May Reading

 

I felt as though I had no time for reading in May, but I did manage to finish six books. Now to be fair, three of them were quite short, as in one-hour-or-less time investment. But sometimes short and sweet (or short and kickass, the in the case of Carol Danvers) is just what I need. 

I started with The Iceman Always Comes on Tuesday by James Masse. It was suggested to me by a friend who is also an audiobook enthusiast and I welcomed it. Quick, and heart-string pulling, with an old movie kind of feel about it, about a literally ice man (as in the guy who delivers ice to keep your icebox cold) and his quest for justice. Especially nice if you're a fan of underdog heroes. 

After that I dived into Main Street by Sinclair Lewis, the book my First Monday Classics Book Club will be discussing next Monday. At the beginning, I thought I was going to love it, but in the end, I was ambivalent. Some moments that shone and a lot that started to feel like a slog. The main character was, in the end, too passive for my liking. 

I picked up Rift by Nancy E. Dunne because she and I will be sharing a table at ConCarolinas here in a few days, and I like to know something about the work of authors I'm going to be working with. I really enjoyed her take on "what if the game is real" and will definitely be checking out more of her work in the future!

The short works helped keep me going during a tough month, with ENDLESS end-of-grade testing in the day job (we have to give each test 3 times this year because of restrictions in place for the pandemic).  The Sprite and the Gardener and The Reluctant Dragon both pleased me for their kindhearted sweetness. 

I revisted Carol Danvers, AKA Captain Marvel recently for a panel discussion about the character, and re-reading Higher, Further, Faster, More put me in the mood for more of this character as written by DeConnick, so I bought myself volume 2: Stay Fly.  Really delighted me. Perfect for my mood. 

How about you? What did you read and love this month? I'd love to hear about it in the comments! 

Fifteen Years and We're Just Getting Started

 

A month or two ago, on the beach

So, it's been fifteen years since I married this guy. That seems at the same time, very reasonable and completely implausible. Time is a slippery beast, and I swear it feels like only a few days ago that we skipped down the stairs together at Duke Gardens. At the same time, they've been some very full years, and sometimes I can't believe it's only been fifteen years. 

15 years ago--look at those cute kids!

We got married in the middle of May, at a ceremony we invited fewer than twenty people to. The day was overcast and intermittently rainy, which could have been bad news for an outdoor event involving a white dress, but we were lucky and the sun came right right when we needed it to, bathing us in gorgeous light and keeping our friends and family dry. 

We've always been proof that timing is everything. 

When I met Sweetman, I was already engaged to someone else. He says he had an unrequited crush on me in the intervening years, but I suspect him of flattery and revisionist memory. What we did have though, was an ongoing friendship, the kind where we always made a point of seeing one another whenever we were in the same town. Over those years, I married and had a child and he dated, but had never settled down. 

Twelve years later, I got divorced, probably about four years later than I should have . . .we hadn't been right together in quite some time. I sent out that big group email like you do, letting anyone who might care know about the changes and where I would be living and all that *fun* (sarcasm) stuff. Sweetman was one of the friends I told. 

As luck would have it, he was also free. Timing is everything. 

I worried that I was going to ruin a friendship by jumping into a romance too soon. I didn't want my good friend to become my rebound guy.  He worried that he was taking advantage of me in an emotionally fragile moment. In the end, it worked out, and we still worry about each other to this day, but now we have a little more power to do something about it. 

So Happy Anniversary to me and Sweetman. We celebrated by taking a garden tour and having Thai for lunch, since our first official date included Thai food and flowers. I wore my Bride sneakers, the ones I commissioned for our wedding. He wore a pale blue Havana style shirt and a Panama hat, because he know I love how he looks in them. 

So, there we are fifteen years into this marriage. If the next fifteen go as fast, I'll be back tomorrow to tell you how dapper he looks with that new walking stick.

Return to the Public Part of My Writing Life

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

The awesome co-hosts for the May 5 posting of the IWSG are Erika Beebe, PJ Colando, Tonja Drecker, Sadira Stone, and Cathrina Constantine! Be sure to check out what they have to say, and visit other writers in the blog hop!

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I'm heading to a convention the first weekend in June. That used to be something I did six to eight times a year, but 2020 and 2021 has seen event after event cancelled or altered to become a digital event. Undoubtedly, it was the right thing to do. Stuffing hundreds of geeky folk into meeting rooms in hotels for music, merriment, performance, and discussion during the pandemic would have been foolhardy and irresponsible. 

But I'm headed to a scaled-back ConCarolinas and I'm *so* excited to be easing back into the public part of a writing life. Participation in conventions has been one of the poles holding up this rickety circus tent I call a writing career. 

At conventions, I have readings, participated in panel discussions, hand-sold books, networked with publishers and other writers, and interacted with readers. All this sharing, helped build my name as an author, sold some books, built relationships, and kept me motivated when things were hard. 

Not having conventions has left a hole in my writing life. 

During the past year, I sought out some video and online activities, and some of them were great! A panel held over zoom takes away some of the limits on geography and let me work with people three time zones over from me, or even in other countries all together. People I might never have gotten to work with otherwise. (You can check out a lot of that work on ConTinual's YouTube channel or on my own). 

But there's a serendipity factor in live events that is hard to recreate virtually. I never just wandered through the halls and ended up in a great conversation because I was attracted by the laughter at a virtual event. Zoom meetings don't give you the chance to peek into other rooms and see what's going on. Damn, but I've missed that. 

Now that I'm immunized, I feel a lot safer about venturing into communal grounds again and I'm so happy that I'll be starting with ConCarolinas, a con that has always treated me kindly and made me feel welcome. 

How about you? Are you easing back into the world yet? What kinds of public events have you been missing lo these many months? 

April Reads

 I only read three books this month, but they were all wonderful! I listened to all three as audiobooks, though I also went back and forth with Kindle for the Gaskell. 

I first found Tananarive Due through her work in The Apocalypse Triptych, an ambitious set of three anthologies where authors imagined life before, during, and after an apocalypse through three interlinked stories. I remembered her name and when I got a good deal on an audiobook of My Soul to Keep, I nabbed it. 

Great slow build horror that went in very different directions than I expected. I'm with Stephen King on this one. Fascinating!

Haven't watched the miniseries yet,
 but it's on my list now!

After that I turned my attention to North and South by Elizabeth Gaskell, the May selection for my First Monday Classics Book Club. I'd heard Gaskell's name many times, mostly as a writer whose influence could be seen on other writers, but I'd never read any of her work. 

In the first chapter, I thought I was going to hate it because it opened with a drawing room scene full of superficial chitchat about dresses and fabrics and such, but it quickly became clear that we'd been given that scene as contrast as we followed our heroine into a trying period of her life and into the most unexpected journey to a happy marriage. 

I'm so looking forward to the discussion next week! And will definitely make room for more Gaskell in my reading life. 

I finished my month with Becky Chambers. Chambers is one of my no-questions-asked authors, who works are on preorder as soon as I hear about them. I've read all four of her Wayfarer series books and loved all them. The Galaxy and the Ground Within returned to all the themes that draw me to Chambers's work: optimism, unexpected friendship, kindness and acceptance, found families. For a book ostensibly about aliens (only one human character active in this story, and she had a bit part), there's a lot to consider about humanity in these pages. 

So, that's my reading month. I began a few other books, and hope to finish them soon, so I'll tell you about them next month. 

How about you? What did you read this month? I'd love to hear about it in the comments!

The Big Five-Oh: The Face I Deserve

I turned 50 today. 

It's very strange to consider. 

I mean, I don't feel fifty. 

Okay, well SOMETIMES I feel fifty, like when I squat to put away dishes and my hip doesn't want to let me get back up, or when I get winded climbing a big hill. I tell myself it's not the years, it's the mileage (and maybe a bit the baggage as well). It makes me feel more like Indiana Jones and less like Miss Marple. 

But mostly, I don't even feel like a real grownup yet…yet here we are. Fifty. 

Coco Chanel famously said that when we are fifty, we get the face we deserve. So, here's the face I deserve, picture taken first thing this morning when my hair was still shower-wet and I hadn't yet had any caffeine. 

So far as faces go, it's fine. Neither glamorous nor off-putting. Pleasant, and sometimes quite pretty, in the right light. 

The lines and creases don't bother me much, and any age spots just blend in with the freckles that were already there. I've started to get a little gray around the crown of my head which I confess I find a little startling when I notice, but otherwise, I still just look like me, a little rounder than I would maybe choose, given all the options, and way more like my Grandma Liz than I expected, given how much I always thought I looked more like my dad. 

So, do I deserve this face? 

When I look at this face, I see bright curiosity and a spark of adventure, a curve at the corner of the mouth that comes from laughing a lot and a squinty-ness about the eyes that comes from spending time smiling in the sun (and maybe from time behind a screen). The teeth are a little yellow from drinking lots of tea while reading and the jawline reveals a fondness for cookies. The woman in that picture looks like a lady who knows surprising things and has a kind heart. 

If I didn't know me, I think I'd be willing to talk to me, based on this face. 

It'll do. 

Six Years In: My Writing Career

Though I have been a writer all my life, I consider April 23, 2015 my birthday as a professional writer, since that's the date my debut novel was published. So, this seems like a good day for a little trip down memory lane, now that Writer Samantha is 6 years old :-)

Samantha's Professional Writing Career (So Far)

I finished my first novel on June 20, 2012. It was called His Other Mother, and is best categorized as women's issues fiction. It took me four years to write that first draft, and about another year to complete the revision to get it submission-ready. It was a dark story, and it took a lot out of me to write it, but it also proved that I could finish a novel. I'm still proud of me for getting that far. 

So far, His Other Mother is not published. It got close a few times, but no publisher took it on, and after a while, I shelved it, chalking it up as the book I wrote to learn how to write a book. Maybe I'll revisit it someday and revise it again, improving it with everything I've learned since, but right now, I'm content to leave it alone. I've got newer projects I'm more passionate about right now.

Finishing His Other Mother was hard enough that I bribed myself through the end of the process, promising myself that I could "write something fun" if I just finished this project. That's where Going Through the Change comes in--what could be more fun than Menopausal Superheroes? 

I finished the revision of that book in December 2013 which shows I got faster. From idea to submission-ready in only one year! My commitment to a daily writing habit was paying off. By August of 2014, I had signed my first book contract!

I had an exciting eight months or so of edits, cover approval, proofreading, mood swings, marketing ploys, etc. (while I also worked on the second book in the series) And then in April of 2015, just a few days before my forty-forth birthday, my book-baby was born! 

And here I am with my first box of my own books ever. That smile says it all. 

I worked hard to get to the word out about that book, querying book bloggers, arranging for review copies, writing 26 blog posts about it for the A to Z Blogging Challenge. and planning a book release party at Flyleaf Books that still glows in my memory as one of the best days of my life. 

My family and friends were there, including my writing community in the form of critique group and other generous souls who helped me on my journey. My mother-in-law made beautiful fancy cookies for the guests. An author-friend Nathan Kotecki made the very generous offer to serve as my "Phil Donahue." He interviewed me and facilitated a question and answer session that made me feel so very famous. 

I'd had a taste of the author life I'd always dreamed of and I grabbed on with both hands! I started attending conventions (Atomacon 2015 was my very first one) and serving as a panelist and author guest. I won an award for that first book!

I worked my butt off to get books two and three in the Menopausal Superheroes series out in 2016 and 2017 and wrote a between-the-novels novella for a special collection. I suffered through the first ever bookless book-launch party for book 2.  I survived the dreaded revise-and-resubmit process for book 3. 

At the same time, I kept writing short stories and tried to squeeze in some time to work on my other ideas and projects. And then . . . I hit my first serious snag: my publisher :-(

It's an old story, especially with small publishers: things fall apart. I won't dwell on the story here, since I'm happy with where I've ended up, but you can read this details in this blog post if you're curious. 

I was so deflated . . .but I was also very lucky. I got my rights back without much trouble. Because I'd been building contacts and relationships with writing colleagues along the way, I was able to make the leap to a different publisher and get all three novels re-released with a couple of months. 

Since then, the Menopausal Superhero Universe has expanded and been re-released with gorgeous new covers. Three novels, two novellas, a set of short stories, and a collection of all those shorter works in a single volume. 

Novel number 4 (working title: Be the Change) is with the editing team now, with a planned release for late 2021. I'm contracted for a fifth novel in the series for 2022. I still LOVE this characters and have a wonderful time telling their stories. 

So six years in, I'm loving my writing life. The community, the creativity, the small-scale fame and fortune. I'm so thankful to have had the opportunities I've seen so far and can't wait to see what the future brings!

IWSG: Calculated Risks

Welcome to the first Wednesday of the month. You know what that means! It's time to let our insecurities hang out. Yep, it's the Insecure Writer's Support Group blog hop. If you're a writer at any stage of career, I highly recommend this blog hop as a way to connect with other writers for support, sympathy, ideas, and networking.

If you're a reader, it's a great way to peek behind the curtain of a writing life.

Our Twitter handle is @TheIWSG and hashtag is #IWSG.

April 7 question - Are you a risk-taker when writing? Do you try something radically different in style/POV/etc. or add controversial topics to your work?

The awesome co-hosts for the April 7 posting of the IWSG are PK Hrezo, Pat Garcia, SE White, Lisa Buie Collard, and Diane Burton! Be sure to check out what they have to say, and visit other writers in the blog hop!
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So, am I a risk-taker in my writing? Well…kind of. 

I'm trying to build a writing career, one that will eventually financially support me. So, when I make choices about what to write next and where to focus my energy in this moment, I'm considering marketability and cross-pollination with my other published work as one of the factors. So, sometimes that means putting down one project that doesn't have a publisher waiting on it, so I can work on one that does--selecting what to work on when based on slightly more mercenary criteria rather than merely following my artistic whims. 

But I don't let that make me play it completely safe. While I don't seek out controversy for its own sake, I don't pull back from it if it arises naturally in my work. My novels address some pretty serious issues: ageism, sexism, misogyny, violence, trust. I don't pull my metaphorical punches any more than my heroines pull their physical ones. If the story needs to take on something potentially controversial, then it will. 

image source

On the other hand, I also LOVE trying new things as a writer. So, there's a balance to be struck between moving forward where I've had success and in experimentation and growth. I use short fiction for this. So, while I'm continuing to write The Menopausal Superhero series, I also slip in a little time to write in my first-love genre of horror stories and to try on other sub-genres of speculative fiction. 

It lets me try out different approaches, narrative styles, and forms without the time commitment required by a novel. 

My favorite way to challenge myself is to write for anthologies. When I hear about a themed call that captures my imagination, I jump in. Even better if it's something I've never written before, like that time I wrote a vampire story for Slay: Stories of the Vampire Noire, even though I'd never written a vampire story before, just because I LOVED the premise of the anthology so very much and wanted to be a part of it. 

It's always a risk to try writing something new, but I'd argue it's a risk to never try writing anything new, too--stagnation is real, and can cost your passion as well as your opportunity to build a career. 

So, I'm a planned risk-taker, I guess, willing to try something new, but only when the time is right. How about you, fellow creatives? How do you balance risk in your creative life?