Have I been slacking at book promotion this summer? Yes, yes I have.  

Is it because I'm lounging on the divan, popping bonbons into my gullet and binge-watching David Attenborough? No, not at all. 

First, I don't have an actual divan. Second, I can't eat dairy. Third, well, honestly, I do enjoy his lovely voice, but television is not my vice. 

Instead I have been listening to a playlist heavy on Anaïas Mitchell, Allison Kraus, Hozier, and Rhiannon Gibbons, working on the next thing.

The next thing.  
​If I were a younger writer, I might have put this next thing aside and focused instead on writing another novel like She Taught Me Everything. A contemporary family drama, say.  It would be a smart career move, to focus on building a brand for my readers to more easily identify me. Excellent strategy long-term.

But I am not a young writer. So rather than thinking about building a brand within a genre, I have passions. Ambitions. Wild horsey dreams.

​Plus this other chunk of words: what I've labeled on my computer as the "Woodkeep trio."
​
These are three (actually five now, but okay, it started as three) related stories clamoring to become as big as a Rubens, and which ask significant chunks of time from me. ​

The three (five) are very different from She Taught Me Everything --like set in a pre-Industrial magic fairy-tale world different.

If I've lost you at fairy tale, so be it.  

The folks clamoring in my imagination don't care about genre conventions. Who am I to argue with fictional characters and their demands? They have a story to tell, dammit!  
But enough excuse-making. They are who they are.

Two Scottish ballads haunt me. One is Tam Lin, about Janet, a spunky noblewoman who will NOT be told what to do. Forbidden to go to Carter Hall, she hikes up skirts and skedaddles, "for young Tam Lin is there."  
As night follows day, Janet finds herself pregnant, and thinks to end the pregnancy with some herbs at Carter Hall.  Tam Lin confronts her and when she says that she will NOT be having a baby with some freaky-deeky fairy knight, he tells her that he's just a poor human, held prisoner by the Queen of Fairyland.
And if Janet is willing, she can save Tam Lin from a fate worse than death this coming Halloween...   

The other ballad is Thomas True or Thomas the Rhymer, in which a guy is snatched up by the queen of fairies — that hussy! — and when he tells her that he wants to go home to the world of humans, she says fine, be that way, and she lets him go...giving him the gift of speaking only truth. Nice gift! 

And that's partly what is inspiring me this summer. These two ballads, along with The Princess Bride, the concept of true love, and a cat. Not a real cat, because allergies, but a cat. 

I don't have a title yet (working on it!), but I do have a date with my editor. Which means, I must hustle back to the—oh, yeah, I am already at my computer.

It's also those scarlet suggestions, notes, generalized messages that teachers and editors are prone to making. They often use red pencil, actually, which likewise does not erase from the page.

When I am an editor working on someone's paper manuscript, I like to use green ink or purple, just to mix it up. Still, even if it's purple, it's red.  And when you are a writer, red = love.  

Or in my world it is.  Because when I have plunked down cash, it's nice to hear from my editor that they like a turn of phrase or the story is interesting. But far better is the attention, time, and—yes--love poured into a note that says something along the lines of, "I think this section could be tighter. Does this word convey the emotion you want? Why are we learning this right now?"

The point of a critical editorial reading is to improve the work. In the immortal words of the original Soloflex ad, it's hard to make improvements. 

So when the manuscript returns with lots and lots of red ink—and yes, the modern version is a Word or Google annotated file, which provides less emotional connection, as you aren't seeing the hasty checkmarks grooved deeply into the page —it's a joy.

Because it's gonna hurt, but it's gonna be better at the end.

But truly, I was NOT lurking. A pair of young women drifted past the table of stacked books, and one, Rachel, picked up my book.

"Squeee! You just picked up my book!" I said.
"Wha?" she said, not yet fully alarmed by my obvious excitement.
"Look on the back!"
She flipped the book over and compared the author photo with my face. "It's you," she said.
"I know!" I said, then, because emotions: "I've got goosebumps!"
"I picked it up because of the cover."
"It's beautiful," I agreed, without the slightest self-consciousness.
"And it's about sisters!"
Were they sisters, I asked, indicating Rachel and her book-browsing friend.
"No. But we both have sisters." Rachel gave me a shrewd look and added, "Is this inspired by a real sister?"
"Yes," I said, truthfully. "But my charismatic older sister is much nicer than that one."
"Oooh," Rachel said. "I'm a charismatic older sister."

And that, gentle reader, is how I accidentally strong-armed an unsuspecting passer-by into purchasing a copy, as well as how I ended up signing a short stack of books at the Barnes & Noble bookstore this afternoon.

Thank you https://www.facebook.com/bntampafl Barnes & Noble South Tampa. And thank you, Rachel! 

In other authorial news, I was invited to map the settings for She Taught Me Everything into a nifty little app called Squirl.  
Squirl is designed to help users, as its tagline announces "Discover the places described in books."

You can visualize where a book is set. So, is Brooklyn Heights your hometown? What snippet from the book did this author choose to go with the pin on the map for Brooklyn Heights?   

You can check the map for books set in any given place—a special treat for bookish folk: to see the locations we've read about.  Or, if you're built this way, it's a way to pre-view spots before visiting by finding books to read that are set in a specific spot.

I love this idea, and hope other authors and their publicity departments will pile on!

Thanks ​https://squirl.co/

"Mathy Math, Math-Math."  That's how one of my friends hears any discussion of numbers: "Mathy-mathetty-math-math."

But even the most innumerate of us have landmark numbers.  These are the numbers that maybe we learned to count by (5-10-15-20, for instance) or numbers that just feel less challenging to keep in mind (100 vs 97, or a dozen vs 13).

I'm approaching a landmark number as an author—a fact that is truly of interest to nobody but me. Has that yet stopped me from writing about anything? No.
​

During my feverish rush last year to get current in my understanding of modern publishing, I gathered some depressing facts. About half of the US population does't read even a single book a year. Not a surprise, but oh! poor creatures!

Also, most books will sell less than 300 copies in the US (1000 copies factoring in all formats across the world). Not just in the first year, btw, but ever.  So if, let's say, you just so happened to be pouring your life-force into the creation of a book, this base truth is helpful for framing one's expectations.

Joyfully for me, I have at least 300 friends kind enough to buy my book. I am grateful for each one. It's a deep thrill every time someone tells me they have read it.

Which brings us to the wonderful-to-me landmark number: 1000.  On Goodreads.com, a website helps 150 million readers track and rate books, She Taught Me Everything is inching closer and closer to the 1000 mark.  

​Meaning that nearly 1000 readers on that site—mostly strangers! people who love to read and who judge by covers!—have either already read or plan to read the book. 
​

They might be getting it from the library (ooh! If you use the library, consider requesting STME), or from a bookstore, iTunes or Kobo, Barnes & Noble or Amazon...

But 1000. Whatever expectations I had six months ago, this number feels a lot bigger than 999. ​