Why Poplar is the Best Dog and A Kickstarter Update

As of Day 1 of the campaign! 

 

I didn't set out to write a story with a telepathic dog. In fact, I didn't plan on any dog at all. But when I was working on the early drafts of what would become LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD, Poplar showed up. 

Yes, characters do appear like that. A gift from the subconscious that any writer worth her salt doesn't turn away. So Poplar stayed. Even as the story morphed and changed. Even as other characters got cut and never returned to the manuscript. 

And when I look at the story, she is its heart and soul.

I'd like to say I created Poplar as an amalgamation of all the dogs I've owned throughout my adult life, but I think she really created herself out of my memories and relationships with our canine companions.  

Let me introduce you to them.

Maxwell Smart

I didn't grow up with pets of any kind. The night before my wedding in 1988, my sister asked if she could bring over our gift as 'it was fragile' and she didn't want to risk bringing it the wedding. 

Sure, we said, come on over. 

And she walked in with a 12 week old puppy. A Lhasa Apso aka a white ball of fluff. 

Maxwell Smart Dog, age 6 with our first born kiddo, circa 1994

Unfortunately, all our photos of Max as a puppy are somewhere in photo albums in a storage unit. He was a clown of a dog and set himself as the protector and best friend of our son pretty much from the start. 

Max was a great first dog to have. He was patient and gentle and playful. Would hop in any car ready for adventure. Max was also something of a Houdini and found many ways to escape our fenced in yard to ride shotgun for the day with our town's animal control officer. 

 

Tigger 

Tigger with her favorite thing in the world: A tennis ball

 

Max lived to be almost 17! When he passed in December of 2004, we weren't going to look for another dog for a little while. It was winter. I had 2 young children to care for. But my youngest (8 at the time) held me to my promise that we would look for a dog once there was no longer snow on the ground. 

In March of 2005, Tigger found us. When we got her records from the dog rescue, we discovered she'd been born the day Max died. The kids ever after believed that Max sent her to us so we could stop being sad. 

Tigger was a hound/lab mix and one of the most responsive dogs I've known. She loved to learn tricks and when she was old enough, she and I passed the tests to become a therapy dog team. We spent many years visiting hospitals, nursing homes, and adolescent psychiatry facilities. She was a natural. Always knew the exact person who needed her love. 

 

Dustin

I swear, this photo was not staged.

 

When our kids got older and busier, it was clear that Tigger needed a canine friend. So we adopted Dustin. Then we found out that he was part Jack Russel Terrier. AKA terror. 

Terriers are a special breed of intense. And Dustin had a lot of trauma from being a feral stray. But Tigger loved him. He became her puppy and she civilized him. Dustin was definitely a challenge, but over time, he became a very sweet cuddler, albeit a menace to other dogs. 

Mya

 

Mya cosplaying a babushka

 

Sadly, Tigger died of cancer when she was 10 and we quickly realized Dustin needed a companion. So we adopted Mya - a border collie mix who had been shot as a puppy and only had 1 eye. She was very much my dog. Extremely sweet with people. Unpredictably fear aggressive with other dogs. Though she and Dustin were definitely pack. 

Dustin and Mya made the transition with us to empty nesting and our move to the farm where we live now. In fact, when I came out here in 2020 at the beginning of covid (while my spouse stayed in Boston, treating ICU patients), they were my loyal companions. 

 

Gigi 

 

1 year of Gigi

 

Mya got lymphoma in 2024 and after 6 months of chemotherapy, died in early 2025. Dustin - probably well in his teen years by then (we were never really certain how old he was) - died of heart failure about 6 weeks later. We were heartbroken, but definitely not ready for another dog. 

Until Gigi found us. A lovely mix of shepherd and hound, Gigi is a lot like Tigger was in terms of her emotional intelligence, responsiveness, and gentleness. Unlike Mya and Dustin, Gigi is exceptionally well mannered with other dogs and knows how to alter her play style to suit her companion. She's also the first dog I've ever had who naturally retrieves a ball and drops it at my feet on command. So these are all my good dogs. 

 

 

And Poplar? Well, she has a little bit of all of them in her. I am indebted to each dog we've shared our lives with for helping me bring Poplar to the page with clarity and honesty. Along with a nose for cheese.

As for the Kickstarter, you can help bring more Poplar to the world with your support! Now that we've reached the initial funding goal, anything raised beyond this will go toward the audiobooks of book 2 and 3 in the trilogy, all with Poplar being the best good dog on the page. 

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Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.

Being Vulnerable

I did the thing.

I put together a kickstarter campaign to help fund the audiobook production of LITANY FOR A BROKEN WORLD.

Can I tell you how much I struggled just to consider doing this? How hard it is for me to ask for friends, readers, and strangers to pledge money to my project? It was difficult enough to write my story (as KS defines it) and be clear on what I needed and to put together rewards for backers that would be something interesting and unique that I could offer. The hardest part? The video.

Kickstarter encourages creators to add a short video to their campaign. Fine, I thought, I'll do a slide deck. But best practice seems to be for the creator to talk directly to potential backers. 

AARGH. 

I'm a writer. And a neurospicy one at that. I work in a little room, at my computer, alone (maybe Gigi curled up at my feet), usually dressed in torn jeans and flannel and with major bed head. Being seen is uncomfortable.  

So I split the difference - created a few slides to introduce my video, did the voice over, added about 90 seconds of me talking about the project and myself. 

Total time to put together and record that roughly 2 minute video? Four days. Four full days. Maybe 40 hours of work and at least 20 takes. Video is *hard*. Kudos to creators who work in that medium. I know I couldn't. 

After getting really wonderful feedback on the campaign and making some important changes, I sent it off to the powers that be at Kickstarter for approval. 

If they give me the green light, I'll set the campaign to officially begin by mid May. 

Stay tuned! If you'd like updates, please consider subscribing to my email newsletter Bluemusings. 

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Subscribe to BlueMusings and receive my short story collection, STRANGER WORLDS THAN THESE, as my gift.

 

Blue Musings is a low volume e-newsletter containing notifications about book releases, sales, recommendations, and free original short fiction in multiple drm-free formats. Your privacy will always be respected.

Taking charge, taking chances: publishing my first novel

Sometime in early 2011, it became clear to me that despite my agent's best efforts and despite her getting my Fae novel in the hands of the big, coveted NY publishing houses, The Between wasn't going to be published.  It wasn't because the story wasn't compelling, or the characters flat, or the writing poor.  It was simply a market decision.  I am an unknown quantity as far as the publishing houses were concerned.  They would have to be certain of selling a certain number of books in order to make their profit.  They believed the market for a Fae changeling tale was limited and thus they passed on my story.

Yes, I was disappointed.  Yes, I was frustrated.  After licking my wounds for a day, I began to think about my options. 

Option 1:  trunk the story and work on another.  Well, I was already working on other novels.  In fact I had written 2 others in the time since writing The Between.  But trunk a novel that so many people believe is ready for prime time?  That seemed wrong, somehow.

Option 2: take a leap of faith and publish it on my own.  If you'd asked me 6 months ago, I wouldn't have considered self-publishing as an alternative.  I wasn't sure that I could or wanted to handle all the details and the promotion that would need to happen going it alone.  Nor was I sure I could find an audience in the crowded epub marketplace without resorting to the kind of hard sell pitch that makes me decidedly uncomfortable.

As the year wound on, I came to the conclusion that my path would be both options.  That is, to continue to work with my agent on pitching my novels to the big publishers for a traditional type release AND release The Between on my own.  But instead of throwing the ebook against the Amazon (etc) wall to see what stuck, I decided on a larger plan, a crazy plan,  a plan that included working on a sequel to a book that didn't sell. 

How Lisa Plans World Domination
(or a self-publication release plan)

 I decided to give away The Between, hoping that readers would enjoy it and want to see more.  (I promise, The Between functions as a stand alone.  No cliff hanger endings, but there is definitely more to the story.)  I hoped that readers would be excited to continue with my characters and world and want to read further. But I didn't want to write a sequel 'on spec.' 

Well, along the way, I encountered Kickstarter and decided that this could be a model to help me fund my time to write and release the sequel I want to write for The Between.


One flaw in this plan was the fact that I am committed to working with my agent.  I didn't want to abandon that publishing path for the world of independent publishing. I believe strongly that successful authors will be those who are flexible in getting story in the hands of readers.  When I thought through my free release/kickstarter plan, I realized that I needed to let my agent know what I was considering and see how the agency stood.

Fortunately, my agent and the agency she represents are both supportive of my plan for The Between, even though my success with it would not mean any income for them.  What it could mean, however, is buzz and  a loyal readership, both of which might make me a more attractive risk to the publishing houses. 

Over the past several months, I've been working with a cover artist (Jade's work is fabulous!) and a freelance editor (squee--she complimented my grammar!) to make sure The Between is polished to a high shine.   I will be releasing the novel in various ebook formats through various outlets in the next 4-6 weeks.  The novel will be free and drm-free, released under a creative commons license.

If you are interested in receiving a notice when The Between will be ready to read, please sign up for Blue Musings, my email list.  Since I don't believe in asking someone to buy a pig in a poke, you can also read some of my short fiction to get a sense of my writing, also available to subscribers of Blue Musings.

I am so excited about getting this story in the hands of readers!  I hope you will join me on this journey.

The Marriage of Image to Word

I am in the final stages of preparing to release an ebook version of my YA Fae novel, "The Between."  This is a story that I have worked hard to craft and revise over the course of the past several years.  It's a story I believe in and one that I want to see find its way into the hearts of readers.

To do that, it needs more than what this wordsmith can offer.  It also needs the right images to bring the book to life.

That's not my strength.  Hell, I think it's safe to say that even my stick figures suck.  I can draw a smiley face reliably well, but that's where it ends.

But lucky for me, there are amazing and talented artists out in the world.  Jade is one such artist.  (:waves to Jade!:)

I first 'met' her (met in quotes, as Jade lives in Australia and our group was online.  Someday, I hope to meet her in person!) as part of a writing crit group hosted at Forward Motion for Writers.  In those days, she focused on her writing and I always enjoyed her highly visual work.  That group disbanded, as many crit groups do, mostly due to time and other commitments.  I still chat/email/exchange work with some of the members now, even years after we stopped doing formal crit together.  I re-discovered Jade on Facebook and found that she'd essentially stopped writing to devote herself full-time to her visual art.  And that she was looking for subjects to paint. 

W00t!

I quickly emailed her, asking her if she'd be interested in doing the cover art for "The Between."

Double W00t because she was.

And here are her first character sketches from her conception of my characters Lydia and Aileen from "The Between."

Lydia Hawthorne	Aileen of the Shadow Court

I love the fact that Jade works in oils.  It brings a sense of capturing a portrait of a real person.  I love that, despite these not being exactly what I might imagine the characters looking like, they feel right in a deeper way.  I love that she is getting to know the characters through her brush the way I would through writing exercises.  I love that seeing these images bring my characters to an even fuller life; as if they were waiting for Jade to put brush to canvas.

I can't wait to see what she puts together for the cover image.

Squee! Exciting Project! Stay Tuned!

While I've been out of formal school for a good many years now, I still get excited about September.  It's the time of new beginnings, of change and transition.  Now that we're back home and the school year is about to start, it's time for me to get cracking on the new novel-in-progress.  But that's not the only new thing coming.

Even as we speak, my lovely agent, Nephele Tempest, is shopping around "The House of Many Doors," a YA haunted house story.  We both have high hopes that it will find a home with a publisher who will fall in love with it.  But that doesn't mean I get to sit back and wait for the publishing gods to pour their blessings on me.  That's so not how things work in the brave new world of the writer.  (Though, to be honest, I'm not sure it *ever* worked like that, not for the vast majority of writers, anyway.)

So what am I doing that has gotten me all charged up?

I am getting ready to release "The Between" as a free ebook.

I have an artist working on cover art and am in process to have the book copy edited, now that it's been revised and polished with the input of my agent as well as critique buddies and beta readers. It's a story I'm really proud of and believe it deserves an audience of passionate readers.

Unfortunately, it's in a genre (a YA changeling/Fae story) that the publishers don't want to take a chance on with an unknown writer. (me).  So publishing's loss is your gain.  :)  With the blessing of Nephele and of The Knight Agency, I will be self-publishing "The Between."  I can't give you a release date until I've had a chance to check in with my lovely cover artist.  If all goes well,  I'm planning for a late fall kick off.

If you are interested in being one of the first readers, please sign up for my mailing list (also conveniently located at the top of the sidebar).

While "The Between" tells a complete story (no terrible cliff hangers, I promise!), it has a companion sequel I would love to write.  The truth is, however, it makes little sense to write a sequel to a book that doesn't sell or have readers. So the really exciting new endeavor is that in addition to releasing an ebook version of "The Between," I am also going to open a kickstarter campaign to raise funds to support the writing and publication of the sequel.

If you aren't familiar with the kickstarter model, it's a crowdsourced funding mechanism for creative projects.  There is no risk to potential backers because money pledged is not released unless the entire amount is raised within the project's timeframe.  And each backer is offered rewards depending on the level pledged. 

I'll be updating this blog and my website about the release of "The Between," as well as when the kickstarter campaign goes live.  Please stay tuned, sign up for my mailing list (you'll also get free original short fiction for your reading enjoyment!), and feel free to ask questions.

For all you early-birds, there may even be sneak peaks of the opening chapters. . .