A stunning, heart-in-throat moment

Mark and Jonny

Picture this. I'm on my lunch hour. I've just visited my local library to check out its permanent book sale and I stop on a bench outside the building to check Facebook before heading back to work.

My FB feed tells me that the CBC TV show "Still Standing" has posted a new 90-second trailer advertising the new season that launches tonight (June 14). I click on the video and attempt to watch it on the tiny screen of my BlackBerry Q10.

Great video. Fun, action packed, with some wonderful images. Then, out of the blue, there's me. Yep, that's right. Me. Sitting at the lunch counter in the McAdam Railway Station and Hotel, talking to "Still Standing" host Jonny Harris. Just a split second image but it's me nonetheless. No doubt about it.

Wow. What a feeling. I've been on TV before, sure, but this feels different. This is an advertisement for a national TV show that is gaining in popularity. Who knows where the 90-second spot will run? Who knows how many people will see it (and me)!

Just me and the Abigail books

So my stomach is in my throat and I'm totally excited and then... boom... there I am again! Me, standing with all of my Abigail books in my hands, smiling at the camera. Another split second, sure, but clearly me. Again.

I am so pumped. I have already shared it on FB and gotten some likes and some congrats from others and I am so totally thrilled. I just wish I could find the video online so I could link to it here and share it more widely!

Thoroughly modern me

Sometimes as I try to become a modern writer I have to laugh at myself -- sure, I'm on Facebook and Twitter and Youtube and here on Blogger but, honestly, do I really think I've mastered the technology to the point where I can actually be creative, even avant garde with it?


My writing partner, Mary E. O'Keefe, and I are putting the final touches on the six new stories that will make up Abigail Massey at McAdam Station, Volume 5, set for publication this fall. As usual, we've had a lot of fun with the project, bouncing first story ideas then story drafts off each other as we try to produce the best new tales of McAdam Railway Station that we can.


And we've come up with some really interesting new material -- a couple of new characters with fascinating back stories, some exciting and heart-warming new stories and, yes, even an attempt to be cutting edge with the final story in the book.


The first fun idea we came up with actually came from my partner. When I told her I was struggling to come up with something really unique for the sixth story in the collection, she suggested I consider writing the story from several different points of view. Abigail stories, she pointed out, are always told with a third-person limited narrator, from Abigail's point of view -- why not tell a single tale from the points of view of several characters?


She mentioned several examples from literary and film history (The Sound and the Fury, for example) to illustrate her point.


I liked the idea immediately and set to writing. And I came out with a pretty fair story -- a story in which conflict arises between Abigail and Martha, in particular, in relation to the differences in how they experience and understand several events in their lives.


I wrote the original story from Abigail's point of view, then the same story from Martha's point of view. Mary agreed to write the story once again, this time from Jenny's point of view. Sounds pretty good, doesn't it?


Well, it does until you realize that the original Abigail story is already longer than any other Abigail story I've written (with the exception, of course, of the Christmas novella) and the Martha story is almost as long. Add in Jenny's point of view and you will have basically doubled the length of the book.


Wow. That's maybe too much for one collection of stories. And the first five stories in the collection were written specifically to lead in to the final tale so it's not as if we can just leave one out to shorten the book


In other words, unless we want to produce a book that is too big to sell for the price at which we are aiming, we need to find a solution.


We tried to cut each version of the story down a bit. It helped. But not enough.


So, trying to be ultra modern, I proposed another solution: what if we printed only the Abigail version in the book, then put a note at the end of the story that says, "To read Martha's side of the story, go to www.abigailmassey.ca and, to hear Jenny's version, visit youtube"?


You know, multiple platforms for different versions of the story. Use one medium to draw readers to the other media. Who knows, maybe Miss Pierce can tweet her response to the entire thing?


See what I mean? I'm already laughing at myself. How silly is this proposal? Especially considering the fact that a good portion of our readership are older people who might not be particularly savvy about using social media. Talk about alienating your audience!


Or... could it work?

Do as I say... not as I don't

So what do you do when someone asks for your advice on something, you give it, and then you realize that you yourself do almost NONE of the things you have just advised this person to do?


That's exactly what is happening to me at this very moment. Last night, I was invited to the house of a friend to talk with her father, a wonderful writer, about how to enhance his online profile, to improve the presentation of his existing blog and to attract more readers to his beautiful prose.


We had a wonderful discussion and I believe both my friend and her father felt they got good value for the time they invested in speaking with me.


The problem is, although I believe very firmly in every suggestion I made to them, I have come to the realization that I personally implement almost none of these excellent suggestions in my own work. It's really quite amazing: do as I say, not as I do.


In preparation for the discussion, I had read over most of the entries on his existing blog site, which has not been updated in some time. I was impressed with just how beautifully this man writes, how broad and creative is his vocabulary, how vivid his descriptions and how expansive his literary knowledge. This is wonderful writing and well worthy of a broader audience.


I also studied the site itself and how his work was presented. And I came away with a deep respect for his work as well as a number of suggestions on how to present it more effectively.


Among my comments and suggestions:

• Don't change your writing style to attempt to attract a larger audience -- write what and how you love and have faith in the quality of your writing to attract the right audience, an audience that can appreciate what you already do so beautifully;
• Include more images -- several of his posts include photographs and others include simply wonderful examples of his wife's creative endeavours (sketches and pastels) to complement the subject matter of his post. I think it is no coincidence that these posts, in general, attract the most attention and the most comments so I recommended that he try to include visuals consistently with each post, especially at the top of each entry;
• Add new entries on a consistent basis, at least once per week, so that, as readers find and enjoy the blog, they can get into a pattern of visiting on a regular basis, confident in the knowledge that they will find something new to read on each visit;
• Create an email list, to which he can send the link to each new entry as it is posted, and ask people to add their name to that list when they first visit the site;
• Be active on Facebook, Twitter and other forms of social media in order to build a network, make more contacts and give himself more avenues to promote his blog;
• Use the front page of the blog site to promote the fact that he hopes someday to produce a book of his writings -- create interest in that project early and see if it helps propel the book into reality;
• Promote himself (and his artist wife), both on the blog site and in social media, since people will often want to read your work if they feel they know, like and/or respect you.

I think theses are all good suggestions. I just wish I myself followed more of them.

Promoting is always more challenging than writing your stories

Awesome book launch event last Sunday afternoon for Volume 4 of the Abigail Massey stories. After some tense early moments, we ended up with a full house and a great crowd of supportive people.


My colleague, Mary, for whom this was the first real event to feature her creative work, seemed to enjoy herself very much and spoke beautifully. I did my bit and we ended up selling more than $1,000 worth of books.


All in all, an excellent day.


And now the real work begins. We have no fewer than eight promotional events on the slate for the next two months, plus media interviews, email campaigns and all kinds of other things we need to do to get people interested in the books.


It's fun but, to be honest, I find it hard. And extremely tiring. While I really enjoy the writing and I find it fun to do the public presentation part (both at speaking engagements and with the media), I do find the pace and the demands rather challenging.


You get yourself into a place where you don't want to miss any opportunity to promote the book so you have a very hard time saying no. You check your email constantly, you're always on Facebook or Twitter or Youtube tracking the progress of your various campaigns and you always... ALWAYS... feel like you have to respond fully and immediately to any request.


No matter how run down I get during these periods, I keep reminding myself that I should be grateful that anyone is taking an interest in the books. That I should be (and I really am, to be honest) delighted when the media calls wanting to cover the story and promote the book. That I should be honoured (and I ALWAYS am) that someone wants to spend his or her hard-earned money on the book that I wrote, over all the competing priorities in their lives.


Speaking of the media, I enjoyed a really fun interview this morning with a reporter for one of the bigger New Brunswick newspapers and I am very grateful that the Abigail books will be featured in a publication of that size and reach. The reporter was very nice and very well prepared, with great questions. Even better, she actually listened to what I had to say and asked excellent follow-up questions.


One thing that threw me, however, was that she didn't have a pen nor a single piece of paper with her. She read her prepared questions from her smart phone. She recorded our conversation on her smart phone. And when I gave her contact names and information for further research, she typed that directly into her smart phone.


Wow. It's a brave new world.

Finding a gold nugget in the waste of the past

If you're a writer like me, you've probably got five to ten projects (at the very least) on the go, inside your imagination if not actually on paper (or hard drive).


Some of them are active projects, the ones you're currently working on from day to day. Others are projects that you're brain is only starting to develop, that are so preliminary that you have not even jotted down a single word about them yet.


And then there are the projects that you started at some point in the past (even the distant, distant past) but never finished, that ran aground for want of imagination, for want of time, or because they got displaced by a newer, fresher idea. These are the projects that, while put aside, are not entirely forgotten.


And sometimes one of these can come roaring back to life, often for the most bizarre of reasons.


That's exactly what happened to me recently. I have a novel project that I began about five years ago, an interesting little idea for the Middle School crowd. The most memorable aspect of the project, at least until recently, was the fact that I created the protagonist's name by combining the first names of my friend's two daughters.From what I remember, I had the basic premise, the name and maybe three paragraphs of writing. Then I set it aside and, to be honest, all but forgot about it.


It all came back to life recently when I was sitting in that friend's living room, chatting with him and his now-teenage younger daughter about writing. I suddenly remembered the project and I mentioned it to them, more to share the character name than anything else.


"What's it about, this novel?" the young woman asked.


And I found myself tossing out a synopsis for the book in a more developed way than I had ever come up with in the past. Even as I was spinning the tale, I could feel myself getting interested. Excited even.


Then the daughter said, as casually as you please, "I'd buy that book."


My friend nodded. "Me too."


We batted around a few more ideas and then moved on to other topics.


When I got back home, I sat down at my new net book and, within about 20 minutes, I had a page-long synopsis in front of me. I read it over, started seeing connections, opportunities, themes that could be developed, and did a quick revision.


Then I did a chapter by chapter outline, capturing the main plot points, the major developments in character and theme, and felt the excitement burning in my gut.


I read it over again. My gut was right -- this good be good, very good. Great, even.


So I Facebooked the young woman and asked if she'd be willing to review the synopsis and outline I had produced. She said yes, of course, she'd enjoy that. In fact, she wrote, "I have some ideas of my own I'd like to contribute."


I immediately emailed the document to her, excitement blooming.


I can't wait to read what she has to say!

Leading up to launch

Launch day.

This afternoon at 2, we send my latest work out into the world with high hopes and the usual set of doubts and worries.

The weather is cooperating. Last Sunday, we were hit with a nasty winter storm, the first of the season, complete with rain, hail, snow and high winds. If our launch had taken place last weekend, no one would have shown up.

Today, however, the forecasters call for a mix of sun and cloud and a high near 10. That works for me. Works well.

Funny the kinds of things you worry about when you are about to launch a new book.

I've tweeted about the launch again this morning and I've facebooked about it. I have appeared in two local newspapers (photos in both, with big articles -- hooray!) and I have been interviewed on a local pop music radio station. Perfect timing on that one: Friday morning, just in time to advertise today's launch.

I think I can be confident that I have done everything I can possibly do to make this launch a success. Now it's just the nervous hours leading up to the beginning of the event. Five hours of pacing and wondering and hoping and trying to think of ways to pass the time.

I've already planned out my own remarks and I think I can count on the host of the event and the person I've asked to read a section of the book to the crowd to do a good job. As for me, I'm more nervous now (five hours ahead of time) than I am at the event itself.

If all goes well, we'll have a good crowd turnout, maybe even some media, and we'll sell a bunch of books. My favourite part is after the event when I get to sit at a table, meet the people and sign their books. It's fun and invigorating and interesting and many good things.

I just have to get through the next five hours.

Arriving at a creative crossroads...

I have to admit it. I'm at something of a crossroads.

I have been working to promote my children's books, written, self-published and sold with all proceeds going to support the renovation of a local historical landmark, in every way possible.

With my sister and the rest of our team of volunteers, I've done everything the writers' magazines and websites have advised:

• We've made public appearances;
• We've worked hard to stir up interest in the media (with moderate success);
• We've created a website, a Facebook site, and a Twitter account for the books and our main character;
• I personally have been on the web as much as possible, trying to promote my own brand;
• I am writing regularly for at least four different blogs, including this one
• We've produced promotional mugs and fridge magnets, advertising posters and free bookmarks promoting the stories;
• We've designed and created an interesting point-of-sale display to help sell books in the various shops that offer them to the public; and
• Now, finally, we've produced an audio book of the stories in the first book.

Frankly, I don't know what more I can do.

The response has been very positive in a lot of ways. To our surprise, the first volume of stories sold more than 1,200 copies very quickly.

We were on a high. We were riding a wave. The media was interested, people were coming out to our public appearances. It was all good.

Sales of the second and third volumes, however, were not quite as overwhelming. Sure, selling 500 copies of each one is pretty good. Outstanding, to be honest, if you figure we don't have a publisher with a promotions arm to support us and we're only for sale at a small number of outlets in a limited geographic area.

But I just don't know where to go from here. How do we push this project to the next level?

How do we break out of the geographic limitations we're facing to reach a wider audience? How do we get national media interested? How do we reach readers who don't even know our books exist?

Or do I simply publish the fourth book (a Christmas novella, coming this November), promote it as best I can, and then move on to other projects?

After all, I've got an idea for a comic novel that is just itching to get out of my brain and onto the page. Should I call it a day on the children's story project and move on?