Tag: publishing
Well, hello, everyone!
I’m not sure what happened, but for some reason, on Tuesday this week Out of Babel Books got more than 400 views. That is about 3000% more than my usual 14. Most of these views were from the United States.
I don’t know whether to thank you all for visiting, or grumble that you’re going to wreck my stats. (No matter how good of a day I have after this, it will look like views are down dramatically.)
I think I’ll go with Thank You. I am so glad you visited Out of Babel. I hope you found what you were looking for. I hope you were all peoples and not botses. I hope you will all buy my books and leave breathless reviews… (O.K., no need to get greedy …)
Cheers! Have a great weekend!
What’s in My Purse?
I got this post idea from snapdragon .
Behold, my purse! Note the Native American-style fabric. I have long had a culture crush on American Indians.
Let’s see what’s in it …
First, the basics: wallet, lip gloss and lipstick, reading glasses, key fob with a little Minnetonka moccasin.
Now, the walking pharmacy: Two kinds of Aleve, two kinds of Claritin, Tums I forgot I had, Kleenex, dental floss picks, hand lotion, and a loose lipstick that is probably twenty years old, but I can’t bring myself to throw away. The Claritin is generally for my kids, not me.
Finally … air fresheners from the oil change place, Band-Aids and antibiotic ointment, tabs for when I simply must flag a passage in a book, business cards in case I need to give one out, and, oh, look! A pair of earrings that needs to go back to my jewelry box.
No, I don’t carry a brush. I have curly hair. One does not brush curly hair; the results are unfortunate.
I occasionally carry a comb in case one of my sons needs it, but they are getting older and starting to comb their own hair before they leave the house.
Other things that might, from time to time, get thrown on top of these: a hand-knitted hat or bonnet, a hair band, clip, or pin that I have taken off, a book that I want to have with me. And of course, the phone.
The Trove, American Falls, Idaho
American Falls, Idaho, is the ultimate American Small Town.
What do I mean by Small Town?: a brief parenthesis
For those who are not American–by which I mean the United States–“small town” doesn’t have quite the same connotations as “village.” A “village” sounds older, like it might have been there for a thousand years, whereas a small town, because it’s in America, is no more than 300 and often only 100 years old. “Village” also sounds more homogenous (is everyone related?), and more rural. A village might have feuds and unspoken rules in it that go back a millennium. A small town, while it is getting a start on these things, is basically a recent, frontier development. Though there are founding families, there’s also a lot more movement. City folk come in, start businesses, or get jobs as teachers. Newcomers arrive from other small towns. Children grow up and leave. Americans are very mobile, and the composition and atmosphere of a small town reflects that. There isn’t as rigid a class system as in most other places. And, though American Falls, for example, is the county seat, there’s also a lot less bureaucracy and fewer government jobs than in a town of comparable size in Asia.
On the other hand, a “small town” is definitely not the same as “hood” (short for neighborhood), which is a village-like section of a large city. Small towns are typically located in farmland.
Anyway. American Falls has the following: a river. A hydroelectric dam. A railroad to take farm produce away to be sold. A lot with silos, trucks, and piles of produce near where this railroad passes through town. Lots of churches. Post office, barber shop, mom & pop shops on Main Street (tree-lined), one of which is of course a bar. A hometown football team. Gracious parks, a golf course, and a nearby cattle lot that you can smell most days. Pizza, Chinese, and Mexican restaurants, because this is America after all. It also has a small hospital, though like most people I prefer to take emergencies to the city hospital 25 minutes down the road. Oh, and a community theater!
You can walk around American Falls during the day without fear. Law and order is maintained. The town is hilly enough that, on these walks, you can catch glimpses of all these small-town features and feel as if you just stepped into a slightly more modern, drastically less New England Norman Rockwell painting. Rising above the town, on the southwest side, is the Big State Highway, and, beyond that, the rolling foothills.
I felt I had to burst into this paean to American Falls in order to set the scene for the main point of this post, which is that a delightfully hippie shop has come to our small town.
An Art Shop comes to our Small Town
This is the interior of The Trove, which opened in American Falls in May.
Here we are looking towards the back of the shop. Notice that it features jewelry, leather goods, and paintings involving UFOs. And that the owners are fond of 78 records.
I first heard about The Trove from a person I met at the town festival this summer. This person, who was buying one of my son’s paintings, suggested that The Trove might be happy to carry our work, since its stated mission is to showcase local artists. Although we don’t live actually in American Falls, we figured we might be local enough to count. We headed straight from the town festival to The Trove, with the trunk of our car still full of paintings. Long story short, the owners of The Trove were amenable to this idea, and that’s why some of the paintings pictured above are by my son Andrew.
The mountain and the storm are my paintings, hung under the owner’s paintings of space and a (manatee?), over some quilts, and beside dish towels.
The Trove was even happy to carry a copy of my trilogy! So, if you ever find yourself in southeast Idaho, and want a touristy, artsy shop with lots of cool stuff, know that American Falls has one.
The Strange Land gets reviewed by an MFA in Fiction Writing
Click through to the Amazon review for the traffic, or enjoy this excerpt:
Many potentially interesting things are going on in this story, but it is unclear who or what it is about. Endu has the most significant character flaw to overcome, but even he does not create the thin red line necessary to create a cohesive plot line, nor does he have a character arc. None of the characters do. Instead, it’s a series of events tend to ramble too much about mundane things.
…
Luckily, as the story progresses, it becomes very visual. However, it still lacks the emotional connection needed to captivate the reader’s mind because the author tells us some of the dramatic beats, which lessen the impact.
The author is on the cusp of developing a writer’s voice. I found some treasures that express that voice: “Wildflowers rose up like an army.” “Knowing the hidden rocks in the sea.” They are not only vivid, they express the theme and help set up the events.
I’m kind of tickled with this 3-star review. I’m also impressed, because it appears the person read the book over the weekend and then wrote this review to post on Monday.
Quote: Take Out the Distinctive Stuff
Next to come to mind was my original literary agent delivering her verdict on my first novel. Don’t want to show it to anyone, she said. Why not? It’s a bad book. Have to think of your reputation as well as mine. Why bad? It falls between the stools, halfway betwixt mainstream and mystery. No way to promote it. And where does the bookseller shelve it? Stick to nonfiction, said my agent. I can sell that for you. How about me rewriting it? Well, if you do, get rid of the Indian stuff.
Tony Hillerman, acclaimed author of the Navajo mysteries, in his memoir, p. 5
Reminder: The Strange Land will be 99 cents on Kindle Tomorrow
Ope, that’s not the cover we went with! That was an earlier draft of the cover. I thought you would like to see it, though.
Here’s the official cover:
The Strange Land will be Book of the Day over at onlinebookclub.org, which I’m sure Scott Hughes (the onlinebookclub guy) would be delighted if you’d visit. Scott is on all the platforms.
In a former life, I reviewed books for onlinebookclub. Now that I’m an indie author myself, I’ve used this site to get reviews and promotions. Their reviewers are, on the whole, terrific people.
How do you promote your book on social media when you are not, yourself, on social media? That is a good question, Grasshopper. What is the sound of one hand clapping?
The Strange Land is a coming-of-age story set in ancient Beringia, among a small tribe destined to become the ancestors of the Native Americans. It focuses on a teenaged boy named Ikash, but you’ll find all kinds of drama, heartbreak, mysticism, and wilderness survival among its large ensemble cast. Some people’s favorite character is the bear. Get this thick, satisfying ramble through Ice-Age Asia and enjoy it over your summer vacation!
O.K., that is enough shameless self-promotion. Next week, I’ll go back to reviewing other people’s books, peering at other people’s ancient ruins, and ranting about their failure to define their terms. It’s going to be fun!
But thanks in advance to any of you who have gotten curious about, or helped me promote, The Strange Land.
The Strange Land will be 99 cents on Kindle this Saturday
Lord willing an’ the creek don’t rise.
I agreed with onlinebookclub.org to make TSL Book of the Day on June 14, but only on the condition that it was free on Kindle. As of drafting this post, I’m still communicating with my publisher to make the durn thing free. As John Piper might say, Brothers, We Are Not Professionals. I’m certainly not. But, with plenty of prayer, I trust that TSL will be free on this Saturday and will of course, with plenty of prayer, rocket into the stratosphere due to large numbers of positive reviews.
Edit: 99 cents was the best I could do. I have made arrangements with onlinebookclub. It will be 99 cents.
The Strange Land is a family saga that takes place in Beringia, the vast plain that used to exist where the Bering Strait now is, in approximately 10,000 B.C. Please go out and get it, if that’s just what you were looking for in your summer reading! Thanks in advance.
I Got Nominated … Sort of
(Is the above really the latest Sunshine Blogger Award logo? Looks kinda messy.)
So, Bookstooge sort-of-nominated me for the Sunshine Blogger Award! Thank you, Bookstooge! I am so flattered. I think his exact words were, “If you’re reading this, consider yourself nominated, because it means you have a pulse.”
Rules For The Sunshine Blogger Award:
- Display the award’s official logo somewhere on your blog.
- Thank the person who nominated you.
- Provide a link to your nominator’s blog.
- Answer your nominators’ questions.
- Nominate up to 11 bloggers.
- Ask your nominees 11 questions.
- Notify your nominees by commenting on at least one of their blog posts.
Questions from Bookstooge:
- Why Would Anyone Consider Cereal to be Soup?
It’s because they are trying to categorize things according to algorithmic rules/decision trees instead of the way the human mind normally works, which is by constructing a schema for the thing in question and then eyeballing it.
With schemas, if the thing mostly resembles the schema, it is considered an instance of that thing, even if it misses checking some important boxes. And if it checks all the boxes but manifestly does NOT resemble the schema at all, then it’s not an instance of that thing.
Cereal is in the latter category. It’s an ungodly modern creation of Mr. Kellogg, who believed that eating meat was morally wrong as well as unhealthy, and sought to banish it from the breakfast table. And I say this as someone who very much likes breakfast cereal, particularly as an evening snack, even though I know it has wreaked havoc with my metabolism (see question #10).
2. Why Do You Blog?
I blog to get you interested in my books. Go buy ’em. BUT, warning, don’t buy the Kindle version of The Strange Land until the end of next week, when it will cost 99 cents because of a special promo.
3. How Do You Justify Your Existence? (I got that one from the Tales of the Black Widowers, good isn’t it?)
Yep, it’s a good one.
“So God created man. In the image of God created He him, male and female created He them. And He said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. Rule over the fish of the sea and the birds of the air, the cattle and the creatures that move along the ground.'”
Edit: By quoting this passage, I am NOT asserting that the only justification for our life is to reproduce … i.e., that your life somehow has no meaning if you are not a parent. I happen to have been given three children, but that’s God’s gift to me, not mine to Him. No, the point of quoting this passage is this: I justify my existence because God made me. He made us. He wanted there to be people. He wanted us to exist as male and female. And, per the latter part of the passage, He wanted there to be a lot of us. If you exist and you are a human, He is happy about that.
4. How Do You Choose Who to Follow?
Unfortunately, I’m a lot like Trump in this way. If you say nice things to me, I like you and then I follow you.
An alternative route is that you posted something that really interested me. This usually means book reviews, discussion about writing, theology, ancient history, and sometimes art.
5. If John McClane and John Wick were tied on a railroad track and you could only set one of them free, which would you choose and why?
O.K., I had to duckduckgo him, but John McClane is the Bruce Willis character in Die Hard. I would save John McClane instead of John Wick for the following reasons:
- John Wick could definitely save himself.
- I only saw the first Die Hard, but in it, John McClane is a family man, whereas John Wick doesn’t even have a dog anymore.
- Once when we were in Indonesia, somebody swore that my husband looked exactly like Bruce Willis and now I can’t unsee it. That makes me think Bruce Willis is even more handsome.
6. In a game of Parcheesi, who would win, Spongebob Squarepants or the Doom Slayer?
I expect Spongebob to win in the same way that Bugs Bunny would.
7. Do you feel guilty about all of my oxygen that you are breathing?
Yes. My gosh, don’t remind me!
8. What is your favorite movie?
It’s a tie between The Princess Bride and a little hidden gem called Undercover Blues.
9. If you were going to be “accidentally but on purpose” killed tomorrow, how would you spend today?
I would write long letters to each of my children. If I had extra time, I’d move on to my husband, then other close family and friends.
I might try to transfer the rights to my books so they don’t go out of print, but I don’t think that could be done in one day. If you snooze, you lose, and I guess I snost and I lost.
10. Are mirrors Friend, or Foe?
Friend, but only in the sense of “faithful are the wounds of.”
11. If you could change ONE THING about your blog, what would it be?
Every single visit to my blog would result in a book purchase and then a breathless review on Amazon GO BUY MY BOOKS PEOPLE!
Ahem. I Nominate:
I nominate seven friends (the number of perfection!) plus Bookstooge cause I want to hear his answers too. And I nominate you, Reader, if you want to do it! After all, you are breathing! Which might provide the answer to my first question!
- Eustacia
- Fran
- Jacqui
- Diana
- Snapdragon
- The Orangutan Librarian
- Chris
- Bookstooge (It’s a boomerang tag!)
To Answer These Questions:
- What is the best gift God has given you?
- Without sharing details you don’t want to share, how did you come out of your darkest hour/day/year?
- What kind of biome would you most prefer to live in (one that can be inhabited by people)?
- In real life, how are your social skills (and do you have any tips for me haha)?
- What is your favorite genre of fiction?
- Do you ever read nonfiction and what makes you pick it up?
- Tell me one nice thing about your grandparents.
- If you could speak any language, ancient or modern, fluently besides your native one, which one would you choose?
- What are your feelings on the Harry Potter series?
- Do you have a favorite YouTuber/podcaster? What do they talk about? Now’s your chance to promote them!
- When did you first seriously consider the claims of Jesus of Nazareth? If you never have, would you do me a solid and consider doing so?
The Adjective Noun, a Novel by Me
Setting: a really long time ago
Characters: Super smart, but not as smart as actual ancient people because novel written by me
Plot: Tragic, but not as tragic as real life
thank you
Out of Babel Books 