Tag: Hurricane Baby

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!

FOR SALE!

Good afternoon! This past Friday night, I got the note from Madville Publishing that my book, Hurricane Baby: Stories, is now LIVE FOR PRE-ORDERS!

Go to the left-hand menu and click on the book’s title to see the brand-new webpage for my book, and you will see a button to click to pre-order my book through Madville Publishing’s site with delivery scheduled for August 20, 2024. As the book goes live in other places like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org, I will add those buttons for you to click on as well. If you want to support your local bookshop as well, you can go and request that they order/stock it.

This page will be updated as I do events, readings, signings, and appearances. If you would like me to come do a reading or speak at your event, school, library, or festival, use the contact form to let me know, and I will see what I can work out!

This past weekend, I went to the annual meeting of the Mississippi Philological Association, which was held by the Mississippi School of Math and Science on the campus of Mississippi University for Women, where I studied for my MFA. I read the first story in the collection, “Still Waters”, and was terrified the whole time. I’ve never read anything as intense as that story out loud in public before this, and it showed. My mouth was so dry I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to finish it. It was well-received by the largely academic crowd, which made me feel good.

But this event, where I know people are going to be spending their hard-earned money on a book I wrote, is momentous. My life is not going to be the same again after this year. But I think that’s good. Keep growing, keep writing, keep learning. That’s my takeaway. Onward and upward!

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!

Single-Digit Fidget

My publishing company keeps saying we go to print six months before publication.

You know what?

That’s this week on February 20!

So I am nervously anticipating that I get to put up pre-order links and my new website page this week as well!

I have been reading about all the emotional whiplash that happens to new authors with an eye to moderating my expectations and all that. I like being prepared. Because I don’t want this whole wonderful accomplishment to throw me off emotionally. Because my stability is worth a lot to me.

But it’s up to me to manage that–so I am trying to keep my expectations in line with the fact that I’m a new author, I don’t have a big pre-made audience to sell to, and I have to understand all that I can control is my reaction to events. I can’t control what others do or say. I can’t control what kind of reviews i get or anything like that. I can just put it out and do what I can to move the needle–and leave the rest up to God.

Like I said when I prayed that day to give my pledge to the church. It’s all up to him. I’m just to give him the glory that is his. I gave the book my best shot for success revising and sending it out. I plan to keep doing that with events and publicity where I can get them. I’m going to start to introduce the book the first weekend of March at the Mississippi Philological Association at my alma mater, the Mississippi University for Women.

I’ll be reading what I can of Still Waters, the first story in the collection, at a panel of other creative writers. I’ll attend other panels while I’m there, probably just the creative writing ones. It’s kind of a full-circle moment for me–when I was in my last year of grad school at Mississippi State University, I read a paper I had written on James Thurber, the great American comic writer, at the MPA Conference that year–also at the W. So I will mention that before I start reading.

(My parents were at that conference since it was only a few miles away from their house. My daddy later asked me was my paper supposed to be funny? I said yes sir, it was. He was scared the audience was laughing at me in a mean way so he decided to check.)

So that’s what I’m preparing for this week. Wish me well!

HOMEGROWN: A Writer’s Exchange

I went to a new literary festival this weekend with my friend Mary Jane in–of all places–Kiln, Mississippi. Jami Attenberg was there. Lee Durkee was there. Margaret McMullen was there. And Mary Miller and Ellen Ann Fentress, my MFA thesis supervisors. and I met people I only knew by reputation. So that was super cool!

It was structured a lot like the Mississippi Book Festival–there were panels on various topics–cookbooks, memoir, short stories, novels, publishing, the writing life, etc., etc. A really cool feature was that there were three presses (one of them was University Press of Mississippi) soliciting book pitch meetings directly from authors!

I only found out about this event on Wednesday of last week, and the trip came together really quickly. So I sent in a request to have a pitch meeting with Looking for Home. I really wasn’t expecting to get in to one because of how late i was signing up–but I did! Pelican Publishing picked me up and wanted to hear my story! I didn’t find out until late Friday afternoon, so I didn’t have long to prepare. But prepare I did!

I took my computer and printed out a writing sample of my book, my CV, and a very generic query letter in the hotel’s business center after we got there Friday night. So when I got to the pitch meeting, he asked about the book, and I handed him the letter and talked about the structure and the story. Then I asked if I could read my writing sample aloud, and he said that would be great. So I did, then i handed him my CV with all my publications on it. Then he asked me about myself, hobbies, etc. (That was the hardest part; trying to make myself sound interesting has never been my strong suit.)

I don’t know if I’ll ever hear from him again; I did pull up his email and sent him a thank-you note for the meeting, and I think that was a good idea. I also had another good idea–I printed out copies of my sell-sheet for Hurricane Baby and handed them out strategically–to the guy who organized the event so I could maybe get included in next year’s event, to people who ran publications, to people who do author interviews, etc. And almost everyone I wound up meeting the first time. I handed out about half of what I printed, so that was cool, too.

Anyway. I will be doing a lot of this in the coming months and after publication, I think, so I’m looking forward to that! It felt so good to finally be able to say, “Hey, I have a book coming out, too!” So a good time was had by all.

Hope everyone has a really good week! Thanks for reading!

Juggling The Work

Well, since I don’t have the final proofs for Hurricane Baby yet, I am working on my three-novella project Looking for Home. I only have two more scenes to write for this POV before I’m finished and can go back further into the past and write the first POV character, Carlton Dixon. Right now I’m working on the POV of Cassie Beck, the adopted teenager that comes to find Carlton, claiming to be his daughter by his teenage girlfriend, Merrilyn Beck. (Cassie’s POV is the part that sold for the novella anthology.) I’ve already outlined what I want to do for Carlton’s POV and Merrilyn’s POV, so that changed a few things that happened in Cassie’s POV. And I’m sure that when I’m finished with the first two parts, I will need to revise Cassie’s part again. But that’s OK.

I want to finish the new draft for this project before Hurricane Baby comes out in August. And I am chipping away, bit by bit, paragraph by paragraph. I am keeping up with my daily word count in a notebook so I can see when I write best and have the best production and figure out what goes well on those days. Is the outlining helping or hurting? Is it better to plan out what I’m writing beforehand or write without a net to catch me if it goes awry? That sort of thing. We will see.

Kicking around ideas of who to pitch publicity opportunities to for Hurricane Baby. I’m looking at book podcasts, regional magazines, radio shows, newspapers, festivals. Once I get to pre-orders, I’ll start sharing that link around. Just getting together my ideas and what all I want to do. I hope I can start getting the word out seriously by then. Wish me well!

COVER REVEAL!

Finally able to get back to my computer after some illness and traveling and able to reveal . . . the cover for Hurricane Baby: Stories, due out in August 2024!

I want to thank Jacqui Davis for her design work here in realizing exactly what I’ve always had in mind for the cover of this work. Appreciate the whole team at Madville Publishing for taking on this project and awaiting the next proof copy with bated breath! Much love to all!

First Proof Copy!

So last Friday I got Hurricane Baby’s first proof copy, a preliminary PDF of what the book will look like once it’s printed. I was so moved by the care my publishing company is taking with this book! Art on the title pages, beautiful formatting within, just wonderful work so far!

My job was to proofread it yet again. And guys–I found over a hundred and seventy typos. I was appalled at myself. I have been slaving over this manuscript for almost twenty years. And I found commas that were supposed to be periods and periods that were supposed to be commas and double periods and sentences without periods at the end and a very few spelling errors (thank the Lord). Inconceivable that I even got any kind of hearing from anyone I sent it to. The line-editor before this proof had found over three hundred errors.

I was so embarrassed for little ol’ me, sending something so flawed out into the world. I had checked and rechecked and run grammar and spelling checks over and over. I had read it printed out, onscreen, everything.

But I don’t need to just beat myself up–so now I have a plan. I know my eyesight isn’t good and won’t improve any as I get older. I am going to have to magnify up the font to I guess the size where the manuscript will have 500 pages and read line by line at every stage of writing. I don’t want to embarrass myself like that ever again.

So now it is back in the hands of the publisher, and I will wait patiently to see what comes next. I think it will be a final proof copy that I will read again for errors, then in February it will go to print!

SO EXCITING AND GETTING REAL!

Moral of the story: editors are human, and so are you. But taking the time to re-read is never wasted. Other eyes are a big help, too. Let’s be careful out there!

Line-Edits!

I got line-edits last week! So I spent yesterday working on that project. Only 335 punctuation corrections! (Ugh.) I did notice a trend–a lot of em-dashes had been typed incorrectly, and I LOVE using em-dashes, especially in dialogue. And I love writing dialogue. So that was that.

Only content question the editor had was about Leilani, James’ second wife, having such an unusual name. I did not know this–it’s Hawai’ian for “royal child”, which was perfect for the spoiled baby of the family! But that was only a happy accident–I certainly didn’t think that up while I was writing, and it’s doubtful that Leilani’s parents would have either. So I dreamed up a new explanation for why her parents named her that–that you will have to buy the book to see :).

Now it goes for formatting into InDesign, then another read to make sure nothing horrifying mechanical-wise goes through once it’s converted to a PDF. Then I read proof versions, then it goes back into design for final formatting of the text.

I am trying so hard to be calm and professional in my interactions with them, but I can’t help for my joy to come out! It’s really getting real! In eight months, my book will be out on bookstore shelves, Amazon, Barnes & Noble! A big goal for my life since I was a very young thing! I have been writing stories for FOREVER. Treasure stories cribbed from the Bobbsey twins’ adventures when I was a kid, teen romances when I was a teenager, short stories in my first Master’s program–I’ve had stories in my life longer than almost anything except my parents. And I’m so close to having a book!

It boggles my mind how far I’ve come.

Onward!