Getting My Geek On!

Geeking out over here!  I wrote this last night because I'm flying off this morning to go to the AWP writers' conference in Seattle!  I went to it in Denver a couple of years ago, and it rocks!  It's like Mecca for writers. I'll get to see so many people I haven't seen in a while and get to meet in person so many people I'm great friends with on Facebook but I've actually never been in the same room with.

So my posting will be a bit spotty for the rest of the week.  I'm going to take copious notes, however, and blog the conference next week.

And I wanted to fill you in on my stops for the rest of the week on the How to Be a Man Virtual Book Tour.  Isn't it great that I can be in two places at once?  Three places actually ~ tomorrow I'm stopping at two places, in addition to AWP.  I'm stopping by Darkest Cravings, and then I did a web TV interview with the wonderful Julia at Talk Story TV.  I have to tell you ~ Julia's the best. She does these amazing podcasts, and we had a great conversation.  It'll be up 9 a.m. MST this morning. On Thursday, I get to stop by Booklover Sue's blog. Thank you so much, Darkest Cravings and Julia and Sue!  You guys are so great!

So I won't be posting much, but I'll make up for it next week. Promise.

Great Giveaways, Batman!

Today on the How to Be a Man Virtual Book Tour, I get to stop by Saph's Book Blog.  Thank you for hosting me, Sapphyria!

Woman in Nairobi reading (via)

 

Wow!  The Goodreads book giveaway for How to Be a Man has ended, and people from across the globe have entered and won!!

I can’t tell you just how moved I am to put a copy of my book in an envelope and send it off to Hungary and India and Indonesia and England and Mauritius and imagine someone on the other end opening it and reading it. 

Imagine this copy that’s in my hands making its way in the world and perhaps touching another person.  I think about reading The Secret Garden as a child, how it brought me other worlds, how deeply it touched me. (Not that my book is anything like The Secret Garden, nor that I make any claims on its timelessness.)

Statistics:  869 people entered, and 20 people won.  Countries represented: India, England, Indonesia, Malaysia, Mauritius, Netherlands, Canada, Hungary, Italy, and the U.S.

Go, little book, and may your new family fall in love with you!

Melancholy

I'm so stoked to be visiting Lynda at Books Direct today for the How to Be a Man Virtual Book Tour!  We chat about all kinds of things ~ the sausage-making that is writing a book. You should stop by!

 

Grace, by gokul k, via National Geographic

 

The book tour is absolutely fabulous, and I'm loving it, but on the flip side, I’m a bit melancholy today, though I really have no right to be.  So to cheer myself up, I think I'll just stare at this photo all day.  I've always loved the faces of old people, and when I used to regularly create art, I loved to do pencil sketches of their faces.

Beauty and Ambivalence

Today I get to visit Lisa's World of Books on the How to Be a Man Virtual Book Tour!  Michigan, here we come! Thank you so much, Lisa and David!

Lone Wolf, southern Montana

This is where I spent my summers when I worked on our dude ranch growing up.  This is near one of our cabins where we would camp all summer and host dudes.  It's in southern Montana near the Crow and Cheyenne Reservation. It's beautiful, but you know how these things are.  The beauty and wonder of it is all tangled up with family and ambivalence. And that's why I'm a writer.

Without a Pocket-Handkerchief

Oh, so many exciting things happening on the How to Be a Man Virtual Book Tour! Today, I'm once again visiting South Africa on Karen Swart's wonderful blog. I also have my very first review, up at IndieReader, and it's a humdinger! Anyone who used the word "masterpiece" and me in the same sentence gets my utmost gratitude.  Finally, I talked with the welcoming and wonderful Julia Widdop at Talk Story TV, and I'll let you know when that vlog is up on!



The Trolls, by J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

This is what publishing a book feels like!  It feels like you get shoved out the door by Gandalf the Grey without a pocket-handkerchief.  But, boy, is it an adventure!

From The Hobbit

Up jumped Bilbo, and putting on his dressing-gown went into the dining-room. There he saw nobody, but all the signs of a large and hurried breakfast. There was a fearful mess in the room, and piles of unwashed crocks in the kitchen. Nearly every pot and pan he possessed seemed to have been used. The washing-up was so dismally real that Bilbo was forced to believe the party of the night before had not been part of his bad dreams, as he had rather hoped. Indeed he was really relieved after all to think that they had all gone without him, and without bothering to wake him up ("but with never a thank-you" he thought); and yet in a way he could not help feeling just a trifle disappointed. The feeling surprised him.

"Don't be a fool, Bilbo Baggins!" he said to himself, "thinking of dragons and all that outlandish nonsense at your age!" So be put on an apron, lit fires, boiled water, and washed up. Then he had a nice little breakfast in the kitchen before turning out the dining-room. By that time the sun was shining; and the front door was open, letting in a warm spring breeze. Bilbo began to whistle loudly and to forget about the night before. In fact he was just sitting down to a nice little second breakfast in the dining-room by the open window, when in walked Gandalf. "My dear fellow," said he, "whenever are you going to come? What about an early start?-and here you are having breakfast, or whatever you call it, at half past ten! They left you the message, because they could not wait."

"What message?" said poor Mr. Baggins all in a fluster.

"Great Elephants!" said Gandalf, "you are not at all yourself this morning-you have never dusted the mantel- piece!"

"What's that got to do with it? I have had enough to do with washing up for fourteen!"

"If you had dusted the mantelpiece you would have found this just under the clock," said Gandalf, handing Bilbo a note (written, of course, on his own note-paper).

This is what he read:

"Thorin and Company to Burglar Bilbo greeting!

For your hospitality our sincerest thanks, and for your offer of professional assistance our grateful acceptance. Terms: cash on delivery, up to and not exceeding one fourteenth of total profits (if any); all travelling expenses guaranteed in any event; funeral expenses to be defrayed by us or our representatives, if occasion arises and the matter is not otherwise arranged for.

"Thinking it unnecessary to disturb your esteemed repose, we have proceeded in advance to make requisite preparations, and shall await your respected person at the Green Dragon Inn, Bywater, at II a.m. sharp. Trusting that you will be punctual.

"We have the honour to remain

"Yours deeply 

"Thorin & Co."

"That leaves you just ten minutes. You will have to run," said Gandalf.

"But-" said Bilbo.

"No time for it," said the wizard.

"But-"said Bilbo again.

"No time for that either! Off you go!"

To the end of his days Bilbo could never remember how he found himself outside, without a hat, walking-stick or say money, or anything that he usually took when he went out; leaving his second breakfast half-finished and quite unwashed-up, pushing his keys into Gandalf's hands, and running as fast as his furry feet could carry him down the lane, past the great Mill, across The Water, and then on for a whole mile or more. Very puffed he was, when he got to Bywater just on the stroke of eleven, and found he had come without a pocket-handkerchief!

Tour Progress Report

Today on the How to Be a Man Virtual Book Tour, I’m stopping by Cloey’s Book Reviews and Other Stuff.  I’m doing a guest post about why reading is a risky proposition. I mean, PAPER CUTS!

 

It’s been a month and a half but just a week on the How toBe a Man virtual book tour, and I thought I’d catch you all up on all the excitement.

I’m a book marketing newbie, but it seems to be going great! All that marketing background is getting put to good use, and the great thing about writers is that they write about their experiences and pass along valuable info about how to launch and to market.  I’m learning from the best.

I won’t run down all the things I’m doing (though if you’re interested, email me), but suffice it to say I have a lot of irons in the fire. I go from all out to collapsed and trying to catch my breath to all out again. (Maybe I'll do a long detailed post in the future.)

The blog tour has been fun.  I’ll be on the radio too and a number of other things.  It’s all new to me. Performance is not my medium ~ paper is ~ and so I’m a bit intimidated, but weighing on the other side is that it’s a subject I’m fairly familiar with. Hehe.

I’ve had a bunch of people stop me on the street and ask me if that was me on the front page of my local paper.  And what’s really great is that my seven-year-old daughter is my biggest ally ~ every time someone stops me when she’s with me, she says, “Buy Mom’s book!”  No prompting!

Sales are not  spectacular by national standards, but they’re decent ~ much more than I expected. I had set my sights low because, you know, short story collection, literary, etc., etc.  Thank you all who took a chance and bought the book!

Another reason I’m not at all disappointed is that I’m working on a career, not just one book, and so while I’m focusing my energy on this now, I have a novel coming out in July and another in January ~ both of which are complete ~ and I’m working on the next book.  A year and a half might seem like a long time, but dang I have to write and revise the next novel. Ack! It’d be great to stay two books ahead.

So, last and certainly not least, I wanted to thank you all! I’m having such a blast, and I hope How to Be a Man is a good read. I did my best to make it that way!

Martyred for Love

Today on the How to Be a Man Virtual Book Tour, I'm visiting Fang-tastic Books and talking about how writing and reading is one of the deepest forms of love because it's as close as you can get to another person's insides. (I can't say it enough: Roxanne rocks!) 

I was listening to NPR this morning and they interviewed Robin Wright, who plays Claire, and writer Beau Willimon from House of Cards.  Season 2 is released for binge viewing today.

It was fascinating!  I agree with a lot of what they said.  Love is in fact transactional, and Claire and Frank’s relationship is self-serving, sure, but one way to look at love is that that is what love is - a transaction to fulfill your emotional, sexual, and even lifestyle needs.  Anyone who denies this is either naïve or, well, in denial. 

We don’t like to look at love this way.  We also don’t like to look at the origins of the Valentine holiday.  Every time you have a saint, you have to have someone who was viciously murdered for their beliefs. There’s a bunch of different stories about St. Valentine, but generally he’s believed to have been killed for marrying Christians and generally helping them, which was a crime at the time. 

At its most basic, doesn’t this accord completely with our idea of Valentine's?  Someone died ~ was martyred ~ helping couples in love.  St. Valentine is in fact the embodiment of love, much like Jesus: a martyr, someone who gives of themselves and they are killed for it. That’s what we say: “I love you so much, I would die for you.”

I guess it’s just in my nature to recognize the yin and yang of everything.  Love has a dark side, but I would also be the first to acknowledge that it is the force that moves the world.  It’s the force of all good in the world.

May your life be filled with love.