Dogged Deadlines!

I've been Missing in Action for much of the last month. My family wonders where Mom has gone. My neighbors may be asking if I've moved away. Social media connections almost certainly believe I've unfriended them. I've been on deadline.

This particular deadline crunch began with a challenge. I attended a writers' conference in mid-September. A woman I've known for years and have worked with frequently, managing editor at a publishing house that has produced some of my books, attended the same conference. She issued a broad challenge to anyone willing to accept it: The publishing house had a contest going involving three different genres. They sought novellas in each of the three categories, with the best entry in each to be published next year. One of those categories is historical romance and my friend, the editor, challenged me to send her a manuscript.

The problem? She showed me the flyer for the contest and issued her personal challenge on September 14. The deadline for all entries was October 15. Could I write a novella start to finish in a month?

Now you understand why I've been MIA. I've been pushing that deadline. The good news is, the novella is complete at 36,000 words. Three lovely readers and an editor gave it a once-over for me, even when I gave them a two-day deadline to get it done, and I submitted my complete manuscript two days ago, on October 14, actually one day early. It's a good story, too. I did it! But that's about all I've done lately.

What has this experience taught me? For one thing, I can be stubborn about taking on a challenge, even if it doesn't seem realistic. Also, I can write a book in a month if I'm highly motivated. Those are good things to know. Not so good are some of the other lessons, like realizing I can disappear so completely into the black hole of my fictional world that I can practically vanish from the physical world we inhabit. Not good. Not good at all.

I'm back now, remembering where I live and reconnecting with the actual people around me. I'm even working again on my other deadlines, which got pushed back or snubbed altogether during my month of publishing panic. Today, I appear to be just like other people with other jobs, people who work given hours and live the rest of the time with family and friends.

I'm not cured, however. Deadline Fever will surely strike again. One day soon, I'll realize I've spent so much time playing with my imaginary friends that my actual, physical friends wonder what has happened to me. Or maybe not. My friends know I'm a writer, after all.

Susan loves to hear from readers. Write her at susan.aylworth.author@gmail.com, or visit www.susanaylworth.com or her Facebook page, www.facebook.com/Susan.Aylworth.Author. Watch for Amber in Autumn, Book 3 in the "Seasons of Destiny" series, coming early next year. Books 1 and 2, Paris in the Springtime and  Sunny's Summer are available in e-book and paperback formats. Winter Skye will follow soon. Who knows? There may even be an historical romance novella to add to the mix. Stay in touch for updates. 

Too close to the action

        My husband and I recently spent 14 months living in Kayenta, Arizona, and working in addiction recovery programs. We loved the work, the people, the beautiful views of Monument Valley...in fact, just about everything! But our time there ended and we left to come back to our permanent home.
          Our first day back in northern California was November 1. The Camp Fire started one week later. Although it did not reach our home, it burned within five miles of us. We were on alert for possible evacuation and the park only one-third mile from our home was closed in the event evacuation became necessary. We saw the black smoke clouds, thousands of feet high, rolling down at us from the ridge and for days we lived in skies so dark, the streetlights stayed on day and night and everyone who had to be out driving used headlights.

For most of three weeks, we did not go out unless we had to. When we did, we wore hazard masks. Worse, we heard the stories and saw the videos from friends, people we knew well, who lost everything: homes, possessions, businesses, pets. Some people we did not know lost family members. At least eighty-five people were killed in the fire, the most destructive and deadly in California history.

Then came the floods. Although this area hadn’t seen measurable precipitation in nearly two-hundred twenty days, the skies opened in a series of “atmospheric rivers” that poured rain and snow across the region for months. In the fire zone, what was left by the flames washed away in a series of floods and debris flows. A friend was among the archaeologists who went into the debris zone to rescue the ashes of the dead before the floods could wash them away.

In the months since then, my husband and I have visited the burned-out areas, viewing only a few of the two-hundred eleven square miles consumed by the flames. We have participated in relief efforts and have tried to extend our help and sympathy to all those affected. Yet we feel helpless in the face of such overwhelming, destructive natural power.

My newest book is SUNNY'S SUMMER, due out in May. It deals with the aftermath of the Camp Fire. I told my husband, "I have to write this. I have to." He warned me not to. “It’s too soon,” he said. “The experience is too raw for too many people.”
Then I wrote a short sketch of the story line and showed it to a friend affected by the fire. She did not lose her home, but the flames burned up to her back porch, she was evacuated for nearly a month without knowing whether her horses were alive, and when she returned, her whole home had to be professionally cleaned due to smoke damage. What couldn’t be cleaned was an uninsured loss. (As a side note, a neighbor who did not have to evacuate cared for her horses. They are well.)

My friend, who had experienced the fires, said, “Write it! You must! People have to see that others are experiencing the same things: the horror, the loss, the guilt…oh, the guilt! Yes, write it. Maybe it can help with some healing.”

I usually try to make my work timeless so it can fit into anyone's experience. In the new book, tied to exact times and places, I tell the story of fictional people who are experiencing the aftermath of the Camp Fire. I hope their experience can help others to heal. Writing it has been cathartic for me.

Susan Aylworth is the author of 17 novels currently available as e-books. SUNNY'S SUMMER, due out in May, is her 18th. She lives in northern California with Roger, her husband of 49 years. She loves hearing from readers. Find her at www.susanaylworth.com, @SusanAylworth, on Pinterest and Instagram, and at www.facebook.com/Susan.Aylworth.Author.

A Book in Search of a Cover

The manuscript is written. The editing and revision are progressing. But your thoughts are locked on a visual representation of your story. The protagonist has been in your head for months, possibly even years, indistinct in exact details—you don’t want anything too recognizable: no photos of starlets or hunks. Other characters live in your head as nebulous physical entities.

What are distinct are the props: houses, trees, a painting, a ball gown, a uniform, the main street, a churchyard. But do any of these express the essence of the novel?

For my novel, Wait a Lonely Lifetime, published by Avalon in 2012, the cover artist chose a night scene of the Ponte Vecchio—one of the most recognizable landmarks in Florence. Though this bridge is mentioned several times in the novel, including a reference to World War II and how it was saved from destruction, the Vecchio does not represent the underlying theme of second-chance at love.

I followed this safe, tried and true, method of cover design with my second novel, published in 2014, using a photo of the city in which the novel, Salsa Dancing with Pterodactyls, takes place. Initially, we used a silhouette including the skyline, ballet slippers and a flying reptile, but this didn’t make the cut to the paperback edition. Following this publication, I used flora to indicate the season of the story but had little to do with the story.

My current work in progress, Pavane for Miss Marcher, is an historical novel, set in the 1870s in a rural village in Maine. The male protagonist is a Civil War veteran who returns home many years later, suffering from guilt and an aching heart, hoping to find the woman whose one letter had given him hope that he could once again be human.

 

A red ball gown, a painting of lilies, a pumpkin patch, a piano, a New England house or village?

Doing the Same Thing

I keep a notebook of ideas for writing, promotions, marketing, website development: all the efforts writers are now expected to be able to do to further their careers.

Last week, I told my "business manager" I wanted to make more money. The response: "Market better."

Of course, I made a note of that...in my good ideas for marketing notebook.

If it is true that the definition of madness is "doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result," I'm there. I have books and workshop notes, leaflets, pamphlets, bookmarked websites and follow marketing-writers' blogs.

There is a wealth of information, everywhere you look. And for a writer who used to be a "marketing professional," one might assume I knew what I was doing.

Not so. Self-promotion is no cakewalk in the park with a fashion icon. Self-promotion is more like staring at a mirror-image of a sleepless night after all three children have destroyed the living room furniture with permanent felt pens and explaining to their teacher why the youngest has multi-hued spots all over his face when all you want to do is curl up with a good idea, a few well-defined characters and the perfect setting.

Once upon a time, writers wrote books, sent them to publishers and rested on their laurels...or did they? The facts tell a different story. When I worked for a women's publishing cooperative, Honno.co.uk, the board members took on some of the responsibility for marketing the books we published but the onus was on the author to generate sales. This is not different from the traditional (legacy) publishers.

Although there may be an advance, promotion falls to the author unless the author is already so well-known the advent of a new book is enough to generate sales. Most of us do not earn out our advances, if we received them, and if that happens more often than not, the author will have difficulty finding another publisher.

But, help abounds! Take for instance, exactly what we do here at Classic and Cozy Books and several other author group blogs such as Avalon Authors (which came to an end when Avalon Books was bought by Amazon Montlake), Four Foxes One Hound, and any number of other opportunities that suggest writing articles, interviewing other authors, presenting workshops and networking.

I have recently joined the Indie Publishing Group hosted by the Mechanics Institute in San Francisco. In a month, I will be giving a brief presentation about the ubiquitous 'Social Media' that many of us are spending so much of our writing time to pursue and conquer. In the previous century (I can say that now), authors were represented by agents, supported by editors and entertained by publishers. Now, we are in the position of doing much of this for ourselves.

And we are having a great time discovering all the fun we've been missing, as well as how amazingly capable we are, and how much work is involved beyond the wordcraft. Estimates are that most writers now spend at least 70% of their 'writing' time promoting their work, even those who enjoy the benefits of legacy publishing, which includes blogging, tweeting,  instagraming, pininteresting, tumblring, redditing, wattpading, as well as formatting, designing, proofreading or hiring someone to do all this while we strive to make a living and pay the rent.

I love my work!

"Where do you get your ideas?"

As we open the new year, every writer I know is making resolutions about the work for the coming season and every would-be writer is dreaming and hoping, wondering how to make the dream happen. Here's one way to get from "I wish" to "I will."

One of the common questions asked in any author interview is "Where do you get your ideas?" Most writers I know have trouble answering this one since, for us, the ideas are everywhere. Life is a constant Niagara Falls flow of ideas. For those of us who think this way, it's odd to hear people ask the question. Often we want to answer, "Don't you get ideas too?"

This makes me think of Son #5. He is a gifted musician, and by "gifted," I mean he truly got music as a gift. It was born in him--which makes Hubby and me wonder what throwback ancestor left that gene lying around. Son 5 learned to play guitar when he was barely a teen. By the time he was old enough for after-school employment, he worked in a music store where he could pick up and play any stringed instrument they had. Just. Like. That. He has since taught himself piano.

When we remarked on his marvelous ability, he usually shined us on with, "It's easy. Anyone can do it." It has taken him time to realize that no, not everyone can do it. Authors are the same way with ideas:  Coming up with ideas is so natural to us that it feels like anyone can do it.

In fact, with a little training, almost anyone can do it. It requires the exercise of imagination, but it's not that hard. If you feel imagination-challenged, just ask, "What if?" Here's how it works for me:

• On a TV program, I heard the story of 17-year-old Julianne Koepcke who, in 1971, was the only survivor of a plane crash in the Venezuelan rain forest. After a two-mile fall, she hiked out alone. Her story percolated in the back of my mind until one day I asked, "What if a modern teen survived a similar accident, but in the Bolivian part of the rain forest where I've been? And what if she was not alone, but had a companion who required her care?" This idea was the genesis for my newest manuscript, an adventure called RESCUE.
• A friend chatted about a woman who claims to see ghosts. I thought, "What if a teen who pretended to psychic abilities was actually visited by the spirit of a murdered girl?" That grew into my first mystery story, MAGGIE RISING: Adventures of a Part-Time Psychic.
• After hearing friends talk about high school reunions, I wondered, "What if a young woman returned to the town where she attended high school only to find that her buddy had grown into a very attractive, interesting man?" It was hardly a new thought, but as the bits and details began filling in, it grew into the first of nine romances set in Rainbow Rock, Arizona. Each of the eight that followed began when I picked a secondary character from a previous book and wondered who would be attractive to that person and how they might meet.
• While watching a movie remake of Shakespeare's "Hamlet," I suddenly identified with his mother and wondered, "What if she told her own story? Would it sound different?" The result was my one-woman play, GERTRUDE.

Other authors I know have written stories after hearing of a racially-motivated murder and wondering, "What if it happened to my child?" or watching a documentary about Adolf Eichmann and thinking, "What if he lived among us today?" A friend watched a teenaged couple telling their families about the future they planned and imagined what might happen in a similar couple if one of them was diagnosed with a disfiguring illness. The same process, with variations, has led to the creation of just about every fictional story we've ever heard, seen, or read.

If one of your New Year's Resolutions is to improve creativity, here's one possibility. To let your own imagination work as most fiction writers do, just observe what's happening around you and ask, "What if?" Now imagine Dr. Seuss saying, "Oh, the places you'll go!" May we all enjoy the journey.

Susan Aylworth is the author of 14 novels, all available as e-books and a 15th which is now in production. She loves her northern California home which she shares with her husband of 46 years and the two spoiled cats they serve. When she can't be with her seven children, seven great kids-in-law, and 25 grandbabies, she loves hanging with her fictional offspring, the children of her mind. She also loves hearing from readers. Visit her website at www.susanaylworth.com or find her @SusanAylworth, at .facebook.com/Susan.Aylworth.Author, or on Pinterest.

Three Daunting Ps

At my local RWA chapter’s Christmas party last month (yes, it was only last month), the book exchange was a mixed blessing for me. One of my colleagues received a book he had read and kept a copy of, so he gave me the book and offered to trade with the one I chose. He already had and read that one too.

The first one he rejected is the one that is the subject of this piece.



January is the time of year we pressure ourselves to make changes. So, when I finished reading The War of Art I was in the right frame of mind to take on the premise that Steven Pressfield eloquently presents.

With due diligence, I set my goals and leapt into the new year (which also happens to be a Leap Year but no pun intended there) with renewed determination. Pressfield’s major premise is that we are at war with ourselves in the form of resistance to our creative goals.
I think we can all raise our hands when we’re honest about how easily we slip into some self-defeating behaviors.

Chief among my self-sabotaging activity is Procrastination. I have another name for it: Displacement Activity. I use those two words as a Category on one of my blogs to disguise the truth behind them. There are ways and ways to NOT write. Blogging is just one. Some call it a necessary marketing/promoting/branding effort. As may be, but it is also a substitute for “real writing”. While I’m blogging, I am satisfying that niggling drive to put words together.

Another of my “resistance” efforts is to Prioritize. This always sounds as though I’m truly setting forth on a planned mission but the items on the list of Things To Do aren’t always about what is necessary to do for my work: writing. I prioritize interesting activities that I can excuse as creative or enhancing my creative drive, freeing my creative brain cells, structuring my creative efforts to be more efficient.  

And there is always Planning which brings me to the second book of the Secret Book Elf tome I have read over the past few days, K M Weiland’s outling your NOVEL: Map Your Way to Success. In all my writing life, I have never “planned” a book. I’m one of those: “put some words on the page and see what happens next” writers. But I see Weiland’s point and questioned myself about my “process” (another P but not as daunting). The other P word that is used for those of us who “see what happens” is Pantsers – flying by the seat of your pants – I prefer the O word that Ian McEwan calls his “process”: Organic.


I attended many business seminars in another life. We said it this way: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail. We also had a different set of daunting Ps but the messages are the same: Get to Work and Don’t Give Up.