When you should edit old stories

DID YOUR FIRST NOVEL GET YOUR HEART AND SOUL?

This is a writerly post if looked at strictly, but could apply to many other things in Life if you think of it as a metaphor for anything you have loved – and maybe lost.

It is a truism that the first novel is often unpublishable, and that IF it gets a publisher (or you publish it yourself) it is often not your best work, because, as a writer, you lack the skills to do the best possible job on the material.

[A corollary is that getting it to the publishable stage takes a huge amount of time which you lack on subsequent books, leading to the dreaded ‘sophomore slump’ when the second book doesn’t materialize or fails to meet its deadline if on contract or simply isn’t good enough and gets rejected.]

A first completed book is like a first crush

There is something in that first attempt which takes you from someone who has never written a novel – THROUGH someone who has finished at least the first draft of that novel – to whatever fate it gets: trunk novel (never to be published or even seen again); published without sequel or following books; or published with great satisfaction (in which case you are extremely lucky, or talented, and will not be reading this post – mazel tov.

In any case, DONE!

So it has value regardless of outcome, disproportionate to its size.

But it has pulled something special out of you: the first story you can see as a whole, the first to get your full commitment, the one to let you try your wings on, the first you have hopes for.

The one that makes you want to improve your writing chops.

[And the one you hope will make you famous and rich, but that is rare, and you won’t be reading here if you were that lucky one.]

For the rest of us writers

IF you didn’t go self-publish that first one (for whatever reasons – in my case self-publishing wasn’t a thing yet in the 1990s), you may have the niggling feeling that some day you really should go back to it, because it pulled so many good things from your nascent writer self.

Many things which you simply couldn’t handle yet.

I had a severe case, when I took a very brief private writing class, of looking at my own writing, KNOWING what was in my head – and UNDERSTANDING that I had not taken that story and put it on a page.

The disconnect was huge. I couldn’t see my own story in my own words.

Self-awareness is exactly the right place to start

Another truism: if you can’t see what’s wrong, you can’t fix it!

So the ability to judge your own writing is a developmental milestone.

Many people outsource this to an editor – and, if they’re lucky to find the right editor, will have their flaws pointed out to them gently, and should proceed from there to correct those flaws in future works, possibly even in the current work-in-progress.

Others choose to essentially do their own first drafts from then on out, and to outsource the editing permanently (I’ve had one such author literally tell me ‘the editor will fix everything, while I go on to the next book’; he is quite successful and very energetic, and I still don’t like his writing – possibly envy?).

I don’t judge writers, but I do choose what to read (when I have time to), so ‘whatever floats your boat’ is fine with me – for others.

By the time I started writing

my life was in tatters: I had planned to write mysteries in retirement after a long and rich career as a working mother/physicist/normal citizen. Chronic illness at 40 scrapped those plans as cleanly as a good snowplow clears the road.

I kept writing; the trunk novel grew to ‘finished story’; the sequel in the planned series was half-finished, the third in the series planned in concept and title (Acapulco Deadlymoon)…

The point here being that I did NOT plan to be hijacked by a much better story, or rather, possibly, a story I really needed to write and to up my game for (the Pride’s Children trilogy).

So the old story got literally left in the dust cloud in the rearview mirror – while I went off to become an indie mainstream novelist, and to spend the next twenty-three so far years on an obsession.

Now I’m heading into the final (?) stretch for Pride’s Children

and the inevitable question arises: what’s next?

Is the answer, ‘Go back to that first love’?

In favor of the idea:

• In the style of Sara Paretsky and Sue Grafton, I had envisioned a long series of novels with a single, first-person main character – and I had poured an enormous amount of my interests and background into her, a young Mexican mechanical engineer who had emigrated to the US with her family as a teen, become thoroughly Americanized on the one side while retaining a cultural Mexican side.
• The first novel in the series had Thea taking a job (she had MP experience) as a security officer on a college campus where her American husband was doing a PhD in physics because she thought he would be finishing and moving to a permanent job, and it didn’t make sense to her to start a Master’s in Engineering and have to switch locations halfway through.
• I could make a graduate school real from personal experience.
• I grew up in Mexico and had, first-hand, the disorientation being bi-cultural can bring.
• A series can end any time you choose to write the last book in it (or are forced to).

Against the idea:

• My experience there is a LONG time in my past now.
• Just because something was satisfying way back when may not carry over.
• There is a LOT to rewrite – with the more modern skillset.
• I am not well yet – may never be – and I’m not sure that is where I want to have a legacy, after mainstream fiction.
• Keeps me from thinking of something new.
• Is in a different genre I don’t have the chops in.
• Was set a long time ago – almost historical if I wrote it in that time frame, which I’d have to because I know nothing of a modern grad school or college experience.

I can’t quite explain the pull

Maybe I feel I failed Thea, after promising her so much.

Maybe I feel I have something to contribute that is relevant to the immigrant side of my own background – first TO Mexico at seven, and then BACK to the US at nineteen.

Maybe the second book, set in Mexico has legs.

I miss Acapulco! Hate what has happened to it, though my sisters do go back from time to time to the safe parts.

Maybe I miss my own youth and health. Okay, I do – don’t we all?

**********

But I’ve never quite been able to consign this one to the permanent dark.

Do you have trunk novels – and have you considered resurrecting them?

We grow in many ways as we age, but we also experience much in the way of loss – is it even feasible to try to go back?

How much of yourself and your writing self did you leave behind?

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Disability Book Week started without me

MAKE AN EFFORT THIS WEEK TO READ A ‘DISABILITY’ BOOK

Disability is very common; hidden disability even more common (1 in 5 adults has a significant disability).

This week libraries and other book places may have a display which encourages you to try a book

WRITTEN by a disabled author, or

ABOUT a disabled character.

There are lots of these books

I did submit both Pride’s Children: PURGATORY and NETHERWORLD, as they are BOTH, but was not chosen this year.

Of course, YOU can read either of MINE and hit that category.

But the whole point is awareness

and I encourage you to become MORE aware, even if you are neither disabled nor have a family member or close friend who is.

Because the reality is that you are five times more likely to become disabled during your working years than you are to die, but most people have LIFE INSURANCE, and don’t even know if they have LONG TERM DISABILITY INSURANCE.

Please investigate – disability insurance, if you have to purchase it yourself, is NOT expensive – and having it kept our family middle class in those many years I was of working age – and unable to get back to the physics work I loved.

Don’t rely on Social Security Disability

You might get it when you need it, you might apply repeatedly before getting it, or you might never manage to fulfill the requirements to get it – and in ANY case it is NEVER generous. Ask anyone surviving on SSDI alone.

Private disability INSURANCE usually covers something like 60% of your salary.

Caveats: most are not really designed for ‘long term’, as they have no inflation protection in spite of their name – check your policy carefully. A few years without income can be very difficult, but a lifetime at the salary you had when you were 30 can be a disaster.

Become ‘Disability savvy’

Think about what you would do – and read some of these books – if you had to, for example, navigate Target in a wheelchair – or get to Denver for a child’s wedding.

Be kinder to disabled folk – we didn’t choose to become this way; for some of us, we didn’t choose to be BORN this way.

Do your little bit: Federal LAW requires that DISABLED PASSENGERS be allowed to board FIRST. BEFORE First Class Passengers. BEFORE passengers with children. Did you know that? Honored more in the breach than in the observance by AIRLINES.

So, use markers such as Disability Book Week to remind you that we’re all equally worthy – but some of us may need a little more time or some assistance, and it would be a much nicer world for all of us if accessibility were BUILT-IN instead of tacked on.

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Obsession is liking something way too much

A DANGEROUS WORD, A DANGEROUS CONCEPT

OBSESSION is

The foundation for Pride’s Children: PURGATORY and Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD.

And defending the consequences of that obsession is the foundation of Pride’s Children: LIMBO, which I am sharing as I write through the final volume of the trilogy.

When does liking something, preferring it, turn into obsession? When it dominates too much of your waking hours, when it starts to interfere with your dreams.

Overdoing calm control leaves you vulnerable

The one who had no trouble learning Mathematics or Logic in school, who has a PhD (for heaven’s sake!) in NUCLEAR Engineering (fusion) was a big reader as a child, and has always had this, uh, underpinning to her temperament, a capacity for intense interest in something fantastical.

The tech subjects were easy, easier than it seemed they were for other little girls in the classes, so the decision was made to represent women, and follow that lead. It seemed a waste not to use the gift that had been given to that child.

Besides, it seemed to amuse the grownups, to make them take the little girl more seriously.

It had the wonderful side benefit it still has: understanding the why of everything from snowflake patterns to the rings of Jupiter, to make the natural world even more fascinating.

Capacity was not limited

It seemed I could do both: understand the logical stuff, and stuff my head with reading the fantastical. Switch the intense focus from one to the other, still be happy. The fact that no others seemed to enjoy the same dichotomy made it a little lonely, but the family support was warm, and the teachers had a high-performing pupil to point to and be proud of, and there was plenty to occupy the time.

If anyone had tried to focus that intensity at that age, they could probably have created either kind of monster, but most adult energy was expended elsewhere in a class with 50 students, and the mother had four younger children and needed help and had no problem demanding it. The father worked long hours building his engineering business, and the grownups were happy not to have problems to deal with.

The child was allowed to obsess without much in the way of supervision.

Or direction.

Or individual guidance. Or indeed anywhere to express it.

Call it ‘benign neglect.’

The keystone: neglect

If you’re quiet and don’t make waves, and sparkle when a flashlight is shone in your general direction, you fly under many radar beams.

Switched to an American college halfway through university because there were ‘student’ (ie, young communists with nothing better to do than disrupt) riots at the Mexican one, but because I spoke perfect American English (it was, after all, my mother tongue), no one at the new US university realized or made an effort to smooth the transition they didn’t realized had been made. Benign neglect again.

The transfer student didn’t make waves, have academic problems or do any of the things which trigger supervisory attention. The grades were good, the activities obvious, and no distress signals seemed to be being put out.

She also had no guidance about what to do or what to do next – not an uncommon situation in college – but, when graduation approached and she didn’t want to go home to Mexico, someone mentioned that she should take the Graduate Record Exam. So she signed up, with no clue that one should prepare for it, and showed up with her yellow pencils on the appointed day.

One section was hard – it had a bunch of questions on details of Optics, a subject never studied. But either it was amenable to logic (as applied), or it was the ‘experimental’ section which didn’t count, because the test results were high numbers.

And the professor who had made a pass, and was probably feeling somewhat guilty about it, read in the paper that another university had a big grant in fusion, and suggested that the girl student should apply there, and went an extra step and CALLED the director of the program. Who said, even though the deadline was past, “Send her papers.”

Graduate school – where benign neglect is not a good thing

I was the only woman student in my cohort. Was not invited to participate in the sessions where the male students did their homework and helped each other learn. The advisor I had applied to work for LEFT soon after I got there, to a big corporation – didn’t reply when I sent a request for guidance. The new advisor was a recent PhD destined for bigger things who found one male grad student in our bunch who thought like him – and groomed him only. He had no clue how to advise the lone female student allotted to him, except to tell her she should ‘read the literature.’ Full stop. No details. No guidance. Attempts to change advisors were unsuccessful.

Stumbled through. Did a project that was useful to the little empire the advisor was creating because the data supported a pet theory of his. No one told her that 90% of the students going through such a program were NOT destined to be sucked up by academia OR the national labs that were considered the next step, but would have to find a job ‘elsewhere.’ The obsession with reading, mostly SF now, continued unabated. In self defense.

Skip ahead a lot

to where all this disconnected stuff had resulted in working on submarines, marriage, a failed bid to become a NASA Mission Specialist, a leveraging miracle of some sort resulting in a job at Princeton – in fusion! – with a discovered facility for handling large computer codes on CRAYs, and two small children.

And then the disaster: contracted a virus at a physics conference where I was presenting a paper, went home with a raging infection – and never got well: ME/CFS had claimed another random victim.

Obsession went underground – there was no energy to feed it with, and a third child on the way – but the specter of a STEM PhD at home, sick, led to what I called ‘accidental homeschooling’ – the use of that education to bring up offspring who turned out to be easy to teach – rather than deal with the logistics of school buses and lunches and paperwork and parental involvement.

And then obsession struck again

Writing fiction. I could do that in tiny chunks once the kids didn’t require every second of my attention. I had always planned to do it in retirement; it happened earlier, agewise, because there wasn’t much else I could do when we had accomplished the necessary schooling: my energy was so limited even leaving the house was rare.

And then the biggie: they were going off to college around the same time a single story hit me and demanded to be written – because ONLY I would write this one. So many things went into it – including an obsession with books and science and movies and a crippling disease – causing a flash burn that showed me the story from one end to the other at once.

Now I’m in my twenty-third year of an unabated obsession, and writing the third volume of what turned out to be the single welded spot where it all stuck and – dare I say it? – fused. I marvel at its staying power, because it happened to the slowest writer on the planet.

Would it be the same?

If I had made it as an astronaut?

If I had stayed a researcher in fusion physics?

If I hadn’t become chronically ill?

If I hadn’t had children or spouse?

If I had succeeded in getting the mystery series accepted by a traditional publisher?

If, in other words, I hadn’t been thwarted a lot in how to apply the capacity for obsession?

I doubt it. Becoming what the bruising travel over the rapids made me, has been trigger and sustenance.

OBSESSION = WRITER’S FRIEND

You get what your writer IS.

**********

Prequel SHORT story (1500 words): Pride’s Children prequel: Too Late

and if you liked it (and followed the PC site):

Pride’s Children: PURGATORY

Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD

Pride’s Children: LIMBO (coming ASAP)

Apologies for US links here only – a universal link is on the To Do list.

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You’re never too old for writing FEAR

From my FEAR and RESISTANCE JOURNAL today:

It got me again.

I, who have published 352K words of Pride’s Children, am terrified. Again.

It’s been a year since the writing of NETHERWORLD ended and the publishing part began, and my body and I have been through a lot.

And I’m getting started back into the final volume, with a strong path ahead of me through plotting that’s been necessary since the very beginning.

I wrote the first scene and the new Prothalamion, thought I was on a roll.

I decided to not mess with a good thing, and to go back to the detailed process that gets me through each scene.

So I started updating the auxiliary files and spreadsheets and graphics and Dramatica files – finding all the pieces one by one in my detailed Scrivener projects.

Getting ready to write as quickly as I can (I HAVE gotten faster at following my own system), I readied all the surrounding bits for the second scene, 41.2 if you number from 1.1 in PURGATORY and 21.1 in NETHERWORLD.

And I froze.

Have gotten NOTHING more written in two full days – only partly brain-fogged days – when I was so sure I’d just plunge right back in.

It’s the same old FEAR: you think you’ve conquered it – until it comes back again and waylays you.

It takes you into a dark alley and tells you you’ll never do it again: this one, the denouement, has to be higher and trickier and more explosive than the previous two, AND you have to bring everything to a logical, complete, and unforeseen but perfect CONCLUSION, and just because you wrestled the lower level bosses to a standstill doesn’t mean you have it for the Big Boss.

Aargh!

I remember reading about a Broadway megastar who still throws up before every performance. 

41.1 can’t go out until I’m sure I haven’t left something important out by free-writing it.

41.2 can’t get written until I make the deep cuts in all the contributing files to get the gold – or write new gold.

It’s not going to get easier.

It’s going to get harder.

And I’m older.

And scared.

Tough. DO IT ANYWAY.

Pretending it was going to get easier is simply the mind’s way of keeping you together until you get to the starting gate.

It’s a lie, a helpful lie, but still.

I have to DO THE WORK.

I have to GO THROUGH.

There is NO AROUND.

NO ONE is going to come rescue me – there isn’t anyone who can, anyway.

It’s my baby. It was vouchsafed to me WHOLE in 2000.

ONLY I can write it.

And I don’t quit.

Just remember I’m terrified when you ask me how it’s going.

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I just paid to upgrade my ‘FREE’ wordpress blog to a paid PERSONAL blog – why didn’t anyone tell me my blog posts were larded with ads for garbage?

They said ads would appear at the bottom maybe – but today I got a taste of the horror of my post INTERSPERSED with gruesome ADS.

MY APOLOGIES if you’ve been subjected to this – LET ME KNOW if it happens again.

Now we’ve really gotten to Armageddon: you have to pay NOT to have ADS.

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Nailing pet peeves for the final trilogy volume

CAN READERS CHANGE WHAT THEY READ?

I’m a big fan of ‘canon’ – what the author of a book or series of books has written IN the book(s), what the true fans consider immutable and the final word.

I don’t read books or sequels written by someone else, mostly because every time I’ve tried that in the past, the results just made me mad.

Case in point: the sequel to Gone With the Wind, the book Scarlett, written by Alexandra Ripley – I know I would agree with many of the 1* reviews if I had read it, simply by seeing a plot summary.

Case in point: The 7% Solution, an attempt to write a Sherlock Holmes story in the ‘style’ of Conan Doyle – I did NOT like it, felt Holmes had been stretched and distorted in ways apparent in NONE of the canon stories from Sir Arthur.

I love writers precisely for their style, their unique way of writing a sentence, plotting a story, evincing the themes. And for THEIR unique creations: their characters.

Not very flexible – am I? – and either you are the way I am, or not, and I don’t aim to convert anyone!

This is your chance to argue for me to ALTER canon as I write LIMBO

Just as a writerly experiment, and because I’m at the stage (I have an awkward horrible rough draft written many years ago to scope out all the ideas, and written in a lot of haste before I learned better how to manipulate words) where I CAN possibly alter the text of the rest of the story a bit, I’m floating another one of my odd ideas:

If you were me, and could eliminate pet peeves in the final volume of my mainstream trilogy, Pride’s Children: LIMBO, what would YOU choose to emphasize?

Think like a famous author, with a ghostwriter who will do the actual writing, retaining all control over both content and style.

What would you have me do slightly differently from the previous PURGATORY and NETHERWORLD (preferably based on your having read them, but I won’t insist, and probably can’t prove it anyway)?

What would you like me to make sure does NOT appear in LIMBO?

What would you do if you were writing LIMBO?

What bothers YOU?

It would be kind if you mentioned why, or just generally what other kind of books you like to read, as the basis for your personal peeve, but I also won’t insist on a reason.

No promises, except that I will consider carefully and thoroughly any suggestions, and at least let you know privately that I did if I accept your suggestion. Fair enough?

**********

I’m about to get serious.

I have started the process of bringing the new MacBook Air up to speed in my environment – just ordered an external SSD for backups which will be delivered tomorrow.

The thinking part, given that the Migration Assistant supplied by Apple has failed (it did last time I upgraded – must be me), will take a bit of time, but I’ve decided I can ALSO trust the beginning plot/plan for LIMBO, since it is so clear in my mind and starts only a few hours after the end of NETHERWORLD – and give in to the writing itch.

Plus the paperwork problem is supposedly almost finished (ask me Sunday night), and dumping it on the accountants should go smoothly (ha?!?), and I can get out from under something that has been in my way for over 1.5 years.

So tomorrow I install the SSD, download and authenticate my copy of Scrivener3 (paid for long ago) and watch a video or two about the new features, and WRITE again, with the intent of seeing if I can speed up the process to make up for lost time.

Oh, and install Pixelmator3, also long paid for, now that I have a LOT of internal storage space on the Air (one of the reasons for upgrading): LIMBO’s cover is clear in my mind, also to be executed in downtime (graphics are easy compared to words), so I have the cover ready by the time the text is finished and edited and proofed. Graphics take a lot of space if you want to keep layers separate for future ease of change.

TOO LATE, the prequel short

It’s been submitted to a literary magazine which would be a lovely addition to my credentials if they decide to publish it.

ONE of the reasons for doing so is that I forced myself to make the necessary final pass to edit the style as close as possible to match the style of the novels. It was as much work as I expected since TOO LATE was written before the final version of PURGATORY had settled into what you might call my voice.

If not, the cover is started, the crucial photo approved, and the whole plan for the ‘look,’ so it is obviously part of the trilogy’s story, is in place. I’ll throw it up on Amazon for a buck, and/or use it as a reader magnet, but a final ebook version is required, and it’s now much closer than it was before.

That’s the plan, in any case.

Hoping to hear your pet peeves.

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2023 Update on B1 megadoses, CFS, and writing

MISSING FROM POSTING IS ENDING!

I never intended to stop writing blog posts here, and at the books’ site – it just sort of happened, for the usual reason these things happen to me: there is only so much energy left to someone with ME/CFS after dealing with it during a day, and only so much of it doesn’t have active brain fog, and stress makes it worse, never better (I don’t have the equivalent of being able to supercharge with caffeine, adrenaline, or, well, anything).

So ‘things happening’ and climbing to the top of the priorities lists (as they always do) means other things get neglected.

I’ve posted some when I had a little energy, but I have about twelve STARTED posts, six per blog, because when I have an idea I quickly create a new one, think up a temporary title, possibly even create a graphic (thanks, Stencil, for 10 free ones a month), sketch in a few quick notes… And usually follow up. Which I haven’t been up to doing lately.

Erratic is the result. Sometimes people even forget you exist.

And they certainly don’t have time in their lives to track another blogger down.

COMMENTING keeps my hand in

and serves a second purpose: getting the brain cells trained toward thought and typing.

If I find an interesting post, I will leave a comment if I have anything to contribute to the conversation. Bloggers don’t get enough engagement, and they put a lot of thought into the posts, and seem to like even my digressions (ON their topic) enough not to block me. Online I’m more of an opinionated extrovert than I manage in person. I still try to keep it civil and not sound as if I’m the ultimate authority on the subject – my rule for myself is, “If you wouldn’t say it to someone’s face, don’t say it at all.” True internet anonymity is not my style.

If I get it wrong, I apologize. Text exchanges inherently lack nuance, and more than once I’ve interpreted something my way and found out from a reply that it was meant some other way. Even with knowing the blog or FB stream, it happens. Twice in the last year the best response was to delete what I said. Not too bad, considering I flap my fingers thousands of times. And have strong opinions of my own.

But commenting doesn’t mean I’m capable of organizing and finishing a post of my own; often it means the opposite.

THE BIG ONE is almost finished

I wish it had been another piece of fiction, but it wasn’t. It was a tax problem which affected me, has taken a lot of time to resolve, and is ALMOST finished, which is why I can START thinking about how to use my time for my writing again.

I like to contribute as much as I can to problems which are partly mine. And this one was big enough that I needed to maintain as much of my usable ‘good time’ for it every day – and ONLY for it – because I have such a small amount of it that it really can’t be split and still get anything accomplished. It also took almost all of my assistant’s time in the two 2-hour sessions I had with her over months, so I got no other benefit from her time most sessions.

But the problem slowly got pinned down and then solved, piece by piece, because I CAN do that, still, if I HAVE to.

I fear for when this is no longer true.

And worry that other things aren’t getting done.

But I refuse to be a parasite just because I am disabled, and I COULD help with this one, so I did.

And I still managed to get Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD published – by spending the money, and having my good friend Bill Peschel do the cover and formatting work. Yes, he was great. No, he’s not making a career of that part of it – he has enough work of his and his wife’s to keep him quite busy, thankyouverymuch.

Otherwise I would be sending everything I could his way. Our loss.

The PHYSICAL parts I will gloss over:

The first was necessary and long postponed surgery (due to the pandemic) last September (which is why I had someone else help get NETHERWORLD out – you never know for sure if you’ll come out of surgery). And a totally unexpected VERY painful recovery and meds mess; mostly over now.

The second, this year, for the fun of it, was a trip to the ER because of chest pain. Did you know that half of the time you have chest pain AND elevated troponin (a cardiac enzyme) levels, it is NOT a heart attack, but you’ve probably done something and deprived your hear muscle of adequate oxygen for a while? But they can’t tell without dragging you to a hospital WITH a cardiac unit, and performing an angiogram to see if any of your stents have plugged up OR you need a new one OR, I assume, something else is wrong. Big fuss. Hospitals (2). Days (3). Recovery (a good week). All of this very difficult when you already have ME/CFS. I will not be doing carpet scrubbing bent over any more. The good new was that I don’t need more stents; the bad part was that I already knew that from the angiogram required prior to surgery last September. And the final word was from the cardiologist who released me who said, “Well, that should be good for another 2 – 5 years,” and who probably wasn’t thinking that I’d had one four months before which should have meant I was okay now. I’m grateful they don’t take chances, but the effect on my tiny life was astronomical.

That’s me ‘glossing over’ anything. For Heaven’s sake, the woman likes to talk! Maybe the second paragraph will help someone else in the future…

Now that I’m supposed to be getting MY life back…

all I want to do is finish LIMBO, and see if I can shorten the 3-5 year expected time to write and publish it.

The other tasks (some of which I’ve been kicking along in little bits of time) include:

Getting readers and reviews for NETHERWORLD. Seven 5* reviews/ratings is a lovely start. Selling one copy in February 2023 is not. ARCs are slowly going out to the reviewers who said they were waiting for it, but it is a long time commitment (about 12 hours to read, plus the time it takes to review), and each ask takes me a couple of days of my tiny bits of leftover ‘second best time.’

Submitting to awards. NETHERWORLD was a Finalist for the 2022 Indies Today Awards, a decent showing for the second novel in a trilogy (PURGATORY won 2021 Best Contemporary novel from Indies Today last year). I’ve submitted to one other award – will know in May – but investigating awards which are good to have has taken a lot of time, and applying to them is getting expensive. I have more to say about help on that front, but won’t, for now.

Marketing. Two attempts to get help from ‘professionals’ have resulted in nothing yet; one of the companies has ghosted me twice (hmmm).

Mainstream literary fiction – the best way to categorize what I write – is a difficult sell if you’re a self-published author; even my Facebook group admin for marketing it has stated they ONLY take their recommendations from regular media (in their case, broadsheets (newspapers) of significant repute which still have review sections). Discouraging.

My somewhat tongue-in-cheek post about how to go viral with literary fiction left me with finding the right influencer as the main method, and I’m trying, but it’s even harder than finding reviewers!

I had at one time the thought of looking at the reviews of popular traditionally-published literary novels – and targeting the readers who DIDN’T like those – until I realized what a huge effort that might be (there were thousands), and decided it would be better to spend the energy writing LIMBO, as having a COMPLETE trilogy is considered far better than having only one or two volumes finished. I’m not sure I believe that – there was a lot of publicity (much of it expensive PAID publicity) for Elena Ferrante’s quartet before the last two came out – but my record for marketing up until now is unprepossessing. At best.

THE REST OF MY SO-CALLED LIFE

The pandemic – and waiting for surgery – did a number on the fun things here at our retirement community.

I’m now able to go out (when it’s warm enough) and ride around on Maggie (my Airwheel S8, a bicycle seat on a hoverboard) on and off our campus. I’ll have to build up to doing that more – and possibly find new people to do it with.

I will be going back to using our pools, including the nice warm therapy pool I love to bob in for a half-hour or less, followed by the huge but necessary time-wasting of a shower with hair-washing.

I hope to regenerate our folk-singing group, on hiatus because singing in an enclosed space turned out to be a really good way to spread the virus, but will have to find a safe way to do that (a bigger, better-ventilated room would help). It has been so many years since we sang together that it will be practically a new venture.

I’m back to using B1 (150mg of benfotiamine + 500mg of Vitamin B1, 2-3 times daily) plus B12 (liquid B12, dropperful sublingually up to 8 times daily) because they or the combination seems a LITTLE bit better than nothing for getting me to have a usable brain.

And I continue to write better when blocking the internet with FREEDOM or ANTI-SOCIAL for a given chunk of time, so I don’t get sidetracked (I’m easily distractible – shiny!).

THE REST OF MY WRITING LIFE

All the obvious:

blog posts

sales for the books

publishing Too Late, the prequel short story

marketing

finding MY readers out of the vast sea of not-my-readers

maybe some short stories about Kary, Andrew, Bianca – and offspring

the next big writing project/book

publicity of some kind – possibly including me if there is enough interest

the as-read-by-author audiobooks

the easier hardcover and large print books

applying for relevant awards

and always, finding ways to persuade reviewers whose reviews I like that they will enjoy reading MY story, and will possibly encourage me by giving the books one of their lovely reviews.

———-

I think that’s about it. Y’all are sort of up-to-date about my MIA status.

I no longer have a BookSprout account (it didn’t produce a single download or review of either PURGATORY or NETHERWORLD in a year), so contact me (comments or About for the email address) if you would like an ARC and would CONSIDER writing a review; I don’t nag.

If you like my fiction, there’s a lot of short stuff here

I am always honored when a reader recommends Pride’s Children to friends or family. Or BOOK CLUB!

Visit the Pride’s Children blog for more about the books (including questions for book clubs!) and to read the prequel. If you FOLLOW there, you’ll find out more about LIMBO and timing and sales when I send out the occasional email/newsletter.

Pray for stability to my life – it helps the writing.

———-

Success for literary fiction defined

WHY DO I WANT TO BE WIDELY READ?

Success? I don’t know if others are in the enviable position of not writing for a living, but I am. Which is good, because I’m what we used to call glacially slow, until the glaciers started calving and melting with climate change. A friend called it ‘at the speed of continental drift,’ which still works.

My concern is that after I’ve put twenty-two years so far into the first two books of a mainstream literary trilogy, I want READERS. Legacy would be nice, but that isn’t exactly an aim, and if you’re not known during your lifetime, you will have to be unbelievably lucky in today’s world to be known because someone championed your work after you left us.

Disability – and now – retirement make writing my personal choice. I always meant to do it when I retired from computational plasma physics at Princeton; disability just made that happen at 40 instead of 66.

I spend my energy parsimoniously – there isn’t much of it, and I want it spent on writing when it is discretionary. I’m sure that if I had managed to persuade a traditional publisher to take me on, the marketing would have still been a problem – most traditionally-published works get six weeks on a bookstore shelf before they disappear.

I would like to see all the hoopla be about the quality and especially accessibility of the writing itself: as I have always found books such as Rebecca and Jane Eyre eminently accessible STORY- and CHARACTER-wise, that is what I’ve aimed to write. Maybe my view of ‘literary’ is flawed or limited (personally, I’m not a fan of ambiguity – others love it, or of speculative fiction – ditto, or of creatively formatted fiction): I want better, more intense, more compelling fiction with care for all the factors that make a ‘good book’. Which is why I appreciate the genre fiction with a literary quality – ‘Dune’ isn’t just SF: it is at least literary-quality SF, at best literary storytelling.

The problem is that ‘literary’ now covers anything that doesn’t fit elsewhere, a common contamination.

Instead of being the fiction that subtly raises literacy – and pleasure. As it was for me as an American child growing up in Mexico, with limited access to books in English and no libraries.

I want READERS. Readers who find what I write better than their usual fare. That’s how I define ‘success.’ It requires that I do a much better marketing job somehow.

**********

To see what I mean by ‘accessible’ and ‘pleasurable’, try the short story prequel to Pride’s Children.

If you like that, consider tackling the longer novels:

Pride’s Children: PURGATORY

Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD

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Who and what a writer is matters

WHEN YOU ARE YOUNG, YOU TRY OUT FEELINGS

And the books which become favorites, the ones you remember, are the ones that make you feel good somehow.

Because that’s what you get objectively and subjectively when you read/buy a writer’s book: their particular take on a life, love, and the universal.

It isn’t accidental that some books become classics: they appeal to something in the reader that makes the reader buy the book as an adult, and read it to their children, because it’s an easy way to say that: this is what I want you to grow up loving – and feeling – because it was important to me, and I want you to have it.

As you go through life, and get battered, you choose

But you have to read widely first, so you find out what you need.

Is it The Velveteen Rabbit?

Is is Pooh, original or Disney (or both)?

Is it mysteries or gory serial killer thrillers? Do you like fantasies and are you satisfied when someone else – the protagonist – is The One? Or do you prefer stories in which, due to the writer’s skill, YOU are the center, the quester, the One.

There’s a whole MATRIX of other relevant bits

• Historical time
• Gender
• Location on this planet or an alternate universe
• Ending
• Language
• Complexity of ideas
• Style and tone and vocabulary
• Originality

But the most important one is always: how does it make you FEEL?

Because that’s what you’re looking for in the next story, the next favorite, the next book.

And that’s what will determine a basic satisfaction with what you read, and what you look for when you take a chance on something new.

I’m a sucker for well-written books

And I get annoyed when that leads me astray: well-written – but with a basic nastiness to the ending; well-written – but with an underlying misogyny or racism; well-written – but with characters you’d never want to meet in real life.

I still remember one book which was recommended by a literary blog I no longer recall and which the reviewer said it was a shame more people hadn’t read, since it was so well-written. I bought it! I read it! I was indeed very well written. And the recommendation made me miss the early red flags, because the story, about a murdered young girl, and how it affected her family and friends, turned into a story which blamed the victim for her own murder – because of the way she ‘responded’ to the sick adults who perverted her innocence. And the final conclusion to the story was that it wasn’t important to identify and stigmatize the killer!

I deleted the book from my Amazon account, something I rarely do, but haven’t been able to scrub how it made me feel from my mind.

Because first the writer described how wonderful she was and how everyone loved her – and then destroyed her by saying she deserved what happened to her! As if anyone, especially a child, a teen, deserved to be murdered.

It makes me wonder WHY someone would write such a book. And realize there’s a whole subculture of writers who do – and readers who love those books.

When I write I make conscious choices

I leave the characters those turnoffs that the big trucks use on a mountain road when their brakes fail – but I can’t make the characters use them.

I adopt the slow burn: things happen with enough time to think about why, to consider consequences, to justify actions. There are plenty of stories – and real life events – where something pivots on a tiny accidental point. They don’t interest me because there is nothing a character can do to avert the coming disaster – they will cope with the change, and the coping will show who they are, but it’s a cop-out, and, under dire circumstances, even good people make mistakes. And have to live with the consequences of a split second.

Not much in the way of subtlety with the turn-your-life-on-a-twisted-dime stories, especially if the reader can see it coming at the previous mile marker. Plus, those books don’t reward re-reading, and that’s a waste: depending on a trick ending is a fool-me-once.

I WANT to write something re-readable.

I want it to take several readings to see many of the connections.

I want most readers to have to go back and read the previous volume before the new one – or to have internalized what came before so they wouldn’t have to (I’ve had both kinds of readers comment about this).

I offer the usual bargain:

I do the work – you tell me how it made you feel.

Then tell me how it worked for you.

Try it out on the prequel 1500 word short story Too Late.

Then remember there’s plenty more where that came from.

**********

Phoning in a bad editorial review

PAYING FOR AN EDITORIAL REVIEW GUARANTEES NOTHING

I’m going to be very careful with this post, as getting a bad editorial review is one of the hazards of paying for reviews: your book could be crap, and a proper reviewer is entitled to say exactly what they think of it.

This reviewer sends you the review as a courtesy, so you can tweak any problems before it gets published.

Sometimes you have the recourse of requesting that the review be dumped, and I have exercised that right.

So any quotes I list from the to-not-be-published review are my only product for my money – as only the reviewer and I should have access to the content, and therefore no one should be able to search for the quotes on the internet, and identify the person I’m complaining about here.

Got it?

I will leave off any identifying information

and write only about the substance of the review, which is the subject of my complaint in a general way (I can already see readers wondering how bad Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD was, and whether I simply can’t take criticism).

Indies like me need a few impartial honest editorial reviews and we need to pay for them. They – in full, or quotes from them – go in the Editorial Reviews section of the book’s Amazon page.

Having a decent editorial review legitimizes you as an author, gives you some credibility.

We need to choose our source, as it can get into real money (for example, a Kirkus review is almost $500), and it will take a lot of sales to make that review worth the expenditure.

There are many other reputable review services available to self-published authors (SPAs), less expensive ones, but the field is, like literary agentry, completely unregulated, even taking into account that the ultimate result, the review, is published for anyone to see.

One would hope for some self-regulation, but the standard thing for an author to do if you don’t like a review is to let it sink like the millstone it is and hope no one sees it.

FIGHTING a review is not done, and will get you branded a ‘difficult author.’

Again, got it?

So why am I taking the risk?

Because I had expectations (silly woman?) that a professional reviewer would at least read the book.

Or enough of the book to be able to say something real and thoughtful about what I spent 7 years of my small supply of good energy producing.

When I was offered the draft review to tweak

my heart sank.

I wrote back, after a bit of reflection at the complete mismatch between my understanding of my book, and the review:

…I have been looking forward to your review for a long time.

And now I have to ask you to completely cancel publication.

If you have any interest, let me know, and I can provide you with a list of all the points your review did not mention that are critical to the story continued in NETHERWORLD.

I don’t know what to think, but the review below in the email you just sent me is not something I would want published if I have any choice in the matter. It does not represent the continuing story nor the characters.

Email, 11/5/22

I did NOT expect a response other than cancellation; what I received was:

Oh my! The review can of course be put on hold.

Please let me know what was wrong or missing. I will go over my notes and re-read, and re-do the review to get it right.

Sometimes I leave out some points in a story in favor of trying to preserve some elements of surprise for the reader; but in this case it sounds like I missed too many and was too general.

Please let me know specifics, and I’ll work at identifying where in my notes I went awry, and will redo the reading and notes as needed.

Lovely offer, so what’s the problem?

I’ll go into specifics of a few things below, but ‘missing a few points’ was not my interpretation.

In fact, when I started to make a mental list of the ‘few points,’ I quickly realized that the entire book had been left out, and a completely generic Romance review was what had been supplied.

If anyone knows Pride’s Children, they know that it is NOT a Romance, was never intended to be one, and misses every trope that a Romance reader expects from a satisfying Romance. Romance is a perfectly viable category with dedicated writers and MANY more readers than literary fiction – and enviably lucrative – but I don’t write Romance.

I’ll let a reviewer for PURGATORY comment:

…And the development of the central attraction isn’t a “romance,” except in the sense that a Jane Austen novel could be called one (and allowing for differences in setting and literary conventions between the early 19th and early 21st centuries, a comparison to Austen isn’t entirely inapt!), nor is it predictable or syrupy…

https://www.amazon.com/gp/customer-reviews/R37NLDE4OZP2AG/

In fact, as much as I respect Romance writers and readers for knowing and getting what they like to read, I have been fighting Pride’s Children being categorized as a Romance everywhere that crops up, including Goodreads, where the librarians refused to do anything because some READERS had chosen to include PC on a shelf with ‘romance’ somewhere in its title.

Pride’s Children is a LOVE STORY embedded in a mainstream trilogy set in the intersection between Hollywood and writers

From the same reviewer:

…This is solid general fiction of a very high order, in the best Realist tradition, exploring human interactions and relationships between enormously well-drawn characters who come fully alive, as real, intensely human people. These relationships do include romantic attraction and love (and even have it as a central focus), but it’s not the sole focus; family relationships, friendships, working relationships, etc. -some healthy and some not– come under the lens as well…

Op. cit.

And now for a few review details, so you can judge for yourself

The whole mention given to Bianca, arguably the most important character in NETHERWORLD, is “And then there’s Andrew’s film co-star Bianca, whose debut film is starting to make its mark on the world,” followed by a single reference to ‘the dance between these three’ and one to ‘a triangle of connections, ambition, and obsessions that embraces scheming, film industry politics, and love and friendship alike.’

The rest of the review tries, generically, to make a two-character Romance out of the friendship between Andrew and Kary: “… recommended pick for prior enthusiasts of the tale, who will find the ongoing growth and connections between Irish megastar Andrew O’Connell [sic] recluse author Dr. Kary Ashe continues to introduce challenge and revised their visions of life…” and “…As each makes their way through dates, other life connections, and events that test their talents and perspectives, readers receive an intriguing contrast in personalities and love that will especially delight prior followers of Andrew and Kary’s worlds.”

The ending tells libraries that NETHERWORLD has “… thought-provoking escapades and interpersonal conundrums where all the characters are both villain and hero will welcome the nicely-developed tension and psychological insights…”

All the characters are both villain and hero?

Excuse me while I gag. The whole point of Pride’s Children is that integrity and morality are NOT relative, not subjective, not ‘opinions,’ but fraught choices with consequences even for those who don’t get to choose.

What do authors do with bad editorial reviews?

Distinguish here first between the REVIEW being bad and the BOOK being so bad the review which says that is good, but this can be irrelevant unless the book is so hyped people go to the original source to see what was actually written, which could lead to a firestorm of sorts until the internet finds the next flaming pile.

The most obvious and most common response is to find some chunk of words in the review that can be used as a pull quote – words to put on the cover or in an ad – that are TECHNICALLY not a lie, because those words, in that order, appear in the review, even if the review context clearly negates the pull quote. Easy? “…one of the best thrillers…” from an original “Nowhere NEAR one of the best thrillers…” Usually a bit more subtle, but you get the idea.

Or if lucky or money is available, a bad review can be buried by several good ones. With the additional fillip of implying the unwanted review is somehow sour grapes.

Dropping the review completely means the loss of whatever was paid for it, which is sometimes the only option.

Arguing about the review in public, WITH names, is best left to well-paid PR pros, because of all the positive and negative ramifications. ‘Going to war’ is expensive, with pitfalls.

Another option, mine, is to use the review carefully as a cautionary example of what can happen, for the newbies to learn from and more experience writers to commiserate about. And then to put it behind you. And, of course, never use that reviewer or editorial review service again.

I briefly considered one OTHER final option

Complaining to the service managers or owners about the review and the reviewer.

Not probably the best option – the reviewer may have been bringing in cash for the service for a while.

Possibly an excuse for the review service to dump the reviewer (usually added to other examples of the reviewer cutting corners or losing their touch).

But extremely dangerous to the individual unarmored AUTHOR, because people won’t necessarily remember that there was some justification for a complaint, only that a certain AUTHOR (those horrible people) had the nerve to complain about a PROFESSIONAL REVIEWER, followed by closing of the ranks of the pros and more complaints about, in this case, entitled indie AUTHORs.

So I’ll stop at ‘cautionary tale,’ hope I get some feedback and not too many people trolling (if you are not a regular, that behavior will get you banned before leading to any posting of your comment; regulars are welcome because I know they will be civil).

I can’t be the only one unhappy with a paid-for review that seems entirely unrelated to the book.

Am I?

**********

Oh, and don’t forget to BUY the book (or going to Booksprout to request an ARC if you are even considering writing a review), so you can make your own decision if my happiness with NETHERWORLD, and especially its ending, is a crock.

**********

How to read and review NETHERWORLD

PRIDE’S CHILDREN: NETHERWORLD IS WAITING FOR REVIEWS

If you hurry, you might be the first to post a review – poor NETHERWORLD is sitting on Amazon without a single one as I write this.

I’m slowly getting over the aftereffects of surgery, so I will be more proactive in the coming months.

FIRST SALE FOR NETHERWORLD BEGINS OCTOBER 19

because Amazon needs its price to not have changed for 30 days, and I have set up a Kindle Countdown Deal for my readers who follow this blog: you can even buy it for $2.99 in ebook on Amazon US that day (unfortunately, countdowns are a US thing, too).

OTHER ways to read and review:

IF you want to download an ARC

follow this link to the books’ site, and it will tell you how to join Booksprout and become a reader/reviewer (they even have other books you might like to download and read). While you’re there, if you haven’t clicked ‘Follow’ before, feel free to do so now – it is the best way to get details about the book delivered to your inbox, and to hear about sales in a timely manner.

I’m using this method because I am still not well enough to handle the back and forth of individual communication about ARCs; if you want that, it’s going to be about a month before I can commit to doing it (it takes a lot of work on my part).

I would appreciate it very much if you join, download and read, and review – and it will be much faster for you.

IF you would rather buy

simply mosey over to Amazon’s page for Pride’s Children: NETHERWORLD, and choose ebook or print. It is a bit longer than PURGATORY, but the ebook is the same price.

And, of course, I would still love a review!

**********

It’s that easy.

But be warned: I write long books.

But then: that may be partly why my readers love them.

I’m slowly getting back to functional, but surgery isn’t easy for someone like me. All anyone really needs to know is that it seems to have been successful, and I’m working on the pain part, and can’t wait until I’m back to what passes for normal for me.

**********

UPDATE March 26, 2023: Back to writing, finally! LIMBO is moving!

The reviews and one rating for NETHERWORLD so far – 9 – are all 5*. I didn’t expect that – but I am honored.

**********

CASCADE is Mark and Steffi and Chapman sticks

There’s a water fall in those hills, somewhere.

A BLOGGER’S OBLIGATIONS: SHARING FINDS

When we find something that blows us away, that touches us somewhere in the deep recesses of our hearts – sometimes for an odd reason – in this case because something about Mark reminded me of our middle son, so that when they appeared in my FaceBook feed, with an instrument (the Chapman stick) I’d never heard about, I was intrigued enough to listen: we need to share.

They travel – and busk.

There are, according to Mark’s website, about 8000 Chapman sticks in the world.

It’s like saying ‘there are about 8000 pianos in the world.’ Not a very big number. Not surprising I’d never heard of them (the Chapman sticks) or seen them played.

Their music is unique. There are links on his site to the inventor and pictures, if you care to follow.

The music is the important part

The first video I saw, on FB, was them playing ‘Hallelujah cover on two Chapman Sticks – performed by Cascade,‘ and Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah is one of my favorite songs. Their instrumental cover is simply beautiful.

Because of my ME/CFS, I have a very hard time listening to music, instrumental or otherwise, and have a horrible tendency to get earworms from it, and to not be able to get it out of my head for literally weeks (I think it’s one of the many processing problems from the damage the disease does to the brain).

So I don’t listen much any more – but Cascade’s versions don’t kick that pile of dust up. I just went through making up a weeks’ pills, listened to 3-4 of their pieces, and none of them wrangled my brain to the ground, so I was immediately prejudiced in their favor, because I LOVE music, and miss it greatly.

So here are a few links for the like-minded

Let me know what you think:

Lost in Time, filmed at Lake Constance in Germany.

The Way Home, new from July 2022.

Floating away, street performance in Molde, Norway.

May you find something you love.

They have the usual CDs and digital downloads – I’ll explore them in the future and definitely get some of their music.

Bon appetit!

***********

NETHERWORLD is a few tiny steps from uploaded to Amazon – but Mark and Steffi were a beautiful interruption, and I needed to find something like Cascade.

**********

Font lessons learned the hard way

A LOT CAN CHANGE IN SEVEN YEARS

In 2015, I was publishing a book for the first time, after spending a gazillion years writing the first book in my Pride’s Children mainstream trilogy, PURGATORY.

Newbies have a lot to learn, and it is an intense experience if you do it yourself, and you’re pretty sure there’s no way you will forget the steps.

But you have to allow for change – from the outside world – and it won’t take you or your needs into account.

I forgot two major things: software changes and computer crashes.

Software changes negate some changes you make to your copy

I was barely surviving, even back in 2015 when I spent a summer learning graphics and covers and formatting, and I thought that, between my notes and my blog posts, I was saving enough information to do it again with the second book in the trilogy (eventually named NETHERWORLD).

I didn’t even think – no spare brain cells – that the process would be different in a few years, and that it would take me seven to write the next book. Seven is a big number of years in computers.

Because of several computer crashes during those years, and a coast-to-coast move from New Jersey to California, I had to rely on backups for some of my major applications, and sometimes those backups came from outside my own storage systems.

When you download such a backup, you get a pristine copy, ONE THAT DOESN’T HAVE YOUR MODIFICATIONS.

And the major mod that bit me was that on several of my indispensable applications, including Word, Scrivener, and Pixelmator, I had installed fonts I used for the interior and the exterior of the book – duly licensed and paid for – because I liked them.

Find your fonts: on your computer – or download them again

Because I included a Design Notes page at the end of the printed copies of PURGATORY, I had a list of all the fonts I used, their licensing information, and where I’d downloaded them from; plus where I’d licensed them from, with a copy of the invoice and registration information.

Not easily accessible – I didn’t think they would disappear, so I was cavalier about storing them properly – but (and here I credit Apple for saving my bacon several times by making a back of my data at the time of the crashes) they were there on my computer backups, and I eventually located all my information.

Font information is now stored in a MUCH clearer fashion, in a folder on my Desktop labeled 2022 PC Storage/2022 PC FONTS (incl PC1 fonts), and backed up on my computer and in the iCloud, so I won’t have to do this again.

[NOTE: this is where I’m trying to save other users, especially self-published authors (SPAs), time and effort – do this from the beginning, and add all new fonts to this storage system, and don’t be like Alicia.]

Fonts I use for covers or exteriors for Pride’s Children:

• Alido (monospaced, from SummitSoft, licensed in the Big Graphics Bundle)
• New Yorker (a very good imitation of the expensive official one, free from Allen R. Walden, to be credited)
• Goudy Serial (from SoftMakerSoftwareGmbH, licensed) in 6 weights
• Sorts Mill Goudy (free from Barry Schwarz, credit)
• Cambria (pre-installed, licensed for all uses with MS Office)
• Book Antiqua (monospaced, pre-installed, licensed for all uses with MS Office)

Saving – and printing out and saving in physical form – the licensing information is a good idea; fonts are someone’s Intellectual Property, and you don’t want problems with a published book because you don’t have the required information handy to prove you licensed what you use – SPAs are a small business, and it helps to behave like one.

Install the fonts on your system

Before you do anything with additional fonts, they have to be installed on your computer in a form you can then add to your software.

For the Macs, this means installing them into the app Font Book, which couldn’t be simpler (assuming the font is one of the approved font types – which I found listed at Apple Support).

The extra fonts I chose for PURGATORY were all .otf or .ttf, which made it vastly simpler for me: double click on the font, Font Book opens automatically, click Install.

Book Antiqua and Cambria were IN the Font Book already, which makes me think that installing Microsoft Office 2011 for Mac also installed the Office fonts properly. Thanks, Microsoft!

Transfer the fonts to your software – if necessary

On the Mac I don’t have to do this! All the fonts in the Font Book that are not grayed out were now available when I opened Pixelmator!

And now I’m back where I was, font-wise, before the computer crashes and the move, and know a lot more than I did then.

**********

Scary time of absent brain

The future is boundless; our life, not so much

Not intending to be dire or apocalyptic – but often being able to write a blog post, almost any kind of a post, signals, for me, the end of a difficult period where the brain power needed to do almost anything is just not there, and I’m not sure if it’s the waxing and waning of ME/CFS – or the beginning of the end of being able to write.

Those who know me, or have been following for a while, know how close to the edge of completely non-functional I live. A little bit worse, and no creative juices flow at all.

I wait it out, deal with whatever is causing additional problems beyond chronic illness and disability, pick up where I left off when I can function a bit again.

THERE IS NO POINT

in wasting any of my energy in railing against my fate – it doesn’t help, and doesn’t make me feel better. [Note: my brain supplied ‘railing’ as the appropriate form of protest against things bigger than I can manage. I was terrified for a few seconds when Google only supplied ‘fencing’ as a definition, until I insisted further and ‘rail’ as a verb came up. Phew!]

It is what it is until they figure it out, this ME/CFS, come up with a definitive diagnostic, find the mechanism(s) that cause it, find a treatment, find a CURE!

Today I had an interesting interaction with someone online who claims 1) to have had it, and 2) to have a treatment protocol that cured him. I had the strength of character to tell him I was glad for him, and not interested in arguing with someone online who has the ‘solution of the week.’ And to please stop writing to me.

As we tell new people, “Hope it’s something else – something that DOES have a diagnostic and a treatment.” If something actually cured someone, it is awfully likely they didn’t have what I have in the first place, but something with similar symptoms – and a CURE!/treatment/prognosis.

It’s vanishingly likely that he has something that can help, and I don’t have the bandwidth for another savior with a solution. I’ve been at this nonsense for 32 years.

There is a finite (ie, non-zero) possibility that now that they’re pouring money into long covid research that they will actually look enough to find a real solution. That’s where my hopes are being pinned; ask me in a couple of years if anything panned out – because governments finally realized that 10-30% of the long covid survivors were, essentially, getting ME/CFS and, more importantly to governments, turning from productive working tax-paying citizens into sick citizens needing the disability benefits they have been promised since they started working. Ie, it will COST the governments, and they may figure out a cure is finally worth putting some money into research, instead of telling people it’s all in their heads.

Hope I’m still around.

More than that, hope it works for people who are not recently ill – not that I begrudge the newbies, but I want to be at the head of the line.

Hey! Look! I’m producing coherent (okay, you may argue about that) sentences!

It’s been a rough time since I announced I had finished writing Netherworld, and now that I have finished proofing the text.

The plan was to format and then to get the cover out of my head and onto a page. It’s been weeks. Sometimes I just go read the end, fall in love with it all over again, and go back to sitting staring at the screen.

Because love hasn’t been translating into action.

So far it’s just par for the course, and I expect it will resolve itself, and it won’t hurt to get the new Airbook(name?) from Apple with the M2 thingamabob my eldest daughter says is good – not having the computer question resolved – should I format and cover on the old machine, or wait for the new one and bite the bullet and update my Scrivener which may have some of the things I needed that the previous version didn’t have?

But I can’t believe how much that tiny obstacle in my path stopped me from making ANY progress.

Physical problems have been the stumbling block

I don’t want to go into details, yet, on a public blog, but my already-strained-to-the-limit body and mind have had a huge task added to keeping us all going, it has affected sleep, pain, and comfort to an incredible degree, and taken every speck of energy I had.

Finding a solution took energy I didn’t have, and going outside my medical system, and I’m glad I did – but it won’t be over for a while, and it isn’t going to be any fun. Until AFTER September, and then there will be recovery.

And I won’t have any relief from taking care of the problem constantly unless I am very, very, VERY lucky next week.

I’m sleeping in 1-2 hour chunks. That should account for the feeling of doom – sleep deprivation is classified as torture.

So I shouldn’t worry, right?

Except that there’s always that one last straw, the one that breaks the badger’s back, and I wonder, when I have the brain to wonder, whether this is it, and hope it isn’t, because I’m not finished writing quite yet.

If I am, it isn’t because I quit. I was because I was wrestled to a standstill by Reality, which always wins.

Meanwhile, putting words on page has given me a little much-needed hope again, and getting the news my computer situation might be resolving has given me a goal in a decision I kept going back and forth on (wait – or go ahead on familiar if not completely adequate technology – wait -…).

Thinking outside the box hasn’t worked yet

but I am vastly encouraged by the fact that I figured out how to, initiated it, was fortunate enough to find a listening ear (after several tries), and it may work much better than what I have had (nothing). And in my weakened state, no less!

I’m very proud of myself for trying – hope it works out.

So there – and mysterious. The women who read this blog and are older than 50 and/or have had children may have a clue; the rest of you really shouldn’t want to know. It’s grotty and embarrassing and against all the modesty my middle-class Mexican upbringing instilled deep, courtesy of my beloved Mother.

If I navigate it successfully, you may ask privately, and I’ll name the Beast.

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As soon as the fog clears a bit more, and/or the new laptop is here and mastered, I will go doggedly right back to working on the publishing of NETHERWORLD, instead of just going to the file, re-reading the end, and crying into my beer because I love it so much.

I’m just waiting for two good friends to let me know if they liked it, too, to feel a whole lot better.

And if you like to be in at that stage, my contact information is in the About. I could use a few more readers/reviewers who are familiar with PURGATORY, and need to keep going.

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Love in the time of pandemic

AND WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN?

Gak! It’s been almost a month since I posted anything!

There was a lot of quarantining in that time. NOT because we were exposed to Covid, though some independent living residents in this facility were (we found out because they had dinner with friends in Assisted Living at the Friendship Table, and the AL people ARE tested regularly because they’re in the health-care portion of our facility).

And because those people in IL who WERE exposed to the people in AL who tested positive, the State of California required them to quarantine for FOURTEEN DAYS in their apartments. None of the IL residents got Covid, thank goodness, but WE had a vacation in Lake Tahoe with our kids a few weeks later, and realized that WE wouldn’t be able to go IF we got exposed ourselves, here, and then had to do the same quarantine for 14 days.

That is, we quarantined for 14 days so we wouldn’t have to quarantine for 14 days – at an inconvenient time which would put the kibosh on OUR vacation. Mixed up world, eh?

So – any progress on publishing NETHERWORLD?

Well, yes and no.

For the ms., I created an easy ARC from Scrivener – the complete, very long pdf of the whole thing (~500 pages), and sent it to the first person who’s offered to review AND buy it on launch day (thank you, David!), and as a backup complete proofed file to several places, including my amazing beta reader (thank you, Rachel!), and gave my husband and children the necessary information to manage my literary estate (and publish Netherworld) if something happened on the trip/vacation/return. You never know.

The formatting is no further than that.

For the cover: I have all the pieces, an updated Pixelmator 3, and an updated Learn Pixelmator 3.5 video course (free update – thanks folks!).

I’ve bought licenses for the two cover images from Dreamstime, acquired another photo from the same friend who supplied the sky for Purgatory’s cover, found a couple of low-res images to guide me in the changes I’ll need to create the cover in my head, and put the whole thing into a folder and a backup on the iCloud. Phew.

Now I just have to do the work, get it past my cover mentor (thank you, Jessica!), and create ebook, paper and hardback covers to spec, and then, because I want to make one change to them, redo a bit of the Purgatory covers (bigger name so it shows on the thumbnail, add the award, etc.) which really amounts to redoing a fair amount of the Purgatory covers AND creating the hardcover one.

I have my permissions from Cambridge U. for my KJV quotations – feels nice and official.

I got my copyright certificate from the Library of Congress! I always feel better after I do that, for whatever it might be worth.

Launching is, of course, dependent on having something to launch. I had approached a PR firm, put up with a long delay to talk to them, checked in with them and received a promise of an answer of some kind before the end of May, and than have been ghosted. It does remind me that if people are not reliable in the small things, it’s probably better not to rely on them for the big ones, so that firm is permanently off the table. Too bad, because I liked them, and had already invested some effort into them.

I’m still obsessively re-reading the end of Netherworld – and not changing a word. I promise explosions, and I hope they are well received.

I want to continue getting into writing LIMBO

I literally can’t wait – because there are only a few hours between the end of 2 and the beginning of 3, and I’m very happy how that turned out.

And I’ve already started writing Chapter 41(LIMBO goes to 60).

BUT I’ve been dealing with some medical problems for 2.5 years to no solution, and I’m in the middle of trying to fix some things that really need fixing, and it’s a slow process because disability means EVERYTHING is so much harder – from making phone calls through phone systems that won’t just let you call someone to make an appointment, to doctor visits which consume an incredible amount of prep time, energy, and recovery time, to a whole slew of medical tests with the same problems – which the new doctor insists on before she will even consider DOING something.

Plus a big paperwork problem I’ve finally admitted I had to step in and manage, do some of, get help, hand over to the pros…

And my limited number of daily spoons is gone every day before I manage to write. Because it’s not just ‘write a few words’ now – it’s the whole huge Book 3 planning review, restart, clean up, carry stuff from 1 and 2 typical glorious mess of starting the final volume in a trilogy. Drives me up a tree that I can’t just do it.

But I’m literally doing the best I can

And not managing to sleep very well with all the above, to boot.

I can tell stress that I’m fine until I’m full-body blue, but that does NOT take away the stress. It just doesn’t add worry, but the things I’m having to do are stressful in and of themselves, and that is such a deep autonomic process that you can’t affect it much.

Plus the physical problems have extra pain and much discomfort associated, which has to be micromanaged – and I was already exhausted before that.

There are signs, portents, and possibilities

of improvements, but not fast.

This is literally the first time I’ve even been able to think of writing a simple blog post, in the whole past month.

Life happens – you deal.

I know what my primary aim is (if family is okay), but I’m not able to DO it right now.

Don’t worry. Nothing TOO horribly grim. But I’m all tapped out of spoons every day, almost the end of the morning, when I’ve done nothing yet.

But stuff slowly gets done, and goes into the rearview mirror queue from the To Do list, and I’ll get there.

On the bright side

my oldest daughter is helping me select my new computer for the foreseeable future – my current lovey is from 2015, and can’t be upgraded far enough because then my necessary old software – Office 2011 for Mac and Dramatica Story Expert – won’t work, and I don’t have the mental bandwidth right now to deal with another potential crash.

Everything is properly backed up (Time Machine and iCloud), but bobbles with computers cost me days or weeks when they happen, so for the first time in a long time, I’m being proactive: a new Macbook Air with the M2 processor and good camera should take me far into the future and definitely through LIMBO.

It will, however, require some learning – not my strong point.

So that’s the update:

I’m working as hard as I can on the critical list items

I’m as far along with Netherworld as I can be, including covers

Ditto redoing the Purgatory covers

Ditto writing into the future with Limbo

and dealing with the sorry carcass which makes all of this possible at all in as graceful a manner as I can against the extra stress of having to do it at all, and the unbelievable amount of extra energy it takes

AND, courtesy of my lovely assistant Sammy, whose last day is today (she’s graduating! going on to grad school! going home for the summer!), I have already acquired an assistant for the fall (another senior – so I’ll get 8-9 months of her life, and leave her a changed young woman – but seniors are really handy), and she’s interested in learning the self-pub aspects of the job I haven’t had time to do with Sammy because other things were more, uh, important.

And the ability to write this post reassures me that there’s still a ‘me’ here.

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More when there’s actually progress on this laundry list.

Be well. Have a great summer. Don’t work TOO hard.

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PS: If you are desperate to read NETHERWORLD, and wouldn’t mind writing a review to be posted when it’s published, email me (abehrhardt at gmail), make your case, and I’ll send you what I have at the time.

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May 12 is International ME/CFS Day

Millions of ME/CFS victims are missing from LIFE

Every year this date reminds me that we STILL have no diagnostic marker, treatment, or cure for the devastating disease that stole my life as a physicist in 1989, the week of Nov. 5th.

Another year with nothing really new that can turn me back into a functioning person.

Or even help new victims.

Except that this year there is an understanding that, if we didn’t know what virus had done the damage, ALMOST ALL of the long-covid victims would be diagnosed, based on symptoms, with ME.

But we know that virus, and possibly that will help some of the targeted research that now has been funded to figure out the mechanism of the damage and find a way to reverse some of it.

And maybe, MAYBE, some of that research will benefit newer victims of ME/CFS, and possibly – though the damage is so long-standing it’s hard to think how – those of us who have been waiting for decades.

If you pray, pray for us.

If you’re not the praying kind, think of us kindly.

We’re still sick – and I wouldn’t wish this illness on Putin.

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Meanwhile, Pride’s Children: PURGATORY is still in existence because of ME/CFS, and NETHERWORLD will be out very soon (the disease makes me very slow).

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