too, if you like my writing? Even more readers.

When I sell more books, it makes me more able to dedicate more time to writing new books.

So, new readers = more book sales = more books for you to read.

I’m always trying to appeal to all my readers, but every now and then I try things I think / hope will attract new readers.

Today I’ve got two to tell you about:

1) Appaloosa Summer is free on Kindle today. I know, I know … if you’re a regular reader it’s pretty much guaranteed you’ve already read Appaloosa Summer (and I thank you for that). If you are a regular reader, and you have read Appaloosa Summer, consider this my way of making it really easy for you to recommend it to other people. Because it’s free! No commitment. No downside to the download. Just click and read. So, if you’re inclined to share this free promotion with others, that would be really great! (You’ll also find posts to share / re-tweet on my Facebook and Twitter pages).

2) Join Up is available in print! Yup, that’s right – my great designer, Daniel, has done another wonderful job making a beautiful, readable interior and you can now hold the book in your hands if that’s how you like to read.

You can get it in the US here, in Canada here, and in the UK here.

So, yeah, if you already have Appaloosa Summer, and Wednesday Riders in paperback, now you can have Join Up too!

Please pass on the news to anyone you think would enjoy the books!

 

 

In Which We Are Amazed

The Brier is in Ottawa this year. If you don’t know much about curling, well, here’s the official website. If you don’t have time to go there, the Brier is the Canadian Men’s curling championships and it is a BIG DEAL.

Like take-all-your-vacation-time-and-spend-$500-to-get-a-pass-for-the-entire-event huge. Like travel-wherever-in-Canada-the-Brier-is-hosted-this-year-because-it’s-a-ritual massive. Like a great big celebration of the sport.

It’s a good deal too – a great deal – for most of the Brier there are three draws each day: morning, afternoon, and evening. In each draw there are four games – so you can watch 12 games of curling each day for about a week and then you get into the playoffs.

There’s a whole culture around the Brier. There’s the Brier patch, where you can see live entertainment, mix and mingle, and have a few beverages. When the stands get rocking during a draw, you say “Oh, I guess a few people were visiting the patch.”

There are costumes, and chants, and noisemakers, and more. It’s really fun.

This year, there was also a Junior Stars program. We urged my son to enter. “You have nothing to lose,” “Give it a try,” “It would be a great experience.”

All he had to do in his entry was explain what curling means to him. That was actually pretty easy – he loves it – so he entered and he won!

I had told him if he won I’d buy him a curling broom so he could have it signed by the team he was paired with so a couple of weeks ago, off we went to buy a curling broom with a white handle … very important.

And yesterday we went.

Well, it was mind-blowing from the moment we were greeted. The Stars – my son and another curler from an Ottawa club were whisked away – and the family members who had come with them were told “Sorry, we have no tickets for you to watch the game … because there are no tickets for where you’re going to sit,” – which was rinkside. Right behind the boards. So close we could touch the players if we wanted to. Very cool.

We got glimpses of our kids every now and then. With the team during practice:

My son with Team Quebec – the Menard Rink – what a great group of guys!

Marching onto the ice as honourary team members and standing for the National anthem.

Holding stopwatches to help the coach time the players’ slides.

Going into the TSN broadcast booth.

On the Jumbotron:

I don’t normally put my kids’ pictures on social media but for this event I figure his cover is already blown!

Each time they walked past us their smiles were bigger.

By the time we finally had them returned to us – in our amazing seats – they had jackets, jerseys, baseball caps and … I couldn’t believe it … actual Team Quebec brooms. Which means my younger son just inherited a never-used white-handled curling broom. Nice …

This whole experience was just nice, nice, nice. The swag was great, and generous, but more important was the way the kids were welcomed, included, respected, and treated like very VIPs.

Both came back bubbling with excitement about Team Quebec, but also about the behind-the-scenes broadcasting – the cameras, the technology, how it all works – very eye-opening.

I want to THANK Curling Canada, Team Quebec, and the amazing Director of Game Day Services, Andrea Weedmark (volunteering her time all during the Brier) for a truly outstanding experience.

Oh, and best of all, Quebec won their game!

Inspiration

I did this today:

This is my finisher’s medal from today’s Ottawa Hypothermic Half-Marathon.

and it was fun.

We also did this today:

It was fun, too, but quite a bit less physically demanding!

For the purposes of this post, I’ll stay with the half-marathon, though.

Due to a number of factors – mostly the hypothermic / winter aspects of this run – it had to be changed from four 5(ish)K loops on a golf course, to four out-and-back 5(ish)K trips.

The out-and-back nature of the course meant all runners were constantly able to watch all other runners. Literally, at every point on the run, I just had to look across the road to see other people doing the same run as me – just heading out as I was heading in, or vice versa.

This meant, of course, yes I could see those ahead of me and, sure, they were pretty amazing. Like the guy who I thought “How can he ever keep that pace up?” and he not only kept it up, but continued to pull away from me throughout the run.

But, while those people had my admiration and respect, they weren’t the ones who inspired me.

This was the first run I’ve done where I constantly got to see those slower than me. In fact, by the third time out-and-back, I was lapping many of them. And, oh my gosh, were they inspirational.

It’s one thing to be in my shoes. To have previously completed a half-marathon. To have trained all winter. To know, barring some weird event, that you’re going to finish. I pretty much knew I was going to finish that run today and, knowing that, it wasn’t really brave of me to start it. It was fun. It was a chance to exert myself. It was a personal challenge to run well, and quickly. But I wasn’t really taking a risk.

This morning I saw lots of people taking risks. Lots of people going above and beyond what they probably felt like they could really do.

I kept thinking “Oh, thank goodness this is my third lap,” and on the final lap I was thinking “Yay! This is it!” and meanwhile I was passing people who were still on their second lap. Who still had over an hour ahead of them.

Now that is brave, and that is patient, and sticking to that requires commitment.

So, instead of watching the guy in front and thinking “If he can do it, I can too,” I was watching all the people walking, or very slowly jogging – just putting one foot in front of the other – and I was thinking, “Wow, if they can do it – if they can stick with it, and put themselves out there – I can, too.”

I hope they’re all cherishing their finishers’ medals tonight … along with maybe a nice beverage of their choice and, possibly, some chocolate … because if anyone earned it, it was those people who dared to set out not really knowing how they were going to finish.

Congratulations

Equine First Aid

I don’t have tonnes of spare time … writing novels is pretty time-consuming! So giving up an entire Sunday is a big deal for me.

I spent all day yesterday taking an Equine Emergency First Aid course from Equi-Health Canada, and it was really, really great.

Of course, having a fun and informed instructor (Emily Bertrand of Royale Equestrian Centre) was crucial, as was having a great, comfortable facility to learn in (thanks to Stephanie Calvert of Meadowvale for sharing her warm, dry, clean home).

And, most important, were the patient “patients” – the horses who didn’t know they were injured, but somehow ended up wrapped to within an inch of their lives.

Here’s the very calm and patient Sierra, sporting a donut bandage over her eye, secured with a polo.

Another view of Sierra’s pretty blue (uncovered!) eye. You can’t see it, but she’s also wearing a hock bandage, two pastern bandages, and a hoof boot.

Anyone who tries to tell you OTTBs are skittish and hard to work with never saw Gimme (Jimmy), who endured his crazy and creative hock bandage with complete patience.

As always, it was good just to be around horses, and people who love them and also, as usual, I learned some great new tips and tricks to write into my horse books.

One tiny one I’ll leave with you here – a great way to wrap an injured leg and monitor swelling. You do all your usual wound gel, gauze, VetRap, etc. then you get a length of duct tape (wait – I know, I was kind of wondering too, but this is really cool …) and you put a pinch in the middle of it, then place it over the VetRap (just a short length that goes across the VetRap join – DON’T wrap duct tape right around your horse’s leg!). You can then also draw a line down either side of the pinch / fold with a Sharpie.

This way if you bandage your horse, then have to go away for a few hours, when you come back you’ll be able to see if the leg has swollen. If so, it’ll pull the pinch out of the duct tape, and you’ll also see the marker lines have been pulled apart.

Cool, huh?

This is the kind of course where, if you don’t know much, your head will be spinning by the end – but it’s still a really good start – and if you’ve already been exposed to quite a bit of horse care, you’ll come away with neat little tips like the above one.

In short, I recommend it!

Stories from the Snow

I guess someone decided not to drive home from my kids’ school yesterday – a pretty good decision! And then somebody else had fun with their snowed-under car :)

I just love big snowfalls like we had yesterday in Ottawa (51 cms, in case any of you didn’t already know that!). There are so many stories built right into them. Stories including, but in no way limited to:

Challenges – Just about anyone, anywhere, trying to go about their day!

Helping – This happens all day long in Ottawa when the snow falls. Yesterday, on the way home from my swim practice, I watched as a young guy drove his way out of a snowbank, then pulled over by the side of the road and got out of his car to walk over to a SUV stuck in the driveway of the community centre. I parked in front of him, and walked over too. There we joined the community centre’s director, and one of the senior staff trying to help the driver – a new immigrant to Canada – get through the massive snow pile left by the plow. Three of us pushed, while the senior staff member tried to calm the woman, and eventually took her place in the driver’s seat. The woman was hyperventilating, close to tears, saying “I have never seen this before. This has never happened.” We all said “It’s OK. It’s normal. You’ll get stuck and people will help you. It’s no big deal.” We all thanked each other for helping. That’s how it goes in Ottawa. You let other people drive your car. You let other people push your car. You thank total strangers for helping you free the cars of other total strangers. I love it.

Things going ahead when you might not expect them to – Four of us showed up to swim practice. Our coach wasn’t there, but we put the lane dividers in and started our warm-up and our coach ran in, saying “I didn’t know if anyone would come so I asked the lifeguards to call me if you did.” The lifeguards had called her, she hurried over, and we had a great swim practice.

Things being cancelled that you were really counting on – I don’t even know where to start here. EVERYTHING was cancelled last night. The notices started as a trickle, then flooded in. No school council meetings, no kids’ activities, no swim practice for the poor swimmers who practice in the evening instead of at noon. For some people this was probably lovely – an unexpected night at home with their family in their snug, dry house. But for others … imagine if your night out was a book launch, or a crucial meeting, or a first date? So many stories …

I got to thinking about these “snow stories” when I was out running at 6:00 this morning. I had a feeling it would be magical to run the morning after the day before … and it was. White, pretty, quiet, very nice.

I was on my way back home, taking advantage of the emptiness of what – during the day – is normally quite a busy street, enjoying the minimal snow I had to churn through, when I looked up at a building I was passing.

It was one of those three-storey brick walk-ups – I used to live in one myself – they’re kind of old-fashioned, but the apartments are huge (by today’s standards) so they can be amazing places to live.

There was a woman standing in her living room window. She was wearing a tank top, and her hair was mussed. She was stretching and yawning, and looking out at me, and I immediately thought how interesting it was that we were in the same city, up at the same time, but having such different experiences in that moment.

I wondered if she felt sorry for me – out running in the dark and the leftover snow and the (sort-of) cold, while she was inside in an apartment warm enough to be wearing only a tank top.

Then I started thinking of how this could be a story. One woman inside, just waking up. The other having already run 6K, with a few more to go before getting home.

What would each of them be like? What would each be thinking? What would the rest of their days hold?

Then I thought, you could twist it – turn the whole thing on its head – imagine the woman out running resents every step and wishes she was inside, and the woman inside is desperate to be outside; seeing the runner makes her wish she’d gotten up half-an-hour earlier and headed on a run.

There are so many possible twists and turns and variations. So many possibilities.

So many stories that do come out of every snowstorm, and dozens more that a writer can imagine.

Don’t Start With Me …

 

Yesterday came big news – but probably not surprising news to anybody outside looking in – that Postmedia is merging newsrooms all over the dang place and, also no surprise, multiple people have been laid off in the process.

As a journalism grad who had to write an essay on “will we have newspapers in 20 years?” (and, by the way, I graduated from j-school twenty years ago) – this is a story I have to be interested in.

So, I listened, and read, and paid attention all day yesterday and this morning.

Do I think this is good for news coverage in Ottawa? No – but not a lot has been good for news coverage in Ottawa (or I suspect most communities) for a long time.

Do I feel badly for the laid-off workers? Of course. As somebody who writes resumes for a living (I do that!) I know how hard it can be to be job searching. Especially if the reason you’re job searching is that your industry is dying, or at least changing right underneath you.

I get that it’s tempting to lash out and, to be honest, I’m impressed how little lashing out there has been. But I have heard / read in a couple of places subtle – or less subtle – suggestions that this is my fault.

Yup, me. Because – that’s right – I don’t subscribe to a newspaper anymore. The message is “See what happens when you stop subscribing to newspapers?”

Don’t get me started …

Did I mention I have a journalism degree? And anyone who knows me, knows I like to know what’s going on. I like to hear different stories. I listen to current affairs podcasts for fun.

So, instead of saying I’m causing the death of the newspaper by cancelling my subscription, take a minute to wonder if the evolution of newspapers forced me to kill my subscription.

From where I sit, it did.

Here’s the storyline:

1) Lo, many moons ago, my husband and I were full-time subscribers to the Ottawa Citizen, weekend subscribers to the Globe and Mail, and we used to have a copy of the Telegraph put aside at a local newsagents for my husband to pick up.

2) Life got busy, subscriptions got expensive, the Telegraph became available online (the copy we used to pick up was $10 / week!) and we trimmed the Telegraph and the Globe and stayed with the Citizen.

3) Life got busier, our family grew, our recycling box got ridiculously full, and I could no longer stomach putting half of each day’s paper on the blue box unread, untouched, unfolded. This wasn’t just because of limited time. This was because I’m probably really never going to read (for example) the Sports section. I’m just not. So why am I paying for it, and killing trees for it, etc.? Hard to justify. We switched to a weekend subscription.

4) That was good for a long time. The weekend papers were always our favourites anyway. Then they axed the Sunday paper. So, now we were paying for one paper a week – and not paying less, either. Then there were a series of redesigns and each time we enjoyed the paper less and less. It became Citizen-lite. Local coverage became very, very scanty. Finally one day all the sections were renamed from things like “Arts” and “City” to thinks like “Where to be” and “What to think” – I’m making those up, but they did rename all the sections to weird, obscure things (I think they were supposed to be “hip”) and, for example, I could no longer find “Books” – where was Books? And if I couldn’t find the section I was looking for, what was I paying for?

We were also supposed to have access to online reading because we were subscribers – except something would go wrong at regular intervals with cookies or tracking or something and I’d be kicked out of the online Citizen and I’d have to jump through stupid hoops to make it work again. Then, one of those times, I read the fine print in the Terms and Conditions (because I was always having to re-agree to them) and I saw my information was going through some company in New York, and by agreeing to all the Ts & Cs I was agreeing to be bound by the law of the State of New York and I was like … uh … no!

The final straw was when I called the Citizen and said I didn’t want to be bound by the laws of the State of New York in order to read my local news and the person who answered the phone said “Oh, don’t worry about it – it doesn’t really mean anything and you should just click ‘OK.'” Really?!?

It was during that phone call that I cancelled my subscription.

Do I wish I could still have a Citizen subscription? Yes … but not to the current paper. To the old paper I grew up with. To the paper that was a doorstop of interesting information on a Saturday. To the paper that used to cover every little bit of local news and even some gossip.

That paper doesn’t exist anymore.

I feel terrible for journalists caught in the middle of this, but please don’t blame me. Please don’t expect me to pay for, and thereby perpetuate, a failing product.

And no, I don’t necessarily think it’s failing because of external conditions. If I had seen a valiant effort being made to improve the product, and people still didn’t subscribe, then fine. But I haven’t seen that.

So … lest I be seen as bitching, while offering no solutions, here’s what I would do:

First, a couple of observations:

1) What you can’t get (as readily) on the internet is local coverage. Sure, certain Twitter and FB accounts might cover local issues, and some bloggers do, but those are rarely in-depth, and they don’t even pretend to be objective. I can find out from seventeen (million) different sources about a bombing, or plane crash, or the world economy, but I can’t find out about what’s happening right here in my city.

2) There are still local newspapers covering this stuff but there is a quality issue. I’m sorry to have to say it, but it’s true. Writers are rarely paid, and if they are paid, they’re paid a pittance. As a result – and I don’t blame them for this – they have limited ability to do research, to chase stories down several levels and often *sorry* the writing is pretty poor.

So – hmmm … – how could we fix this?

What about (radical thought) we take well-paid, well-trained journalists and set them to covering city issues with depth, quality, and some attempt at balance? How amazing would that be?

All I’m going to say is I’d pay for it.

I would.

One subscriber back right here.

I wish I thought somebody would try …

PSA

For those scratching their head over yet another acronym in this acronym-heavy world, my “PSA” above refers to a Public Service Announcement and this one is about …

No, not Cancer – except, actually, it kind of is … let me explain:

The “C” I’m talking specifically about here, is a colonoscopy.

Not pleasant – right? Not something you really want to think about, and probably not something you want to undergo. But – think about it this way – better than cancer.

Why all this talk of cancer and colonoscopies?

Well, without going into too much detail, because it’s his story – not mine – my dad was diagnosed with colon cancer this summer. At the beginning of August, to be exact.

Before you worry too much, he had surgery by mid-September and is fine, fine, fine now. Completely fine. The cancer hadn’t spread, and the surgery, and his recovery, went beautifully.

Which is all great … but it could have easily been a different story. And, to be honest, when we say “all went well” we’re glossing over lots of worry, re-arranging of plans, time spent in medical waiting rooms, and an operation that – even when it goes well – is a major assault on the body.

So, because I have a diligent and pro-active doctor, and because we talk, and I tell her things that happen in my family, I am now scheduled for a colonoscopy (thanks, Dad …).

Is it convenient? No. Will it be a pleasant and / or comfortable experience? Of course not. Is it glamorous – you tell me; are you now thinking of me in more glamorous terms?

But, you know, I want to know. I want to know if I’m OK. Or, I want to know if I need to do something now that will make sure I do better than if I wait and don’t do something until later.

Until too late. Those are scary words to hear, and they lead me to a brief digression – to another story – to when I was referred to a dysplasia clinic after my doctor / the lab found pre-cancerous cells on my cervix.

Again, it’s a good-news story. It turned out fine. I was monitored until they kicked me right out of that program (yay!). But, on my first visit, when I was convinced I shouldn’t be there, and was probably wasting everybody’s time, the doctor explained all the stages leading to cervical cancer. He started with where I was and went step-by-step until he got to “too late.”

It was chilling to hear those words. I won’t ever forget them. They’re words you never want to hear applied to you.

So, if somebody offers me a test – some screening – a snapshot of vulnerable parts of my body, I’ll say yes. Please and thank you.

Even if it’s a colonoscopy.

I don’t know if anyone reading this will really care. Maybe some of you will wonder why I’m sharing this. I guess it’s just so if your doctor has recommended screening, or a procedure, and you need a nudge to take care of your body – to have a test to get an all-clear, or any early diagnosis – that you’ll do it.

I think it’s a good idea.

I’m told I can be picked up around noon after my colonoscopy … so I’m already booking lunch with my husband.

See? Something to look forward to!