Trusting my subconscious

The Fountain of Trabazon: An Oracle Deck by Julie Pepper

Earlier in the Autumn, I attended the Paradise City art festival in Northampton, MA. It's a beautifully curated art show with a wide variety of artists and craftspeople. I usually wander, doing a lot of 'window shopping' and comparing notes with other ceramics artists, but this time, I stopped short at a piece of art that was filled with color, energy, and narrative.

It turns out that the artist - Julie Pepper - is a local Central Mass artist and that we know folks in common.

Her paintings were also available as the illustrations in a 56 card oracle deck and I bought it.

I had learned a bit about Tarot reading for a novel I wrote some years ago and find reading the cards to be a way to free my subconscious and help me in my creativity.

This morning, I pulled out Julie's deck and prepared to do a past/present/future spread. The question in my mind as I shuffled the deck was about my writing and how to move through the resistance I've felt all year.

Here is my interpretation of the reading, using the Divinitory Guide as a starting place.

The leftmost card represents the past.

Card 31: South Africa
Listen
Spirit is telling you to listen to your body. 
Can you be open to your body's changes?

There have been so many changes for me over the past year. I'm in menopause - a time of great transition both physical and emotionally. In addition, I've been dealing with some nagging health issues. It makes sense that my creative energy has been sapped by the demands of my body and its changes. I've been working hard to accept where I am and embrace this new phase of my life. In many ways, I am stronger than I've ever been, notwithstanding my nagging knee and wrist pain.

The middle card represents the present.

Card 48: Ophelia
Believe
Wearing your heart on your sleeve?
Trust yourself.
Can you believe in your intuition?

It's been a strange year. The year I didn't write. As a writer, perhaps I should have been far more distressed about that than I have been. Instead, I've been focusing on other creative pursuits - knitting, crochet, and yarn spinning, ceramics, working on our farm. And I have been content. I feel a deep sense of being home in my self. Seeing this card and its interpretation is right on the nose for where I am now. My subconscious has known all along that I'm on the right path.

The rightmost card represents the future.

Card 32: Choice
Dance.
Pick your own music, choose your own steps.
Have you forgotten you have choice?

The question on my mind as I prepared the cards was how to return to my writing discipline and will I find that joy again.And considering this card, it occurs to me that my question was one created from a place of fear. And fear is not a healthy place to cling to in making choices. I don't need to be afraid. I am picking my own music and choosing my own steps. Fear doesn't need to trap me: I have the power of choice.

This is what I will tell myself, when the fear rises up again.

Be patient with yourself - so much is changing in your life. You can trust in your own power and intuition. Your choices will take you where you need to go. 

---

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The Importance of Small Joys

I have voted.
My husband has voted.
My sons will vote.
I have talked to friends & neighbors about voting.
I have written post cards for contested races.
I donate money to social justice causes.
I call out racism/sexism/ableism/hatred when I see it.

I still feel powerless.

— LJ Cohen (@lisajanicecohen) October 30, 2018

This was the start of a thread I posted on Twitter this morning. I wanted to keep it all in one place, so I am sharing it here as well.

In every quiet moment, I try to focus on hope. And I repeat this over and over:

May all beings be held in lovingkindness.
May all beings be at peace.
May all beings be free from suffering.

I struggle on social media about boosting all of the terrible acts of evil around us.

Am I adding to the despair?

Or helping to warn people of good conscience?

If I let the evil pass without comment, am I complicit?

If I celebrate small joys, am I minimizing the pain & suffering around me?

If I deny those small joys, am I allowing evil to win?

A dear friend posted this to my FB wall. Because I love word-based puns, & I'm a potter.

I had two loved ones send me silly things today that made me laugh.

I am grateful for the momentary respite. It feels right and good to find something positive to cling to.

Right now, it's a blue VW Bug with the license "Alonzz" my son sent me.

My son took this when he was stuck in traffic this morning. Any day that starts with a Doctor Who reference is a good day.

Maybe that small joy is what allows someone a burst of hope & energy to keep fighting.

So I will keep sharing silly dog pictures & groan-worthy word play.  And I hope you will keep sharing those with me, too.

As we fight. As we keep fighting.

---

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Playing the Long Game

I'm taking a brief break from the long and twisting tale of my adoption search story to return to some hard numbers about my publishing journey. I do this periodically, mainly because I believe in transparency and it helps me maintain perspective.

First caveat: I am almost entirely self-published.
Second caveat: I do very little promotion or paid advertising. I have a small mailing list of under 1000 subscribers. I could probably earn more/sell more if I focused on this side of the business.
Third caveat: I walked away from amazon page reads to keep my books widely available. This resulted in a definite drop in income that I'm starting to recover from. It was a long term choice to eschew the immediate money for long term sustainability.
Fourth Caveat: I have learned I can write/publish a book a year and no more than that.
Fifth caveat: YMMV

This is an overview of my earnings from January of 2012 through yesterday, August 7, 2018.

I've marked when each of my 8 novels were published. They are color coded for the series they belong to.

A few things to notice:

2014 was an anomaly year. In June of 2014, I published DERELICT, the first novel in my space opera series, Halcyone Space. I did little that I hadn't done for my prior books, but this one (forgive the terrible pun) took off like a rocket.

There were fewer books being published in 2014 and Amazon's algorithms (impenetrable to mere mortals, then and now) somehow picked up on a week or so of modest sales and decided to promote the book in its genre newsletters.

Unfortunately, I had no way of capitalizing on this good fortune directly, as Amazon doesn't share its sales intel. While I had my social media links in the book and a link to my newsletter, I had no way to directly promote to all those readers.

One year later, when ITHAKA RISING was published, (book 2 of the series) I had no way to let all the readers of book 1 know it was out. And Amazon didn't magically do it for me. You can clearly see the tiny bump in income for that release. However, sales of all books over the following months were slightly higher than in the prior year.

In 2016, I had greater traction with the release of DREADNOUGHT AND SHUTTLE, again mainly due to the power of Amazon: At that point, I had taken the newer books exclusive to Amazon in their Kindle Unlimited program and a big chunk of my income that year was through page reads.

Book 5 (PARALLAX) debuted in 2017, when I had pulled out from KU to have all the books available wide. My income between mid 2017 to mid 2018 was given a lovely boost by a .99 Bookbub feature on DERELICT.

This second graph is a yearly comparison of earnings between January of 2012, when I published my first novel, through yesterday, August 7, 2018.

With 8 novels in the marketplace, and a completed series, and greater traction on non-Amazon marketplaces (especially Kobo), I'm on track to exceed my KU exclusive/boosted-by-page-reads 2016 income.

If you omit the outlier of 2014, and factor in the switch from Amazon exclusive to wide, the trend is towards higher earnings year on year with more books available in the marketplace. (Note: the 2018 bar is only 7 months of the year and doesn't include the earnings from my latest bookbundle participation.)

Take Home Messages

• Publishing is a long game
• More of your books in the marketplace translates to more potential points of contact and sales
• Amazon is still the biggest player in the market. Some writers choose to stay exclusive with them and can do extremely well on page reads and the specific promotional tools that gives them. 
• Going wide entails risk and it can take a long time to gain audience share outside of Amazon
• Of my 8 novels to date, 4 have earned back their production expenses, the 5th is on track to do so. 3 have not and probably will not. This is the case even in traditional publishing: good sellers bankroll poorer sellers.
• This is not the business to be in if you need a steady income. AKA keep your day job or have a partner with one. 
• Luck and timing play a larger role in financial success in publishing that any of us want to admit. 
• You have no direct control over luck or timing. 
• Hard work is necessary, but it's not enough.
• If you, like me, find creating as necessary as breathing, there is no hope but to keep working. 

---

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Darkness. Balance. Transformation.

There is beauty, too, in the starkness of winter. 

This isn't something I don't already know.

It's not something that I haven't been through numerous times before.

It's not even particularly revelatory or interesting.

It just is.

The ability to be sensitive to emotions and subtle changes around me is both a blessing and a curse. It's what fuels my creativity, but it also triggers anxiety and depression. That very sensitivity means that my filters are porous. It doesn't take a lot to bring me joy, but it also doesn't take a lot to bring me sorrow.

I've had a hard time staying in balance vis à vis my emotions of late. It expresses itself in multiple ways including fatigue, isolating behavior, and difficulty writing. From the outside, it can look like depression and it probably has some of that in the mix, but it also doesn't feel particularly bad. What feels bad is the guilt and irritation I experience from not having gotten things done.

There's a weird energy this time of year. All these subtle and not so subtle messages of Do! Buy! Engage! That kind of external mania turns me inward, as does the shorter days and the cold.

I don't think cyclic shifts in our productivity and activity is bad or wrong. As with most things, it's complicated. It depends.

Right now, I'm almost 2 months behind where I wanted and needed to be in drafting book 5 of the Halcyone Space series. And I'm trying to figure out how to keep on track while honoring my self and my mental and physical health. So bear with me here as I talk it out and work to make sense of it.

*

Creativity doesn't just happen; it's transformative. Both as its process and in its outcome.

In order to create, we must collect elements from the world around us - sensory experiences, emotions, ideas, memories, objects - and change them, imbue them with layers of meaning to form something new. That is one meaning of transformation.

The other is how that new creation, be it a painting, a poem, a novel, a song, or any other expression, changes the creator and the audience.

So we transform to create and our creation has the potential to transform us.

That's a lot of responsibility, along with a process that can seem messy or magical or just impenetrable.

But it starts with that sensitivity. Those porous boundaries. And they don't discriminate in what they take in.

*

Like many folks, I've been following the news cycle. It's nearly impossible to avoid it. My social media feeds used to be full of dogs, recipes, travel, book news, and Doctor Who memes. Now it's overwhelmed by fear, calls to action, outrage. And yes, there's a lot to be feared, much work to do, and to be outraged over. 

I don't think I can isolate myself from everything. Nor would I want to even if I could. Even if I felt no personal responsibility to the world, my creativity cannot live outside of it. That porous filter between me and everything? It can't be set to only take in some things and not others. Not if I want to continue to transform and create. 

And yet, I'm tired. The amount of energy it takes to preserve my emotional safety is enormous. It feels like I've run short of resources for anything else. So my writing suffers. My organization suffers, my social connections suffer. 

*

None of this is to imply I don't also have great joy in my life. While this year has brought incredible challenges, both to the world and to my small part of it, it has also given me much to be thankful for, not the least of which is StarField Farm and the beginning of a new adventure with my husband. Then there is the discovery of my extended family, found after a near 40 year search. (Another blog post for another day.)

*

I live in a part of the world where the days are getting shorter. Where creeping darkness is more than just a metaphor. It feels like the calendar year is accelerating to the end with all of its artificial marking of accomplishments that somehow need to happen in a particular timeframe. 

*

I don't have answers. I am doing the best that I can.

I will end with a few lines from Mary Oliver's brilliant poem, WILD GEESE. I need this reminder.

Perhaps you do, too.

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

--From "Wild Geese" by Mary Oliver

May you find the balance you seek in the days to come.

#SFWApro

---

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Begin Again

I was talking with a friend the other day about feeling lost. I've not written consistently in more than a month and while it's not writer's block, exactly, it does feel like I'm blocked by something.

Deadlines are looming, I have story ideas, yet I'd rather do laundry or dust the floors than sit down and write.

Much of this is a resurgence of free-floating anxiety I've dealt with my whole life. It comes in waves, often tied to nothing tangible I can name. Sometimes it's external stressors that worm their way in past my boundaries and defenses. Certainly there are enough of them in the world right now to fill a endless well.

Like many artists and creative types, my emotional filters are quite porous. Most of the time, what gets in becomes part of my work. It gets processed and transformed. But sometimes, I feel like I'm mired in a stagnant pool of ugliness.

My friend pointed out that she's seen me move through these cycles before and I know she's right. That may be the only saving grace of all of this. I am not panicking about the stalled writing because I know that the words will return.

Part of that process is returning to more regular blogging and returning to journaling and poetry. These rituals are part of priming the pump for my other writing.

And while many writers will talk about the need to write every day, there's also the truth that creativity doesn't emerge from nothing. Humans are not machines that dispense creativity with inputs of food and rest (though those are important).

To live a creative life, I think we need to strike a balance between consistent practice and refilling the creative well. Sometimes we can do both at once. For me, right now, that's not the case.

But I've been here enough times to know this is my normal. 

If you're struggling out there (and goddess knows there's enough to struggle over), remember to breathe. If you write every day, that's great. If you take long breaks where you're not writing, that may be exactly what you need. One doesn't mean you've arrived at the pinnacle of professional writer; the other doesn't mean you're a slacker or hack.

Note to self: read the above paragraph again. This pertains to you, too!

#SFWApro

---

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Finding my way home, again

I'm sure there are a myriad of reasons why I have been feeling rootless and anxious over the past months. Ultimately the reasons matter less than my reactions to them and while I've made my writing and publishing deadlines this year, it hasn't been without difficulty.

And it has been with the knowledge that I've wasted enormous amounts of time, lost to endless checking of FB, Twitter, and Google Plus.

I've tried more organizational techniques than you can count. They all work to some extent, for a little while and then I'm back to losing time at the screen or looking productive while researching yet another organizational system.

The other day, I pushed myself to go strawberry picking. I had had it on my to do list all week, and finally by Thursday, I had run out of excuses and knew that if I didn't do it that day, it wasn't going to happen this year at all. The season is short and doesn't care about my excuses.

So I drove out to the self-pick farm and spent the morning gathering strawberries in the lovely sunshine, under an intensely blue sky.

By that night, I had dehulled, chopped, and weighed out 3 pound portions of the 12+ pounds I'd picked and readied them to make jam. (One canner's worth is already done, the other packages are in the freezer waiting for their turn.)

What I realized in sinking into the process of making jam is the thing I've missed this year has been simple immersion. Doing one thing with my full concentration and intent. It's what ceramics helps me achieve, and I've only been at the studio sporadically.

Concentration is like a muscle. If it's not exercised, it atrophies. My ability to focus fully as been eroded by the coping strategies I turned to when I was under stress. In the end, they are maladaptive strategies and I need to build in more adaptive, more nurturing ones.

But I have to do it in a way that doesn't feel punitive.

Making endless to do lists haven't helped me in the past. It only makes me feel worse when I don't get to what I know will help.

So I'm just going to use this to remind myself how much better I feel when I take regular walks with the dogs, make jam, spend 10 minutes meditating, read a poem, do a bit of yoga, spend time at the studio, free write.

These are things that help me feel more like me. The doing of them is its own reward.

Today I took a long walk with the dogs in the woods. Aside from the ticks, it was a wonderful day. I found myself breathing in a deep and easy rhythm while sun and shadow made patterns on the trees. As I relaxed more and more, I started thinking about an old writing project that has been stalled for more than a year and came up with a different way of looking at the problem.

This is progress. This is self-care. This is coming home.

#SFWApro

---

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Creativity, Frustration, and Burnout

It was the best of jobs, it was the worst of jobs. . .

When people ask me what I do (which is the typical first encounter questions in the US, as if doing is more important than being. When I remember, I ask instead 'What do you enjoy?') I tend to reply with something like this:

"I have the best job in the world. I get to make stuff* up for a living."

And I'm not lying when I say that. I've done other things for work, most notably a 25 year career as a physical therapist. I truly loved being a PT. It was something that was both a job and a calling and in my long career, not only did I directly and positively impact the lives of thousands of patients, I also directly nurtured the careers of dozens of clinicians as well as helped shape the way chronic pain is managed throughout the profession.

Still, being able to live a life of creativity through my writing is amazing. It's what I always dreamed of doing, since early childhood. It's hard to top that with any career, no matter how successful.

There are days where going back to the routine of evaluating and treating a patient seems the simpler path. You know that famous opening line from A TALE OF TWO CITIES? Yeah. Turns out Dickens was right and was probably also talking about the life of a creator. Definitely a best of times/worst of times gig.

Understand, I'm not complaining. No one is holding a gun to my head and forcing me to write for a living. And I went into this gig knowing how mercurial it would be: How long the odds of success. How having a day job or a patron went with the territory. How few writers made a full living from their writing. How much luck and timing counted, even when the hard work was done and I had a solid book, with solid editing, and a solid cover.

Knowing all of that doesn't make it easier to understand why amazing books get overlooked. And I'm not even talking about my own work, here. Over the years I've been working this author/publisher gig, I've had the pleasure of reading some incredible novels and meeting (both virtually and in person) some incredible authors. 

And we're all struggling with having our books discovered. This isn't an indie vs traditionally published dichotomy either. I personally know:

• a NYT bestselling genre author who, trapped in midlist hell, broke with her agent, stopped writing her own titles and now only ghostwrites;
• a traditionally published author with a 3 book deal, the novels have been well reviewed and well received, and she'd drowning in her day job, desperate to be able to leave it and afraid to do so;
• an indie writer whose work is simply astonishing and well-loved by his readership, but who can't seem to get that big break that causes the work to catch the attention of Amazon's algorithms;
• actually, that last point for at least a dozen writers I know and whose work I have recommended over the years. 

I'm not even sure what the point of this blogpost is, to be honest. My fellow writers already know this; they live it. I suspect that most of my blog readers are fellow writers, so we're all singing to the same choir. 

Maybe it's simply to remind myself that this is the work that I love. As frustrating as it can be, I keep stringing words together to make sentences, turn those sentences into paragraphs. And somehow, those paragraphs stack up over and over and end up telling a story.

I'm a storyteller. It's what I do, who I am, and what I love.





*Depending on the audience, that gets changed to 'sh*t'

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"Then they stay dead."

My father with his grandchildren, circa 2001

The line of the title of this post is from a poem by Donald Hall called "Distressed Haiku."

You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.

Then they stay dead.

I've been thinking of that line a lot lately because, like Hall in the poem, I am approaching the anniversary of the death of a loved one.

It's been almost a year since my father died. And yesterday represented the final saying of kaddish (the Jewish prayer recited in honor of the dead) after 11 months of mourning.

Nearly a year ago, I helped him move through the terrible choice to let go and I've been running away from feeling the echoes of that choice ever since. The time I spent with him in those final months were emotionally exhausting. Being fully present with him and letting us both feel the fear and the uncertainty: I never wanted to be the grown-up in that way. That was always his job. His job to guide and suggest, letting me come to my own decisions. I didn't want to do it.

But it didn't matter what I wanted. My father needed me.

No wonder I have been running away from my own emotions for the past year.

The boxes from his apartment are still stacked in the dining room. I haven't looked at them or opened them. As if leaving them unexamined meant I could avoid unpacking the complicated emotions that went with them.

And one of the more complicated things I have steadfastly not been facing is my fears for my children, knowing that I will not always be here for them.If I don't feel like I have the strength to cope when I am 52 and surrounded by family and love and stability, how can I help but worry about them?

I am feeling very mortal and very small these days, cut off from the past and fearful for the future. Which should leave me anchored in the present, except I'm not. I'm just floating in a void of anxiety.

So I started journalling again. Coming back to scratching words on a page is like returning home. This is who I am. Words comprise the force that energizes and grounds me. The truth of what I feel flows from the pen, even if I want to hide from it. Even if I have no idea where the words will take me. Even if no one reads them and I never read them again.

This is the truth I have been running from: my father's death shook me in ways I am still processing. I am afraid. I feel vulnerable and raw in a way that's different from how I mourned when my mother died

I miss my father's wisdom. I miss his clarity.

And I don't like feeling afraid.

---

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On not buying the farm

Our family wasn't looking for a farm. And then the opportunity to purchase a 10 acre property and a fully renovated farmhouse about an hour and fifteen minutes from where we live pretty much fell into our laps.

We'd been talking about our next steps for quite some time, ever since our kids started approaching college age. We knew we weren't going to stay in our current home and in the Boston suburbs forever.

A farm was not something I would ever have dreamed of wanting. I am a self-described 'city mouse'. I lived in Manhattan in my young independent years and it's a city that imprints itself on you. Living in the suburbs was a compromise with my husband (more of a country mouse) and the needs of our family.

But as my life shifted more and more to the life of a writer, the idea of a truly quiet space really began to appeal to me. Now, it had to be in the right area. I needed to be somewhere near a writing/creative community, ideally not far from a college town. In our pipe-dreams, we had settled on the Western MA region, somewhere not far from the Northampton area and the five colleges. That would give my husband his open space and me my connections to culture.

Then a month ago, I got an email. The farmers that run the meat share we belong to were selling a family property and our dream went from theoretical to practical. Long story short, we put in an offer. So did two others.

Yesterday, we found out that the sellers are choosing one of the other offers. And I totally understand why: it's a young couple with several years of farming experience who are ready to start farming the property now. We are a few years away from making the break from where we are. While we would maintain the property - either renting it out or using it as a weekend home/writing workshop space, we weren't ready to commit to it full time.

Am I disappointed? Yes. But here's the interesting thing: I'm not devastated, like I thought I'd be.

Disappointment is a feature (not a bug!) of the creative life. I have been rejected far more often than I have been accepted since I dedicated myself to being a writer. I have learned that so much about 'success' is simply out of my control and that my own abilities are not dependent upon what happens externally.

Honestly, it was far, far harder for me to cope during the several week-long process of waiting for the owners to accept or reject our offer. Living in that liminal state had me anxious and depressed. (I wonder if that's how Schrodinger's cat felt. . . )

Knowing - even if that meant the answer was no - is better than not knowing.

And I don't feel as if this process was in any way wasted. It clarified what my husband and I want in a way that all the daydreaming hadn't. We'll be continuing to look in the Northampton to Worcester region for a small farm property. We're not in any pressured rush and I know we'll find something we love. (And if you know of a place, please let us know!)

So someday we *will* 'buy the farm'. Just not this day. . .

---

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Waiting, on hold

"Hold the line, please" Photo by Muffet, used with permission, cc license

As I type this, I am literally on hold, listening to artificially cheerful and utterly generic music, punctuated by a recorded message about how all the representatives are busy, blah, blah blah.

That is actually an easier 'hold' to deal with then the more abstract issue of waiting for answers.

I feel like I'm in an endless holding pattern in my life and on multiple fronts.

• Waiting for word on my submission to Angry Robot's open fantasy call. The novel I submitted had been requested during their last submission period, and the editor who read it had asked me to revise and resubmit. When I had finished the revision, the editor had left the publisher, so I sent it for their call that ended in January. I have high hopes, but tempered by the knowledge that so much in this business is subjective and what one editor loved, another might be tepid about.
  
• Waiting for the final cover art for DREADNOUGHT AND SHUTTLE.  Chris Howard is an extremely talented artist and writer, who also has a stressful day job, along with his own writing career to manage. I've worked with him before and know what he sends me will rock. I'm just impatient and excited. (And here, take a look at the concept sketch! Love it!) 

This is Dev. She's working on sabotaging the spaceship she's being held captive on.

 

 

• Waiting to hear about an idea I had to create a choose-your-own-adventure type text game from the fantasy world of my Changeling's Choice novels.
  
• Waiting/hoping to see improvement from a medical treatment a family member is undergoing. It's not something I can talk about without betraying confidences, but it's something that's been weighing heavily on my mind and heart, and something I have absolutely no control over.
  
• Waiting to hear back from the sellers of a farm/farmhouse in Western Mass. We're looking to 'buy the farm' (don't worry - that's literally, not figuratively!) as the next step in our pre-retirement life. I've seen the property and it's wonderful. My husband has not been able to get out there b/c of work and travel, but we're hoping to schedule a time to see it the weekend of April 23/24 and keeping fingers crossed that it's still available.

This is where I want to write all the words!

•  Waiting to hear back from several authors I've contacted about reading/blurbing DREADNOUGHT AND SHUTTLE. These are all writers I have some connection with and I did my best to craft a polite and compelling request, but everyone's time is limited, and I know what I'm asking is a large favor in terms of time and commitment. 

I'm not someone who does well with ambiguity. Honestly, I'd prefer a 'no' to silence, so having all these things up in the air makes for a very discomfited Lisa.  I am doing the best I can to stay focused and positive and spent a good chunk of yesterday brainstorming for the choose-your-own-adventure game as well as the final copyedits for DREADNOUGHT AND SHUTTLE. Today, I'm actually feeling more grounded and settled. Work is definitely my antidote to anxiety.

I'm definitely hanging in there and keeping the faith in writer-land.

#SFWApro

---

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Fail Again. Fail Better.

Photo by Feral78 used under CC license, with attribution

So far, this year - and it's not even the end of the first month of the year - I've already done 2 things that challenge me.

The first was to craft a short story that fits as a prequel to the universe of Halcyone Space. The second was to submit a manuscript to a publisher during their open call.

The short story was hard for two reasons - first, short fiction doesn't come easily to me. Creating a story is  vastly different than creating a novel and most of my short stories end up reading either like ultra-compressed (and ineffective) novels or the first chapters of a novel. Where I have been successful is in writing more poetic/literary speculative fiction short stories that are less plot driven than idea driven. But for this project, I needed to capture the narrative flow of the novels in a format that worked for a short story. AARGH.

The second reason it was a challenge is that I needed to match/sync up with what I have already written in 2 published and 1 in process novel for this universe AND make it work as a standalone short story. It's the problem of continuity on a whole other scale.

The submission challenge involved a full revision of a project I had written a number of years ago and make sure it was at the point where I would be proud to have it stand next to my recent work. Then I submitted it to Angry Robot for their open call.

Why was this a challenge? Let me tell you - writing something new, starting from scratch is far easier than doing a revision of an old work. Think of the difference between building a new home and renovating one from 100 years ago. You have to find the healthy foundation and bring everything around it up to code.

And submitting it for publication consideration means that rejection (my old friend/nemesis) is a very likely outcome. It's also letting go of a degree of autonomy and creative control I've enjoyed on all my own imprint's projects.

I decided to go ahead with submitting OATHBREAKER'S PRICE to Angry Robot because I'm focusing on the Halcyone Space books under my Interrobang Books imprint. I had the manuscript available and I didn't have a publication slot for it this year. I'm not fully convinced that going with a publisher will be a significantly different experience than being my own publisher, but I'm interested in finding out.

And before the month is out, I'll be starting on my third out-of-my-comfort-zone project: a collaboration with writer Rick Wayne on a novel whose inception happened in a strange conversation thread on google plus. I've never written with someone before and I'm nervous, but also excited and energized by the thought of it.

This is what I believe: The life of an artist of any stripe means living balanced on the edge of fear and joy, being driven by both. I believe the act of creation is essentially an act of sacrifice. Being willing to fail is part of that sacrifice. If I don't challenge myself, if I'm not willing to reach past my limits, I back away from that place where what I create is greater than what my mundane self can imagine.

So, yeah, this is the year I'm planning to fail better.   


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That was then, this is now

December 1, 2010: The fire started in the basement.

My office, after the firefighters smashed every window on the 1st floor.

It was 5 years ago today that we were woken up at 5:30 am by the wail of smoke detectors.

PLEASE make sure you have working smoke detectors and don't take the batteries out if they go off while you're cooking and annoy you. That's their purpose.

It was 5 years ago today that we fled our smoke-filled, burning home in bare feet and pajamas.

Don't worry about what you'd take with you. Just go. Make sure everyone in your family understands that and has an exit plan. You have no idea how fast smoke can fill a house. And it can kill. 

It was 5 years ago today that we stood outside, shivering in the pre-dawn cold watching our house burn and hearing the sirens come.

It was 5 years ago today that we were so damned lucky to be alive and unharmed, huddled together, holding onto our dog, who had the good sense to be barking her head off by the door instead of hiding somewhere in the house.

It was 5 years ago today when I understood what was important and what was not.

I have a different relationship to things now. I want less clutter. Fewer things. 

 It was 5 years ago today when I started to learn about the importance of community and accepting help and support from others. 

It was hard for me to accept support. Some days, it still is, but I'm working on it. 5 years on, and I can still tear up thinking about the generosity and caring of the people in my life: neighbors, family, friends both local and distant, people I knew in 'meatspace' and those I had met through the 'net. 

And 5 years later, I think this may be the first anniversary since the fire when I didn't think about it all day. In fact, I had pretty much forgotten what day it was until just a few minutes ago. And I'm not even sure what reminded me. 

I'm no longer spooked by sirens. The smell of a fireplace no longer sends my heart pounding. (But I still can't drink the smokey scotches - they taste the way my house smelled after the fire.) I don't have nightmares anymore. I do look for smoke detectors everywhere I go and I always consider how I would get out of a building or a home in case of an emergency. I suspect I will do that for the rest of my life.

Mostly, I remain grateful. Grateful for my husband's alertness and quick reflexes. He was the one who realized that annoying sound wasn't his pager or the alarm clock and got us all roused and out of the house quickly - maybe in 45 seconds after the detector went off. Grateful that my family (and pup!) were unharmed. Grateful that we had insurance and could have our home back. Grateful for a brick house that we could come back to. Grateful for the love and support we received when we needed it.

If there is anything I would urge you to do it would be this: check your smoke detectors, accept help when you are in need, and always remember to pay it forward.

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Memories and Melancholy

Thanksgiving, 2010 with my cousin's family in NH

Five years ago, we went up to my cousin's family's house for Thanksgiving. It was 2010. My father was in his first years on dialysis. My mother's dementia became more and more evident. I had started that year with three main goals: to move my parents from their isolated home in a golf community my parents could no longer participate in to an apartment where they would have support, convince my father that my mother needed supervision when he was in dialysis, and to connect him to a caregiver support group.

I felt like a superhero: I accomplished all three at the start of that year.

In the fall of 2010, my older son was a senior in High School. My younger son, a freshman. For the first time in a long time, the two of them had become friends. I had just entered my second year of writing full time after leaving my physical therapy practice and finding a literary agent to represent me.

I felt settled into a new phase of my life, seeing the time where my children would be leaving the nest and my husband and I would have the chance to renew our focus on our primary relationship as a couple.

A few days after Thanksgiving, on December 1, 2010, the screaming of smoke detectors shattered my complacency. It was a cold winter's morning and my husband - used to carrying a pager for decades and with lightning fast reflexes - realized our house was on fire and roused all of us. We fled our burning home at 5:30 am, barefoot and in our pajamas.

A year of displacement followed where we were displaced, not only in where we lived, but in the rhythms of that life. While we joked about finding easier ways to remodel, wondered if our dog had been smoking in the basement again, and genuinely rejoiced at  our good fortune to be alive and unharmed, there was a deep sadness and unease that permeated the entirety of 2011.

The following Thanksgiving, we were back in our rebuilt home. Our older son came home from college, and we thought we had resumed the course of our lives.

But there is no going backwards, only forging a new normal. In the four years since the fire, our extended family has dealt with significant losses: Illness. Deaths. Suicide attempts. The words don't seem so overwhelming, but the reality they represent was.

This past year, the new normal for me has been a lot about surrendering control. Not of my own actions and choices, but of my ability to carry burdens for others. It has been a difficult lesson. Far easier to watch your life burn in a house fire than to truly realize that you cannot ease another's pain.

It has been six months since my father died. Since I helped him make his choice to stop dialysis and enter hospice care. He was 92 and had no regrets or unfinished business. He faced the end of his long and rich life with a dignity and grace I can only hope to emulate. I miss him terribly. While it had been many, many years since I had had Thanksgiving with my parents and extended family, I have a lifetime of memories from my growing up where my father was the king of that holiday. He did the lion's share of Thanksgiving cooking and I used to wake up to the smell of roast turkey basting in a mix of white wine, citrus, and apples.

It's hard for me to think of Thanksgiving without also thinking of him. How capable and loving he was. How gentle and how wise a father. How much the person I am today is because of him.

The writer in me looks at this all and sees the cliches. If I were grading this essay, I'd circle that last bit in red and ask for specifics. But I don't want to share them today. I want to hoard the memories - small and large - that make up who he was and what he meant to me.

As I write this, the rest of my family - my husband and grown sons - are waking up. And I realize the boys have their own sets of Thanksgiving memories, forged over the years they have seen their parents cook a feast together in the small kitchen that none-the-less holds food and love in a tight relationship.

And I understand that my father is here, with me. My mother, as well. What we love is never lost. Like the laws of conservation of energy, it is only transmuted into something else.

Tonight, I will raise a glass to all of it. The losses. The pain. The laughter. The joy. And be thankful. Always thankful.

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Seeing the Flaws

Work from April 2013

When you've been practicing something for some time, there's a good chance you're going to get better at it. Which is totally a good thing.

I've been working with clay - handbuilding and throwing on the wheel - for 8 years at this point and I'm finally in a place where I feel I have basic mastery of form and process. I can sit down and create an intentional shape, a planned set of items, even execute a project I'd only imagined and have it work.

My skills have definitely improved significantly from where I was even a year ago. Also a good thing.

What becomes difficult, is that my critical eye gets better even faster than my hands.

I met a friend for lunch at her house last week (:waves to Bliss:) and realized she had one of the mugs pictured above. I cringed. Looking at it, I realize there's more wrong with it than right. I could make a list of the flaws in the work, from centering to shape and proportion, to finishing, to glaze application. What I am making now is far, far better than these.

Yet my friend loves her mug. It's even one of her favorites.

I think she would be mad if I gave in to my impulse to smash it and bring her a new one!

It's a good thing the mug is at her house and not mine. If it were here, I would smash it. Not from anger or frustration, but from a position of not getting overly attached to a thing, and realizing that each item of ware I create teaches me something. Once I've learned the lesson, I no longer have to keep the product. It's the process that's most valuable.

'starry night' mugs, 2015

But another lesson here is in learning to let things go.

We are all works in progress and not finished products.

This is also true of my writing.

I finished ITHAKA RISING in 2014 and after the usual process - revisions, readers, revisions redux, editor, production - it was published earlier in 2015.  Today I finished reviewing the audio book files for the story. All 15+ hours of them.

And I have to admit, there were places where I cringed in the listening. I heard all the awkward word choices, the places where character wobbled, pacing issues, inconsistencies in descriptions. It was like looking at a bowl I'd thrown a year ago and only seeing where it wasn't centered.

But, here's the thing: perfect doesn't exist. Not in handmade pottery. Not in paintings. Not in music. And not in writing stories. The craftsman is probably always going to be hardest on the finished work. What I came to realize, after having to listen to several sections over again, was that the story didn't deserve to be 'smashed'. It was . . . it *is* a good story. I can distance myself from it, just a bit, to see it through a reader's eye and see where it has a strong shape. Where it is pleasing. Where it entertains and moves. That it works.

I can see both the flaws and the strengths and be satisfied, yet still be determined to hone my craft.

Because that is what artists do. Between now and next year, I will throw hundreds of cylinders on the wheel. I will lay down tens of thousands of words on the page. If I am true to the process, what I produce then will be better than what I can produce now.

And that, too, is a good thing. 

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Write the Next Book

Anyone have a defibrillator?

Expectations. They can be brutal and tricky beasts. As much as we (okay, I) work hard to stay in the moment, it's damned difficult not to give in to disappointment when things don't immediately work out the way you had hoped.

The launch of ITHAKA RISING, book 2 in my Halcyone Space series, has been one of those events where I feel both elated and depressed. Elated because the book is in the world, is selling, and is garnering excellent reviews and recommendations from readers and writers I trust.

"Usually I can point out one or two reasons why a novel wows me, too, but this one was just cover to cover awesome. Expect great characters, who actually grow and change and have to deal with new problems; a nail-biter of a plot, that manages to be both twisting and absorbing at the same time, settings that expand to take us to new and scary-thrilling places in this universe, and the kind of SF adventure you probably haven't read in a very, very long time (if at all.)"
     --Lynn Viehl (AKA Paperback writer)

 "space opera with a brain and a heart."  -- Mike Reeves-McMillan (Netgalley reviewer)

 So why depressed? Because compared with the launch of book 1 (DERELICT), ITHAKA RISING is flatlined. (Comparisons - they are evil.) It's hard to know why a book breaks out; certainly I didn't do anything significantly differently for each of these two novels, and, in fact, I believe ITHAKA RISING to be a better story. And I'm this strange mix of hopeful and confident that it will find its readership, even if that journey is slower than it was for the prior book.

It would be easy to let my discouragement get the better of me - and, yes, I have done my share of moping with my fellow writers (expectations - it's hard not to have them) - but I know I have no control of what happens after a book is released into the world. Sure, you can tinker with price, run ads, do an internet/social media blitz, but I'm not convinced those things will be the secret sauce that gets a book noticed.

As. Nathan Lowell, a writer friend/mentor keeps reminding me, your best advertisement is to write the next book.

So, I'm writing the next book. Book 3 in the Halcyone Space series has a working title: DREADNAUGHT AND SHUTTLE, and is the interlocking 'cat and mouse' stories of Micah vs the drug cartels and Ro & company vs the Commonwealth. I'm about 10% into the story and finding my writing groove again.

And there are other novels in the pipeline, including a joint project with a writer I respect the hell out of (waves to Rick Wayne!), and a revise/resubmit of a fantasy title to a medium-sized publisher.

While huge sales numbers and stratospheric rankings are the stuff that author's dreams are made of, what I'm really focused on is creating enough of a back list that selling in modest numbers will allow me to make a basic living as a writer. This is an expectation that I know is within my reach.

I also know I have the discipline and the focus to get there. ITHAKA RISING represents my 5th published novel, but in reality, the other three are low sellers - primarily because they don't appeal widely to an eBook buying readership. I don't regret writing and releasing them and it is my hope that they will also find their right readers in time, however, my functioning backlist currently consists of two novels: The Halcyone Space books. That is not sufficient to be self-sustaining.


In the next two years, I plan to add three additional novels to that pool. And I have no plans to stop writing anytime soon.

(#SFWApro)

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"Art isn't easy"

Order
Design
Tension
Balance
Harmony

These are the words spoken by the character of George Seurat in Sondheim's "Sunday in the Park with George" at the beginning of the scene in which he pulls all the elements together for his famous painting.

I am not a painter, but this process of bringing disparate elements into order, into harmony? I understand that. It's what I struggle with every time I put words on the page. 

Aside from being a big fan of Sondheim's work in general, I am a huge fan of this show, in particular. I have seen in many times and have never failed to be moved to tears by it.

Art isn't easy.

Right now, in particular, I am thinking about the scene that opens Act II, where the modern George (great grandson of the artist) is trying to raise money and interest in his newest project. He sings:

Art isn't easy.
Even if you're smart.
You think it's all put together,
But then something falls apart
Art isn't easy.
Overnight you're a trend,
You're the right combination-
Then the trend's at an end,
You're suddenly last year's sensation.

It's so easy to feel like you are irrelevant. That no one shares your vision, or even cares. That you don't matter. Because we have learned to conflate what is worthwhile with what sells. And the more something sells, the more important is must be.

Our culture believes that and if we're not so incredibly careful, we can, too.

I have a vision for my writing. I believe in my characters and their stories and I want others to believe in them, too. 

As George sings:

A vision's just a vision
If it's only in your head.
If no one gets to see it,
It's as good as dead.

So we reach out of our comfort zones and talk about ourselves, our process, our stories, hoping to connect with patrons, readers, collectors, all the while feeling as if somehow each tweet, each post, each promotion cheapens the magic. The way explaining a joke renders is no longer funny. And all the while, story pulls at me.

I'd love to say that what other people think about my work doesn't matter. But I'd be lying. It matters because I'm sharing a part of myself. If no one reads it, no one can criticize, but then how will it live if no one sees it?

Keep Moving On

Sondheim gets it. Gets it on such a deep, aching level that over 30 years later, his work still speaks to me. At the end of the musical, Marie tells George:

Stop worrying if your vision is new.

Let others make that decision—they usually do.
You keep moving on.

Perhaps you need a little encouragement. I know I did, today. If nothing else, watch this second video. Listen with your full self. Marie knows the truth of it:

Anything you do, let it come from you.
Then it will be new.
Give us more to see…

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"Then they stay dead"

You think that their
dying is the worst
thing that could happen.

Then they stay dead.

         - Donald Hall, from Distressed Haiku

Eight weeks ago today was my father's funeral. The first days passed in a haze of exhaustion and stunned disbelief. The first month was filled with moments of sudden pain as memories would catch me up, or events would trigger a fierce longing for him.

At the one month mark, I removed the torn ribbon the rabbi had pinned on my shirt at the funeral. While I am not a deeply religious person, there is some wisdom in the rituals around death and pinning that ribbon on each morning for 30 days was not just a reminder for me (as if one forgets the loss), but also a reminder for others to be patient with me. That I had just suffered a loss. That I was actively grieving.

This past month has been one of healing and returning to routine. Or so I thought.

This morning, I was overwhelmed by a terrible longing to talk to my dad. It came out of nowhere. It's not a 'special' day - not a birthday, not a holiday, nothing happened to trigger a particular memory. I just realized how long it had been since we spoke last. I miss him. And the realization hit that each time I thought of him, it would be longer and longer since I told him I loved him, hugged him, or just talked about some mundane thing or another.

And those lines from Donald Hall's poem burst into my mind. Then they stay dead. 

The death of my father isn't my first loss and it won't be my last, but for whatever reason, it's hit me the hardest. My mother died 3 years ago this September, and her's had been a slow decline, her memories and cognition worn away by dementia. I think I said my goodbyes to her long before her actual passing. But my father was lucid and mentally vital until just before the end. We had several weeks together in the last months of his life where we had deep and honest conversations. There was nothing left unsaid. No unfinished business remained between us. And he chose to stop dialysis with a full understanding of his decision, with grace, with dignity.

I miss him.

It's true that the dead never leave us as long as our memories of them stay alive. There is some comfort to be found there. This raw feeling will not be with me forever - and perhaps that is part of this pain. Perhaps I am holding on to the grief as a way to hold on to my father.

He'd be the first to tell me to let it go. To assure me that it will be fine. That he will always be there for me.

That is what I choose to hold onto today: the memory of his love.

 ______________