A "Shy" Writer's Christmas

Thank you! Thank you! Thank you!

Bishop Hill Book Signing

Saint Lucia’s Day is celebrated throughout Scandinavian countries as a festival of light. Likewise, in Bishop Hill you’ll find sidewalks lined with hundreds of luminaria, votives set out in simple bags, and windows aglow with still more candles, some real, on the Friday and Saturday nights closest to Dec. 13th.

I was there this year as chauffeur and helper for Lilly Setterdahl. She held a book signing in Bishop Hill’s new Welcome Center for her 19^th book, Second Love After 50.

We had perfect weather, as in no snow, for our afternoon. Lilly spent two hours talking to people and selling her new book as well as copies of her other books. I walked the streets visiting old friends and trying to take in all the “new” the village had to offer.

Lilly and I couldn’t stay for the evening’s light show; we had to get back to the Quad Cities. I had to be content with my memories of years past when I spent many chilly hours in the Blacksmith Shop stoking the wood-burning stoves, eating cookies, and drinking the spiced cider. (I would occasionally try some homemade glögg just to see how much pain I could endure.)

From age 9 on my boys and their friends had the run of the village when they weren’t in service as Tomtes and St. Lucia girls. They were free ranging before we had that term.

I dropped Lilly and her gear off in East Moline and had a lot to think about as I made my way across the river to Davenport. I passed a lot of houses decorated for the season, some quite lavishly, but none had the lovely warm glow of the hundreds of candles that filled my memory.

Jan Brett

Somewhere along the line, I missed out on the phenomenon of children’s literature that is Jan Brett. That omission was rectified when I met up with her on a recent sunny Sunday morning at the main branch of the Davenport Public Library.

I should say I met up with her and her entourage. Brett was accompanied by: her husband, a musician in the Boston Symphony; a pair of live Bantam chickens (I’m going to guess that the egg she held up was just the shell); two large fuzzy costumed creatures (one of which had to be a hedgehog); a staff of 3 or 4 people from Iowa City’s Prairie Lights bookstore (there to sell books); and a full compliment of local librarians brought in for extra duty.

Brett’s custom decorated tour bus rolled into Davenport as part of the tour for her latest book, The Turnip, a lavishly illustrated children’s picture book based on a Russian folktale.

I got there soon after the doors opened and picked up a nice assortment of promotional handouts. I readily accepted everything for the purpose of marketing research. My blue mitten indicated what group I was assigned to if I bought a book and wanted it signed. Blue turned out to be the second of four groups. That was an impressive amount of organization. When I saw the length of the line waiting to buy books—I knew it was needed. The tour bus, a crowd of over four hundred people: Brett had indeed achieved “rock star” status.

Brett’s thirty minute talk was part reading and part drawing lesson. I was impressed that she never talked down to the kids in the audience. She used scientific names and terminology to describe the chickens and explain the differences between male and female. Scientific and G-rated. The lesson went well over the top in terms of helpfulness and gentle encouragement for everyone to try their hand at drawing.

I plan to add this experience to my cache of marketing info. I will never be at this level, but there’s still a lot to be learned at the feet of a master.

POV Revisited (Again)

I finished Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News. I’m impressed with how well she handled all the interconnected story lines. More than the story lines, she fully fleshed out the characters—warts and all.

Rereading it made me realize (again) that I did the right thing by limiting my novel to one main POV. I had given each of my four POV characters a good beginning, but having two of them suddenly become quiet after a pivotal scene had been a mistake. Atkinson had her three main POV characters speaking to the reader till the very end. They were allowed plenty of room to wrap up their subplots—for the most part. Some loose threads lingered. A few mysteries remained. Quite enough for her next work in the series.

Her attitude about the lingering mysteries of life:

“Everywhere you looked, there was unfinished business and unanswered questions…

…Everything would remain a mystery. Which meant, if you thought about it, that you should try and clear everything up as much as you could while you were still alive. Find the answers, solve the mysteries, be a good detective. Be a crusader.”

I think “try” is the operative word here. So, if I try this again, having multiple POVs, I’ll have a great example to fall back on. Another case where a writer doesn’t have to play by the strict rules of a genre to succeed. 

POV Revisited

I went out of town for Thanksgiving. Before I left, I was writing what I thought would be my weekly blog post only to discover (too late) that I was really writing a column. Hence—the lateness of this post.

While away, I started rereading Kate Atkinson’s When Will There Be Good News. This turned out to be a great thing. I had forgotten all about the structure she chose to tell her story—stories.

Atkinson has whole chapters dedicated to separate points of view, POVs. There are four: a doctor, the lone survivor of 30-year-old crime; a veteran who was police and is now a private detective; a currant police detective with marriage issues; and a 16-year-old orphan with the worst kind of brother. 

Each person receives ample time to reveal background, frame current conflicts, and then gets sent on their way. I presume they will all eventually meet up with each other.

I’m only halfway and there’s been a train wreck, the doctor’s husband is lying about her whereabouts, nasty thugs are looking for the brother, and the two detectives have more in common than their professions.

I have to finish so I can see how Atkinson makes all this come together. (My memory is a little murky… Well, a lot murky.)

It’s an academic point for me, since I’ve already taken out the multiple POVs from my novel. Let’s face it; I didn’t have this much drama going on. My story is set in—Bishop Hill, IL—the center of the grand American Midwest.

Donald Harstad can pull off demonic cults and foreign terrorists in northeast Iowa. I’m only managing a missing painting and the motives behind the heroes and villains searching for it. 

I will endeavor not to be late with the next post.

Start the Launch Party

When I enrolled in the Midwest Writing Center’s marketing workshop series lead by Jodie Toohey, the Wordsy Woman, I thought I knew a little something about promotion, sales, and social media presence. The operative word here is “little.”

                               

After the six sessions of intensive presentations and HOMEWORK I can positively say, “I now know a lot more.”

Before, I would have had my launch party and then…?

I would have been hard pressed to have any kind of plan of action outside a press release.

Knowing what to do next. Who to talk to about reviews. Where to investment my time and money. How to handle all the things that needed some preparation and lead time to make happen in an organized and beneficial manner. When I should pace myself and think realistically about just what I could do to connect to my potential readers. These topics were well covered over the course of two months.

“Realism” is another operative word. I got a dose of that as I completed my writing assignments, filled out my worksheets and charts, and thought about how I’d answer probing questions about my target reader.

I came away with resources to tap into and ideas to try. I plan to budget, schedule, and keep in touch. There is a wealth of information out there and it’s good not to have to navigate those waters alone.

The best part: a book launch still starts with a PARTY! 

Launch v. > (launch into) begin (an enterprise) or introduce (a new product).    From the OED

Party n. (pl. parties) 1. a social gathering of invited guests, typically involving eating, drinking, and entertainment.    Also from the OED

I plan to serve meatballs at mine.

Thought for the day:

I went to the Figge for the Thursday night opening reception for Wit + Whimsy The Photographs of Kenneth Josephson. I knew nothing about Mr. Josephson outside of seeing a few photos that had been included in a prior Figge exhibit. I remembered his work being fun and inventive. I liked how he took time to see the odd little things of our everyday life and transform them into Art by shifting the focus of the image ever so slightly. Tire skid marks on a paved road become calligraphy. Distorted lane markings on melted asphalt seen through a mat become a modernistic print.  I looked forward to experiencing more of his unique way of viewing the world.

The 84-year-old photographer spoke sparingly and let an overview of his work do the talking for him. It was quite eloquent. He only needed to add clarification here and there, to explain about lighting, timing, and the lucky gifts that occasionally befell the patient observer with a 35mm camera loaded with film.

His last story of the evening was about his trip over from Iowa City. It seems his car passed through one of our small Iowa towns, one no bigger than a few buildings around an intersection, and something caught his eye. A multitude of cracks in the road had been repaired and what would look like random lines of tar to most of us appeared like an exotic alphabet to him. He had the car stop so he could take a photo.

I can appreciate that level of spontaneity.

I have been known to pull up short and walk back to take a picture of spilled paint on a London sidewalk. The neat thing: pigeons had walked through the wet paint and left trails of intersecting birdie footprints. So much fun. That probably set off my own series of pigeon photos. (The benefit of digital photography—it’s so easy to take and store all the shots you may never get back to. As long as the memory space holds out, I’m good.)

The point I’m trying to make is to stay open to new uses for the familiar. If it works for the visual image, it’s up to us writers to make it work for our written words.