Welcome to 2014

I used to get reminders from BlogHer when I didn't post anything for a two week span. It helped, those reminders, sort of like a homework assignment, or a work deadline.
 Left to my own devices, I was probably spending way too much time skimming pages on Pinterest for decor ideas, or sending away for land brochures and bookmarking fashion pages for shit I don't need or can't afford.
 Or maybe I was doing this.

 There were those chunks of days I dedicated to writing, and even bigger day chunks spent editing, submitting, revising ... so, that's something, because it's all about the AMOUNT of creative work you produce over your lifetime that will lead to greatest success ... according to a recent NPR episode that I chose to listen to rather than study my Spanish lesson.
 At least I wasn't doing this.

 So, that's something.

I have managed to corrupt, I mean entertain, a whole new group of players by starting a monthly Girls Night Out. I love these ladies. We laugh. A lot.
 There's also Book Club and Bunco, Poker for the boys and of course, a regular schedule of yoga and weight training, because some days I need to go out in the world and eavesdrop to get the perfect combination of imagination, dreamland and reality into a scene.
On that note, things are progressing with the pitching of the book/s. All good news and all very exciting. I've got the right people around me and the cards are finally in place.
 And I've got a bunch more flash fiction in the stack, now that I've decided once and for all to write without the self-editing/inhibiting questions of what would that person think or how would that group of people feel... 

 I encourage you to go out there and attack life this year. Find your passion. Seek what fuels you. Enjoy life, don't merely go through the motions. Dump negativity and surround yourself with people and things- if that's your kick- that make you feel good.

I'll be back in a few. Stay out of trouble. Dance. A lot. And eat healthy.

Maybe get a Roomba.

THE BOOK IS HERE.

 Click over HERE to see the goods.

Writers and Books and Things That Might Go Bump In The Night

 

Posts about that stuff and all sorts of ideas over here.

A little interruption in the current broadcast...

Okay People

Let's talk 

We are approaching the Labor Day craziness of Atlanta.

A huge independent book festival with all sorts of literary fun, art, cooking, drinking, music, drinking, writers, parades, kids, art, drinking, books, magazines, lectures, readings and drinking.

That's the Decatur Book Festival. 

 and then, 

there is Dragon*Con

which is... well, kind of hard to explain

most of time, wandering around there, my face looks like this.. see, I'm even pointing to my own face in incredulity. Also, I'm talking to a banana.

It is mandatory to have your picture taken with half-naked men.

 Extra points are scored if you tell a joke to a policeman, and manage to NOT get arrested.

  
and Hell to the YES, it is scary fun. I am actually looking more forward to this than the book festival this year. Because, you know, the freaks will always be with us. Books? Not so sure.

What's on a writer's bucket list?

Most likely:

•  publication in the New York Times
• Paris Review or Playboy
• landing the NYC agent
• selling to the top 3 legacy publishers
• attending Breadloaf, and not as a waiter
• being asked to be the Keynote speaker at an international event
• appearing as a guest on GMA during book week
• meeting your literary idols- whomever they might be for you
• selling your novel to Hollywood
• seeing your name in lights
• attending the Iowa Writers' Workshop- until you found out this.

which brings up that whole art as form thing. shown on this guy's bucket list.


My bucket list as a writer is more of a bunch of cramped notes in a dog-eared journal, a combination of prayers to a deaf God, hopeful meanderings of an optimist and desires that dwindled as I aged.

Yes, many are checked off, but not half as many as the number I've added to the bottom.
I'm determined to live a long, long life.

Summer Vacation used to be fun, but now?

My kid said I was the only mom who moaned at the mention of summer vacation.
"Most moms like spending time with their kids. They want them home."

I laughed. Really, really laughed, like one of those Rosie-oops-I better change my drawers laughs.
It's not that I don't want to spend time with my kids. I love them. They amuse me. They help me. They bring me joy.

They are also loud and busy and messy and needy and yearn to be the center of my attention.

Did I say I write in an open room in my house? Did I say I write best with peace and solitude? Did I say I tend to walk around with pages, reading them aloud, pacing the clear, wide areas of the house looking for inspiration? Did I say I tend to produce less work in the summer, but failed to figure this in to my spring work?

sigh.

So, this next few weeks, before I pack up my two kids and their two friends and drive them to the beach, I will try to learn to write wearing headphones, in the bathroom, balancing my laptop on my knees, behind a locked door.

It's a forest out there, Mr. Gump, said Chris Brown on GMA.

Sometimes, do you find the internet a confusing mass of misinformation, instead of the answers to all your trivial questions about THAT song or THAT show or THAT girl?

 I know I rely on it too much for research, but really, there are no reasons to go to the library anymore. Unless you want to catch a virus or eavesdrop on necking teenagers.

But here's the thing. When I'm bopping around looking for one quick answer to a - insert air finger quotes here- research question, I may spend another two hours putzing around on the links the question sends me to, or the blog of the person quoted in the answer, or  shopping for shoes because an ad popped up and man, those are some cute shoes!

You feel me?

I have multiple blogs, multiple facebook pages and multiple personalities- nah, not really. I just like stringing examples in sets of threes.

AT any rate, here's me today, effectively enacting my PRODUCTIVE PROCRASTINATION. I woke up today to an email from my ebook  publisher telling me they had finally honored my request to drop the cost of my ebook, Simple Intent, for a short while- as a "marketing test."
 He asked me to post a few notices to my facebook pages and my facebook friends' pages. Sure. great idea. I check the clock and give myself a set stopping time.

Thirty minutes after the set stopping time, I look up from a page about Chris Brown doing his non-anger management thing again. I don't even know how I got there. It was like my brain was saying, post info. move forward. finish task. get back to novel page - scene in the building with Jojo, but my fingers had a totally different idea: who's doing who? What the hell is that? And really? A monkey and a bullfrog?

sigh.

Is there a name for Internet surfing ADD?

Microsoft Word Humor from The Onion

Microsoft Word Now Includes Squiggly Line To Alert Writer When

 Word is Too Advanced For Mainstream Audience 

Book sale

Last night my daughter told me that I could start my own used book store with all the books I have on my shelves.

I laughed, then wondered again, about storage for my darling hardcovers, all those signed and first editions- books that I imagine will be called "antiques" before I die.

I know publishing is a changing industry. I accept that. I bought my Kindle, and shopping for tablets, read downloaded material all the time. 

 I even have my own e-book at all the retail outlets.

                        Simple Intent 

* on sale for the next fews days at a discounted rate of $4.99

Though I still buy books in all forms, I must admit, the nights of wrestling with a 600 page hardback book while trying to get comfortable in bed, only to have it bonk you on the bridge of your nose when you fall asleep... won't be missed.

So, do I really need a Literary Agent?

I know that was your morning meditation... so I wrote about it- over here:
WRITE BY THE WATER: writers retreats



What are your thoughts?

The Birth of an e-book. The death of tradition?

 So, yeah.
BOOKS. PUBLISHING. YADAYADYADA.
 Are you as confused as I am?

I saw an 80 yr old man reading a book on his I-pad at the car dealership waiting room yesterday and I was all, WTF? Really??
I had to run home and pull some John Cheever off my shelf to calm down.

Okay. no. I didn't. I came home and kissed my Kindle- which sounds sexy, but wasn't.

let's talk about the new world of books, shall we?
  I wrote about my own e-book here, well sorta.

 Jane Friedman of Writer's Digest talks about publishing trends here.
One of the best articles and Q and A's I've read in a long time.

Noted is the lack of respect for the modern editor. Sigh. Great blog post here.

And all of that means... what to you, my book loving friend?

 This weekend, I will be appearing at the Decatur Book Festival in Atlanta, GA for a gathering of over 300 authors and a writers and poets and book junkies.

My literary journal and writing contest, SCRATCH will be performing readings on Saturday, giving away back scratchers and raffling off a briefcase ( to buy our beer), all weekend long.

Of course, we're debuting my book, SIMPLE INTENT. Yay. Get that autograph now, before you have to pay for one. Heh heh.

We're also promoting the amazing collaboration called, Write by the Water: a writers retreat, and giving everyone who stops by FREE WATER.
YEP. You heard it here first. FREE WATER.

So follow along on facebook ( or twitter. ( @lindasands)
 I will be posting pictures, and comments... as will my fellow SCRATCHERS.

The headline said: Literary Porn. Of course I clicked on it.

It was a collection of a shop of stuff for the book lover, the reader, the writer, the man who wants to make his date believe he is one of the above.
 and I thought cool...
 until I looked at some of the prices.
 Fancy book markers made with imported crystals, reading glasses with real gold embellishments... automated page turners with a 4 figure price tag...what was this? Literary porn from SkyMall?
 I skimmed down a few pages, drawn to this:

okay. Nice back, but it was the caddy I liked- a solution to my I wanna soak, but I gotta write dilemma.
Look closely, it's a piece of WOOD. A few planks nailed together and laid across a pretty darn expensive tub.
 I looked at the price tag.   $100, plus $20 shipping...
 for a piece of wood?? I have a sheet of plywood under my workbench I could rip and sand. I have a shelf sized leftover piece of MDF that would be exactly the right size, and could be painted to match my Venetian/ hotel style whirlpool tub.
 So, uh, yeah, thanks for the "wooden caddy" idea. But I think I'll send my money on a bottle of wine to drink IN the tub.

 

When Googled became a verb...

I wrote about this on my writing blog today, but thoughtI should share here too... because, well. I think you all deserve some wise words, and pretty cool links.
 SO... please allow me to repeat myself:

Today, I Googled the phrase, “Places to Write.”

I had been speaking with my writer friend, Gwen Morrison, a brilliant author, editor and publisher, and my partner in the newest venture: Write by the Water: a writers retreatabout the best place to write in our homes… something most people ask of authors at those Q&A’s after the reading, on the big book tour.

As suburban moms, we have both adapted a room in our house to act as office/writing space. A place where children and dogs come and go as they please, usually leaving us more interrupted than inspired.

I hit up my good friend, Mr. Google to see what he had to say what I typed in PLACES TO WRITE.

The writers at Wicked Writers had a list of 10 places to write.

I got a kick out of this one.

5 – From a Jail Cell: Well, not in reality. Whenever I can’t seem to find peace and quiet anywhere, the loner in me dreams of writing from a jail cell in solitary confinement. No Internet, no planning dinner, no vacuuming, and no teenagers not doing their homework. Ahhhhh 

Novelist and Coach Jacqui Lofthouse suggests “going on holiday” is the best way to get any writing done. In other words, get out of your natural element.

She speaks of getaways in  Tuscany and the South of France, dropping uber-attractive nouns; villa, country-home… I like her thinking.

This article reminds me that:

Virginia Woolf famously insisted that in order to write professionally a woman must have “a room of her own.”

Oh, yes. I like that. All you women writers now have a perfectly good reason to overtake the den.

And, yep. Even JK Rowling has something to say on the subject.

THIS IS where I’m going to be writing this fall.

In one of the spacious rooms, on a balcony, under a tree, on the beach, in a kayak…

You can join me…..  it’s easy. CLICK HERE for all the details. I’ll save you a spot on the sand.

"I think there's just one kind of folks. Folks."

~Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird, Chapter 23, spoken by the character Scout

 Going to a celebration of Harper Lee's one and only book.

Here's the party, if you're in Georgia.
 But, I'll bet other states are doing the same kind of celebration on this 50th year.

coolest thing?
 One of the featured authors, Jack Riggs, is the writer in residence/guru at the Florida writing retreat in October that I'm hosting.
 You can come and play and we will recite lines like this:

"Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing." - Ch 2 of To Kill a Mockingbird


"Mockingbirds don't do one thing but make music for us to enjoy. They don't eat up people's gardens, don't nest in corncribs, they don't do one thing but sing their hearts out for us. That's why it's a sin to kill a mockingbird." - Ch 10 of To Kill a Mockingbird 


"You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view - until you climb into his skin and walk around in it." - Ch 3 of To Kill a Mockingbird

If: You're a Girl. You like to read. You have friends...

read this.

Writing is a socially acceptable form of schizophrenia. ~E.L. Doctorow

Posting over there today.

Books? What are those?

As a writer, I am supposed to read. I'm supposed to like it and I'm supposed to encourage others to do it too, right?
And lately?
 I have been sucking in all three categories. 
 Some people get busy, and they stop eating right, they stop exercising, they let the laundry pile up and they stop vacuuming under the bed.
Some of us, let the books pile up to hide the dust bunnies under the bed.

 Amazon editors have no idea how I can get my 11 year old daughter to enjoy reading.. books- not internet sites and teen magazines- but they say these are the books I should be reading this month:          

Editors' Picks for April

• Spotlight Selection: The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman
• Hellhound on His Trail by Hampton Sides
• The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O'Farrell
• Will Grayson, Will Grayson by John Green and David Levithan
• Eaarth: Making a Life on a Tough New Planet by Bill McKibben
• Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey
• Wilson by Daniel Clowes

                     Great. Another list.

Yes, Mom. It was another one of "only you, Linda" moments.

I've been a bit secretive about a current project, but it's time to bust out and tell all. Don't worry I'll keep it PG, just in case any kids are doing a reverse POS. ( that's text speak for: parent over shoulder).

I went here to gather more research and candidates for the secret project.

The working title is: We Brought It. You Bought It. This unique photo-essay book goes on the road and behind the scenes with 50 Modern Truck Drivers in an attempt to entertain and educate the public, hopefully changing cliched views of "the trucker."
For this daunting task, I hooked up with the fabulous NY photographer Avital Aronowitz and stole a savvy blonde bombshell named Donna, to ride co-pilot to this event:

On the way, we did what girls do... talk and snack. Until we hit this traffic jam in Tennessee. caused by an accident ... which oddly enough- on our way to a trucking convention- involved a loaded semi- tractor trailer on his way home and a van of Mennonites on their way to a wedding. yep. Start the prayers, 'cuz it ain't pretty.


We created our own detour snaking through traffic, driving the wrong way on the shoulder and finding a u-turn that led us back to a series of country roads peppered with barns, silos and cows.

 I "heart" the black cow! There is a video of them running after us, as we rode slowly along their fence... it's debatable whether they were more intrigued by Hans-Sharon, the German sports car, or My Humps blaring out the open windows.

Unlike the convoy of truckers in the Papa John's Stadium parking lot, we checked into the Crowne Plaza and were welcomed by a wall of bourbon and Degas sketches of horses asses.

Avital was hard at work at the Expo, shooting shiny chrome and meeting Trick My Truck dudes.

 I climbed into the first rig I saw:

Donna honked the horn of a MACK. Oops.

And we found  fancy sleeper cabs with killer TVs, showers, toilets, full kitchens and as one trucker said, "Better stuff than what I got in my house."

we saw trucks like this  and some that even had stripper poles

because, you may run out of dollar bills someday.
 Of course it wasn't all chrome, alligator skin, Southern accents and big tires.. we had some girl time, Cheezits and wine,                                                   and celebrating my birthday in a padded cell.

Have to say it was the most productive and fun-filled, eye opening weekend I have had in a long, long time... hanging with the most generous, fun-loving happy people you'd ever want to call friends... even if some of them are self-proclaimed ex-outlaws with hermaphroditic pugs.

Reading in bed, clothing optional.

If it's about writing, authors, books or words in general? I posted it over here. Click and read. you won't be sorry.

National Novel Writing Month

What do I think about NaNoWriMo?


check it out ------> over here