Hurricane Baby – Page 2 – Julie Liddell Whitehead

I Need Gas in the Tank

My creative imagination for Looking for Home is just about exhausted.

I have line-edits to work through still. And another reader I hope to hear from by the end of July. So I’m waiting on the edits (which I can probably knock out in a day or so) until I hear from her.

I’m already moving my thoughts to the query materials and compiling a list of who to send it to. I’m going to follow a similar procedure to make those decisions that I used with Hurricane Baby–presses that are interested in Southern stories. I don’t think I’m going to send to university presses this time, though. This book, while historical, isn’t about a real historical event like Hurricane Baby was. So i’m not sure what would be the angle for a university press. I may send to those in Tennessee, where the book is set. But I’m going to have to think about that.

Ten days and I head into my very busy month for Hurricane Baby. I’m looking forward to everything, especially my trip upstate to Starkville and Columbus for a signing and for the Possumtown Book Fest, now in its second year. Hopefully I get to meet some people in person that I only know by reputation as well as catch up with friends and colleagues from MUW.

Going to continue thinking ahead and try to organize myself for all of this. Hope some of you can make the events and enjoy yourselves!

Gearing Up

So this August will mark one year since Hurricane Baby: Stories published. It also marks twenty years since Hurricane Katrina struck Mississippi and Louisiana. That has really brought a lot of attention to the book right now.

–The “Writers Drinking Whiskey” podcast drops on July 23. Bill Hincy and I talk the book and my debut journey here.

–“Talk to Me Day” on Mastodon on August 3. The #ScribesAndMakers group hosts me taking questions about writing and my book throughout the day that Sunday.

–Interview with The Southern Review of Books publishes on August 6. My MFA mate Katharine Armbrester put this Q&A together for this online publication

–Book Signing at Impression Books, a locally-owned bookstore here in Flowood. MS at noon on August 9.

–Book signing at Book Mart and Cafe on August 15 in Starkville, MS at 2 p.m., followed by:

–Panel and signing at Possumtown Book Festival in Columbus, MS on August 16 all day. Panel is at noon and the signing is following.

–Book Signing at Barnes and Noble Booksellers in Flowood, MS at noon on August 23 at the front of the store

–“Lunch and Learn” podcast with Kyla Hanington, another MFA mate, at 11 a.m. on August 26.

–TV appearance on WJTV with Walt Grayson at 3 p.m. on August 27 on the “Focused on Mississippi program.

–“Tombigbee Tales” podcast with host Shannon Evans and guest Rod Davis to talk Hurricane Katrina memories and literature on August 29, TBA.

I think that’s everything.

And then I’m going to relax by continuing to query Looking for Home!

Seriously, if you can find a way to support some of these events, I really would appreciate it. Trying to do a big push to drive sales here before its book birthday. Thanks to all of you reading for all the support over this magical time these last few months. Happy writing!

MWG Coastal Chapter

So Wednesday me and MJ went down to the Mississippi Gulf Coast to let me speak before the Mississippi Writers’ Guild chapter in Gulfport. We had a good trip down and got turned around once or twice trying to find the place the event was at, but we managed and had a lovely time.

I did my storyboarding speech that I gave to the students at the Southern Festival of Books, and it seemed to go over really well. I read it along with Tommy Hebert’s first story again, and everyone seemed to like how that fit in with the lecture.

And then we had a great Q&A session, with questions ranging from how I wrote the story to how I had selected the MFA program I attended. It was an interesting mix of people–some older than me, some about the same, and three that definitely seemed to be the young ones in the crowd. But the room was full, and they even had to bring in extra chairs towards the end.

At the end before I left, I handed out my bookmarks with ordering information and my website on them if they wanted to pick up the book or just check me out some more. Those have been the very best idea I had throughout this process–so cheap and so easy to hand out.

Next Saturday is my last event for June–a book signing at a coffeeshop/bookstore named Coffee Prose in the heart of Jackson. We’re going to do it from 9 am-11 am in the morning, then go to one of our favorite restaurants for lunch. I’m looking forward to that.

Just one event in July–I’ll be doing a Zoom meeting for a group of writers in Nevada on July 6, Sunday afternoon. I have no idea what this one is going to be like, so that will be interesting to find out about.

And hopefully next week I’ll get my manuscript back with new edits and see where we can go from there. Happy writing!

Looking Ahead; Looking Back

So my activities are slowing down at this point. I have one event left in June and only one Zoom event scheduled for all of July. I am hoping to get my latest manuscript back from my other two readers by mid-July and plan to take that open time of no events to do whatever other edits need doing on it. I know I want to look very carefully at the word count, at the pacing of the actual beginning pages, and at making sure the continuities are right. We will see if anything else comes up.

August will be important for three reasons: the book will be a year old, the twentieth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina is that month, and to that end, I have a lot of events scheduled. the first is an online “Talk To Me Day” on Mastodon on August 3, then there’s a Book Mart signing in Starkville on August 15 and the Possumtown Book Fest in Columbus the next day, August 16. Then another shot at a signing at B&N on August 23, another Zoom event on August 26, and finally a podcast recording with fellow author Rod Davis and my friend Shannon Evans on August 29, the actual date the storm hit Mississippi in 2005.

I am making such a big push because first-year sales are so important to the life of a book. I am probably going to stop hustling for events, press, etc. once the first year is over. The good news is I already have several possibilities for events in the next year; I just have to wait and see how those possibilities pan out. And anything else I am invited to I will need to be very judicious about whether to attend or not.

But I could never have anticipated what all has happened for my book this year–the reception by readers, the accolades from various quarters, the support from other authors, the support I’ve gotten from my publisher, my family, and my work–all amazing and humbling for the little book that could.

Dog Ear Books

No, this is not a post on the merits or calamities of marking your place in a book with a bent page.

Dog Ear Books is a lovely little independent bookstore attached to Wild Fox Coffee in Brookhaven, MS. The bookstore opened last fall after Hurricane Baby was released, and it came to my attention in an email I got at work from Shelf Awareness. Earlier this year, I decided to give them a call and try to work out an event with them. So that event was where I spent most of my day yesterday,

The bookstore/coffeeshop is located in an old home place–the coffeeshop is in the back, likely where the kitchen would have been when people lived there. The other rooms are filled with books, tons of comfortable seating, and bookish items. They have a used-book room, a romance/fantasy book room, a classic book room, and a kids’ book room as well.

We got there before lunch and asked where a good place to eat would be, and they directed us to Friends, a Mexican restaurant across the street. Had a lovely meal there, then came back for frappes and setting up the event. They had a very nice table in their romance room, so I sat there to greet people.

The neatest thing about this event was that there were two events going on around the town–a baseball tournament and a four-wheeler race. Almost everyone who bought a book was in town for one of those events! Some came because of the social media posts about me being there, but I signed books for people from Oklahoma, Louisiana, and surrounding towns in south Mississippi.

The staff, particularly assistant manager Ashley, could not have been nicer. I sold half of their stock of my books and signed the rest so they could offer the signed copies to their customers. It was a good trip, and a good time was had by all.

Next event is another Mississippi Writers’ Guild event for the coastal chapter on June 18 and then a signing at Coffee Prose, our own coffeeshop/bookstore in Highland Village in Jackson. Hope to see some of you out and about! Happy reading and writing!

Book Magic!

This week, I had another surprise pop up about Hurricane Baby: Stories–it’s now available online from Target.com! I was so STUNNED. I immediately wrote my publisher asking HOW she pulled this one off. She said it was likely because it was available at the wholesaler Ingram and that I had done such a good job collating my metadata. That was flattering, as was her comment that I should write something about metadata and its role in publishing.

Now, some readers may be wondering what metadata is and with good reason; I didn’t know anything about it until I started working for my job at a publisher. Metadata is information sent to online retailers such as Amazon, Barners & Noble, Ingram, etc. that makes use of search engine optimization (SEO) to enable readers to find a certain book.

Much metadata has to do with information the publisher will determine and supply–ISBN, title, cover image, shelving headers, BISAC codes, dimensions of the book. Other items of metadata that can be entered into your book’s electronic record are comparison titles, excerpts, and keywords.

Comparison titles are where the author indicates the book sits in the marketplace–books with similar themes, audiences, and writing styles. I used Amazon to search out mine for Hurricane Baby–I typed “Hurricane Katrina fiction” in the search bar and found several titles I thought would work. I then read the summaries and decided what books would match mine most closely. Other considerations include the amount of sales, the number of reviews the book had, and what format the book was published in; they needed to be as similar to the format as the book I was working on as possible.

Excerpts are important to give everyone reading the metadata the flavor of the book. I took a scene from the middle of my first story, “Still Waters”, where the hurricane hits Hattiesburg, Mississippi full force. It summed up the serious issues from the storm and showed the style of my writing.

Keywords are search terms for the book–a word or phrase that is electronically attached to the book as it goes out into the world. My keywords for Hurricane Baby were: 2005, climate change, destruction of the Gulf Coast, hurricane baby, Hurricane Katrina, loss of faith, post-traumatic stress disorder, Southern literature. The keywords can be a set of phrases or single words that someone might use as a search terms when looking for information/books on my topic. The key player in this case is Amazon–it has a fifteen-keyword limit for how many search terms you can attach.

So that’s a quick rundown of what I know about metadata and how I used it for my book. Hope the information can be helpful to someone else. And may it work in your favor as it seems to have done in mine! Happy writing!

A Wild Moment

I have documented a lot of surreal moments in my author journey on here–selling the book, preorders, my first review, my first author signing, etc.

Here’s another one for the books.

I was in a Barnes & Noble Booksellers in a local mall. And because I’m a bit delulu, I asked them on a whim if they had copies of Hurricane Baby: Stories in stock. The lady checked her computer and said, “We don’t–but it looks like our sister store in _____ has seven copies. We can order it for you if you’d like, though.”

You could have knocked me over with a puff of wind. My book actually WAS IN STOCK in the local branch of one of the biggest booksellers in the world. My stars–

I didn’t tell her who I was–I just smiled and thanked her.

Today I went to the sister store and FOUND MY BOOK in the huge Mississippi authors section in the front just inside the automatic doors and to the left. A whole stack of them.

I was almost hyperventilating at this point.

But I picked up a copy, took it to the front desk, introduced myself as the author, and asked if I could sign all their copies. They agreed to that, and the manager went to the back to find GOLD STICKERS that say “SIGNED EDITION” on them to place on the front covers of the books. I signed every copy even as my hands were shaking.

FOLKS–I was in a display with John Grisham, Greg Iles, Della Owens, Fannie Flagg, Kiese Laymon, Jesmyn Ward.

Bestsellers. Award-winners. And little old me.

I’ve run out of words to describe the feelings. And that’s saying something.

Storyboarding Fiction

I went to the Southern Literary Festival in Blue Mountain, Mississippi at Blue Mountain Christian University this weekend. What I did was give a talk on how I constructed most of the stories in Hurricane Baby. It was often not as neat a process as this pattern makes it seem, but I did apply it to most of the new stories I wrote for this version of the book. I used the story “Neighbors Helping Neighbors” to illustrate the moving parts of the story.

SET THE SCENE: Answer the questions who, what, where, how, and why your characters are in whatever situation they find themselves in at the start. Always include action to bring the reader in. The reader sees Tommy wake up the morning after Hurricane Katrina, gets a sense of what he’s been through and where his head is at, and learns a bit about the character as well.

RISING ACTION: Get the characters moving. Show the reader what is happening in the world of the book. This piece of the story needs to set the events in the story in motion. Tommy Hebert gets a text message asking for people to come help a family in Mandeville. So he goes out on his boat and meets other men, his best friend Mark, and Mandeville cops who take them to the destruction.

MEAT OF THE STORY: You relay the most important part of the story here. This event should have the potential to cause a change in the characters who experience it. This is where the action is: this is where the heat is. In this story, Tommy and the other volunteers work to dig out Amy Thompson and her baby, Avery Thompson, out of the destroyed house. Tommy and a fireman are able to rescue the baby and get him to the hospital to be helped. But Amy Thompson has a heavy beam on her legs, crushing them–and Tommy finds out later that she didn’t make it.

CLIMAX: For me, the climax is not when there’s a big reveal of information to the characters and the reader. It comes when it’s revealed how the characters react to the big event/the meat of the story. In this story, Tommy is sitting in his house waiting on Mark, and a thirst for something to drown out Amy Thompson’s screams comes on him–and he succumbs to it.

DENOUMENT: The denoument is the fallout of the characters’ reaction to the climax. Tommy drinks three beers before Mark can get to him and starts a fourth as he comes in. They talk and decide Tommy’s in no shape to do the cleanup they had planned–neither physically nor emotionally. Mark leaves, and the reader is left with Tommy continuing to drink and the question of what happens next.

So this process is just one way to organize a story, but it’s been a very effective way for me to think about how to make all the events in a story/book fit together and flow naturally in a cause-and-effect manner.

No more book events in April as it’s usually a busy one for family in our house. Keep writing!

Highs and Lows

Let’s talk about the low point first.

I suspected as much, but I got the official notification on who won the Mississippi Institute of Arts and Letters Fiction Award, and it wasn’t me. Which was a bummer. It’s one thing to not win an award because you wouldn’t dream something like that anyway. But to be nominated unexpectedly and then not win feels a little different.

But no matter. I called out the winner on Facebook and congratulated him and encouraged everyone to buy his book. It costs nothing to be gracious even when disappointed.

But one high–the nationwide Association of Writers and Writing Programs Conference and Bookfair was in Los Angeles, California this past week, and Hurricane Baby: Stories was there! My publisher, Madville Publishing, had a booth there and they took my book with them! I saw a photo of it because my MFA program was also there, and they hunted Madville up and posted my book on their Facebook page. So nice to see my book in such an exotic locale.

And another high point–this Friday, I went to my hometown high school where I graduated from in 1988 and spoke to the junior and senior classes about having a vision for their life, and setting goals, and executing plans to achieve those goals. I was told before the event that this was a pretty unmotivated bunch of students.

But I didn’t approach them that way. I told them I was just like them back ages ago when I’d been a high school senior, but that I had a vision of what I wanted my life to look like and I worked until I achieved it. It seemed to perk them up somewhat. They asked me to read some of the book, and when someone asked where they could find it, I handed out my bookmarks and told them how to order. I hope I inspired someone at least a little bit.

So what’s ahead? I plan to start working back on Looking for Home on April 1–hopefully my beta readers’ feedback will come in and I can start incorporating what they have to say. And Friday I am conducting a breakout session at the Southern Literary Festival in Blue Mountain, Mississippi at Blue Mountain Christian University. I’m going to talk about how I constructed the stories in Hurricane Baby by a pattern, then I’m going to give them a silly writing prompt I hope they can have fun with.

Happy reading and writing this week!

What an Interesting Development

I track several things on the Amazon page for Hurricane Baby–sales rank, number of reviews, some sales numbers. Until recently, I didn’t think much about price.

I would see the price occasionally dip to $18, $17.99, $16.50–small changes from the cover price of $20.95, but nothing to really wonder about–until after the first of this year.

Then I noticed the price dropped to $8.50 for the paperback version. (The Kindle version is $9.99.) I thought that was odd but assumed it would be short-lived. Next thing I knew, the price was $8.48. Then $8.12.

I really started to pay attention then. It kept dropping until it reached $7.99 a few weeks ago.

I wrote my publisher asking if she had any insight as to why this had happened, Her answer was “not a clue”.

Hm.

So I turned to Google for answers. I input “Why did Amazon discount my book”. I got various websites proffering reasons that largely fell into three camps:

A) The book is selling really, really well and they discount it to sell more, or

B) It’s a completely algorithmic decision, or

C) it may be a case of setting your book up as a “loss leader”, hoping that a low price will cause shoppers to buy even more products than just the one book.

Another possible reason is Amazon may have ordered too many, and they want them out of their warehouse. That doesn’t sound likely since my book is print-on-demand–the book is assembled in response to the number of orders.

I was glad to find out it wasn’t necessarily a case of Amazon being ready to remainder the book and selling copies at fire-sale prices to get rid of them, which had been my first thought.

So we will see what happens in the future for my Hurricane Baby, the little book who could. Hope everyone has a good week!

PS 3/24/2025–I posted this last night, and then I looked at Amazon and found that the book has gone back up to regular price! That’s an interesting coincidence!