jdlwhitehead

Work-In-Progress

So I’ve had a break from everything this week. It was odd to realize that the book’s only been available for a month. Now it’s time to continue shifting to the future with my work.

I’ think I’ve only missed one day of writing this week, and I believe I’ve added a thousand words to the document. I finally found the right voice for the female main character, and I can see the shift in the work. The words are coming a lot easier now as I type. I hope to finish off another section in the next few days, then start the next scene I want to work on.

Yesterday I did something risky and read the first novella again just to see how it held up. I think it does. I already know where I want to fill out some areas, and I’m sure once I read the whole work together when I finish the second novella, I’ll find even more work to do and revise and add. But I feel a lot more confident approaching it now, more like I felt when I first started working on it

My next book tour stop is in Natchez for the Mississippi Librarians Association on October 10. There will be books for sale at that event so that should be a good opportunity to move some product. Hurricane Baby seems to be moving at a steady pace, selling some every week it’s been out. That’s all I can ask for.

So I suppose that’s all the updates I have today. Happy reading to everyone!

This Year’s Mississippi Book Festival

Before I started writing today about the Mississippi Book Festival, I went back and reread my experience with the event last year. I didn’t know it when I wrote then, but I was only a month away from getting the offer to publish Hurricane Baby from Madville Press. I read it and I can feel the longing and hope in the words that someday I would attend as an official panelist and get a peek behind the curtain of what being a published writer might look like.

And yesterday I found out.

I was proud to be selected as a member of the panel “Mad About Madville” with the other two Mississippi writers Madville Publishing had released books from this summer, Steve Yates and R. J. Lee. Our moderator was Darden North, a local MD who writes medical thrillers along his professional career. Our panel was mid-afternoon and had about fifteen attending–the big draw of the Festival across the street was LEVAR BURTON and JESMYN WARD in conversation; that was some tough competition. But we all three got to discuss our books for an hour and that was just the best feeling ever.

We had the opportunity to sign books that people bought at the event, and I had one young lady come up and ask me to sign her copy of my book. But it was special in that I didn’t know her; she didn’t know me; she had just somehow heard about the book or picked it up out of curiosity and wanted to read it. That was so touching to me and made my day.

It was strange being on the other side. I got to visit author-only hospitality areas; I got to meet several authors I knew only by reputation. I felt every once in a while the felling that you know, being part of this is AMAZING.

The rest of the month is slow for me as far as events are concerned. I hope to catch up at work and on my work-in-progress with some fresh inspiration from the Festival. Happy reading to all!

Calming Down

Well, the rush of launch activities is slowing down a bit. I’ve had most of my media appearances I had scheduled go off without a hitch. I have one more article coming out that I know about on September 4 from a local online news source called Magnolia Tribune. Then I have all those scheduled appearances from now to January–I may have more come up in the next few months to be scheduled at a later date.

I’ve made it pretty good. I didn’t say anything I wish I could take back, everyone I’ve dealt with has been so nice and professional, and I didn’t trip-wire into being overly excited or get full of myself, which I consider a good outcome. And I sold some books! That’s the best part! 🙂

I think now it’s time to try my hand back at the work-in-progress. It’s going to be difficult still, because with all these craft questions I’ve been asked in interviews, I’m hyperaware of how my choices I make resonate with readers. I need to shut all of that off and just write one word after another. That sounds easy enough, doesn’t it?

So far I’d rate my author experience as A+! Happy writing to you all!

FIRST Book Signing

(Pic overhead courtesy of Bob Whitehead)

Whew. Yesterday turned out to be a thrilling day. We had a lot more people than I was expecting based on my emails, texts, and Messenger posts. I joked that I guess you find out how many friends you have when they all text you that they’re not coming.

But we wound up having a good crowd, almost sold all the store’s books, and the store asked me to sign the ones they hadn’t sold, so now they can’t return them to the company that published them.

It was a cap-off to a good week; a book review ran Sunday in the closest thing Mississippi has to a statewide paper; I had a quick LIVE TV interview on a local feel-good news show as well. Next week I have other article running in two fairly large newsletters that I hope will turn well out as well, then a talk on a statewide talk-news-station on Thursday.

Then we take out a week for my daughter’s wedding, and I kick off traveling again the next week.

Y’ALL.

I am now a PUBLISHED AUTHOR. Looking at that sentence, it just barely computes. I DID IT. I set out to do it, and I did it!

My moderator for my book talk and I have known each other professionally almost 25 years now. He said in his introducing of me, that when he first started dealing with me in my freelance career when he was a publicist (I had not heard this story) that whenever I called for information or whatever, that in his office, I was called “the bulldog freelancer” because if you didn’t do what I asked right off, I’d be calling you for it right back for it if I didn’t get it.

I’m going to hold on to that. In my work-in-progress, at my job, selling this book–I’m a bulldog who doesn’t quit.

TWO DAYS!!

Hurricane Baby: Stories releases into the reading public two days from now. It seems so bizarre that right on this date a year ago, I just gave up on the book emotionally. I had two more publishers I was considering sending it to once their reading periods opened up, and then I was going to sit back until the rest of the rejections rolled in. And I was going to never create writing for publishing again. I would stick to my job at the press I worked for and just file thar dream of publishing a book in a drawer in my mind and lock it shut. Delete all my writing of my computer files, the whole works. But I was going to wait until I got my 71st rejection to do that. Giving it time for the process to wind down.

Then three weeks after thinking all of that over, Madville Publishers offered me a publishing contract–and now here we are.

I’m going to take the opportunity to thank some people for their help in making this come true:

Lori, the first person I showed any of it to, who saw the story’s promise before I even did

Chris, one of my editors who suggested that they could be more to the story than I had

Karen, Mary Jane, Jesse, and Candy, the first people who read the whole book after I finished it.

Beth and John, who swapped manuscripts with me.

Billy Watkins for giving me his agent’s email address

Jim Dickerson, who asked, “Do you have any more stories like this?”

Dawn Buck and the whole crew at New Stage Theatre who gave me a chance to see the work in action as a play in 2010

Kendall Dunkelberg, for founding the MFA program at Mississippi University for Women

Mary Miller’s fiction workshop, who were the first ones to see it the first story another ten years later and gave great feedback on it.

Rob, Renee, Shannon, Debbie, Keslsey–all who read the first version of the short-story collection and gave great honest feedback throughout this entire process

Cheryl and Laurie, who I met and jelled with at A Smokelong Summer 2022 workshop and who so graciously accepted my offered exchange of manuscripts for critiquing purposes

Christopher, for giving me the scholarship to attend a Smokelong Summer.

Steve, for reading that first book contract and giving me advice on the finer points.

Lauren, for opening so many doors for me to get the word out about my work

Katie, for giving me space in her magazine to tell the faith story behind the whole endeavor

Kim, my publisher who has answered all my pesky questions often sent to her late at night.

Mike, for recommending to Kim for it to be published

Courtney-Ann, who got me on the radar for TV coverage.

Tracy for taking my book for review,

RJ Lee who did such a wonderful first review

May, Ellen Ann, CT, Steve, for their blurbs on the cover

Jacqui for a stunning cover

John and the crew at Lemuria bookstore, Murph at the Author Shoppe, and Carolyn at Book Mart for taking a chance on stocking the book

Mic, who answered my panicked Facebook message two days ago on how to get my unboxing video back after I deleted it, and who solved the problem.

Rebecca, for taking me sight unseen into her live radio show to talk about the book on the exact day nineteen years after Hurricane Katrina made landfall

Jim at the Louisiana Book festival and Ellen at the Mississippi Book Festival for honoring me with a space as a panelist

CT for a possible future event

Robert Kneuhle in arranging stops on a book tour for our Madville Trio throughout Mississippi.

And Bob who hears me prattle on about book stuff and loves me enough to listen.

Of Two Minds

I am realizing that I might need to take a break from my work-in-progress, Looking for Home. I’m in the last third of the book, and I suddenly just dread sitting down, opening it, and writing. There’s a multitude of reasons why I could be stuck–the other two sections were more drafted, while this one is not. The events in this section are hard scenes to write. The character goes from a teenager to a battered wife and on and on. I don’t think I have a handle on the main character in this section.

What I do know is I feel bored with it. And if I’m bored writing it, you’d be bored reading.

But there’s a really good argument to be made for keeping on. I only have a few chapters left before I have a full draft. You can’t edit and refine what you haven’t written yet. The discipline is the key–if you keep showing up for yourself, eventually you’ll break through. Always finish projects, Neil Gaiman said. You have to keep your forward momentum going. I felt this way close to the end of Hurricane Baby and pushed through because I had something to prove.

And that’s all very true, too.

But I no longer have anything to prove right now.

I do know I’m about to go through a time with my book launch where my mind will be distracted. I want so much to enjoy this time upcoming. Maybe making working on LFH only a sometime thing after going through the whirlwind of events with my launch.

Ill have to think some more. Any advice, drop it in the comments!

OK. Wow. Here We Come!

So time starts speeding up for me very soon. This past Friday, I was interviewed in a statewide radio show on public radio that airs on August 18 at 5 p.m. on Mississippi Public Broadcasting and logged onto the website, http://msartshour.mpbonline.org/episodes later on for those who are not in Mississippi.

On August 14, I’m supposed to have an article published on the “First Person Singular” vertical on Substack, edited by Sari Botton. You’ll read about a sudden illness that felled me two weeks after getting the publication news about Hurricane Baby and how I coped with that.

Then on August 23, I have a live TV interview with Studio 3 at WLBT News at 3 p.m.to talk about Hurricane Baby with their host.

Then comes the big day of my signing at Lemuria Bookstore at noon on August 24, with signing at 12 and then moving to Lemuria’s event space at 12:30 p.m. for my conversation with Steve Yates, a longtime writer colleague, about Hurricane Baby. I did the same interview style talk with him when his book The Lakes of Southern Hollow was published, so here’s returning the favor at my signing.

And to wind up the month is another radio interview with Rebecca Turner on her show Good Things on the actual 19th anniversary of Katrina’s landfall in Mississippi. That show will be at two p.m. and will be later released on her website (https://www.supertalk.fm/shows/goodthings/) for those of you who might get the interview on the air.

That’s all for August except for the occasional stab at my work-in-progress/ There’s a new article I’ll put up on press and I’ll updated the schedule page to get all things Hurricane Baby in one place.

Lemuria Books Thursday

Thursday I did a Q&A with my fellow Madville author Steve Yates, who I’ve known professionally for almost twenty-five years. He signed books for a bit in the store proper, then we moved over to the store’s event space for me to ask Steve questions about his book. I pulled from the list my friend Shannon gave to me to set up my own Q&A document on my website, and some flowed just from the conversation. All very low-key; we had a crowd of about 12 there, including a fellow who said he planned to do a story on the event. I’m not quite sure how that’s going to turn out, but we will see.

I also talked to another bookstore in north Mississippi about a signing; we will see how that goes. Supposedly they have a book on the way to them. I talked to one lady over the phone and another over email. The issue is going to be turnout, as usual–how can I conjure up a crowd? I got my post cards to mail for folks to go to my Ackerman event, so I;ll be sending those next week. Who knows what’s going to happen,

I’ve also got invited out of the blue to do a library appearance in Pontotoc, which I’m not sure I’ve ever been to. It would take me out in the middle of a week but they have a high weekly turnout. So we will will see, there, too.

Pic below of me and Steve, courtesy of Tammy Yates:

This Week’s News

So this Thursday I get a chance to debut myself a bit before my book signing at Lemuria by getting together with Steve Yates, author of The Lakes of Southern Hollow, at his signing at 5 p.m. at Lemuria Books Store in Jackson, MS on July 25. We worked out a deal where I would do a bit of Q&A with him about his book, then he’s going to do a bit of Q&A with me at my Lemuria signing, which is coming up faster at noon on August 24 than I can even think.

I also got another invite to an event that I can’t disclose yet because I am waiting on final confirmation of my materials needed to be registered. So that was nice, especially since a symposium I thought I would be able to be a part of did not work out in my favor, I found out this weekend. No skin off my nose–I’ll probably still go to the event and enjoy myself anyway.

I finally got the first “chapter” done on my second section of my work-in-progress last week. It’s definitely going to need more work, but that’s just the way it works–I have to get SOMEthing down on the page so there’s something to edit later on, right? So now I need to figure out where my next entry point into this part of the manuscript is. I think it may be Merrilyn’s first date with her future husband. We will see.

So things are shaping up very quickly in my writer world. I may have to white-knuckle my way through all the events, but maybe not. Maybe I can be calm. I’d like to be, but a little adrenaline never hurt anybody either.

Break

I took an involuntary break from writing on my work-in-progress since my oldest daughter and her son came up here from Florida. I decided that spending time with them was more important. So that’s what I’ve been doing the past two weeks.

It’s not been wasted time. I’ve thought about the manuscript every day. I decided I’m going to play Merrilyn as a woman who knows what she wants but has to find sneaky ways to get it because of the volatility of the people around her. And that affects her by making her a volatile person, too. The idea is to take the Merrilyn of the first section of the book and move her to be the Merrilyn of the third section. That’s going to take some heavy lifting.

So I suppose I need to get back to work at some point, and it may as well be now. ‘Til we meet again!