Virginia Hull Welch's Blog: BooksontheBeach, page 5

Tick Tock

I’m pulling down my Facebook page today. My personal page, that is; my author page must stay up so readers can find me. It’s part of doing business in the tech age. Thankfully I like connecting with my readers. It’s the human touch of the writing experience—one of the best parts.

I have nothing against FB. I love FB. But I can hear this tick tock, tick tock in my head, and it grows louder every day. It’s marking the passage of time, and it’s telling me that life is short and I’m dribbling too much of mine through my fingers, lost forever like water spilled on the ground, never to be reclaimed. Sitting in front of the computer (like I am right now), checking my two FB pages, checking my Amazon reviews, checking my CreateSpace sales, checking my Kindle Direct downloads, writing yet another blog, reading yet another blog—is this what life is? Note that I do all of these chores alone. They don’t involve another person.

I’m going out on a limb now—may the reader interpret what I’m about to say in the spirit that I say it—but I lost my 18-year-old son in a car accident on Valentine’s Day this year, and in that one, heart-shattering minute the tick tock ratcheted up to a cannot-be-ignored clanging in my head. Life is short! Life is short! Use each day for something worthwhile, something that makes life better for someone else. Serve. Give. Love. Use time wisely. Life, after all, is made up of minutes. Minutes. We get so few, and neither of us know exactly how few. All we know is that we have one right now. How will we spend it?

Do any of my FB posts really matter, anyway? Whom do they serve? Do my posts feed the hungry? Clothe the naked? Comfort the sick and oppressed? Give hope to the incarcerated?

Tick tock.

Free today and tomorrow, June 8/9 - Crazy Woman Creek

Friends,

I've decided to do a freebie: today and tomorrow, June 8 & 9, my western romance, Crazy Woman Creek, is available for free download via Amazon. Just put VIRGINIA WELCH or CRAZY WOMAN CREEK in the search bar.

If you like the story, please consider posting a review to Amazon and goodreads.

Thanks for the vote of confidence.

Oh yes: I'll be on WXML 90.1 FM New Vision radio discussing my books on Wednesday, June 12, 8:35 am and again at 6:05 p.m. Live streaming available.

I love you, Paula

"It Ain't All About the Cookin'"
by Paula Deen with Sherry Suib Cohen

Paula, Paula, I love you. I've read this book three times. So what makes it so good?

Candor - You're going to see the real Paula.
Humor - Lots of it; I love it when a book makes me laugh out loud.
Admiration - You watch Paula go from clueless teen who marries, by all accounts, the wrong guy, to young mother of two sons, to agoraphobic, to impoverished single mom, to hard-working, successful restaurateur.
Family photos - They add depth to the book.
Recipes - A few of Paula's favorites.

In 279 fast-reading pages Paula begins at the beginning, giving us her life's story to date. After you read her exhausting account (not because it's too long, but because she had to work so hard and against such odds) of how she got her first restaurant off the ground, you'll want to hop in your car and drive down to Savannah just to eat at Lady and Sons.

Which is exactly what I did after I finished the book, all the way from Virginia Beach, Virginia. The food was worth it and Savannah is charming. I highly recommend this entertaining light read.

Tumblr Fumblr

My college-age daughter is on Tumblr. A lot. I wouldn’t mind so much except for the fact that I only recently learned how to use Facebook and have been so proud of this huge accomplishment. Mom … in the 21st century. And now I learn that all my technical finesse is misplaced, even outdated, ‘cause FB is so very yesterday. Tumblr is the happening place, never mind that it’s not spelled right and sounds like an online meeting place for people who throw plasticware parties.

Just last week I learned how to use html on my goodreads blog too, another reason to crow around the house. (“I learned how to do that in 2005,” she says, eyes rolling.)

OK. It is a fact that I was on FB for nearly two years before I realized what those little red balls at the top of my FB page were, you know, the ones with numbers in them alerting you to a message or friend request. I used to look at the little numbers changing, day by day, and think, “A user counter? Skeeball score? What do these cute little balls mean?” By the time I had figured out this puzzling technical mystery I’m sure that everyone who had ever friended me thought I was a stuck-up snob for ignoring their requests. And I didn’t know that you can send a private message to another FB user until just last month. All this time I couldn’t understand why people would put sensitive information in a post for every Tom, Dick, and Harry to read, so I clung tenaciously to e-mail, thinking that it was the only way to send a personal message. Now I understand why my longtime whining about the uselessness of FB was met with blank stares.

Now I face another FB crisis: my timeline photo is getting old. One day soon I’ll have to do the honest thing and update my picture. After all, a gorgeous photo of myself, thin and four years younger, dressed to the nines for my oldest son’s wedding isn’t exactly the real, 2013 me. But the problem is I don’t know how to swap out a photo on FB. My daughter set up my FB page a long time ago. What if I end up leaving a big white hole on my FB page where my gorgeous photo had been?

So, friends, if you have a link to a page on how to swap out your old FB timeline photo for a more up-to-date photo, please … don’t send it.

Obsessed

Obsessed. This is the unscientific conclusion of my unscientific analysis of today’s 100 bestselling books on Amazon. As we sit on our lard butts punching the 1-click button, we are obsessed with shedding said butt (10 percent of titles) by merely switching what we eat (diet change, also 10 percent), more specifically, by eating like cavemen, aka as the “paleo” diet. (Excuse me a second here while I chase one of my mini crumb donuts—it’s rolling toward the edge of my desk.) When I was growing up, paleo grub meant anything that was conked on the head, dragged home, and consumed raw while dancing around a bonfire. Nowadays paleo means sleek, toned, and sexy, according to the covers of these ubiquitous books, which is nothing like the image of the hairy, grunting hunter-gatherer we associate with ancient civilization. According to the dictionary, paleo means ancient—or at least it used to.

We are evenly split between nonfiction and fiction titles, running about 36 books in each category. In the nonfiction category, we are focused, very focused on self-improvement—again, 10 titles. Three of the nonfiction titles contain claims of seeing or experiencing Heaven, though we are silent about Hell, a telling statement about American spirituality and surely the wellspring of a good sermon. Especially, ahem, when the same number of titles are devoted to BDSM.

Eleven titles are expressly devoted to self-improvement (a few imply it). We know we need to do something about the lard butt, credit card debt, relationship messes, and perennial sloth, but 11 percent of us are content to just read about a solution. Three books (three!) are devoted to helping us perform better on college entrance exams. Are we that devoted to excellence in education? Nah. Probably we are just trying to make up for 12 years of partying.

Ten books are aimed at children, two of which are aimed at “young” girls, specifically the care of young girls’ bodies, which suspiciously sounds like a slippery segue into the top 20 books (paragraph one) that she’ll be reading in just a few years.

You can draw all kinds of conclusions from these numbers, but what I want to know is, why are numbers 45 and 48 even on the list? #45: Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, Fifth Edition, American Psychiatric Association; and #48, Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association, 6th Edition. Required reading? Or maybe there are a whole lot more people than we think who need help. We all know somebody who needs these books, probably someone who works right in your office…. psychiatrists and psychologists everywhere seem to think so too.

But what really got my attention is book #2, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald. 773 days in the top 100, 1,995 reviews of a book with an overall four-star rating. I say “overall” because just over 11 percent (227 readers) gave it a punishing one or two stars; 198, almost 10 percent, gave it three stars, which ain’t exactly complimentary. These miserable statistics make you wonder why this nihilistic, hope-draining book appears on every high school reading list in America. Maybe it’s all about the high drama of multiple adulterous relationships, but Gatsby never rang any bells for me. I’ll take the earthy, frank simplicity of being chased by the GEICO caveman over an afternoon with Nick.

Can It Be Learned?

Can comedy be learned?

I’m really out of my element here. I probably should just shut up now. But being the risk-taking type, I forge ahead.

How many times have I sat through a funny sermon, read a funny book, watched a funny movie, and after the guffaws stopped, said to myself, “Gee, I wish I could make people laugh. What a gift that would be to the world.” That’s how I look at the comedy gene: a gift God deposits in certain people to be shared with others.

But then, I’ve always thought that about artistic talent, too. You either have it or you don’t. So I never even tried to learn to draw. Middle-aged and my sketches still look like the stuff taped to kindergarten walls. And there’s the missing mechanic gene. I just let my husband assemble anything that comes into our home in multiple pieces. The tech geek gene? Again, his job. Math gene? Born entirely without one. (That’s why we major in English …)

But I picked up a book recently, Writing the Romantic Comedy by Billy Mernit (c 2000, Collins, Imprint HarperCollins), that has made me rethink the whole born-with-something-missing notion. I have learned that comedy in all forms—movies, books, stand-up, television, radio, etc.—shares predictable, repeatable elements. Tension. Conflict/Crisis/Resolution. Threat of loss. Shared pain. Surprise. Then I picked up The Comic Toolbox: How to Be Funny Even If You're Not by Jon Vorhaus (c 1994, Silman-James). There, between the jokes, I read about the fundamentals of humor. More important, Vorhaus confirms what Mernit says: Comedy must contain certain elements, and anyone can learn the elements and apply them to any entertainment medium.

That provoked memories. Sitting in art class at L.C. Curtis Junior High in Santa Clara, Calif. learning about the color wheel: primary and secondary colors and how to use them to complement or contrast. Sitting in cooking class learning about the elements of a properly baked cake: leavening to make it rise, egg as a binder to keep it from being too crumbly. Oddly, I took that cooking ball and ran with it―baking is second nature to me. But I ignored what I was taught in art class because by age 13 I had already determined that I had no artistic talent. No gene.

The confluence of these three lessons (writing comedy, creating works of art, baking), bolstered by the encouraging words of Mernit and Vorhaus, has given me pause when it comes to all the things I’ve said that I can’t do. What else have I failed to attempt because I was convinced I wasn’t given the gift? Perhaps there are many gratifying pursuits that I’ve missed merely because I didn’t know that you can break them down into simple, concrete elements.

Maybe, maybe not. I’m not going to quit my day job to become a stand-up comedienne (that’s not risky behavior, that’s starvation). But reading books such as Mernit’s and Vorhaus’ has opened my mind a little to at least trying something new. Thank you, gentlemen.

Money - The Acid Test

Everything you need to know about money is bound up in a slim little cloth-covered book that you’ll never tear from my hands. “Money – The Acid Test” by David McConaughy was published by The Westminster Press in 1919. It became an instant bestseller.

“All life is a stewardship,” it begins. Thereafter McConaughy convincingly lays out his moral argument that how you handle money is the most telling evidence of who you really are. Money appraises men and money reveals men, he claims. Stewardship is the test of character. He discusses, in order:

1. Stewardship
2. Acquiring
3. Spending
4. Saving
5. Giving
6. Proportioning
7. Accounting
8. Influencing Others

I like this book’s direct, sparing style. He wastes no words, pulls no punches. I guarantee he’ll make you squirm. He echoes the argument of a favorite pastor of mine, the man who officiated over my and my husband’s wedding vows 35 years ago. I remember Pastor Emanuele Cannistraci (Evangel Christian Fellowship; San Jose, Calif.) used to have a favorite saying about money. He said, in so many words, “Show me a man’s checkbook, and I’ll show you where his heart is.”

McConaughy says, “The pocket-book is like a sensitive nerve; touch it and you will soon discover whether its owner is unselfish or otherwise. Cash is an acid test of character.” (p. 53)

No dancing around the truth here. I do not consider this a “Christian” book per se, though he quotes the Bible liberally. Its spiritual truths apply to anyone of any religion in any place in any age.

As I write this, one copy is for sale on eBay. But you can read it online too at Open Library.
http://www.archive.org/stream/moneyac...

What if it's a stinker?

Several months ago I picked up a tantalizing title on www.weberbooks.com. It promised to deliver everything I wanted: an engaging, true, first-person drama bolstered by plenty of humor. The publisher had hired professional talent to create an offbeat, quirky cover that drew me in. My expectations were high. I couldn’t wait to start reading.

The opening chapter showcased everything listed above … and more; halfway through the second chapter I shut the book in disgust. The manuscript had never been edited or the editor was DUI. The paragraph that stopped me in my tracks had five separate editorial problems—the writer had even spelled the name of his place of worship incorrectly. It was a minefield of confusing sentences, misspellings, dropped words, and typos, which distracted from the read. Too bad. I had hoped to lose myself in another world for an hour, a mini-vacation from my daily grind. A good book does that. But with every error I was jerked back to the fact that this was no otherworld; it was a piece of writing. The writer, who should be invisible and silent, was always with me.

So I posted a 2-star Amazon review detailing my experience. Quickly I received an e-mail from the author telling me I had no business posting a bad review. I should, he said, have contacted him first before posting.

Really? Let’s discuss the ethics of posting a review. Do you write negative reviews? I do—and I will. If I read a good book, I write a review reflecting my delight and explain what is good. If I read a lousy book, I do the same. You don’t write a positive review to please the author any more than you write a negative one to do harm. Once a book is released to the marketplace it’s not about the author. It’s about the read. You write a review to share with others your experience with a book, good or bad. Once a book is released, the readers own it. Let them decide.

When I feel compelled to write a negative review, truthfully, I do pause. I’m not interested in cutting an author off at the knees. If a book is bad from the start—a stinker, no hope whatsoever of achieving greatness—most often I do not post a review. The book will die without another clod of dirt tossed by me. But if a book has merit―the writer has talent but lacks polish―I note this in the review, and I always try to say something constructive as a guidepost for his or her next book.

Fifty Shades of Nothin'

Years ago I was sitting in a coffee shop—a well-known southern chain popular with truckers—when I called the waitress over to our table. The coffee tasted bad. Melted tire bad.

“No one else has complained about it,” she said, the soul of smug.

The story of my life. Is it just me, or is there a genetic quirk in a small host of us, we chosen few born with a DNA glitch that causes us to be perennially out of step in the mundane and the universal, from coffee to blockbusters?

1977 – My date (now my husband) and I are sitting in a dark theater staring at these bizarre, hideous creatures with tentacle-like protrusions flailing from their heads, the kind of evil beings one associates with the inhabitants of Hell, and I’m thinking, “Why in the world would anyone pay $2.25 to see this?” Ho hum. Star Wars

(Twenty years pass. I don’t go anywhere. I’m raising kids.)

1997 – My children are blathering about a book all their friends are reading. It has wizards in it (you know where this is going), so being a concerned mom, I secure a copy to make sure my children are not feeding on witchcraft. One hundred pages into this lengthy tome, I’m bored out of my mind and stop reading. True confession: I let my children read J.K. Rowling mostly because, being the working mother of four, I’m too tired to deal with it. A few months later I get a second wind, pick up the book and again try to find out what all the fuss is about. This time I make it through only 75 pages―I am just sooooo bored. I give up entirely on steering them to other titles, realizing that even if there are wizards in it, I’m now swimming upstream. My kids, no, the entire reading world, adults included, is hooked on the series. Harry Potter

2001 – The lights go off in the basement of our Leesburg, Virginia home, where my children have pressed me sore to watch some wildly popular movie epic. The film comes on, all these armored warriors in need of a bath appear on the screen, and one of them opens his mouth to reveal the most ridiculous, sloppy, intentionally gross, vampirish teeth I have ever seen. Repulsed at Hollywood’s pitiful attempt to frighten me (yawn), I get up and abandon the movie, never to return. The Lord of the Rings

2013 ‒ The online world is ablaze (Amazon to date has almost 19,000 reviews) for a 3.5-star, childishly written “love” story that focuses on a lopsided relationship founded on BDSM (look it up here: www.acronymfinder.com). Its reviews, hands down, showcase better writing skills than the book. Review after scathing review recounts mind-numbing word repetition and just plain bad writing. In fact, after reading so many eye-popping claims of BDSM being performed in every imaginable setting, I had an epiphany. I misnamed The Lesson, my first novel, my naïve little romantic comedy. I should have named it―

Fifty Shades of Nothin’

Cannibals Know It - Commas Save Lives

BooksontheBeach – ‘Cause that’s my idea of a dream vacation

Indie authors are afflicted with a severe sickness. They have been bitten by success, the heady knowledge that they have accomplished a great thing: they set out to write a book and they wrote it. How many times have you heard someone say that they’d like to write a book? LOTS of people would like to write a book (what stops them?). But most never get down to the gritty, grinding, time-consuming business of outlining, writing, and above all, completing a manuscript.

So indie authors do what most only think about doing, and having accomplished this great thing, they feel like they can do anything.

But no one can do it all. Most indie authors (most authors, actually), can’t edit their own work. It is the bane of the indie publishing world that having conquered one mountain, indie authors are convinced that their personal reserve of literary acumen is enough to carry them to the top of the next. They are wrong. Their prose may ooze with cleverness and their story may be solid, but typos, misspellings, empty nouns, excessive modifiers, misplaced prepositions, missing punctuation, and weirdisms on every page trip them up repeatedly—and that’s not even touching on structure, theme, plot, and dialogue.

Editors. Love ‘em or hate ‘em, they DO serve a purpose. They see the weirdisms authors miss; they make sense of nonsensical things that are clear only to the author; they keep authors from embarrassing themselves in a very public way.

I once got fired from an editor position only because I was determined not to quit first. I knew the firing was coming. Why was I so fired up (sorry) about not quitting? Because the tech-geek whose work I was editing referred to editors as those “people who push commas around on a page.” Really? What cannibal wrote this?

LET’S EAT, GRANDMA.

Or is it,

LET’S EAT GRANDMA.

See, commas save lives.

Indie authors: Treat your infection with a healthy dose of editorial antibiotic. If you can’t afford the services of a competent editor, before you release your magnum opus at least put your manuscript in front of several trusted friends, ideally people who read a lot. When you keep hearing the same comments, good or bad, rest assured that your friends see what you cannot. You’ll be glad you fixed your work before its weaknesses are described in blistering detail in online reviews.