Category: general

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.

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!

New Podcast Episode

Soa few days ago I sat down with Shannon Evans, host of Tombigbee Tales, a podcast originating out of the Columbus MS area. We talked about how I got into writing, how I wrote Hurricane Baby, and how I wound up selling it to my publisher. So it was a good conversation in my head.

The tape told a little bit different story. I waited too long to answer questions, I used filler words like “um”, and I didn’t let the host set up the pace of the interview. Good points: I answered every question fully, and I wasn’t boring in telling my stories. So now I know what to continue to work on in future interviews–being quicker on the uptake with questions and speaking with authority.

So we will see how the next one goes! Here’s the link to last week’s podcast if you want to give it a listen:

https://www.podbean.com/ew/pb-jmfs3-163fdc4

Terror

So I wrote last week about being really excited that Hurricane Baby had opened for pre-orders.

This week I’m writing about the terror.

I started having really high levels of anxiety about the idea of my book in the hands of readers and thinking about “What if they don’t like it? What will people think about me as a person after reading this?”

And I just kept letting my mind spin out of control with those thoughts.

What finally broke the spiral was an email from Lisa Cooper Ellison, an author I admire very much. She wrote about her recent micro nonfiction that had been published in the Tiny Love Stories feature in the New York Times and how she simultaneously felt a surge of pride and a wave of fear. Fear of not handling all the attention in a good way, fear of not being able to leverage the opportunities the publication might give her, etc.

It felt so validating that someone else felt the same kind of feelings I was feeling when something so wonderful had happened in her writing career. I wrote her an email letting her know that she had helped me come to grips with my anxiety.

So now the fear has worn itself out after bedeviling me for several days. I feel much better knowing that those feelings are common to other writers also and can be overcome.

So I am back to normal now (as close as I’ll ever get to that) and am ready to continue this journey. Onward!

Not Quite Ready

Reading proof pages hopefully for the last time. So that has been the work this weekend.

I’ve also been busy on my work-in-progress Looking For Home. I’ve got the last third as far as I can take it without having the other parts written. And knowing me, I’ll do something in the other two sections that will necessitate more changes in that last third section. So I am pushing along!

It’s been a little difficult doing the switch because that old talk in my head about wasting my time is still there! I was hoping that having a published book would quell that voice forever. But apparently in my mind, I’m still not allowed to write just because I enjoy it and I’m good at it.

I have to remind myself that I don’t have competing priorities anymore. I work for an employer and that’s important. I do some housework and cook meals at night. But otherwise, my free time is for me to work on what I feel led to do. My writing is one way I feel that I can reach out to people and make them think about things they might would rather not. And that’s important. No matter what else needs doing–my writing is important, and I can spend time on it without guilt.

Back to proofreading! Onward!

Liminal Space

So now I am in the liminal space between querying my book and publishing my book. I’ve done what I’m supposed to do (get the manuscript in the best shape I can, look over sample covers, get leads on publicity avenues) and now I’m waiting for the edits and the ironing out of final details before we go to print in February 2024. Suddenly February 2024 doesn’t seem that far into the future as it did in September when I signed the deal.

I am working on When I Went Crazy–I’ve finished the first chapter and am looking at the next. I will likely start on it tomorrow night when I write. I’m also researching places to try to publish my novella Looking For Home as a standalone book. So far I think I’ve sent it six places (I don’t have my list in front of me so don’t. hold me to that.) Not many publishers do novellas, so there aren’t many places to send to. But I’m going to give the ones I can find a shot and see what happens.

I love that I’m finally able to think about a future in writing and publishing my work. I had resolved to myself that if Hurricane Baby didn’t publish by 2025 (the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina) that I would just give up on writing fiction altogether and just stick to my bipolar work and labor for a better world for the mentally ill in my little corner of advocacy and education. But now I feel like I have a chance to do more, be more, get more visibility for the issues surrounding mental illness. And that’s a good feeling.

Bucket List Visit

We went on a trip to Wisconsin for summer vacation and as a side trip, we stopped in Madison and visited a former professor of mine from when I was at Mississippi State University; he’s now at University of Wisconsin-Madison. We haven’t seen each other in thirty years, but we’ve stayed in touch on and off through that time (basically the whole time the Internet was being invented around us).

We had a great visit, and at the end of it, he said something that will stick with me, I think. He said he admired my persistence and always had.

That will keep me going for a while.