Tag Archives: publishing

July 7, 2016 · 4:24 pm

Doom Looms, Dear Ones

 

pogo

Wisdom from Pogo by the Great Walt Kelly

I get down and depressed when things continually go down hill and life becomes a depository for piles of disappointments, busted plans, and reversals of fortune.  I recently got rejected again by a publisher.  They told me they didn’t want my work, and subtly hinted that they really didn’t think it would be a good idea for me to submit any more to them.  And this, of course, was not one of the big five.  They don’t even accept submissions from a goof as lowly as me who thinks he can write stories.

I take things like that with a grain of salt anyway.  Twenty years ago I was told by a published writer that my writing was good enough to be published, and that all good writing eventually gets published.  But I chose the coward’s path back then, continuing to invest my time in teaching hormonal and homicidal brats to read and write English in a poverty-pocket of South Texas where they barely pay teachers anything.  I chose that cowardly path because it challenged my abilities and seemed a fulfilling life… and besides, I loved working with kids.  Now, my life is winding down.  I am retired on a full pension which is surprisingly good compared to what most teachers get nowadays, earned at a time before the Grinch became Emperor of Texas and declared the teaching of Science and making students think were acts of pure evil.  My health is failing now, and getting published in the age of the internet is now a much more iffy sort of thing where hacks can make fortunes and good writers are ignored.  Even small publishers aren’t interested in my work.

kelly_450

Yes, I tend to say “Gork” a lot because it doesn’t matter where I go from here.  I have lived a good life.   Now, as I dissolve in illness and pain and disappointment, I have no regrets.  I fought the good fight and did good work.  If the writing thing doesn’t do anything more for me than let me entertain myself in my last days, then that is good enough.  I have one book published, and I mean to continue banging away at stories that I have always intend to tell, they will continue to exist after me, at least for a while, and will represent me well when I am gone.

kelly_pogo_earthday

So, I am bound to die, and fairly soon, and we are going to have the racist Orange King as our next President, so the economy will collapse into the pocketbooks of a handful of billionaires.  Doom Looms… a phrase I borrowed from a Walt Kelly strip that cut to the heart of the matter long ago.  While we live, we are all together as passengers on Spaceship Earth, and we are the only enemy available to contend with.  So, instead of being bummed out about bad fortune, I choose to count my blessings and seriously contemplate what I can do to make things better… whether it is in a big way, or just a little bitty one.

Fools

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April 20, 2016 · 7:22 pm

Mr. Lucky

Self Portrait vxv

Sometimes everything goes wrong.  That, of course, is something that happens more often than the times when everything goes right.  Lately I have had the fortune to experience the more common of those two sometimes.

My most recent publisher, the one that was supposed to publish Snow Babies, underwent a reduction in capacity and financial difficulties.  They had to reorganize and reduce their commitments.  That meant they could no longer publish any of my other novels.  It apparently also means that they will no longer fulfill the publishing contract on Snow Babies.  Bummer.

My new car, a Ford Fiesta that I bought from Enterprise Rental Car to replace my old Ford Fiesta that was unceremoniously killed by a passing motorist as it sat in front of my house, is now in the shop with it’s own hoof and mouth disease.  While picking up kids from school, I hit a pothole on a Dallas street.  Not just any pothole, but a huge camouflaged cavern of a pothole capable of taking a huge bite out of the right front wheel.  I was not speeding.  I did not do anything wrong but drive in place I have driven a hundred times previously… though this time it was after torrential rain and a bit of nasty hail that I had no way of knowing made potholes bigger and angrier and more horrible.   I am surprised that it didn’t eat any other cars in the moderate traffic I was surrounded by.  But I initially thought that once a passing motorist, younger and more pothole savvy than me, did the good Samaritan act of helping me change the tire, that I would only have to get the tire fixed or replaced and would be happily on my way again.  No such luck.  Not only was the tire ruined, but also the rim it was mounted on, and possibly the undercarriage of the car.  It was going to cost at least the $500 deductible from my insurance company, unless something even worse happened that they couldn’t see without looking at their bank books a little harder.  And I had to get another rental car in the mean time.  But, of course, the recent hail storm not only had most of the rental cars rented, but the rental companies had lost cars to hail damage as well.  I was stuck with a rather expensive Dodge Challenger that the car insurance can’t completely pay for.  And I have no place to park it if the hail decides to revisit us this week.  Double bummer.

And, of course, it doesn’t end there.  Having kids in school is a challenge, especially this time of year with high-stakes testing going on.  I can’t give you particulars because some things have to remain private, but even really bright kids like mine, the children of two teachers, can be subject to test-anxiety and failure and the resulting depression which can prove fatal if not taken seriously enough.  Triple damn ding-dang bummer!

But we can’t let bad luck be the end-all of the story.  I am a pessimist by nature.  Nothing has happened to me recently that took me by surprise.  I am always expecting the worst to happen, and life rarely disappoints me on that score.  So I am not floored by these randomly-occurring sucker punches.  Rather, I am given that shot of anger and adrenaline needed to pick myself up and start fighting back.

class Miss Mcover

I have my novel Magical Miss Morgan almost ready to submit to another publisher that I found through a friend, with a couple of backup publishers to send it to after it is rejected the first time.  I have researched three possibilities so far.

I talked to the insurance agent today to stop the hemorrhaging of money down the drain of car repairs, and though I have taken a pretty good-sized cannon shot in this battle, it will not sink my little pirate ship.

And a conference with principal and teacher and student and parent solved a lot of the other problem.  It can be an advantage to a kid to have a teacher as a parent.  We tend to know how everything works, and we speak the secret language of Edjumacation to help get things actually done.

So, no worries, man.  Even though all my luck is bad luck, I am still lucky… since there is a lot of it.

 

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April 14, 2016 · 5:35 pm

Like Pulling Teeth from a Chicken

superchick2

Life is hard here in the Kingdom of Paffoon where you labor hard at a labor of love and try to give birth to something eternal that ends up going nowhere… stacks of old writing litter my closets, and the prospects of being published grow dimmer and dimmer.  My book Snow Babies has a contract with a publisher, but, apparently they are not going to be able to publish it after all.  I am at the very least going to have to find another publisher for the rest of my books, both finished manuscripts and works in progress.

Blue and Mike in color (435x640)

I do intend to follow through and get published, though.  I can no longer teach, but I feel a powerful force pushing me towards the sheer precipice of authordom.  One way or another I am going to make it over the edge and plummet to the bottom of that cliff.  I am compelled by the need to tell stories, and I have a captive audience every school day no longer.

I used to tell my classes that doing impossible things was like trying to pull chicken teeth with pliers.  You know, impossible things like getting a book published or teaching a mostly Spanish-speaking student how to read in English…  every-day-sort-of impossible things.

“But, Mr. B, chickens don’t have teeth,” some bright-eyed student would say after realizing that “chicken” was the English word for “pollo”.

“Exactly!” I would say.  “That’s what makes it so challenging!”

And now I must put on my chicken-catching socks, find my tooth-pulling pliers, and get ready to make more novels happen.  After a brief bout of consternation and depression, I actually feel a bit better about the whole fiasco.  There are other publishers, and publishers seem to like my writing, even if they can’t publish it.  And I have waited two years to get Snow Babies published, all apparently for nothing.  It is time to stop wasting time.  And maybe to stop repeating repetitions too.

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January 23, 2016 · 8:53 pm

Dumb Luck

Dumb Luck

Sometimes life is just a flip of the coin.  Heads for the good things.  Tails for the bad.  But because of the nature of random chance, even though the opportunities for good luck or bad luck are equal, tails twenty-seven times in a row can happen.  Before my book is able to be published, my publisher is on the brink of shutting down.  Their own roll of the dice has come up snake-eyes a few too many times.  I and the other authors at PDMI are trying to rally around each other and do what we can to help.  But the business is, for the moment, on hold.  Good things can happen too, though.  My novel, Magical Miss Morgan, is still in the running for the Rossetti Award from Chanticleer Book Reviews.  That might turn out to be a real good heads up and help me with my publication goals.  My blogging is going well.  For some reason I seem to be scoring 60+ views on a single day at least one day a week for the last six weeks.  I am now averaging 30 views a day instead of the old rate of 20.  My blogging is being read by more actual readers than ever before.  That’s a good thing, but also the result of dumb luck.  There is no formula for success making it happen.  I have to keep trying and trust that sometimes things will accidentally happen in my favor.  I admit to being a little tired of things that accidentally cause me harm.  Do I believe that God has a plan, and things work out the way they should?  Of course I do.  But I am not vain enough to think that I am important enough to the over-all plan to effect even a single flip of the coin of fate.

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August 3, 2015 · 2:03 pm

Working on Snow Babies

I really don’t have to put very much into this blog since most of my 500 words are already taken up with novel editing.  So I will just put in a few comments on this novel that has consumed me since 2012.   It is called Snow Babies Val at the barn

because it is basically about lost children and a blizzard that threatens to take them away completely.  Now, there are fantasy creatures in the story, child-like ghost-things that come in the teeth of the blizzard to take away the souls of those who die in the cold.  But the title actually refers more to the child characters in the story, Valerie Clarke (as seen above) and the four runaways from the Trailways bus.  It is a story of survival during a blizzard, and survival when you have lost the ones you love.  It is also a story of quilts… patchwork quilts… of many colors and varieties all stitched together seemingly at random.  Because that is what life is like.  Random stuff.  Stitched together…to make something beautiful that can save your life in the cold.

265469780

This novel was submitted in manuscript form to the Chanticleer Book Reviews novel writing contest for Young Adult fiction.  The contest is called the Dante Rosetti Awards as seen in this logo.  The book didn’t win, but of the many manuscripts submitted it made it all the way through to the final cut and was a finalist in the contest.

I am currently working with editor Jessie Cornwell of PDMI Publishing to get the book ready for print.  I hope to have it published soon.  Clay Gilbert, Managing Editor of PDMI LLC recently did a profile on me because of my upcoming book.  Here is the link for that;

Portals and Pathways by Clay Gilbert

Let me leave you with a look at the frost spirits from my novel.

7snowbabiesAI hope you don’t feel hopelessly mooned by that, because there are worse things that Snow Babies can do than that.

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June 9, 2015 · 3:10 pm

The Mickey Himself

I was desperate for a daily topic and trying to pull together all the best Senator Ted Cruz jokes I could think of when this message from my publisher, PDMI appeared on Facebook;


Daven Anderson

May 31 at 3:52pm · Edited

Good evening PDMI family!
Attention new PDMI team members: I would like to run features about you on our company Facebook pages. Don’t worry if you don’t have a book ready, these posts are about you. What drives you. What got you here to PDMI. Your hobbies and interests. Who *you* are.
Message me, the PDMI Publishing Facebook page, or e-mail me at (his proper email address not revealed here)@pdmipublishing.com.
Thank you! smile emoticon

Aha!  I can write about myself, post it here to count for my goal of posting on WordPress every day this year, and then send it to him to fulfill this request.  That right there tells you a lot about me.  No, I don’t mean that I’m lazy.  Although I do re-post  a lot of old Paffoonies on this blog (https://catchafallingstarbook.wordpress.com/).  It means I have to be efficient and economize my best efforts.  I was a Texas public school teacher for 31 years, ending in a retirement last Spring because I suffer both from six incurable diseases, and the need to become a published author before I croak.  I have forty years worth of stories in me that have to get out in whatever time I have left.  I am ill and having breathing trouble today as I try to knock this post out at my usual 500 words plus of finished prose per day (that’s the minimum I have set for myself).  To date I have successfully published my book Catch a Falling Star that I published the hard way through I-Universe (now owned by Penguin Books).  That, however, is the hard way to publish.  All the editorial help and marketing help offered by I-Universe is offered for a price.  I had to write the book well enough to pass all their editorial standards and I had to pay a hefty sum of money for the privilege.  So, with the next novel project, I finished writing, and made it to the finals of Chanticleer Book Reviews YA novel contest, and then sought a new publisher, pdmipublishing.com, who agreed to publish Snow Babies and gave me a publishing contract in which I no longer need to pay out of pocket to get my precious stories into print.  So, it is safe to say writing is now my second career, and if I starve to death in old age it won’t be because the government basically hates teachers.  No, that isn’t accurate either.  The government doesn’t hate teachers (not even the Texas government); they only hate having to pay them for their work.  To finish up, I should make a list of my many life-consuming useless hobbies, but blogging is one of them, so you can read about doll collecting, comic books, and other such nonsense on my blog.  I am also an amateur cartoonist, which I will prove with a couple of my picture Paffoonies that I created to go with my novels;

My Art 2 of Davalon Val B22

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March 14, 2015 · 3:15 pm

The Bicycle-Wheel Genius

DSCN7060

I have just finished the final edit of The Bicycle-Wheel Genius.  PDMI may not be ready for another novel from me, but it is ready for an editor or beta reader to be looking at it.  I will not be making any further changes because of my perception of the shape, style, and meaning of the novel.  I need input to proceed.  I need to advance to publication.

Blue in the back yard

This novel is about a lot of things.  It is science fiction.  It is a time-travel and alien-contact story.   But the thing it is really about, theme-wise, is friendship.   It is about the friends we need, the friends we have, what makes a friend, and how you treat a friend.  It is about love.  It is about love that has nothing to do with sex.  It is about love between boys and girls, about love between boys and other boys, about love between a man who has lost his wife and son and a boy who has lost his best friend, and even about the love between family members who love each other even when they disagree and don’t like each other very much.  It is also about love between a boy and his rabbit and how it changes when the rabbit is turned into a rabbit-man by the time machine.

My Art of Davalon

Okay, part of the reason that all sounds so terribly complex, is because of the structure I adopted for this novel.  This novel is a unique sort of sequel to Catch a Falling Star.  I call it a Prequel-Equal-Sequel because it takes place before, during, and after the events of the other book.  The primary characters are also different.  The main protagonists in the first book are only minor supporting characters in this book.   The supporting characters from Catch a Falling Star, the inventor and bicycle-wheel engineer Orben Wallace, and his next-door neighbor boy, Timothy Kellogg (also the grand and glorious and ludicrously uproarious leader of the Norwall Pirates, a small-town liars club of country boys), have become the protagonists.

It was all a very complicated process to write, but also strangely fun and deeply engaging to do.  I originally assumed because it was overly complex and facetious, that it was really not that good.Millis 2

Re-reading and editing, though, has caused me to think that it actually a very good story.  I know that it is not as good a piece of writing as either Snow Babies or Magical Miss Morgan, but it has a very significant part to play in the over-all story arc of my home-town novels.  It develops critical characters like the two protagonists, Mike Murphy, Blueberry Bates, Cudgel Murphy, Mary and her daughter Dilsey Murphy, and, of course, Valerie Clarke.  So, this is a sort of celebratory post.  I have finished another project and must now move on to the phase where I must try to get it published and publicized, packaged and promoted.

RabbitWalker

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October 10, 2014 · 3:19 am

My Latest Novel

I sent this novel to the publisher during the October submission window last night.  I am hoping it will get published and add to my published catalog.  Superchicken was my nickname in high school, so this one is a little autobiographical.  This is also the one where a boy is tricked into going camping with a girl who has a crush on him at a nudist camp.  So it should be noted that some things in this story really happened.  Still this young adult novel is mostly funny, a little serious, and a lot of fantasy.

superchick_novel Supe n Sherry_n

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