Tag: Hurricane Baby

New Post–BOOK BIRTHDAY EDITION!

Yes! A year ago today, on August 20, 2024, Hurricane Baby: Stories debuted to the world! My first book ever published, and my life has not been the same since that day.

I had been doing some media events beforehand and had a nice little stack of pre-orders. The actual day was a little anti-climactic–I went on with my Tuesday workday routine. I got some emails and some comments on social media congratulating me on the announcement. What really sticks out in my mind is my MFA thesis director, Ellen Ann, sent me a vase of flowers–daisies and other greenery. I think I’ll remember that forever.

But then I had my first-ever book signing at Lemuria Bookstore in Jackson, MS. A moment I had been dreaming of for literal years was unfolding right in front of my eyes. I felt like I was floating a foot off the floor all day long.

Then the Mississippi Book Festival 2024. An event I had dreamed of being a part of ever since it first began in 2014–and I made it on to a panel! I mingled with the other authors; I walked around meeting friends old and new. I had a new appreciation of the volunteers and of the visitors, who love books and bookish people enough to keep this event going for over a decade.

And my tour plan kept unfolding–at least one event a month for the entire year. Many social media postings, many, many emails to publications for publicity, many, many, many phone calls to event organizers for other appearances. I traveled mostly throughout Mississippi, with one trip to Louisiana and another trip to Alabama thrown in there.

Two events I’m particularly proud of: in September, I went to the little county library where I had checked out so many books, read so many magazines, and worked at so many Saturdays and read my book aloud to a group of family, friends, and teachers who had known me just about my whole life. And later in March, I went back to my high school alma mater, not to read or sign my book, but to tell the senior and junior classes that I had been just like them–exactly where they were, in this same exact school. And I had decided what I wanted to do with my life and that I didn’t let anything, not disability, not bipolar disorder, not anything, stop me from achieving it.

So many people came together to make this year so special. If I start naming names, I’m going to forget someone. Just thanks to all the booksellers, festival organizers and volunteers, reading series organizers, teachers, professors, journalists, editors, blurbers, librarians who put my book on their shelves, and readers who have made this year so special!

I have a few events still on the schedule in the coming weeks. But I’m querying a new book now, and that will likely take up a great deal of time in the coming months. Soon my time with Hurricane Baby will draw to a close. But this year will be in my memory for quite some time to come. Happy Birthday!

Rolling Along

This week is going to be wild!

On Thursday, I’ll have an article coming out on Jane Friedman’s website on networking as a debut author! It was amazing how that opportunity came together; I just cold-emailed her the idea of doing an article on my author journey and threw in everything but the kitchen sink into the pitch. She emailed back that if I picked ONE of those ideas, it would probably make a good article. So I pulled out that strand, and she said to give it a shot! That runs August 14 at https://janefriedman.com/

On Friday I go back to my college town bookstore and do a signing there–I hope it goes well as well. Give us an opportunity to see some old stomping grounds, me and Bob. The owner wants me to talk the local newspaper to do an article on the twenty-year Katrina anniversary this month so Monday I’m going to see what I can do about that.

And I’ve also started receiving all the materials for the Possumtown Book Fest this Saturday in Columbus, Mississippi–schedules, directions, information, contacts, etc. It looks like it’s going to be a lot of fun! I’ll see a lot of people I’m familiar with from school and some I know only by reputation. Hopefully meet a few people, too. This is only the second year they’ve offered it, and I’m really proud to be involved. I would have attended last year except it happened on the day of my first signing!

Such an amazing week! And there’s more where that came from the NEXT week as well. Hope to see some of you around!

Standing on Principle

I’ve read a lot about boycotts of bad actors in the book world, and most of it kind of slides off my back. My books are available on Amazon, Target, Wal-Mart, Books-a-Million, and B&N websites. I didn’t decide that; my publisher and the store-buyers did. I don’t give it much thought in the day-to-day.

But this morning I had to face something down and decide what to do with it.

I was scrolling Facebook and came upon a meme that was so deeply racist it made my jaw drop. I’m not even going to show or transcribe it here; that’s how bad it was. I looked to see who had posted it–and it was an organization I have an event scheduled with next month.

Well.

I looked at the comments–several people had posted, wondering if the site had been hacked.

So I sat down and sent the organization an email, alerting them of the post and saying I hoped it was a hack and not a post by anyone in their organization. I put in a link to the post and sent it off.

And I made a decision, right then and there. If I got a reply of “lighten up” or “it was just a joke” or “I can post what I want”, I was going to cancel my event. I didn’t want anything to do with that kind of organization.

About fifteen minutes after I sent the email, the post had been removed with an apology put in its place, saying they had no idea what happened and were changing all their passwords and securing their computer access protocols. From the dealings I had with them up to this point, this response was perfectly consistent with who these people were.

I’m a very small literary fish in a medium-size literary pond, and my event would not have made a dent in their or my bottom line. But I felt at peace with my decision and with how ready I was to do exactly what was right. Maybe it won’t make any difference in the long run. But it was an important decision for me to make.

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.