Still Not Nesting

When I sold my first book to Avalon, I learned that the print run would be about 2,000 copies. Of course I was thrilled anyway, and the thought of having several thousand people read my book made me giddy. The print runs on the other four Avalon books were similar, and since I chose to put the last Wally Morris mystery out myself, with the help of CreateSpace, it was probably less.

But the amazing thing is that I once had an audience of over a million readers. A long time ago I had read an op-ed column by Anna Quindlen, a person whose opinions I respected, and I strongly disagreed with her. You can read my letter to the editor, thanks to the magic of the internet. Believe me, though, if I couldn’t have found it that way, I have copies of the newspaper from that day tucked safely away.

LIVING DESK

Nesting

Published: February 10, 1988

To The Living Section:

Anna Quindlen's column on the nesting instinct [ Life in the 30's, Jan. 27 ] reminds us that the grass is still greener on the other side.

Nesting is not all what a person who doesn't have a job does all day. Those of us who don't have jobs do not all spend the entire time our children are in school having lunch with our friends or furniture shopping and picking out wallpaper. We have the luxury of having time to do these things occasionally (and without the children, which is the only sane way), but we also feel strong responsibilities to various activities, which we probably wouldn't have time for if we were working.

We make sure our children get to their different after-school activities. We also work on committees handling such trivialities as improving our children's education and starting recycling programs in our towns. Some of us even have to find sitters to take our infants so we can have the time to do such things as performing in a puppet show that seeks to sensitize third graders to the handicapped. We don't expect help from working mothers for these things, although some of them occasionally ask us to chauffeur their children around since they think we have nothing better to do.

One thing that I have noticed is different: we don't have to send a sick child to school. That's usually the day we do a lot of nesting, because it stops our whirlwind of activities and there's not much else we can do. One or two days spent at home nesting, particularly with a cranky child, is plenty for most of us, and more than satisfies that need for months. JOANI ASCHER South Orange, N.J.

Looking at that letter all these years later. I hope I did not hurt anyone’s feelings. It is hard to get everything done, I’m sure, especially if a person has a full-time job. And now, from the standpoint of a writer trying to get book after book finished and published while people think that just because I only work part time the rest of my time is available for whatever, I find myself just giving in, putting off my work, so that I can do those jobs that full-time workers don’t have time to do. My children are grown and gone, and the only person home with me, during the days when I’m not working at my outside job, has four legs and a tail. But she needs time too, so that she can develop into a good Seeing Eye® guide dog.

And I can always hope that someday I’ll have a circulation closer to the one I had for my letter to the editor over twenty years ago before I started writing professionally.

Furry Muses

In the bio of my first book, I mentioned that I got a lot of writing done with a warm puppy asleep on my foot. How a sleeping puppy can help a writer develop her craft is almost as much a mystery as those I write. So I’d like to take this opportunity to explain.

As many people know, my family has been raising Seeing Eye® puppies to become guides for the blind for over twenty years. We are currently raising our thirteenth pup.

We started shortly after I found a copy of the novel FOLLOW MY LEADER, by James B. Garfield, in one of the local libraries.  I had read it as a child and tried to become a puppy raiser at that time.  I sent a letter to The Seeing Eye® asking them how I could get involved and they replied saying I could not do it because I lived in Brooklyn. I would have to live in New Jersey. I figured that would never happen.

But it did, many years later, when I was an adult. And when my daughter read the book at about the same age as I had, she asked if we could raise a puppy.  My husband was totally against it, we were cat people, and it was out of the question.  We finally convinced him that it would be just for one year. That was in 1993.

Raising a puppy starts with the delivery of a seven-week-old ball of fur. The anticipation for each of our puppies was similar—excitement, acknowledgement of a big responsibility, and in the beginning, lack of sleep. The warmth and sweetness of a soft fresh puppy is unbeatable and the cuteness factor is sky high. Cuddling ensues when the puppy is delivered, but also training.  The more we followed the rules, the easier it became. We learned that when the puppy wakes up, we were to take her out, after she ate, we were to take her out, and when she had been playing for a while it was a really good idea to take her out. It sounds tedious but it doesn’t last forever, and it cuts way down on the paper towel and stain remover bills.

Because I was not officially working, (volunteering in two school libraries, puppeteering in KIDS ON THE BLOCK disability/difference awareness performances, carpooling and taking care of my mother didn’t count as work) I was the one home with the puppy most of the time. I learned a few things, one of which was that if I was sitting at my computer, the puppy would curl up on my feet. If I wanted to get up, the puppy would wake up, need to go out, be played with or walked, or fed, etc. So I stayed in my chair and wrote book after book.

I have found that when I’m stuck, taking a walk with the puppy is a useful thing. We walk along, practicing crossing streets without running into them unheedingly, and discuss plot points.  The puppy rarely disagrees, but, on the other hand, cannot take notes, so I’m obligated to remember all the epiphanies by myself, rush home and write them down. When I self-published the last book in the Wally Morris Vengeance series last year because I couldn’t stand the series not having an ending, we chose the name TWELVE PUPPIES PUBLISHING as the name of our publishing company. The puppy who was #12 is on the back of the book.

Each of our puppies has had a different personality and sense, or lack thereof, of humor. Two didn’t make the program and lived with us for their whole lives. One of them became a therapy dog. Another of the dogs we raised who had a career change became a bomb sniffing officer for ATF. When people ask how we can give them up after raising them for a year and falling in love with them, which we always do, we say it is sometimes harder than other times. But one thing about raising Labrador Retrievers, at least in our experience, is that they will go with anyone, and I think that makes the separation they feel easier. To me, that’s more important than our feelings. The departing dogs will fall in love with their trainers, then they will fall in love with their forever people, who will not have to leave them at home all day while working as I now do.

Luckily I only work outside of the house three days a week, and while I’m home writing there is still a warm puppy on my foot, even as I write this blog.

Note to Self: Don't Double Space

When I decided that I couldn’t just let my final Wally Morris mystery, Vengeance Acts Up, wallow in dejected, rejected ignominy, I made the decision to self-publish it using CreateSpace.  I read closely all the comments on the former Avaloners loop, looking for info and helpful hints from other authors who had already made the leap.  Unfortunately, I seem to have missed a few essential pieces of advice, surely given in the instructions, but overlooked by my husband, the one who actually did all the computer entries, and me.

We really tried hard.  I copied as much as possible each page of one of my earlier Avalons, to make sure that my headers were done right, and the title pages and dedications were all good.  I forgot (unbelievably, I do work in a library, after all) the copyright page, which was a shame, because it would have been one more place to list our newly formed, unofficial, publishing company, TWELVE PUPPIES PUBLISHING.  We chose that in honor of the twelve Seeing Eye® puppies we’ve raised and put our current one at the time, Nana, in the logo spot on the back of the book.  She was seven-weeks-old in the picture and had just been delivered from The Seeing Eye® breeding center.

Trust me, it’s cute.  You can look at it yourself. http://www.amazon.com/Vengeance-Acts-Up-Mystery-Mysteries/dp/0615824099/ref=tmm_pap_title_0

After an amazingly short time, the brand-spanking-new proof arrived.  You can imagine our dismay when the book came in at a hefty 450 plus pages.  We’re talking doorstop.  It was huge.

It turned out that we should not have sent the book in double-spaced. There were a few other mistakes I didn’t pick up until I looked at the proof in person (rather than the convenient and free version on the computer screen.)  Also, there was the biggish mistake I won’t name that was in the Kindle version http://www.amazon.com/Vengeance-Wally-Morris-Mystery-ebook/dp/B00CW5DGS4/ref=tmm_kin_title_popover  (does anyone know what to do to get that fixed?) that my daughter caught.  Actually, that was another mistake we made—doing them in that order. And, because I didn’t quite understand the terms, I managed to make the book semi-unavailable, especially to the vendors who sell to libraries.

The next time I use CreateSpace to publish one of my books (I have a huge backlog so I hope it’s soon but we always seem to be too busy) we will try to follow the rules.  Right now we are raising our thirteenth Seeing Eye® puppy, Holliday (no, we don’t name them), but I don’t think it’s really wise or practical to change the name of the publisher. One never knows for sure, so we’ll all just have to wait and see.  We could be at the beginning of a publishing dynasty.

Two proofs after the doorstop, and still missing the verso page, (we are a little boneheaded at times) we had a copy we liked.  I had a book signing at home (really a cake fest with wine, beer, cheese, fruit, ten things my daughter and I baked, and oh, yeah, books for sale), tons of people came, and everyone had a good time.

But we didn’t let anyone see the doorstop.