$8499.00

From 6 a.m. until noon, today I received eight email solicitations.  Each of the eight promised they could help promote my book for a fee.  Added up, the total cost of all these helpful solicitations was $8499.00 and there were no guarantees. 

Who is Ringing My Chimes?

I do not own an Ipod, Ipad or smart phone.  I own a dumb phone.

Along with 24/7 phone availability, I mothballed my sophisticated cell phone and expensive contract a couple of years ago.  Then, contrary to my politics I went to Wal-Mart.  For about fifty bucks I bought a TracFone.  You can buy minutes, at 30 cents a minute and you pay either way for incoming or outgoing calls, basic service, no contracts on this one-way street.

The problem is the Fone has gremlins.  It will go off in the middle of the night, louder than a smoke alarm chiming out that I’ve missed 58 text messages…and the Fone is not even set up for text messages.  Or, the Fone will ring with wrong number after wrong number so many times I don’t answer it which defeats the purpose of a mobile phone.

To address these Fone inconsistencies means calling a toll free number and talking to someone in Honduras with an accent thick as his or her inexperience at working the phones and resolving Fone problems.  The resulting two hour conversation brings no results.  So, the Fone takes its place in my office drawer filled with similar phoniness in this cellular evolution.

From the Ground Up

Horse tail, steel wool, seaweed.  Pit-fire, sagar, raku.  Porcelain, stoneware, clay hunting.  Centering, burnishing, wax resist.  How sweet the sounds of these words to the ears of this dormant ceramist.

“From the Ground Up,” an exhibition featuring 14 central and Eastern Washington ceramists, opened yesterday at Larson Gallery in Yakima, the “Palm Springs” of Washington state.  My ceramic breast plates were among the featured work.

Half way into the reception I found my self in a group of exhibiting artists sharing not so secret, trade secrets.  Like how the minerals in kelp, depending on the season it was harvested, change the flash of color on a primitive fired vessel.  How horse hair leaves fine clean lines on a raku surface and copper key shavings thrown onto wet red glaze turn green at cone 06 but burn off at cone 05.

We talked about the merits of pit, salt, wood, gas firing, about the malleable world of clay until the exhibit closed.  We went out to dinner and continued a conversation, natural and unpretentious and one I didn’t realize I’d missed so much working to center myself around this writing business.

One of my breast plates, “Jason,” sold.  It is made from clay I dug at low tide on the Strait of Juan deFuca.

Read to Rover

Every Friday morning my main interests come together for an hour or more…dogs, kids, books and art.  Henry, my 10 pound Chorkie and I are members of Read to Rover, a volunteer program that helps children with reading difficulties. 

The program is simple.  Dogs who pass the AKC  Canine  Good Citizen test and a basic obedience  test are then eligible to go into schools, libraries, etc. to listen to kids read books.   The theory being the dog is not judgmental and the child feels more comfortable to read.  

Years before dog reading programs were implemented, 

I was doing a similar program of my own.  I called it Lunch with Bucky.  During my lunch break, I invited kids with special needs into my art room at school so they could eat lunch and talk to Bucky, my 10 pound Yorkie, who came to school with me every day in a basket.  I just sat at my desk and listened and on one occasion I heard a six year-old girl say to Bucky, “Daddy came into my bed last night with a pair of scissors,” which led to a long story now in CPS files.

Every Friday morning I brush Henry’s teeth, and hair and we go to elementary school.  Some days there are eight or more dogs in the library.  Henry sits in the same basket Bucky left behind, and he listens to kids read for 15 minutes at a time.  After an hour, kids who want to stay in for recess an we draw pictures, an added treat since there is no art program in the school.

Dogs, kids, books and art; a perfect picture.

How Many Pies til I Break Even?

This from Amanda  Hocking’s blog, the overnight best selling author of young adult, paranormal kiss and bite books….

“There is so much stress in doing it all yourself. The editing is never good enough. And finding an editor isn't as easy everyone thinks. People thinking an editor is just having someone read through it a few times, checking for basic grammar and spelling, and while that is part of it, it's also much larger than that. It's helping tighten up sentences, watching repeated phrases, helping with flow, etc.

And it is really, really hard (or at least, it has been for me) to find an editor that can do all that. My books have all been edited - several times, by dozens of people with varying backgrounds - and people still find errors.”

And, she’s just talking about the writing.  Not the marketing part. Fortunately, I worked with three good editors.  Just when I thought the world was my oyster, Suitcase Filled with Nails, was finally published and the orders would come rolling in, the pearl fell out of the shell and landed in my lap.

 I never planned on being in the book business.  Now, I  am and doing the math and facing the reality that I might pocket a buck, maybe less from my book which retails for $16.95.   It’s like an author is a pastry chef and she or he works really hard making the best pie possible and in the end she or he  receives  the smallest piece cut from the whole.

Blue Hole

Last night’s reading at Pacific Mist Books in Sequim, Olympic Peninsula’s alleged blue hole, was a cozy affair.  Chairs were already filled when I arrived ten minutes early. Lots of educators and some old friends were there.  Surrounded by books and people buying books, I read and fielded questions and signed the books people bought. 

This was the third reading/signing in one week, not as large as the one drawing over a hundred people and requiring me to use a microphone.  But in this intimacy, the audience sitting in chairs only feet away, I felt appreciated.  This supportive audience, unlike some reviewers, like dark holes, did not make allegations they would not defend.

No One Has Promised me a Rose Garden

In the past three weeks I’ve started three different blogs, all shedding light upon and lamenting this book business.  But, I’ve gotten  bogged down with bad barcodes,  distracted by distribution, sell at cost, sell at a loss- publishing problems I want no part of but must face. 

The only high point in all this mind-boggling brouhaha is getting to meet some of the bookstore owners who sell Suitcase, three different book stores with three different and personable book store owners.   In all three cases the stores were busy with buyers.

I love book stores.  I love books.  By the time I was ten I had my own library, a check out desk, the whole wad, all shelved in my bedroom.  This was years before my mother said to me “You can always afford to buy a book.”  This came after I said I wanted to buy “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” but I didn’t have enough money when I saw it in the book store.  The next day, when I came home from the 7^th grade a new copy of “I Never Promised You a Rose Garden,” was waiting for me on the kitchen counter.

If only the give and take of the book business was this simple and direct.