To Have or Not to Have THE BOOK PARTY?

 

I see this question on writers group chats. Should I have a book launch party? Where? How? Is it a must?

 

I really like this post by Liz Alterman. It tells of her personal experience of this very matter.

 

Let’s face it: unless you have written on a very hot topic and are a known expert on same, or you are already an established author for fiction, your book event will not draw a crowd of strangers. Your audience will be largely made of supportive friends who want to celebrate with you, a very nice thing. This, too, makes a book feel “launched.”

 

 

But there will be a few new faces, and each is a possible future friend. This, at least, has been my experience.

If the very idea of throwing a party where no one comes gives you night sweats, know that you don’t have to have book events. Many writers are not natural partiers. It’s okay either way.

 

Speaking for myself, I hope to have more books published. Parties will depend on what/where/when. I did like my previous events after I had done them and saw, as the book of Genesis says, that it was good.

THE BLACK HOLE OF EMAIL-VERSE

 

Email changed many things. The word mail shouldn’t be confused with the mail of yore.

 

For one, email is supposedly delivered in seconds. This means that not getting a reply for many days (think--more than ten) can feel like an insult, specifically with personal emails.

 

Email goes into the ether and, without a physical presence, depends on some form of acknowledgement of receipt. In personal email, this means a reply. In business, it can be an auto-receipt. Without either, it’s in the who-knows-if cloud.

 

The other day, my email program let me know two personal emails bounced for some technical reason. I re-sent them, and they didn’t get a “bounce” message the second time. Later, both friends asked me why I had sent twice, as they got it the first time.

 

At the mercy of this non-physical world, I could only mumble something about the bounce notifications having to do with some protocol/permissions that someone somewhere on the interwebs explained in terms neither I nor my friends understand.

 

Marvelous thing, this email business. But I confess I feel helpless sometimes when I can’t understand or imagine its path to my dear ones or the professionals I am dealing with.

 

The mystery of carrier pigeons is, at least, something the mind’s eye can envision. Ditto for physical mail.

 

But email remains a black hole. It swallows, and when it works, it spits out.

If You Think It— It Be REAL

 

Up until the age of seven or eight, I believed that if I thought something up in my imagination, it became real.

 

A fine example was The Mickey Mouse Affair. I was five years old when I told my best friend that I had a “real Mickey, round black ears and all.”

“Where?” she asked.

“He’s under my bed and only comes out at night after everyone goes to sleep.” I said.

My friend wanted one also. She told her parents, who then summoned me so I can admit I made it up. I insisted my Mickey was real.

It wasn’t that I didn’t know I had thought this up, or that I was embarrassed about fibbing and didn’t want to admit it. I knew I thought him, and also was convinced that now he was real.

 

Kids. This is part of the magical age.

 

Most people outgrow this, or channel it only into the creative arts. A sad and bad scenario for those who don’t grow up is when they apply this to politics.

 

Today, I use my imagination to write fiction, which, as far as I’m concerned, becomes real in its way.

©Carina Povarchik

ONE NATION UNDER GOD

 

With the United States approaching another birthday, (our 248^th) I got to thinking this line from the Pledge of Allegiance, which in its current form is only seventy years old. (More about this pledge’s history is here.)

 

“One nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all.”

 

The reality is that our nation is in fact more than one nation, if you subscribe to the notion of it being divided by many distinctive and legally sovereign states.

 

In reality, plenty of our nationals don’t see God’s presence at all.

 

Liberty is relative, with one percent of US citizens in prison, not all of them justly. The liberty of the rest is curtailed in many ways, not all of them wisely.

 

Justice: oh, dear. Justice, especially “for all,” is elusive. Not that other nations do better. But justice for all on this earth has yet to manifest here or anywhere.

 

And then it hit me: this pledge is less a statement of how it is. and more an aspiration of how it should be.

 

Let us wish it, and strive for it, and maybe get ever closer. I can pledge my allegiance to this as an aspiration, without reservation.

Happy Birthday USA

WHEN AN EYE FOR AN EYE LEAVES EVERYONE BLIND

 

A dear friend of mine was hurt, badly hurt, by the actions of colleagues who should have had her back.

At the same time, she was going through challenging family health issues, seemingly unrelated.

 

Her professional injuries were doozies. Her personal challenges were met with courage and steadfastness. She was too busy to think how to respond to her colleagues’ betrayal. There were other things to face and no room to digest their treachery. 

 

But once she came up for air, she, a gifted writer, devised a literary revenge of sorts. She would write a fictional novel about what happened.

 

She enlisted my help in brainstorming the characters and the style she might take. She was on fire, feeling creative and alive again. Ideas were pouring out. “What do you think about this?” and “I just thought about that” came pinging over the transom in rapid pace.

 

I was happy she was finding herself again. Writers process and digest through stories.

 

I was less sure about the vengefulness I felt gushing out of her.

 

I thought about the times I was done wrong. I didn’t want to hurt those who did it, but I did entertain thoughts of how, somehow, they’d be hurt and know how it feels.

 

I thought about how real healing has come to me. Only when I truly began to wish well for the ones who made themselves my (or my people’s) enemies, and gone to do us harm, did I find peace.

 

Real healing requires nothing less. An eye for an eye leaves everyone blind.

PEACE.

TREASURES on the Way to the PARTY

 

The longer I live on this earth, the more I realize that it’s the way to, rather than the end point, which is the real deal.

 

From recent life of me and mine, I watch as--

*The adventure of brewing beer is not the drinking but the process of making the thing. Both complex and interesting. [I was an observer on both ends]

*Painting a portrait~ finding out a face is so much more than the “seen.” [Ditto about being an observer]

*The first drafting of a novel~ Learning so much about what I never knew I didn’t know~ Interesting is too mild a word for it.

*Navigating a nature trail~ who cares if we ever get there and what is “there,” anyway?

 

These got me thinking about all the things discovered accidentally, on the way to a different destination. Their discovery stories are linked below--

Penicillin, Teflon, pacemakers, X-rays and the microwaves are famous examples. But also, Quinine, Velcro and potato chips… Ah, well. What did we ever do before the latter?

 

So, chipping away here to the next adventure. Nothing is wasted. The roads are littered with treasures. The party is the hike itself.

 

THE BEST and the NOT-SO of HUMANITY

 

Not long ago, I witnessed the best and the not-so-great aspects of human beings in the space of five minutes.

 

Trigger warning: This true account mentions people’s races because they go counter to unfortunate stereotypes, and thus belong in the telling.

 

I was standing in Safeway on the checkout line, the only one open that mid-morning, when I realized someone was holding up the line. I’m a bit hard of hearing, so I couldn’t tell what they said. To me, three customers behind, it appeared like a customer was arguing with the cashier.

 

That customer was an old Chinese man. He could have been in his nineties. Next to him stood his wife, smiling blithely a sort of beatific smile. I couldn’t figure out if she agreed with her husband or just didn’t want to contradict him.

 

Ten minutes later, and the line hadn’t moved at all. The old man was still there, saying something to which the cashier also said something.

 Right behind the Chinese couple were two black ladies in their forties. One of them, her face so laden with makeup it looked theatrical to me, (eyelids painted in glittery gold and the longest artificial eyelashes) and the other lady only slightly less so, were talking to each other about this ‘n that. Their conversation didn’t seem connected to the goings on in front of them. Behind them, a nicely dressed white man in his fifties stood with a small number of items already packed into his bag.

 

Behind the man was yours truly. The line didn’t move.

 The line behind me grew exponentially. It now began to resemble the ticket line to a blockbuster movie, curling around the next aisle.

Five minutes more, and the man with his bag of groceries just stormed out in a huff past the old couple and walked out with his groceries, not bothering to pay. Mind you, he wasn’t one of those thieves who intended not to pay. He had spent fifteen minutes in line already. He was angry. Perhaps he felt Safeway owed him for his waiting.

 

I was frustrated also but wouldn’t think to not pay for something I was taking from the store.

 

The two well-painted ladies then turned their attention to the goings on in front of them. The one with the golden eyelids asked the cashier, “how much is it?” and some conversation ensued. Because of my lousy hearing, I only heard bits of it. But I did hear the number, "Eighty-four dollars and fifty-seven cents.”

 

The cashier then repeated to the old man, “she is paying for you.” He didn’t seem to fully understand, and his wife with the beatific smile seemed to understand even less. The cashier had to say it over and over. Then, the old couple left with their groceries.

 

I asked the two ladies what it was about. “He was short,” said the less painted one. “His debit card kept saying he was short, and he tried running it over and over.”

 

“You paid the difference?” I asked.

 

“We both did. We split it,” she said, pointing to her friend.

 

“You did something good,” I said. I was so pleased to have stood next to them, as if their goodness would spill some rays on me.

 

“Yeh, honey-child. God sees all,” said the golden-lidded lady.

 

I don’t think anyone ever called me “honey-child” before. I felt utterly blessed.

 

In the car, I found myself tearing in gratitude that I got to witness the beautiful ladies (especially after the entitled man who walked off without paying) and that Oakland, my embattled and economically challenged city blessed with all races and colors, is still a place where we get along and then some.

 

As they say on Netflix, this is a True Story.

“SHIP OF FOOLS”: JUNE 4TH IN HISTORY

 

On this date, June 4^th, in the year 1939, the German ocean liner MS St. Louis, carrying more than 900 Jewish refugees from Germany, was turned away by U.S. officials on the Florida coast.

 

Their lives could have been saved. Most couldn’t imagine what was to come, but conditions for Jews in Germany were already known to be dire.

World War II broke out three months later when Germany invaded Poland. But German Jews were already in concentration camps before, to be followed by the Jews of Poland and other conquered territories.

 

A famous movie was made in 1965 (after a novel published in 1962), inspired by this ship and others similar to it. It was called SHIP OF FOOLS. In the movie, the Jewish tragedy was subdued and the voyage’s destination changed. But what stayed with me when I saw the movie in my teens was how cruel it is for nations to turn a blind eye to the known suffering of those who choose to make the difficult journey of leaving everything and everyone behind.

There, but by the grace of the almighty, go any one of us.

 

I cry for the doomed of the MS St. Louis. Let’s remember them this day and, please, *do better.*

SPRING

 

Even the word in English, SPRING, brings to mind a hop~ and a skip~ and a jump~---an upward trajectory.

 

Enjoy the uplift with a spring in your step.

Life is reaffirming itself.

Blessing 

WHO TELLS THE STORY

 

History is written by the victors. So said Winston Churchill. Napoleon called it a fable agreed upon.

 

In my current WIP, a pre-teen learns that what she knows of history, even recent history, is but a version of it and not the most interesting version.

 

Young people learn from books and increasingly from games and other visual media, (such as movies) what passes for the “true” story of humanity’s past.

 

Even scientific truths are augmented by storytelling. Think of the visualization in school textbooks of what the dinosaurs looked like. These are hypothetical guesses, periodically revised. Yet these images are taken as true depictions of a world now gone.

 

The greatest achievement of winning in battle may not be the spoils of war or avoiding the pain of being ravaged. It may be that you and yours get to be the ones telling the story of who did what to whom.

 

Somehow, perhaps because I began my life in an embattled region, I felt the need to tackle this thorny matter.  Even more, it seems all the more important to make younger readers consider it.

 

Storytellers have an outsized responsibility, one few can begin to achieve, to have their audience made aware of what a vantage point does to perception.

 

Because perception is reality is more than a cliché. It is what we carry forward and use to make decisions. “Knowing history as to not repeat it” misses the point. Whose history do we know? Because, Virginia, it seems to me we are repetitiously repeating the repeats.  

RIDING A WILD STALION

 

Having just completed the fourth draft of my work in progress (=WIP) and with two beta readers’ feedback to help navigate the last two drafts, I can now assess what an anomaly this current WIP has been.

 

I was never a true planner. I have a writing friend, a published novelist, who not only fully charts all the details, plot points and characters of her stories before she begins typing the first paragraph, but if she finds that her writing has so much as begun to stray off the planned course, she deletes those pages and gets back on the road she had marked.

 

I can’t imagine writing this way. Too much like the homework back in school days: I know I must do it, I have a feeling of satisfaction when it’s done, but the work itself is torture, if you find extreme tedium torturous.

 

I know two writers who are complete pansters, (=writing by the seat of their pants) no plan whatsoever. They sit down to a writing session with no idea what will appear on the screen/page. Stephen King claims to be one. He sits to write in order to find out what will happen next. This is successful only for those who have so ingrained story structure in their creative mind that it turns out brilliantly, or at least not a complete going-nowhere-mess.

Panstering is very much like a flying trapeze without a safety net.

 

I had attempted this once a few years back and gave up after the first chapter. I then sat down to make a rough chart and proceeded as I usually do. I follow the chart loosely, discovering some surprises along the way but basically staying the charted course. Some call this “discovery writing.” It’s a plan that is not detailed, and the details are spontaneous and immensely enjoyable parts of the process.

 

I started my current WIP this way. But this time, right after the first chapter, the story went its own way. I had so completely lost control of this galloping horse that I didn’t stop to glance at my charted plan. What was happening on the page bore little resemblance to my plan.

 

It was as if I attached the reigns of a trusted old workhorse to a carriage. Once we left the carriage house, the horse began to gallop. To my horror, I discovered it was not the horse I thought I had attached, but a wild stallion. I was driving a carriage that a young wild horse I'd never met before had taken over. I had no control.

 

I’d start every writing session dreading where it was going. I had no idea where it would end.

 

Well, it did end. A second draft surprised me, because it sort of held together.

 

What’s next? Who knows. But it’s been an experience.

THE (mostly) UNSUNG HEROS of PUBLISHING

 

A writing colleague who had beta-read for me (and I for her) and who, like me, had been on occasion paid to freelance edit, let me know one of the books she had edited had won an important award.

When she mentioned the title, I gasped. It’s one I had read because it came recommended and it is an exquisite literary novel for middle grades. Aside from the mentioned award, this novel had garnered accolades from all the sources that matter in publishing.

 

The glory, rightly, goes to the author. The financial gain goes to the publisher. But what goes to the editor who guided it to the mature version the world got to read?

 

No glory, or even a smidgen of recognition, will attach to this all-important arm of the publishing journey. Some writers will mention their editor’s name in the acknowledgement page. But the public at large only knows editors when the latter write their memoires, and this they get to publish only if they had edited well known writers, plural.

 

Try not to chuckle as I confess this reminded me of intelligence officers as part of national security. Few know what battles they fought so we won’t have to. Editors are like the CIA field agents whom the public will never know.

 

Unsung heroes are a special breed. They work for the job at hand and not for a pat on the back.

 

To the editors:

The LONE PERSON THEORY of HISTORY

 

We grasp the past in stories. We frame our understanding of history in the stories historians tell.

 

There’s a school of thought that human history is largely shaped by single individuals. Thus, some speak not of the perennial evil current that is antisemitism, or of the German people in the middle of the twentieth century, but of “Hitler.” Hitler did this, and Hitler did that, and it’s all because of Hitler.

 

I remember reading a book (wish I could remember the title) where someone was bent on inventing time travel so he could go back in time and kill baby Hitler in his crib, before this baby would grow up and wreak havoc. I can’t remember if in the story the protagonist succeeds (=alternative history) but another baby grows up to stand in Adolph Hitler’s stead, or if the attempt fails. It was one or the other, because we know what did in fact happen.

 

A similar theme is in a graphic novel, Bodies, by Si Spencer, now made into an eight-part filmed series.  It was interesting to watch, and as wrongheaded as can be.

The lone savior/lone villain who can either save the world or destroy it is the basis not only of every superhero comic, but of all stories going back to the Bible and before.

 

For this reason, the multitude accept politicians who state a variation of “I alone can fix it.” It sounds preposterous to most thinking people, but we have been conditioned to frame our understanding of reality in this way.

 

All this is a reminder to storytellers. Storytellers have a responsibility for the ages. Our protagonists struggle to overcome and do right. But as they do, is humanity saved?

 

Even in kidlit, there is a stream of “kid saves the world.” (Think Harry Potter)

Blimey if I never write such stories, despite publishing professionals constant urging to “up the stakes.” I’m a big proponent of stories where an individual changes their own perspective or helps a person near them.

A Messiah is one because their teaching lights a way of being to individuals.

 

Save me from the save-the-world ones. We keep telling their stories, and the world is clearly not saved.

WHO’S AN EXPERT?

 

In a world where complexity in all matters is the norm, we turn to experts to navigate what’s what.

 

But who are the experts?

 

To paraphrase Mark Twain, there are experts, “experts”, and know-little braggarts.

 

How are we to tell who’s who?

 

For that, Virginia, we need experts.

 

They are everywhere.

 

Over the interwebs, under the radar, over the airwaves, and under the table.

 

If almost everyone’s an expert, then hardly anyone is.

 

Which sends us back full circle and on an endless Möbius loop.

 

Go, figure. Better yet, know you’re unlikely to.

 

Me: an expert at diagnosing confusion.

THE PARADE THAT WASN’T

 

In Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird (an alternate sort of Bible for writers) there is a poignant chapter on the bloated expectations authors have for “Publication Day.” [See page 208, “Publication”]

 

Publication day is a date set by traditional publishers, after which the book will be available in stores or for order online. It’s the TAH-DAH!!! Day and your book’s birthday and let’s have a party day, drum-roll, ready-set-go-- horns blowing and pop out of a cake: your book is out in the world. 🎆

 

As Ms. Lamott tells it, it is nothing of the above.  99.9% of published writers know she’s spot on.

 

On any given year, all the parades and woopteedoo are for ten or twenty titles in the whole country. These are from the uber commercially successful authors or debuts that somehow hit the nerve-de-jour, usually for political reasons. Fine fiction writers should know that publication day is meaningful to one person only, themselves.

 

You can give your book a launching party, and it will be attended mostly by supportive friends. You can do a blog tour exchanging favors with other author friends, and their readers will note your book was born. It’s fine, because it means something to you.

 

But no parade. Nope, not even a small one. The hard work of letting people you never met become aware your story is available has just. barely. begun.

 

A good glimpse into the realistic experience of almost all authors and what we can, in fact, do on publication day— is in this post.

 

I’d add that doing a private dance in front of the mirror is highly recommended, also.

🎈🎈🎈

APRIL 9TH IN HISTORY

 

Lee Surrenders

“It would be useless and therefore cruel,” Robert E. Lee remarked on the morning of April 9, 1865, “to provoke the further effusion of blood, and I have arranged to meet with General Grant with a view to surrender.”

 

The two generals met shortly after noon on April 9, 1865, at the home of Wilmer McLean in the village of Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Lee’s surrender of the Army of Northern Virginia to Ulysses S. Grant, general-in-chief of all United States forces, hastened the conclusion of the Civil War.

 

Regardless of which side of history you side with in any specific conflict, it is something to celebrate when men of war call it quits in order to save lives.

 

I’m commemorating April the 9^th today, with the hope that all who rejoice in raising arms will consider how much greater the alternative is.

SHARING FIVE TAKEAWAYS from a Webinar

 

A few months have passed since I attended a so-called “closed” webinar with a senior editor in one of the big-five publishing houses, and so I feel no shame in sharing the main takeaways for all who are knocking on publishers’ doors.

 

This sort of insider’s view should not be a secret. There are many misconceptions floating on the interwebs, and writers (who the editor remined us— are the bedrock of publishing) have it hard enough already.

 

Takeaway #1

For the big-five and their imprints, you need an agent. We knew this, but it was emphasized as in no real exceptions, period. Forget about special openings or contests.

This ties to the last takeaway, but bear with me.

 

Takeaway #2

For debut fiction*, whether kidlit or adult, your web-presence is not a consideration for acquisitions. Someone asked about the number of Facebook friends and the editor said that “Facebook isn’t a thing anymore.” Nor are any of the other digital town squares. Just make sure you haven’t made hordes of zany cuckoo comments, which if you’re agented is likely not an issue. (Agents weed for this before taking writers on.)

*Non-fiction is a different story

 

Takeaway #3

Yes, it is harder now to get traditionally published. It was never easy and it’s been hard forever. But since the pandemic closures it’s harder, as in much harder. If you had the fortitude to plow forward before, you must double down now. It’s the same trek only steeper.

 

Takeaway #4

The theme, plot, pace--- all must quicken the reading editor’s heart. But none of those matter as much as the quality of the prose. If the writing voice doesn’t “pop,” the big-five editor just moves on to the next submission to be rejected.

 

Takeaway #5

Who your agent is matters a whole lot. Editors remember agents who have sent them “yawners” and “un-sparkling” submissions before. They remember agents they didn’t like dealing with. Worse, they are aware of the bestselling writers the agent also represents or if they don’t have any A-list writers as clients. There is a definite hierarchy in consideration of submissions depending on the agent’s standing.

 

This last takeaway may be the hardest insider’s view to hear.  

 

All that said, I will focus on the only thing in my control: write better.

A CURIOUS ANIMAL CALLED “AUTOFICTION”

 

Some months ago, a post about Autofiction popped into my feed. Here it is, for reference.

 

Succinctly defined, it’s an autobiographical story that is then fictionalized. In many ways all fiction draws from the writer’s life, but in autofiction the connection is much tighter. Call it fictionalized autobiography.

 

(As an aside, much in published autobiographies is also fictionalized, as the author attempts to justify, obfuscate, and shape their past reality— whether as an act to deceive or an act of self-deception.)

 

In other words, the lines are blurry at best. Maybe this is why I was unfamiliar with the notion of “autofiction.”

 

My published novel, The Voice of Thunder, was called by one reviewer “fictionalized autobiography.” Fair enough. It began as a short non-fiction memoire and morphed way off course into fiction. All my work draws from my life, even talking animal stories.

 

But just a couple of years ago I had the true experience of writing autofiction.

 

An injurious event I had lived, while deep into the Covid pandemic when the world had shut down and many suffered more real existential hardships, was the inexplicable and abrupt end of a seventeen-year friendship. My former friend just informed me she never wanted to hear from me again, no further explanation.

 

If you’ve had this happen to you, you know how injurious this is. But it was a first for me and I was ill prepared. In a time where social contacts were already strained by governments everywhere, this was especially hurtful.

 

I had a lot of time to mull over how I had gotten myself into this predicament, and how my judgment regarding this friendship had been so off mark. I was eager to take responsibility in every way I could, because I have power only over what is up to me.

 

Still under various degrees of quarantine, I had the time and the impetus to try and solve this mystery by--- yup, writing a fictional story about a friendship that turned out to be an illusion. Or was it a delusion? That was but one of the many questions.

 

The writing itself would reveal and also serve to heal.

 

After many revisions, I’ve started querying this story, which turned out to be much more fictional on the surface, as they all do. It’s a good story and its setting befits the world I write about, that of much younger readers in middle school.

 

But the theme still holds strong. Who is a friend? How do you know a friendship is true? What do we make of friends who behave like frenemies?  

 

So, before I knew the term autofiction, I wrote it. Now I also have the writerly word for it.