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.
PD is walking up Beaver Creek Road with her dog Rocky when he runs off into the trees. She splashes over the mud and across the creek calling for him, but the big, dopey golden retriever doesn’t come. She has never been in this part of the forest before and worries about getting lost. Then she hears singing. Singing out here? She follows the sound and finds her dog making friends with a woman people call The Witch.
Thus begins Between the Bridges, the newest book in my Up Beaver Creek series featuring the adventures of PD Soares and her friends. They went through so much in the last two books. What else could possibly happen? Well, it’s early 2020, the beginning of a year none of us will soon forget.
After a fun year of writing, many (!) revisions, and a good going-over by my wonderful Beta readers, Between the Bridges is close to publication. On New Year’s Eve, I finished the final rewrite. Now, I’m in what I call “formatting hell,” worrying over spacing, page numbers, copyright notices, and such. My cover designer is working on the cover. I’m hoping to release the ebook on Feb. 1 and the paperback soon after. You will be able to order it not only from Amazon but from all your favorite booksellers through Ingram, the distributor used by most bookstores.
It has been 11 years since I started the first book, Up Beaver Creek, which I fully intended to be just one book, not a series. I spent years on that book, writing, rewriting, and trying to sell it to an agent or traditional publisher. Finally, I decided that since nonfiction was my main career focus, I would self-publish my fiction as the fun thing I did for myself. Readers liked the first book so much I published a sequel, Seal Rock Sound, in 2022.
Self-publishing these days does not mean paying a printer and storing hundreds of books at your house. Print-on-demand technology means we can write and format the books online and have copies printed when orders come in. We can use the power of social media, Goodreads, Amazon and many other online venues to sell our books.
Anyone can self-publish a book these days. Doing it through Amazon’s KDP program is free, and the royalties are higher than most traditional publishers offer. The trick is to publish a book that is just as good as those put out by traditional publishers. Books that are poorly written, edited, and designed make self-publishing look bad for all of us. Books that we don’t promote like crazy go nowhere.
Doing it yourself is not easy, but it does have advantages. You can write the book you want to write without worrying about whether it will sell. You can release the book on your own schedule. The average traditionally published book takes two years from acceptance to publication.
The publisher has the final say on editing and cover design. By self-publishing, you make all the creative decisions. You’re also responsible for the creative mistakes. That’s why revising, having other people edit and proofread, and hiring a skilled cover designer are so important. I have a whole talk I could give on that subject, but let’s move on.
PD and her friends are as real to me as anyone reading this blog. I have to keep reminding myself that I cannot drive up Beaver Creek Road (shown in the photo) and see the Rainbow House and Donovan’s cabin on the right because they aren’t really there. I realized with a shock last night that I’m older than every character in the book and would not fit into their world, not in reality. But in my imagination, I’m 43, just like PD, singing harmony with her and Janey.
I don’t know if I can let them go after this book. PD’s stories have been well-received, and I already have ideas for another sequel. It might be different, perhaps from another’s character’s point of view, but there will be troubles, there will be love, and there will be laughs.
As soon as Between the Bridges becomes available, I will share the cover and links for purchase. Stay tuned for news about launch events and readings. Meanwhile, I have to check the page numbers and margins again.
Thank you to Pat, Samantha, Bonnie, Nancy, Stacy, and Kathryn for your eagle-eyed examination of the Between the Bridges manuscript. I’d be lost without you.
Happy New Year! May God bless us all in 2024.
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I took the old laptop out of its nifty leather case and stared. Was it always that clunky looking? So square? Like an old Volvo. Instead of a mouse, it has a marble-sized trackball. The screen is about the size of my Kindle screen. And what’s with the giant box with a little plug sticking out of it?
This thing doesn’t have a USB port, but it does have a place to plug in a telephone line for the modem. Suddenly the old backup computer has become an historic artifact. But it’s my only hope to find out what happened to Roberta and Frank.
I’ve been reading through short stories I wrote back in the late ‘90s. Some are so awful I’m relieved no one wanted to publish them. But some are still good, especially this one about Roberta and Frank, who run into trouble while traveling in their motorhome. I was thinking I should polish it and send it out. It’s not too out of date. Look, Roberta even has a cell phone. She doesn’t know how to use it, but I can fix that. I got to the end of page 5. The ambulance is coming and–where’s page 6? Where’s the rest of the story? I have a vague memory that Roberta stops being such a wuss and saves the day, but I don’t know the details anymore.
I have to leave for church in five minutes. I tear through my files. I sent it to literary journals back in the days before we submitted everything online. I have to have more paper copies of “Runaway Dream.”
I find maybe 50 short stories. Lord, I was prolific. But not that one.
Okay, look through the pile of CDs. Nope, too new. Where are those old 3.5-inch floppies? The only computer with a floppy drive that I still have would be that laptop I bought in 1993. There it is back behind the unsold books.
Epson ActionNote 700 CX. I plug it in. The poor thing is beat up, the F7 key coming off, the screen part separating from the keyboard part (unlike a lot of today’s laptops, it’s not supposed to). It turns on. Gray screen, words and numbers. DOS. Oh crap. Does anybody remember the DOS operating systems that preceded Windows?
Press F1. Okay. Setup failed. Press F12 for setup utility. I get a screen full of choices and no idea what button to push. The date shows Jan. 1, 1990. Memories of Y2K. Remember how we thought the world would fall apart because all our computers couldn’t make the leap to a new millennium? Most of them did but maybe not this one.
I decide to take pictures so I can show you all this historic computer. I close the top to shoot the outside. When I reopen it, all the words and numbers are gone. The computer doen’t even hum. When I push the power button, nothing happens. Old ActionNote seems to have passed away while I was trying to take its picture. But how does Roberta get off that deserted road? Does her husband get to the hospital in time?
Wait. Do I have another laptop, an interim between the Volvo and my current HP, a Honda maybe? Can’t find it, but I find some 5.25-inch floppy disks. Short Stories 1 and 2. Great! Oh. I have nothing that can read them. I have always backed up my files, carried copies in my car, and put them in the safe deposit box at the bank. It’s all useless nonrecyclable plastic now.
But wait, the Volvo didn’t die. The plug got super hot and the computer turned itself off. After it cools, I plug it in again. Green light. Must act quickly. Setup. Change the date. OMG. Windows 3.1. Insert disk. Horrible wailing noise. It can’t read the disk, can’t read any of my old disks, but hey, here on the hard drive is the old version of my novel Azorean Dreams. Hello, old friend.
“When the alarm shrilled at 7 a.m., Chelsea groaned and
covered her eyes against the light pouring in the bedroom windows.” The whole
book is there. Wow.
What else is on this thing? There’s the unfinished novel about a quadriplegic named Daniel. And something called deaderma.wps. Oh, I love that story. Reporter goes to do an interview and finds the subject dead in the rose bushes. Being a reporter, she gets nosy . . .
No Roberta and Frank. I created these people. I need to find
out what happened to them, even if I have to retype every blinking word into
the new (ish) computer.
I’m still looking. And no, I do not want to write a new ending. The moral of this tale. Print everything out. I still have poems, stories and essays I wrote on manual typewriters 50 years ago, but I can’t read what I entrusted to my computers in 1997. Even 2007 is iffy. Paper lasts longer than modern technology. We’re putting all of our information into machines that will be obsolete before I pay off my Visa bill. Is anybody thinking about that?
Do you have antique computers and antique media hanging
around? Ever try to use them? What is going to happen to everything we have
entrusted to our computers in five, 10, 20 or 30 years? Are writers the only
ones who care?
I could tell you a whole other story about the days I spent last week sticking slides into the old slide projector. I thought I would get them digitized, but then I thought, why? Even my own slides bore me now. It’s been a dusty time in the Lick household lately as I try to sort things down to manageable levels. Within reason. Marie Kondo, queen of throwing away everything that doesn’t give you joy, can’t take my stories away. She’s not even getting the old laptop. Not yet.
Here are some interesting links to read about the history of laptops and the history of data storage.
Unleashed in Oregon 