A good stopping place

When I was a kid and my mother wanted to pry me away from whatever I was reading, she used to ask me in her gentle way to set down the book, "when you reach a good stopping place."

I think I've reached a good stopping place for this blog. I will have a new novel coming out soon, Bride of the Living Dead, and I need to stop looking in the rear view mirror and focus on what's right in front of me.

I started writing this blog in late December of 2005, and it's been fun, self-indulgent and educational. I learned, as usual, by doing things wrong--or at least making my own choices, which may look wrong even when they are right for me!

Lesson one, obscure blog titles are probably not the way to go!

Lesson two, complicated concepts like looking back 30 years compared with now..... What can I say? I'm a novelist, I like a lot of layers!

Although I continued my orange notebook listing books I read until December of 1982, I feel okay about leaving my 30-year-old, 30-years-ago self in 1979. That was when my life began to change and deepen in many ways. My mother died in 1980 and a few months later I met and began to live with the man I would marry. I published my first novel in 1988.

Now here's the scary part. I'm not really giving up blogging. I will keep in touch in the more immediate, unpolished (eek!) form of Live Journal. Simple concept, simple title lynnemurray.livejournal.com

Usually I hide behind material that I've revised and flea-combed for months or, at the very least, days. When Laurie Edison suggested Live Journal, my first thought was: "Fine, for her, she writes about making jewelry, that's colorful, concrete, three-dimensional and intriguing."

Myself, I sit in a trance spinning webs of words. At least spiders get out and slaughter the occasional housefly, but I leave housefly capture to the cats. That's pretty much my life. Who wants to read that? The jury's out on who will read it. But I did get the idea to write a bit about writing, getting Bride ready to go to press, doing revisions on my next (Vampire) book, forging ahead on my ongoing (Ghost) manuscript, book promotion (a major obsession) and all that jazz.

I've been doing guest blogs for Body Impolitic--the next one will be on writing fat fiction. Laurie and Debbie have invited me to blog more frequently. I shall, and I will put up links here when I do.

Thank you for hanging out with me on memory lane! I will leave the archives of this blog where they are and simply post the forwarding address for new stuff. Feel free to visit me in the present day. My new motto is

word salad, word soup, words on fire!

Live large and prosper!

Lynne

Happy publication note and low tech freebie

I wanted to let the select few (the happy few I hope!) who read this blog know that I will have a small ebook coming out soon in Holly Lisle's series The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About... My first entry for this series will be The 33 Worst Mistakes Writers Make About the Legal System.

Do you think a better title would be "...About Courthouse Drama" or "...About the Law"? The book will encompass both of those, and I am entertaining suggestions up until the end of February.

Holly Lisle's online shop, where my ebook will be soon!

Okay, now for the freebie! It is a very useful 52-page ebook, in the form of an Adobe PDF file that Holly created from her Create-A-Plot Clinic. I have the Adobe file and permission to send it out free, but I have hit the limit of my expertise in blogger, so I am hoping I can send it to anyone who wants it as file attachment. You can email me at the link on this blog. I won't put you on a mailing list--believe me I don't know how to do THAT yet either--LOL! I hope to learn, but this is just a one-shot request thingie! If someone requests this and it doesn't work I will modify this post and try another strategy. I may be low tech, but I am nothing if not persistent!

Researching Holly Lisle books on writing...more to come

Holly Lisle's fiction spoke to me so much that I was interested to see her books on writing and I am now checking them out.



Picking up my fluttering manuscript pages from the slow-motion train wreck of my last year...more to come -- oops! Clicking on the cover takes you to a more expensive option, the singular ebook I'm looking at can be reached through this link
21 Ways to Get Yourself Writing

Eeeeeeeeeeeebook adventures

“A” book by any other name might be “E” book? Hmmm. I’m not sure what an ebook is, except that I just wrote one, or Jaki Girdner and I did….kinda. I’m calling it an “E for Experimental”-book because the next ebook I have in mind involves sex and may actually have some hope of selling a few copies. The current one is also E for Exploring the ebook world.

Jaki Girdner and I put together Writer-to-Writer Reminders, Tickles, Tips and Tricks. Between us, we’ve had a total of 22 books published—16 for her, 6 for me. We should know some things worth sharing. The tips take place as a dialog between two writers: Ms. Reminder, who is extraordinarily organized, with tickle files for events planned years in advance, and Ms. Amnesia….well, she has a little problem with authority, outlines and planning ahead. We had a good time writing 52 tips, one a week for a year and an extra one to finish.

With a little help from a graphically sophisticated friend, this was translated into an Adobe PDF, and officially put out as an ebook.

As Hamlet says, "the rest is silence." Silent meditation? Actually last weekend it was silent medication because my back went out the minute the book was all Eeee-ed up, and introduced to Paypal.

Coincidence? I think not.

Of course any novelist is capable of functioning with zero feedback and encouragement. It goes with the territory. Most of the fiction being published even by large presses as such a minimal promotion budget that authors learn quickly to use any publicity idea they can manage to get the word out about their books. Like many authors, I’ve become obsessed with this subject. Not particularly expert, just obsessed.

But how to promote an ebook? Bookstores wouldn't be involved. Hmmm. Repeated internet searches yielded predatory websites that had more in common with “work at home” and multi-level marketing scams than they did with anything remotely applicable to promotion of entertaining material that someone might want to read.

Obviously never telling anyone about the book isn't going to work either.

So, now that my back is better, mentioning Writer-to-Writer Reminders on this blog is the next baby step into the Mountains of E-Madness. You can probably tell I've been re-reading H.P. Lovecraft--but that was this past week--30 years ago I was hitting the library like a locust infestation.


May 4 to May 20, 1977 I read, in whole or in part:

SnowBlind, A Brief Career in the Cocaine Trade, Robert Sabhag

The Fight, Norman Mailer

The Omnivorous Ape, Lyall Watson

The Sound of Two Hands Clapping, Essays by Kenneth Tynan
Sigh, theatrical criticism, Olivier playing all the great classic roles in the 1940's and 50's, I have a weakness for theatrical critical essays, and Tynan was such a superb writer.

Three Tales, Paul Bowles
Note: Esoteric almost to the point of nonexistence

Tiny Tim: An Unauthorized Biography, Harry Stein
Tiny Tim

Intent on Laughter, John Bailey
Couldn’t find much on this, out of print. But when I looked for it, I found and loved, this website.

About Those Roses, Frank D. Gilroy

A Burnt Out Case, Graham Greene
For me the anticipation of reading Greene is always more fun than the actual reading. He just can't seem to make me savor his world-weary depression.
Ya gotta grant him the prize for angst, though.

How the Comedy Writers Create Laughter, Larry Wilde
Turns out this guy is still around, and he invented National Humor Month (April, I missed it, who knew?) I like his good-humored web site.

The Plays of Ferenc Molnar (1929, intro only)
I still have the quote I got from Molnar, slightly paraphrased, on the wall above my writing desk: “Shakespeare was a genius. The rest of us must simply strive to be honest.”

Translation, Stephen Marlowe
Note: very disturbing cover art. Poorly written story


May 4 to May 20, 2007 I read:

The Orchid Thief,Susan Orlean
I also watched the film Adaptation wherein screenwriter suffers so much turning The Orchid Thief into a script, that he takes that struggle as the film's subject matter. Reading the book after watching the film, I could see his problem. The book was essentially a magazine article on intercut with lots of background and information. Interesting but not essentially a story. The movie also had one of my favorite writing teachers, Robert McKee, teaching his seminar on Story. Very cool.

Blood Bound, (Mercy Thompson Series, Book 2): Books: Patricia Briggs
Moving slowly back into the tamer paranormal novels I like so much

At the Mountains of Madness, H.P. Lovecraft
An old favorite, a paperback that must be nearly 40 years old. I’ll talk about obscene vegetation another time.