How Books Are Made, Part I

 

"Hiccup" and "Toothless" from How to Train Your Dragon

It starts with a spark of creativity, a tiny seed of an idea that begins to take root and grow in a writer’s brain. At first, it’s easy to ignore the tender little seedling trying to find purchase in a place already teeming with ideas. Those initial ideas definitely get overshadowed by projects that have already made it from brain to keyboard (or yellow pad or sketchbook, in my case). I can pretty much guarantee that the majority of working writers have at least a dozen ideas growing in addition to the three or four projects they’re working on. I do.

Take this post, for instance. The initial idea formed about a month ago. In that time, I have jotted notes for the next blog post (and the one after that), finished and submitted three poems for publication, revised and submitted an essay for publication, worked my tail off to format a book for publication (more on that in the next post), and written countless journal pages. That’s just the physical work I’ve put in. The extra ideas that haven’t been harvested yet? They’re still growing in my brain. Some of them are really getting out of control in there….

It still amazes me to think how my published books came into being. In the 1970’s, I was teaching Lamaze childbirth classes, and my students felt the available books were too technical. I was freelancing at the time, miraculously getting published on a regular basis, and they suggested I write a book with all the information I dispensed in class, posed in less clinical terms than others had used. I gave it some thought (and growth time), and two years later my first book was published.

When I began researching, at my mother’s request, the alleged crimes of her grandmother, I knew eventually I had enough material for a pretty compelling memoir. Many years later (when Mom would finally allow it), The Tainted Legacy of Bertha Gifford came into fruition.

The Dogs Who Saved Me came about during a long summer afternoon spent organizing photographs. I had so many pictures of the various dogs I have companioned with, I realized there were enough to make an album of just dogs alone, and as I leafed through the finished project, considering all their incredible stories, I knew I wanted to record them. That book took two years to write.

This next book—the one that I am just weeks away from seeing released on Amazon—did not begin as a book idea or even a writing project. It began as a song. No. It began with a cat that looked like a dragon. Or more accurately, a dragon that looked like a cat. Here is that story:

When I moved waaaay up to a cabin in the mountains, I took two black cats with me: Old guy Boo Radley and newly adopted Sugar Plum (aka “Sug”). Sadly, in my second year on the mountain, Boo died. Where Sug had previously bonded with Boo, now she began to bond with me in earnest. And it was cold in the winter months, so she would come to the loft at night, jump on the bed, and I would hold the blanket up for her to climb under and snuggle down. Often, in the depth of darkness and quiet only a mountain retreat can offer, I would sing to her. In the beginning, I sang her “Too Ra Loo Ra Loo Ral” and other sweet Irish songs I had learned as a child.

Then several things happened in succession. My dear friend and fellow author Michael Welker (Blockbuster Blueprint) suggested I watch the animated feature How to Train Your Dragon, mostly because he thought I’d love the soundtrack, which I did. (Loved the film, too; ya gotta love a rescued critter/underdog/unlikely love story/unlikely hero movie.) Sometime in the ensuing days, I walked into the main room of the cabin to find little Sug face to face at the French doors with an enormous black bear. Sug was standing her ground, back arched, fur and tail puffed to maximum bigness, and hissing as she bared her teeth. She looked, in that moment, for all the world like a tiny dragon. Later that night, as we hunkered down in bed, I began to hum a random tune I’d come up with. Suddenly there were words for it:

Dragon song is an old one

Sing the tale told so long

Dragon song is an old one

Old one, sing the dragon song.

At some point before this, I had attended a writers group meeting in which the guest speaker had noted, in suggesting ways to market one’s books, that the creation of a series (rather than a stand-alone novel) brings readers back looking for the next chapter in the saga. I had dismissed the idea at first. (Writing a series—keeping every detail of every character and plot point clear and correct throughout all the books—is much more challenging than writing a single, all-encompassing story.)

But that night, singing this new song to my tiny cat who apparently had the spirit of a dragon abiding within her, a seed was planted.

Hard to believe that seed began to take root over a decade ago. Well, the original idea became a book. (More on how that happened in the next post.) Originally, I had decided just three books—a compact trilogy—would do nicely. (No way would I attempt an on-going series, given all the other projects I want to tackle.) But as I worked on the second book, I realized that the four seasons had become a theme, so that now there are four books in what will be, when they are published, the Dragon Singer series. The books are written for a middle-grade audience. Which means, I suppose, that any avid reader over the age of say, eight, who loves cats and good dogs and dragons and music will probably enjoy them.

Did I mention that the first one is nearly ready for release in a matter of weeks, if not days? Watch this space!

Constants

 

It’s been six weeks since I’ve posted. I’d like to use my typical “off with the fairies” excuse—and in some ways, I think I would be justified—but really, time and creative energy have been sorely depleted.

I know some of you loyal, compassionate readers, if you follow me on Facebook, have been waiting to hear the warm, fuzzy details of my romantic relationship with “that one guy” (or, if you’re Sean Piscioneri, the guy before that guy—sorry—inside joke). Alas, the guy who began as a friend and briefly became “boyfriend” has now agreed that “friend” is the more healthy status for us. We like each other. Always have since we met 27 years ago. We just don’t… see eye to eye on some things. It’s not important what they are.

Among the critical take-aways from that brief experiment, however, is the fact that my mental health can still easily be tipped off balance under certain circumstances. This surprised me. I mean, seriously, when you get to the age of 70, and you’ve spent decades working to shore up your strategies and defenses against panic attacks, you float along through life thinking you’re safe from them. Then out of the blue a trigger is pulled—however gently—and suddenly your heart is racing and that dark shadow is just there, over your right shoulder, looming. Takes your breath away. Like, literally.

So one of my accomplishments this summer was finally—FINALLY, damn it—getting an appointment with a therapist. It took a month, from initial phone request to finally seeing someone (and by “seeing,” I mean staring at a screen image via Zoom), and I had to push hard with follow-up phone calls. But hey, the energy expended was worth it. I like my therapist. More on that in future posts, I promise—not because I really want to talk about my childhood trauma—I don’t—but because I want to do whatever I can to encourage others to seek professional help in being the best version of yourself you can be today. And tomorrow.

 

Another satisfying accomplishment of the summer was writing 31 poems in the month of August and sending them out to strangers on postcards. This was not a zany idea of my own. Rather, it was part of the annual “Poetry Postcard Fest” sponsored by Cascadia Poetic Labs, the mission statement of which states: “Empowering people to practice poetry & deepen connections to place, self & the present moment.” (Gotta love the alliteration!) The cool thing about signing up for the PPF is that you also (potentially) receive 31 postcards. So far, I’ve gotten about 20 postcards, mostly handmade and decorated with creative artwork, in addition to the poetic offerings. It definitely put some pep in my step on my daily walk to fetch the mail.

I didn’t expect to write any particularly whiz bang poetry. Just as in the year I participated in NaNoWriMo, I signed up for the PPF simply to challenge myself, to impose the discipline of working on poems in addition to my other writing. (Once upon a time, I did call myself a poet, because I have had a few poems published. But that was years ago.)

Surprisingly, though, I was quite satisfied with several of the 31 poems I wrote, and so, for the first time in decades, I think I’ll send some out, just to see what happens. Stay tuned.

As you can imagine, I needed inspiration for those poems. I also needed time alone to process pre and post panic attack, so off to the woods I went, hiking every few days with Miss Maya Angelou Murphy, who continues to let her guard down with me. Nature is an inspiration in and of itself, so I was pleased to capture some photos reflecting my awe.

And, of course, I spent time with my emotional support pals, Sgt. Thomas Tibbs and Jenny the Cat. The Dog Who Hated Being Touched has now become The Dog Who Loves to Be Loved On—brushed, petted, scratched, massaged, whatever. Whenever the world becomes “too full of weeping,” as Yeats described it, I can sit down next to Thom, give him head rubbies and ear scratches, and tell him all about it for as long as it takes for my blood pressure to drop to normal again.

 

Don’t get me started on Jenny’s antics for comic relief. This cat… oh my dragons…. If I had let her, she would have stayed outside on the patio for the duration of Tropical Storm Hilary as it blew through our town with crazy wind and sideways rain. As it was, she stayed out, curled in a corner of the blanket on the patio swing, until I finally made her come in when debris began flying around the yard. And let me tell you, she let me know how unhappy she was about having to do so. She always lets me know exactly how she’s feeling about my unilateral decisions. That’s where dogs and cats are different; dogs say “Okay!” and cats say “Who said so?”

 

Speaking of cats… and dogs… and dragons: I also spent the summer—as promised—working with artist/illustrator Allie Myers on the cover of Fey Girl, the first book in my Dragon Singer series of middle grade fantasy novels. Allie is beyond amazing—I feel at times she is somehow “seeing” what is in my head—and she has just informed me (as in, this morning!) that the front illustration for the cover is complete. And, oh my dragons, it is exactly—no, it is better than what I had imagined in my head. I will be sharing that in a separate post, along with more information about the series. Since the back cover and spine are simple, the cover should be ready in another two weeks, which means the book could be released as early as late October, early November—just in time for Christmas. Again, stay tuned. I am so, so excited about these books, and I can’t wait for all four in the series to be out in the world.

If you’re still reading, thank you. Let me sign off here with one of the poems from this month’s Fest that I particularly liked, once I was satisfied with the final draft.

 

Constants

S. Kay Murphy

I wake up moody, musing

On the problems of yesterday.

In the still-dark, I take the dogs

Out to the yard, looking up,

As always, to find my constants.

There is Taurus, stretched across

The sky, the Seven Sisters,

Whispering secrets, and proud

Orion, on his back in August,

Perpetually sighting his arrow

Nonetheless, unconcerned

For the tilt of the Earth

Today, tomorrow, or yesterday.

Nothing But Gratitude

 

On Friday I had one of those moments of profound exasperation at the absolute mindless insensitivity of some people, and (if I may state this publicly without seeming like a complete judgy wench) the idiocy of some people in the treatment of their dogs. Sigh….

I needed a few warm, fuzzy feelings to balance the negative energy, so I asked Facebook friends to post pictures of their pets. Boy howdy, did they ever. If you were one of those folks, thank you. We can never underestimate the power of seeing a cute dog or cat or horse or reindeer face (or robot—long story) to release a bit of oxytocin and calm our troubled hearts.

After perusing those pics for half an hour, I left the valley and drove to Lake Arrowhead to do a quick hike then visit my granddaughter and her baby daughter—all of which enhanced my oxytocin high.

Beyond that good stuff, I want to take a moment to thank those of you who are regular readers of my posts. I began this blog in 2009 while I was living in the wilderness of Mt. Baldy, having adventures with nature and wildlife nearly every day—while also experiencing many, many rejections of my work written for commercial purposes (and an occasional sale or two). I wanted to write about whatever I felt like writing about, with no concern for word count or market viability. So I began to blog (the first post mentioning how much I loathe the word “blog”).

At first, I had a handful of folks who were regular readers willing to skim through my somewhat provincial if not inane musings. Slowly, as the posts went out into the world—and I began to write about more pressing issues, such as race relations in the U.S. and the “Me too” movement—views of my posts increased from 30 a month to 100 a month and then close to a thousand a month, which is where the average now hovers.

But last month was a banner month. I mean, I had a lotta lotta views. The analytics on Blogger allow me to see what posts people are looking at, so I know what started the upward trend in views (a post that could be construed as political), but I was downright shocked when I saw the numbers skyrocket.

Total number of overall views for June: 9,041. These were not views of the same post; there were a number of different, er, issue-related posts being viewed. But oh my goodness, I am humbled and grateful whenever people read my words, be it 5 or 500. This number nearly floored me.

So thank you, dear Readers, for clicking that link again and again over the months or years to see what the heck I might have to write about in my rambling, parentheses-and-dash-infused style. Before you click away from the page, here’s one more silly rambling offered for your amusement:

Things to do while the oatmeal is cooking:

(Note: Of course it’s cooking—no packets here, no “instant” for me! Damn right it’s steel cut (whatever that means), organic, they-take-forever, cholesterol-lowering oatmeal for this “granola head.”)

Start a load of laundry.

Add “laundry detergent” to the grocery list.

Empty the dishwasher.

Open the door for Jenny the Cat to sashay outside and begin her day, warning her not to bring yet another mouse into the house.

Wash the dogs’ dishes and Jenny’s dish.

Wash hands thoroughly.

Stir the oatmeal.

Catch the mouse that is now scampering about the living room with Jenny merrily giving chase (without letting Jenny see you taking him... or her).

Carry the mouse outside (in an empty oatmeal can) and down the block, depositing him/her near the ravine (and thus near food, shelter, water).

Stop. Notice the sunrise as it tops Mt. San Jacinto.

Think of that one guy who always makes you smile.

Smile.

Return to the house.

Wash hands thoroughly.

Stir the oatmeal.

Encourage Jenny disingenuously to “keep looking for Mr. Mousie,” pretending it “must be here somewhere.”

Create a Facebook post documenting the number of mice Jenny has brought into the house to play with.

Walk all the way back to the bedroom to pet Sgt. Thomas Tibbs in his bed and tell him he is the best boy ever.

Walk back down the hallway to the den to pet Maya and tell her she is the best girl ever.

Wash hands thoroughly.

Stir the oatmeal.

Add walnuts.

Grab the blank page journal used for poems and jot down the lines that came to mind about that one guy while you were walking back from relocating the mouse.

Turn off the burner under the oatmeal and add raisins, dried blueberries, banana slices, cinnamon, and brown sugar.

Stop. Close your eyes. In one long inhale of this sweet-scented repast, acknowledge with gratitude the blessings of food, cat, mouse, dogs, dishwasher, washing machine, sunrises, wild spaces, warm smiles, word gifts… and that one guy.

 

The Continuing Legacy of TKAM

 

Some months ago, my dear friend, poet and author Mary Langer Thompson, sent me a copy of the book pictured above, Why To Kill a Mockingbird Matters. I am deeply indebted, as reading Tom Santopietro’s fascinating review of the writing of the novel and the making of the film reminded me once again how much I love this book.

 

Ten years old and starved for books that were slightly more advanced than the Bobbsey Twins and Little House on the Prairie series my friend Cathy had offered, I snuck into the closet where some of my older brother’s books were stored, hoping to find a science fiction or fantasy novel I could get lost in. Instead, I pulled out a tattered paperback with the picture of a bird on the cover. To Kill a Mockingbird. I was a birdwatcher. Why on earth would anyone want to kill a mockingbird?

In Harper Lee’s words, “Thus began our longest journey together.”

Reading it then, at age ten, I didn’t fully understand all the nuances of race relations. I was a young white girl living in a predominantly white community in Southern California. That particular summer was a quiet, lazy one. The fiery tumult of the Watts uprising was still a year away.

What did resonate with me the first time I read TKAM—and every time since—was the story of a girl who was as like me as she was unlike me.

Like me, Scout was a tomboy. (With my first read, I was ever-so-envious of Scout’s overalls; It would be another ten years before I finally had the buying power to purchase my first pair at age twenty. I’m nearly seventy now, and I still wear them often.)

Unlike me, Scout had a comfortable and close relationship with her father (something else I was envious of).

But what a story! Bored of a summer, Scout, Jem, and Dill spent their days imagining life inside the Radley home, in the same way my brother, sister, and I would wonder and speculate about the weird neighbors who’d moved in next door, bringing with them a live monkey that roamed freely about the house and regularly attacked and bit the girl our age who lived there.

In my initial read, the trial of Tom Robinson seemed to interrupt the flow of the book, and I didn’t understand most of it, or the chapters about the well-intentioned but clearly racist (although not to me at the time) missionary society or Scout’s very racist third-grade teacher. Happily, the novel returned to the mysterious figure of Boo Radley in its final pages.

At some point in my childhood or adolescence, I saw the movie based on the book. I have no memory of how I saw it for the first time; it must have been shown on television. But my emotional memory recalls the tenderness that Atticus extended to his young daughter.

Some years later, when my own daughter turned ten, I gave her a copy of TKAM for her birthday. It occurred to me then—since my kid would be reading it—that I should read it again, review it from an adult perspective. My, how differently—how much more heavily—the story landed on my heart. Now that I had more fully experienced the Civil Rights Movement. Now that I had been caught up in race riots at my high school. Now that I had Black friends. Now that I had children of my own, some of them racially mixed.

If I had loved the novel before, I revered it now.

So I count myself most fortunate and blessed that, nearly as soon as I began teaching high school, I was privileged to teach To Kill a Mockingbird as part of the curriculum. I taught ninth grade for 25 of the 27 years of my teaching career, with multiple sections of ninth grade in any given year. How many times now have I read aloud these words, affecting a Southern accent, “Folks call me Dill” or “Scout, let’s get us a baby” or “Hey, Boo”? I have no idea. How many times have I watched my students as they watched the big reveal of Boo Radley in the movie? I have no idea of that number, either. But I can tell you that, despite having read and seen it over a hundred times now, that scene—whether in the book or in the film—still brings me to tears.

In recent years, TKAM has had its detractors. In my humble opinion, the critics who focus solely on the plot thread of Tom Robinson miss the mark of Harper Lee’s great American novel. As much as we may agonize over the stark truth of his situation, the book is not “about” Tom. It’s Scout’s story, one hundred percent. It’s a coming-of-age tale—albeit based on the harsh realities of Southern issues—of a young girl who is, initially, blissfully ignorant of the ignorance in her community. She is six and innocent as the story begins, nine when it closes, her eyes now having been opened to see some of those things that Atticus would have kept her from seeing, if only he could have.

Sixty years on—even after all those years of reading it over and over again to sweet but squirrely freshmen, even after my lofty graduate classes in Faulkner and O’Neill and the many women writers like Toni Morrison who have brilliantly shifted the landscape in modern literature—TKAM is still my favorite book. In nine years and four months, my great-granddaughter will turn ten. I know exactly what gift I will give her for that birthday.

A Cascade of Nostalgia

 

Forest Falls, named in part for a very tall, very beautiful cascading waterfall (called "Big Falls") at the east end of town, is a small village in the foothills below Mt. San Gorgonio in Southern California. I made my first sojourn there when I was in high school when a group of “Jesus freak” young people like myself car caravanned there from Riverside. I still have photos and many fond memories from that day.

A half dozen years after that first trip, I returned to Forest Falls to attend my very first writers conference at Forest Home, the beautiful conference center there. At the age of 21, I had entered a national writing contest, won third place, and the person who called to make that announcement told me, “I see that you live in Southern California. In addition to everything else you’ve won [publication in a national magazine with a readership of six million, plus books on writing AND the entire Chronicles of Narnia series, just for fun], we’d like to send you to a writers conference.”

Did those lovely folks have any idea how attending that conference would catapult me into my dream of writing and publishing? I don’t know, but it sure did.

When my children were old enough, we returned for a day of hiking, picnicking, blackberry picking—and, at the end of it, a trip to the ER for stitches after my eldest son stepped on a piece of broken glass while wading barefoot in the stream.

I can assure you, when I returned many years later with three young grandkids in tow, I made sure all of us kept our shoes on.

At some point in my adult life, I picked up a friend who was trying to decide whether or not to leave her abusive husband. I took her up to Forest Falls in my beloved VW bug. While we rock-hopped over rough terrain to get to the falls, we also attempted to navigate the equally challenging topics of “commitment” and “self-esteem.” Good talk. Good walk. But when we returned to the car—the only one at the trailhead on a weekday—we discovered it had a flat tire. In the hours previous, I had been trying to convince my friend that she was stronger than she realized. When she saw the flat, she began to wring her hands and cry. (Mind you, this was decades before the convenience of cell phones.) She was not reassured when I told her not to worry, we would, together, fix the flat ourselves. But we did, handily. At some point, a young man with a six-pack of beer pulled into the parking area on a motorcycle. He took a seat under a tree and watched us do the work—and I was grateful that he never offered to help, just sat and downed his beer, one after another. Because when we triumphantly finished and climbed into the car to leave, my friend told me how empowered she felt. Booyah.

In the past, the trip to Forest Falls required some planning, as it was some distance from where I lived. Moving to Calimesa, however, put me much closer, so that now I can get up there in just over half an hour, traffic permitting.

So of course, I had to take Maya. Here’s what happened when I did:

As soon as we left the car and hit the trail, we saw the giant sign erected by the Forest Service: The area around the waterfall was “closed,” for all intents and purposes. Why? Because in order to get to the falls, you have to cross Mill Creek, and (as mentioned in my previous post), the water in the creek is running so high and so fast, it’s treacherous. Plus someone dies every year by trying to climb the falls, and I think USFS is simply tired of calling Search and Rescue to pack out another dead body. Seriously.

However—we could still walk along the creek, which we did. (Click here to see a bit of that.) Until she saw people. Too many people. There may have been a total of five or six at various points along the stream. But for her, one human (besides me) is too many. So she panicked. Where to escape?? Into the water. She headed straight into the stream and would have paddled to the far side had I not reeled her back in. (When we hike, she’s on a fifteen-foot lead, so she really did get pretty far before I wrangled her closer to shore.)

 

When I wouldn’t let her retreat, she did what I have taught her to do when she’s fearful, which is to sit down and take a breath. (Okay, I know you can’t really teach a dog to take a nice deep breath, but she sits, and I do the deep breathing.) Yep, she sat her little bottom right down in that ice-cold water. Silly dog.

 

We didn’t stay much longer; I had things to do at home. But I did stop to take pictures, and realized (shout out to all my Baldy friends!) from a certain point, you can see all the way from Forest Falls to Mt. Baldy. And yes, of course I waved when I realized that. You never know who might be waving back.

 

Rising Out of the Gloom

 

It’s been a very long time since I’ve been kissed, and it finally happened today! Details to follow….

If you live in Southern California, you know that we’ve been having day after day after day of first “May Gray” and then “June Gloom,” those mornings in which the marine layer from the Pacific Ocean has drifted far enough inland to cover everyone in light to heavy fog. Yesterday was no different, the damp and tangy layer so thick I had to use my windshield wipers as I drove Miss Maya Angelou Murphy up to a hiking spot that, while quite familiar to me, had been previously undiscovered by her.

Thurman Flats is located off Hwy 38, a mile or two to the east of the Hwy 38 and Bryant Street junction. There is a small brown Forest Service sign for it that indicates “Picnic Area, ¼ mile.” You can't miss it if you drive slower than the 70mph most locals want to drive on that stretch of highway.

And there is indeed a beautiful, tree-shaded picnic area there, but I wasn’t intending to have a picnic. I just needed to rise above the gray gloom that had been hovering physically outside my house but also mentally inside my head. I know, I know; we writers live inside our heads. I try to come out and play from time to time… but… a lot has been going on that I’ve had to… ruminate upon. We’ll just leave it at that.

The photo above was taken from the parking lot at Thurman Flats. Note the pretty blue sky, the low cloud cover in the valley below. Yes! I could feel my spirits lifting as I called Maya out of the car.

Challenge #1: Would Maya be willing to cross water and boulder hop with me to get to Mill Creek? We had to pick our way over places like this:

But that girl was ready and willing, as she always is when we hit the trail, and across she went, stopping only when I asked her to so I could get a picture. Then on we went.

Through the trees and blackberry brambles, keeping an eye out for both bears and snakes, we carefully, cautiously traversed the trail and found Mill Creek gushing madly with water pouring over and around boulders at a level I’ve never seen it, and I’ve been going there for decades. Hooray for snow melt!

Challenge #2: Would Maya come willingly to the edge of the roaring stream? Or would she fear it?

Challenge accepted, of course. She trotted right up. I held her back from the edge. I didn’t want her to take a dip in the icy water then have the current drag her in (and me along with her). There is a very short video of her coming through the woods to find the water, which you can view by clicking here.

We walked along the edge of the stream for a bit, but it had broadened so much, the trail was obliterated in some spots. It was early when we went, and my car had been the only one in the parking lot, so I was surprised to find a pair of men’s shoes by the shore. Did he walk back along the trail barefoot?  Did he realize when he arrived home where he’d left them? Who knows. I left them where I found them.

 

We headed back—which was when my kiss was finally bestowed. We had almost reached the narrow trail leading to the parking area when I heard a commotion and looked up through the foliage, half expecting to see a bear. Nope. It was a bounding dog, a large coonhound, followed by an even larger German shepherd. They barreled straight for us.

Challenge #3: Would Maya completely freak out? Or allow the over-excited doggos to greet her?

Turns out, she didn’t do either, really. She sat down, which is what I’ve taught her to do when she’s frightened. The dogs ran up and sniffed her, but she remained sitting quietly, not trying to run. I could hear the dogs’ person trying to call them back from yards away, shouting as loud as he could to be heard above the roaring stream. I looked up to see him moving down the trail—a man about my age, backpack on his shoulder, two smaller terrier mixes following at his heels. He called to me, something by way of apology, I assume. I laughed and shrugged because I couldn’t hear him, then turned my attention back to the dogs just as the coonhound leapt up and kissed me right on the cheek!

Wait. You didn’t think the kiss was offered by a man, did you? Nah. Just a sweet dog saying hello—and leaving huge muddy paw prints down my sleeve and all over the front of my jacket. Closer now, the man called once more to his rambunctious boys, and both galloped off, leaping over boulders and kicking up sand. I’m guessing they had a great day. Maya and I left them to return home, driving back down into the drizzle, but not minding it one bit.

 

Pivoting

 

I was 23 years old when I wrote my first book, 25 by the time it was released across the country by a national book publisher. Ah, the good old days! Back then, I wrote first drafts in longhand, then typed them on an IBM Selectric typewriter, edited each page, and typed a final draft, so that everything I wrote was replicated at least twice, sometimes three times.

The submission process back then was similar in some ways to what it is now. Despite what we might see in the movies (proud, independent women marching into editors’ offices and plunking down weighty manuscripts with entreaties that the work be considered), the whole deal begins with a simple letter, dubbed a “query” letter, because it’s basically a question: “Hey there, I wrote this book about this person/thing/idea. Care to read it?”

Pre-computer age, these letters were sent off via USPS in great numbers with, of course, a self-addressed, stamped envelope (the sacred SASE) enclosed for the reply. Then the waiting began. Weeks, often months, sometimes years later (or never), a response would finally arrive: “We regret to inform you” or “Thanks for your recent query letter regarding blah blah blah book. However….” Or (blessedly) “Hello, Kay! I was intrigued by your idea for a book about prepared childbirth. Please send me a proposal.”

The proposal is somewhat like a very lengthy query. In it, the writer is once again asking that the work be considered, but the first three chapters or fifty pages are included, plus an outline of the entire book, plus, in recent years, the author’s marketing strategy, and the author’s bio including previous publishing credits.

Once the proposal (typed and retyped on that trusty machine) was packaged up and sent out (again via USPS, again with a SASE tucked inside), the waiting would begin again… weeks… months… years. No exaggeration. No kidding.

Of course, if one desired to be published by one of The Big Five New York Publishers, one submitted queries to an agent, not the publishers themselves, as the Big Five will not take unsolicited mail from the likes of us lowly urchins pecking away at keyboards for fun or for a living. Ahem.

Nowadays—O joy!—we live in the whizbang era. I can write queries on my laptop, send them out to writer friends for feedback, make changes rapidly, and email them out—for FREE! No stamps, no SASE, no waiting! Well, okay, still waiting… weeks, months, years for a reply. But at least no waiting for the mail to arrive at its destination.

[Side note here about the whizbang era: I once sent a short piece to the Home Forum editor of the Christian Science Monitor (a publication which pays very nicely) to whom I had submitted successfully in the past. I sent this new essay at 5:30a.m., via email. By the time I got to my day job at 7:00a.m. and turned on my computer, the editor had responded with a short email in reply: “Hi Kay, I read your piece over my first cup of coffee this morning and loved it. It’ll be in our October 30^th issue. A check is on its way to you. Thanks for thinking of us.” Holy hot damn. That’ll make your day, won’t it?]

I digress.

One more note about querying publishers or agents: In modern times, this can also be done by (a) spending $250-$500 or so to attend a writers conference and “pitching” one’s idea directly to an agent or publisher face-to-face (known as offering the “elevator pitch”—in other words, if you encountered said person in an elevator, how might you quickly describe your story idea in a way that grabbed the listener’s interest enough to be offered a read—or (b) participating in “pitch wars” on Twitter, during which one tweets out (in 280 characters or less—that’s characters, not words) a synopsis of one’s book idea—for all the world (and hopefully an agent) to see.

I love writers conferences, but can no longer afford them. I am reluctant to share my story ideas with the masses before they are in print, especially in today’s world of I-saw-it-online-so-it-must-be-fair-game-to-copy, so neither of those options will work for me.

All of the above is a verbose, reminiscent preface to make this short announcement (mostly as a follow-up to my post of 27 February of this year): After a good deal of rumination, two brief forays into the modern publishing world (during which I was told the first book in my middle-grade series is “too long” for that age group and also four books in the series is “too many” for a small press), and a couple of great conversations with two writer friends, I have decided that my series will be published “independently” (as we now say to avoid the sad and defeatist label of “self-published”).

What this means for me:

No waiting.

The first book will be released as soon as I can get it formatted and have a cover design professionally created. Booyah.

I have total control over the creative content; I will not need to change the titles of the books in the series (to suit the marketing department of any potential publisher) or the characters’ names, nor will I have to cut the book length from 70,000 to 50,000 because “children don’t want to read long books,” as the industry believes. (I keep suggesting the so-called experts ask kids, but no one is listening to me. Again, I’m just the urchin pecking away….)

It also means that there will be a handful of fellow writers who will shake their heads and cluck their tongues in an exercise of group schadenfreude because “poor Kay couldn’t get her kids’ books published so she did it herself.”

Sigh. It used to bother me that I didn’t get respect among my writer friends. But seriously, if they’ve read my work (and many of them haven’t), and they don’t think I’m “good enough” by now, I can’t help them with that. They are not the readers I’m concerned with, anyway. The ten-year-olds who read this series can let me know if they like the books or not. And I’m pretty sure they will (like them, I mean—but also let me know—because that’s how ten-year-olds roll).

So: Those of you who are mentioned in the books or have become characters in one form or another, you won’t have long to see yourselves in print. Wondering if that’s you? Stay tuned….