I could blame having four books published in one year and all the effort that has taken. I have also edited a poetry book for AlzAuthors and contributed to three different anthologies coming out this year.
But the real reason is that I have taken a lot of my creative energy into a new endeavor, a Substack column titled “Can I Do It Alone?” which addresses the challenges for people living alone, particularly those in their senior years. This is a subject that is so important to me I can’t stop writing about it. Maybe it will become a book someday. But right now, I’m putting out two posts a week and can’t wait to post the next one. The response has been huge. Maybe it’s the Substack platform. Maybe it’s the subject. Maybe it’s a little of both. But that’s where I have been.
The river of words is flowing. It has just changed direction for a while.
I’m starting to think about compiling my Unleashed posts into a followup to the first Unleashed in Oregon book. Sales have not been great, but those who have read it really enjoyed it, and I like having my posts preserved in a book. We’ll see.
Meanwhile, I’m still playing music, I’m thinking about getting another dog, and I have all these home improvement projects I want to do . . .
P.S. What are the four books? I’m shirking my publicity duties if I don’t mention them. Between the Bridgesis the third novel in my Up Beaver Creek series. Find out what PD and her friends are up to now. Blue Chip Stamp Guitar is a poetry chapbook about my lifelong love of my guitar, and Dining Al Fresco with My Dogoffers poems about life with Annie here in the forest on the Oregon coast. No Way Out of Thisis a memoirabout the journey with my husband through our marriage and Alzheimer’s disease. You can find them all on Amazon or at your favorite bookstore.
I may not post here for a while, but you never know when inspiration will strike. Have a great summer. Read a book or two.
This year is nuts. I have published four books in three different genres. Not to mention two anthologies, one of which I edited. Plus my Childless by Marriage blog and a Substack newsletter called “Can I Do It Alone,” which has gone berserk since I started it on April 1.
Too much! At least I can die knowing I have published most of what I had to say. I do have other work brewing, and I’m not planning to die any time soon, but if God says, “Time’s Up,” I can go in peace.
If a writer could just bask in the glory while someone else handles publicity, marketing, and schlepping books to the post office, it might be okay. But this is like giving birth to quadruplets. Every one of them needs attention, and if I talk about them too much, it sounds like bragging.
Not that I’m complaining. There will never be another year like 2024 (for me or the world), and I am grateful.
Here’s the state of publishing here: Out now: * Blue Chip Stamp Guitar (The Poetry Box)—poems about my lifelong love affair with my guitar * Dining Al Fresco with My Dog (MoonPath Press)—poems in which an aging widow and her dog figure out life alone in the woods * Between the Bridges (Blue Hydrangea Productions)–the third novel in my Up Beaver Creek series. PD thinks she finally has her life figured out. Ha! * Thriving (Exsolutas Press), an anthology of prose, poetry and art, which includes two of my poems and will fill you with inspiration. * Poetry for the Dementia Journey (AlzAuthors), which includes three of my poems and for which I did much of the nuts-and-bolts editing
Out VERY soon: No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s (She Writes Press). Publication date for the memoir about my Alzheimer’s experience with my late husband is June 25, 2024. You can pre-order it now. I already have copies if you need one before that. This is the biggie. I even have a professional publicist working on it. If you see my ads on Amazon, shoot me a screen shot so I can see what they look like.
All of these books are available on Amazon AND at your favorite bookseller. If they don’t have them, they can order them, and the more requests they get, the better. Also suggest your local library order them. After you read the books, consider leaving a review at Amazon, Goodreads, Bookbub or on social media.
I am available for readings, talks, or discussions online or in-person. Email me at sufalick@gmail.com.
* June 19, 10 a.m. PDT online: The Childless Elderwomen will discuss “Couragageous Conversations” on Zoom. Our group of accomplished women without kids will talk about how we handle those awkward times when people just don’t seem to understand how our lives might be different from theirs. Register athttps://gateway-women.com/register-now-fireside-wisdom-with-childless-elderwomen-wed-19th-june-2024-courageous-conversations/ Attendees will be anonymous and off-camera, and the event will be recorded for those need to watch it later.
* June 23, 2 to 4 p.m. in person: I will join three other poet-songwriters at the Mid-Valley Poetry Society’s “Poet-Songwriters in Conversation and Performance” at The Dye House at The Willamette Heritage Center, 1313 Mill Street SE in Salem, Oregon. Admission is free. Just come!
Blankby Zibby Owens. A novelist can’t think of anything to write, so she pitches a book with nothing in it, and it goes viral! This book is not blank, and it’s a lot of fun.
Binge-watching: I watched all six seasons of “The Resident,” (Netflix) which stars Matt Czuchry. That led me to “The Good Wife,” (Prime) where he was a regular. I had never been interested in “The Good Wife” before, but now I’m into it. If nothing else, watch it for all the guest actors who subsequently became famous. So far, two of the actors from “This is Us” have turned up as defendants in murder cases.
That’s more than enough for one newsletter. It’s still raining off and on here on the Oregon coast. I’m still playing music at St. Anthony’s in Waldport. I’m doing physical therapy for my back, and it is working. I’m still missing my dog, Annie, who passed away in September. The hunt for a new dog begins in July. I’m seeking a healthy, mid-sized, middle-aged female with a mellow personality.
I sit way too much, and my back is paying the price. Where can I buy a desk chair that ejects me after a set amount of time and will not let me sit again until I move around for a while? I don’t want to fly up through the ceiling like the guy in the cartoon. I picture spikes coming up through the seat or the seat suddenly becoming unbearably hot or cold, something that gives me no choice but to get up immediately.
I already use timers to remind me to take a break, but I tend to ignore them. Just this morning, when the timer dinged, I shut it off, and kept working. Then an urgent email caught my attention, and soon I had been sitting way too long. I’m visiting the chiropractor again on Wednesday, but I wouldn’t need him if I’d just MOVE.
Inventors, get busy. Lift chairs already exist for folks who have trouble getting up. I need one for the relatively able-bodied who need to be forced to stand and move around. Ideally, we could set a time, say 30 minutes, and for the next 10 minutes or whatever you cannot sit in that chair. Call it the Timed Office Chair Ejector, TOCE for short.
Meanwhile, things are happening, and I want to bring you up to date.
* Between the Bridges, the third novel in the Beaver Creek series, is out and available right now at the bookstores in Lincoln County, Oregon or from your favorite bookseller wherever you live. Support your local bookstore if you can.
* Blue Chip Stamp Guitar, my poetry chapbook, will be out March 15, which is very soon. Dining Al Fresco with My Dog, my first full-length poetry collection, is coming in April, and No Way Out of This: Loving a Partner with Alzheimer’s will follow in June.
The schedule is getting busy, just way I like it. Here are the book-related events currently set for the next few months.
Saturday, March 9, 4 p.m.—Zoom—I’m marking my birthday and the launch of Blue Chip Stamp Guitar with an online reading hosted by my publisher, The Poetry Box. To register and receive the zoom link, visit https://thepoetrybox.com/live-03092024.
Wednesday, March 20, 1 p.m. PDT—Zoom—I will join Jody Day’s Childless Elderwomen chat with several other fabulous “nomo crones.” Our topic this time is “Caring for the Caregiver.” We will discuss our experiences taking care of our spouses and/or parents and our fears about who will take care of us when we need it. Register at https://gateway-women.com/gateway-elderwomen. The session will be recorded, so you can watch it whenever it works for you. If you worry about anonymity, neither your name or your face will be shown on the screen.
Saturday, March 23, 12-2 p.m.—in-person at the Nye Beach Book House, 727 NW Third Street, Newport, OR. I will be signing copies of Between the Bridges, the new novel in the Up Beaver Creek series, as well as my other books. Come, buy an autographed copy at a local bookstore instead of an online chain. If you are not in the area, the book is available in print and on Kindle wherever books are sold.
Thursday, April 25, 7 p.m.—Facebook live and in person at Marco Polo, 300 Liberty St. SE, Salem, OR. I will be the featured reader at the Salem Poetry Project, sharing poems from Blue Chip Stamp Guitar and Dining Al Fresco with My Dog. An open mic follows. Watch the Poetry Project Facebook page for information. https://www.facebook.com/SalemPoetryProject/.
Tuesday, May 14, 6 p.m.—Zoom—I will be one of the featured readers at the bi-monthly Head for the Hills series. An open mic follows. Visit the series’ Facebook page, for details or email dale@champlindesign.com to get on the mailing list.
READ AND ENJOYED: The Squannacook at Dawnby Richard Jordan, The Poetry Box, 2024. As I started reading the first poem in this beautiful chapbook, I felt myself relaxing into something beautiful. I was with the poet on the bank of a river in Massachusetts, breathing fresh air, watching fish ride the current, and listening to blackbirds singing. This winner of the Poetry Box Chapbook Prize is deserving of every accolade. I thought I would not be interested in a book about fishing. I haven’t held a pole since I was a little girl, but it’s about so much more than fish. The language, the unhurried pacing, and the Zen of being out in nature captured me immediately.” I love these lines in “Blackbird Through October Mist”: “It is important/now to lift the paddle, let it rest/across your lap. This is the time to glide.” This whole book feels like a long, easy glide, and I treasure it.
House on Fire by D. Liebhart, 9:25 Books, 2022. I stopped everything to read the last 70 pages of this novel, which begins with a mother asking her grown daughter to kill her father. The father has dementia, and caring for him has become next to impossible, but he made the whole family swear they would never put him in a nursing home. The daughter, Bernadette, an ER nurse, knows all too much about dementia and death, but she can’t kill him. Nor can her Bible-quoting sister. Even without that, she has her hands full. Her son Jax has major behavioral problems and has been kicked out of every school in the area. She barely makes enough money to pay her bills, with no help from her sometimes partner Shayne, who lives and works at a commune up in Topanga Canyon. Things are complicated and about to get more so. This is fiction, but so real I believed every word. Five stars for this one.
WATCHED AND ENJOYED
“True Detective,” Season 4, starring Jody Foster, streaming on MAX. This is one spooky story. They are in a part of Alaska where the sun doesn’t shine at all in the middle of the winter, so it’s always dark. A group of men working at a research station in the middle of nowhere suddenly disappear. Foster is determined to find out what happened. Twists and turns galore.
“The Color Purple,” 2023 version, streaming on Hulu and Amazon Prime. This updated version shares the same heartbreaking story, but it’s a musical. The music is fantastic, and the cast, featuring Fantasia Barrino and Taraji P. Henson, does a fabulous job. If you’re not crying at the end of this, you’re tougher than I am.
The timer says I have three seconds to get away from this chair.
Cheers.
Sue
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Annie watched me, confused. Why was I setting up a card table on the deck and covering it with a tablecloth? Why was I carrying out dishes, silverware, cloth napkins, and a candle? And hey, why was I putting her bowl on that table, where she couldn’t even reach it?
I was doing a “photo shoot,” trying to create a cover picture for my poetry collection, Dining Al Fresco with My Dog, coming out next year from Moonpath Press. Turns out it’s not as easy as it looks.
For years I marketed that book as Bully Wind and pictured a woman standing outside in a storm, defying the weather. My editor vetoed that title. This one is more fun anyway, but here I was fighting the Oregon coast wind to set my table.
For the first try, I used one of the tablecloths my mother embroidered sixty years ago for her canasta club, my blue Currier and Ives plate, Annie’s silver bowl, and one Oregon Coast Aquarium commemorative wine glass. I filled my plate with raviolis and an artichoke and put kibble in Annie’s bowl. I took umpteen photographs, trying not to get too much of the hot tub, the chain link fence, or the defunct yellow wheelbarrow I plan to turn into a planter someday.
I left the wine glass empty because wine conflicts with my meds, and I don’t actually drink much. Once everything was set up and photographed, we did indeed dine al fresco. It was delicious, although the raviolis were a little cold. However, in the photos, the food looked disgusting.
There’s an art to photographing food, and the pros use a lot of tricks that make the food look good. Check out this site about styling food for photos. You won’t believe the things they do. For example, that “syrup” on the pancakes might actually be motor oil, and there might be glue in that cereal instead of milk.
I sent photos of the table without food. The editor liked the concept, but said Annie needed her own wine glass, silverware and cloth napkin.
Okay. This time, waiting until the sun wasn’t blasting the shooting area, I used my good white tablecloth, my red Depression dishes, and Annie’s fancy bowl with pictures of dogs on it. I found two wine glasses without writing on them and poured red wine in them, taking a few sips as I went along. I didn’t bother putting food in the dishes because, ick.
This time the editor liked the shots, but she said the dog’s bowl and silverware weren’t completely in the frame and I needed to reshoot in high resolution, something I knew nothing about. There’s a setting for that on my phone? Turns out there is.
I will be reshooting again tonight. Dinner is leftover stir fry for me, Purina’s “vibrant maturity” kibble for Annie. There will be wine in our glasses, but I promise Annie won’t be drinking any.
This time of year, dining outside is wonderful, but it feels odd doing it alone. I miss the family barbecues when it was too hot in the house, so we took everything out to the patio, sat around the picnic table, and dove in. Hey, there’s a poem about that in the book.
I have set up many pictures for this blog. Usually it entails plopping some object on a plain surface, taking its picture and uploading it to WordPress.com. I also purchase art from 123rf.com and use free art from pexels.com.
Is it common for an author to be asked to provide her own cover image? Not so much, but it happens. In the best cases, you have an artist or photographer in the family or already own the perfect picture. Otherwise, it’s time to get creative.
I have had good and bad experiences with book covers chosen by others. The original cover of my novel Azorean Dreams, which was supposed to show a romantic couple in the Azores Islands off the coast of Portugal, actually showed a scene from Italy. When I complained that the guy was missing my character’s mustache, they drew one in. Worse, after the book was published, I saw that picture on the back cover in magazine ads all over the place.
It gets worse. I published a book titled Freelancing for Newspapers years ago. (It’s out of date, but still has good advice. If you want a copy, I’ll send it to you for free). The publishing house decorated the cover with a stack of folded newspapers. Makes sense. But on one of those newspapers in big, legible type is the word “genital warts.” Embarrassing!
For a book cover, you need more than just a great picture. It has to be eye-catching and appealing. It has to be a unique high resolution vertical shot, and you need to think about where the type will go, what colors will be prominent, and who owns the rights to the “image” you’re using.
You can’t just rip off a picture from the Internet. You can, but it’s wrong. There are agencies that sell photos, artwork and images created by artificial intelligence, like the one pictured here with the checkered tablecloth from 123rf.com.
The editor preferred to go with an original. So I’ll be setting the table tonight when the light is right. Then Annie and I will dine in style.
Have you ever set up a scene for a photo shoot? Tell us about it in the comments.
Does anyone have a dog who actually sits at the table to eat?
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Unleashed in Oregon 