11 Things I Love About Social Media

Edie Melson        @EdieMelson

Let’s face it, social media takes a lot of hard knocks and gathers a good bit of bad press. But just like almost anything we have to do—or even love to do—there are good parts and bad parts.



1. I can reach more people. With the advent of the internet and specifically social media, I can connect with more people than I’d ever been able to in the past.



2. I can help others without having to be in person or even on the telephone. I can offer assistance through a comment, a prayer, a practical link, many of the ways I could before, but without the barrier of location.



3. It gives me a wider perspective. I live in the south, in the United States. Without the benefit of social media, this would give me a fairly specific definition of what normal looks like. Connections with people all over the world have broadened my horizons and influenced the way I see things.



4. I can get my message out faster. If I have something I want to share, I can do so almost immediately—with little or no time-lag.



5. I can connect with others regardless of location. This benefit has helped me reconnect with old friends, stay in touch with new ones, and even develop relationships with people whom I might never have met in person.



6. It makes me deliberate about reaching out beyond my inner circle. Social media is a world that grows with momentum. If I’m consistent and diligent about connecting every week, my circle widens. If I don’t, it shrinks.



7. I have learned to clarify and shorten my message. There are good and bad things about living in a world of soundbites. One of the good things is that it has forced me to drill down to the core of who I am and how I want to present myself. This makes my presence on social media more effective, but it also makes my in-person presence better.



8. I have a new skill set and it’s made me more confident. Doing social media well requires a big jump in skills. By learning all these things, I’ve proven to myself that I’m not too old—or stupid, or lazy, or ______—to grow as a person and as a writer.



9. It has made me more respectful of others. By watching the negative behavior of others, it’s made me more mindful that I need to follow the golden rule and treat others the way I’d like to be treated—online and off.



10. My definition of community has grown. I grew up believing that my community consisted of those who were physically nearby. Now, my community consists of those with whom I share life, sometimes in person, sometimes online.



11. I have found a new aspect of the ministry God has given me. Many of us feel God has whispered a unique purpose for our lives to us. With the advent of social media, that purpose has deepened. Where once He could use me to reach a small group in my community, now He can use me to reach the world.



I know we could (and often do) go on and on about how social media is a drag. But it isn’t it nice to spend a little time focusing instead on how it’s a blessing? I’d love to know what you’ve found positive in your time on social media. Be sure to share your thoughts in the comments section below.

Edie Melson is the co-author of the bestseller Social Media for Today’s Writer. She’s the co-director of the Blue Ridge Mountains Christian Writers Conference, and board member of the Advanced Writers and Speakers Association.

https://www.blueridgeconference.com/

Visit Edie at:

www.EdieMelson.com

www.twitter.com/EdieMelson

Edie Melson, Facebook

How Do You Manage to Write a Historical Novel and Make it Feel Fresh?

Leslie Hachtel

History is about people. Every time you tell a story about someone and the events that shaped their life, through your own voice, set in whatever period of history, that’s always fresh. 

I find readers respond to an old story told from a different perspective and also a story they haven’t heard before.


I have always been fascinated with the idea of having a part of yourself remain when you leave a place. I was also intrigued with the thought that someone with a similar experience in the past could reach across time and offer help. This is how the idea for the book, Stay With Me came about.

Many authors use the "What If?" questions as they write. Here are some of my "What If?" questions.  "If you are damaged by a past experience, can you heal and make your life better? (yes) And what if we’re not really ever alone? What if there is always someone there to offer comfort if we know how to accept it?"


The twist was creating this story about two women who share similar lives and can communicate across the years and I chose to focus on survivors, both in the past and the present.

I love history, so I don’t like to limit myself to any specific eras. All time periods have their challenges and after I create the characters, the time period offers the background, the influences and sometimes the goals for the protagonists. The setting definitely influences the characters: the rulers, the environment, the possibilities, and the limitations.


When writing about history, there are always those who influence life and those people are the people who create the settings for me. When asked for advice on writing historical fictions I always tell writers . . ."Do your research"!!!! Making a mistake will take the reader right out of the story.

 

Leslie Hachtel has been working since she was fifteen and her various jobs have included licensed veterinary technician, caterer, horseback riding instructor for the disabled and advertising media buyer, which have all given her a wealth of experiences.

However, it has been writing that has consistently been her passion. She is an Amazon bestselling author who has written fifteen romance novels, including eleven

historicals and four romantic suspense

Leslie now lives in Florida with her very supportive husband, and her new writing buddy, Josie, the poodle mix.

She loves to hear from readers!

Website:  https://www.lesliehachtel.com/

Facebook:  https://www.facebook.com/lesliehachtelwriter/

Twitter:  @lesliehachtel

Blog: http://lesliehachtelwriter.wordpress.com

Bookbub: https://www.bookbub.com/authors/leslie-hachtel

 

The Weight of Memory

Shawn Smucker

The last eighteen months has brought all of us many unexpected things: both tragedy and gifts. One of our pandemic gifts has been moving from our row home on James Street, a home we loved and lived in for seven years, to a little cottage at the back of a small development, a property with a border that runs along the woods, and if you walk deep enough into the woods, the Conestoga River waits.



After so much time in the house together, me and my wife and our six children, we needed some space to breathe, to get out of each other’s hair, to stretch out and exhale.



Yesterday I looked through the window and one of the little neighbor girls was climbing the tree in our front yard with our two youngest kids. They were encouraging each other.



“Go ahead, climb up, you can do it.”



“Put your foot here.”



“I’ll give you a boost.”



This seems to be the best example of how we should all be living at the tail-end of a pandemic: full of encouragement, helping where we can, and exuding belief in one another.



* * * * *



During one of our last nights in the old house, a thunderstorm rocked the city. Lightning darted toward the ground, followed by rolling rumbles of thunder. During the flashes of light I could see the small-town minor league ballpark in the distance, the one where games had not been held for a year. The wind whipped the 100-year-old sycamore’s branches in front of our house, lashing the spring leaves.



I sat beside the bed of our youngest child, and when a loud echo of thunder sounded, I’d look up and give her a reassuring glance.



“It’s okay. It’s going to be okay.”



And so hope has survived even the hardest of years, the hope that it is going to be okay.



Even though hope has survived in one form or another, something fundamental has changed in me. But how could something, many things, not have changed after the year we’ve all lived through?



I can feel it in my writing life, which has taken on both a sense of increased importance and a greater sense of helplessness. Surely these stories are more important than they have ever been. Surely I am less capable to tell them as they need to be told.



This is the back-and-forth I feel in my mind after living through 2020 and the first half of 2021.



What real world problems could this writing ever solve?



* * * * *



It all reminds me of something Anne Lamott writes at the end of her wonderful book about writing, Bird by Bird, when her writing students ask her why their writing matters.



“Because of the spirit, I say. Because of the heart. Writing and reading decrease our sense of isolation. They deepen and widen and expand our sense of life: they feed the soul…We are given a shot at dancing with, or at least clapping along with, the absurdity of life, instead of being squashed by it over and over again. It’s like singing on a boat during a terrible storm at sea. You can’t stop the raging storm, but singing can change the hearts and spirits of the people who are together on that ship.”



This is why I keep writing, why I wrote The Weight of Memory: we are traveling rough seas, but through books and writing and art we can travel these seas together. And we can keep singing while the storm rages around us.

Shawn Smucker is the award-winning author of Light from Distant Stars and These Nameless Things, the young adult novels The Day the Angels
Fell and The Edge of Over There, and the memoir Once We Were Strangers. 

He lives with his wife and six children in Lancaster, Pennsylvania. You can find him online at www.shawnsmucker.com.

An Author’s Twenty-Five Year Collaboration

Allen B. Boyer

 

Did you ever think about stepping back in time? Maybe twenty-five years in time to collaborate on a book with a younger version of yourself? It sounds like something out of a Stephen King novel, but in 2020, I had such an opportunity.

I’ve been writing books since 2003. I’ve had the good fortune to write thirteen books for two national publishers. As most writers know, the process of sitting at a desk staring at a keyboard with no distractions around can make writing a lonely experience. However, there are some writers who collaborate on books. Until 2020, I never known the experience of co-authoring a book. However, that changed when I found the perfect person to collaborate with. A much younger version of myself.

Way back in 1997 I began to write a murder mystery set in a quiet community called Mount Gretna. Based on a real place, I was familiar with the history of the community and how it attracted artists and scholars every summer to pursue academic interests. Even the streets of Mount Gretna are named after Ivy League schools. A detail meant to reflect the environment of the community. To me, it seemed like the perfect place to set a story where a dead body is found in this perfectly academic place.

Back in the 1990s (when I started this story), I was reading a lot of James Lee Burke. I loved his prose and marveled at his writing. His protagonist, Dave Robicheaux, was a tough as nails detective battling his drinking habits and leading a solitary life. For some reason, I wanted to have a character like this at the center of my mystery. A reluctant hero with dark secrets who tries to solve the mystery by himself. Around a hundred pages into the story, I got stuck on a plot point and couldn’t get around it. With writers block staring me in the face, I admitted defeat, put the manuscript away and forgot about it.



Flash forward to 2020. Like most people, I was locked down in my home because of Covid, looking for ways to occupy my time. That’s when I ran across the manuscript, which I had titled Gretna Greed. A good portion of the story was written by long hand and filled a series of notebooks that I found in a packing crate in my basement. I went through the notebooks and read lots of passages that worked and lots that didn’t work. After reading through a few notebooks, it became clear to me that I had to come up with a better plot and a better character to frame the story.

I gave the plot a lot of thought before I started writing. I’ll admit, I was a bit intimidated by the challenge of rewriting the story. After all, this was the manuscript that gave me writers block once. I was very conscious of that and didn’t want to get stuck again. As a result, I began to make changes.

I kept the discovery of a dead body at Mount Gretna’s Lake, but decided to set the story in the 1960s. Instead of sticking with the dark tone of Gretna Greed, I decided to lighten up the storyline by changing the main character. Gone was the moody and brooding Dave Dampier, replaced by a former Secret Service agent to Dwight Eisenhower named August Summerfield (the last name I found on a tombstone at a local cemetery). Gone was the idea of the main character being a loner. Instead, I had August move to Mount Gretna where he purchased a home next door to his niece, Grace Walker. I had August and Grace both mourning the loss of Grace’s mother (August’s sister). I thought it would be interesting to let grief bond these two characters, and how a murder mystery provided them both with an opportunity to escape that grief.

Aside from his vulnerable side, I gave August a few quirks as a character. He loves Happy Jim chewing tobacco, a brand that was very popular in the 1950s and 60s. My grandfather always had a pouch of Happy Jim around and loved to chew it. He also carried a spittoon around the house with him. I thought it would be an interesting character trait for August. However, unlike my grandfather, August is not that good of a shot when it comes to spitting out his tobacco juice, which leads to some humorous situations.

Another trait I thought would be interesting was to give August his love of bird watching. He’s retired and it’s an activity that, like my father, was interesting for August. I decided to make August very knowledgeable about birds. Knowledge that he sometimes shares when he sees a parallel between the behavior of a bird and the that of a suspect.

What I learned about myself as a writer during this process is that I’m a better writer now than I was two decades ago. While the prose I wrote in 1997 was good, it just no longer fit with my style of writing. I remember how it used to take me a long time to craft these poetic pages of narrative like James Lee Burke. When I read those passages in 2020, it simply slowed up the reader. The story didn’t have any flow. So, as much as I can say I collaborated with a younger version of myself, there really isn’t much left in the story from 1997.

Morning Mist and Murder is the title I gave this first August Summerfield mystery. I wasn’t sure if there would be a need to bring this character back, but I’ve been pleasantly surprised by the sales in the first month. It was a journey well worth taking as a writer.

Do you have a story that your tried to write but couldn’t? A tale that you put away and never got back to? Well, you might be surprised by what you can do when collaborating with a younger version of yourself.

Allen B. Boyer lives near Hershey, Pennsylvania with his wife and three children and one year old Golden Retriever. He is the author of thirteen books. If you enjoyed Gumshoe Granny Investigates, please check out Bess in the other books in the series, including the Dupree Sisters Mystery Series and the August Summerfield Series.



Website/Blog

https://allenboyer.weebly.com/blog/allen-boyer-an-authors-blog

 

Amazon link for book

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B096TFN8BD/ref=sr_1_2?dchild=1&keywords=Morning+Mist+and+Murder&qid=1623184219&sr=8-2

 

 

 

 

 

Redeeming Grace with a Sense of Place

LoRee Peery 

One of the things I listed as a to-do with my first book contract was come up with an identifying tagline to go with my name. Some might say it’s a brand of sorts, because I cannot write without giving credit to the Lord for what He does for me. I also determined forever ago that I would write about my Nebraska home. “Redeeming grace with a sense of place” is what I came up with as an email signature. I tossed the phrase around with members of a writing group, prayed about it, and used it for my first website and Facebook page. Nothing ever grabbed my attention as a replacement.

In the early days of my writing, I didn’t know what genre to choose. My first publications were nonfiction set in Nebraska because Nebraska is what I know. The people in my home state are down to earth, hard workers with a rhythm of life I can’t imagine finding in the city. The souls who grew up and live in my state jump at the chance to help others in need.

Just for fun, I researched. According to Wikipedia, “The term sense of place has been used in many different ways. It is a multidimensional, complex construct used to characterize the relationship between people and spatial settings.” Several definitions are then mentioned.

As a Christian who believes in the grace God extends, for reasons known only to the Father, He sent Jesus to pay the ransom for my sin and saved me from an eternity in hell.

Jesus is the only way. Since I’m a reader of fiction, I chose story as a way for characters to come to that same realization. Though imperfect and impacted by situations of the world, readers can identify with the people in my stories and find encouragement as those fictional spirits turn to the Lord for answers and guidance.

The year 2020 will be a memorable one worldwide. For me, it wasn’t so much the covid-19 virus as what I went through physically, mentally, and spiritually. Pain struck on Mother’s Day when I applied eye makeup for the first time since the lockdown began in March. I lowered my arm and gasped in shock. I’m used to something always hurting due to fibromyalgia and osteoarthritis, but I have a high pain tolerance. I was sick to my stomach all day. If I’m nauseated, I know the pain is high, and that sudden stabbing down my arm was eight on the pain chart.

A few days later, an X-ray revealed a broken acromion bone, the thin one at the top of the shoulder that curves on the end. A CT scan told the surgeon his earlier rotator cuff repair hadn’t worked. I needed a reverse shoulder replacement.

The next morning, I awoke at 4 a.m. recalling that sometime during the last half of February I had picked up Valentine decorations off the floor that had fallen from the shadow box. Backing up in my journal I found nothing about my shoulder, but my lower back had screamed with pain for a couple weeks. Then I remembered.

My husband had left his shoes on the floor. I tripped over them, and with my right shoulder, hit the narrow edge of an open door. Then I bounced into the wall with my upper left side, knocking off the shadow box and its contents.

I had a reverse shoulder replacement on June 3rd. At the same time, the surgeon used what he called putty from that earlier repair and two screws to hold the acromion in place. In July we saw that the bone hadn’t healed. I needed a second surgery to remove hardware, along with a bone graft. Long, painful, and weak months ensued.

During those months of pain, I was up in the wee hours of many sleepless nights reading my Bible. I found myself pouring out my frustration and praise through what I called LoRee’s psalms. Or lamentations and songs, all with adoration for the Lord God who calls me His daughter. Ever trusting, though my frailty drifted to the surface, my Lord had control and all would be well.

I ended up writing three volumes with working titles, “Shelter in the Night,” “Looking Beyond Self,” and “Gratitude.” I set aside the 500 poems earlier this year to write a Christmas novella.

God’s grace abounds, and here’s a sample of how I view His redeeming grace:

Titus 2:11 For the grace of God has appeared that offers salvation to all people.



God’s Grace Granted



God’s grace is among us

God’s grace is offered to all



God’s grace sets us apart

God’s grace teaches us



God’s grace enables me

God’s grace is patient



God’s grace frees me

God’s grace purifies me



God’s grace encourages

God’s grace corrects



God’s grace saved me

God’s grace grants peace



God’s grace is present

God’s grace is eternal.

Nebraska country girl LoRee Peery writes fiction that hopefully appeals to adult readers who enjoy stories written from a Christian perspective, focusing on the romance. These include novels and novellas for women and men in the Contemporary, Romance, Historical, Time Travel, and Mystery/Suspense categories. She writes of redeeming grace with a sense of place. Her Frivolities Series and the book based on her father’s unsolved homicide, Touches of Time, are available on Amazon. She is who she is by the grace of God: Christian, country girl, wife, mother, grandmother and great-, sister, friend, and author. Connect with LoRee: www.loreepeery.com

https://www.facebook.com/LoReePeery

Find her publications at Pelican http://tinyurl.com/kwz9enk

And Amazon https://www.amazon.com/LoRee-Peery/e/B004UAGL2W/ref

Making the Right Choice

Bill Woods

Several years ago, I was diagnosed with cancer. I took a week off from work and flew to St Martin in the Caribbean to consider my options. One option, my doctor explained, was to do nothing––skip the operations and endless treatments and accept an early death.

I stayed at a French resort on one end of Orient Beach. That first morning, I woke early to walk the mile-long beach and think.



I walked by a solitary man raking sea grass into a pile at the waterline with his feet. Judging from his leathery skin and ropy sun-bleached hair, he lived at the colony down the beach. After kicking the grass into a throne, he sat down and contentedly watched the sun rise out of the ocean. This scene is the Prologue to the novel.

In my imagination, this man had faced a dilemma like my own and had chosen to spend his last good years here. His backstory, family, and private thoughts began to emerge. On this pristine beach, he could have been from any time period. Orient Beach is my imagining him and his family on this beach in the years 1580, 2002, and 2023.



The first draft of Orient Beach was written by an engineer. Every day, I concocted plots and scenes. Every night, however, a voice nagged, “Everything you wrote today is crap. Your plot is just a frame with characters dangling from it. The plot won’t become a story until you get inside their heads.” This awakening of my feeble, underused right-side brain made me feel possessed. In my writing journal, I began to refer to this emerging aspect of myself as Muse. This banter between my Muse and my engineer raged daily.



After two years of struggle, Orient Beach began to fizzle. But this idea of a hack writer being haunted and badgered by a Muse took over my imagination. I turned “pantser” and wrote the Muse of Wallace Rose over the next four months. After, when I went back to Orient Beach, I kept my Muse in the driver’s seat and rewrote that novel into its current form over the next six months.

My original approach to writing was overly structured. Outlines. Character studies. I had to know the end before I started. I discovered answering all the “what if’s” up front makes writing boring, both to write and to read. I also discovered when my characters came alive as I wrote, they wouldn't follow the script I gave them in the outline. The “what if" choices I made up front got overruled. As a writer, I like my characters to surprise me. Fiction readers like this, too.



The start (first page of a short story or fifty pages of a novel) is gruelingly hard. Some days my Muse does not show up for work. This is when many new writers lose faith and quit, I think. I have to continually reassure myself my theme and concept are strong and worth the struggle. I’ve learned if I continue to blunder ahead and be patient, my characters will turn from cardboard cutouts into real people. After this point, the characters take over and the story begins to flow.



If I look back over my novels and short stories, my pattern is to choose my characters first. The story starts with them. Most of my characters are patterned on someone unique I’ve observed but don’t actually know. My imagination creates their current situation and backstory. I present them with tough problems and record how they solve them. Out of this a story emerges.



I have been asked how I conceived such “bizarre” characters. I get this question a lot––not from my fans, but from me. I would like to say that the inspiration for “Orient Beach” overtook me one morning and it just rolled off my fingertips as fast as I could type. The plot for the most part did; however the characters and themes only became fully formed after exhausting rewrites and polishing.

In Orient Beach, digging into the psyche of my characters, discovering their motivations, their unique insights, was like panning for gold nuggets buried beneath the gravel. It was only after the first draft that Legion and Lily Anna came alive for me. This is when I began to laugh out loud at their jokes and become too bleary to type during their calamities. I became vicariously them.


In both my novels and in my short stories, I explore tough issues (religion, love, greed, prejudice, death, war, etc). With writing I can create characters who are braver than I am, or wiser, or more moral. I throw these dilemmas at them and see what they learn. As Flannery O Connor put it, “I don’t know what I think until I write.”



The principal character in Orient Beach is this beach itself. The beach is the only character that spans the four and a half centuries covered in the novel. And like any protagonist, it faces hardships and changes over time. My other characters could not have existed anywhere other than this unique location. I'm so enthralled by the Caribbean, the only difficulty in writing scenes was going back and deleting all the superlatives that crept in.

“Orient Beach” has left me in a different place from where I started––perhaps more self-aware. It’s this anticipation of the next discovery in that vast unknown between my ears that makes me eager to write the next novel.

What happened to the cancer? I chose to have the operation. What was the primary factor for that choice? At age 15, I read Hemingway’s, For Whom the Bell Tolls. I fell in love with language, the possibilities of it. I promised myself someday, before I died, I would write a novel. I’m relatively healthy now.

Bill Woods, author of Orient Beach and The Muse of Wallace Rose, lives and writes beside the Duck River in Columbia, Tennessee.

His debut novel Orient Beach was a finalist for the Faulkner Society Award in 2018.



The 13th annual Killer Nashville awarded the Silver Falchion Award for Best Short Story Collection or Anthology of 2020 to Bill Woods for THE MUSE OF WALLACE ROSE.

The Georgia Magnolias Series

Ane Mulligan       @AneMulligan 

When I began writing this series, I had an idea for each book that I presented to my publisher when I handed in the proposal for In High Cotton, book 1. But each book was intended to stand alone. The characters in the second book, On Sugar Hill, are new.



However, in the third book, By the Sweet Gum, coming out in March 2022, I was writing a scene and realized I wanted Maggie and Sadie from the first book to be in the scene. So, I gave them a cameo appearance. Now, as I write the fourth book, Up Level Creek, several characters from On Sugar Hill show up in the story, since the fourth book takes place in Sugar Hill, too. Are you confused yet?



While this series is historical, it takes place in 1929-1932, so dialogue wasn’t hard. Perhaps some people talked a little more formally than we do today, but not a lot. I did pull a few slang words for the young people to use.



The most difficult part was the research. For the first book, I used a fictional town, so research was general. I learned some interesting things, like most rural areas of Georgia didn’t have electricity until the 1950s! Atlanta and the larger towns did. Some smaller towns did if they had a mill in the town with hydroelectric.



But when it came to Sugar Hill, I hit some roadblocks. My hometown was not incorporated until 1939. That’s the reason for the title of On Sugar Hill instead of In Sugar Hill. Before 1939, there was no official history. What is now the City of Sugar Hill back then was a militia district. The closest city, Buford (which today shares its zip code with Sugar Hill) didn’t include the militia district in its official history. The county listed the streets and schools, but that’s it. And since most were dirt roads and not paved until many years later, it’s hard to find a lot of information. One good rainstorm could change the topography of a road.



I had to rely on the oral stories of families who had lived here for generations. The folks old enough to remember the details of 1929 have either passed on or are too ill to be interviewed (of course, Covid didn’t help). Their children, however, have told me many their family stories.



One character (both in real life and in my book) was Rocky Venable. I first learned about Rocky through our theatre company performing cemetery tours in Sugar Hill. For some reason, Rocky fascinated me. Then, I met his great niece through church and learned more about him. I couldn’t leave him out of my story.



Because of the sketchy history prior to 1939, I’ve had to—or been able to—take some literary license as to who owned what store and exactly where it was placed. Hopefully, nobody will object and simply enjoy the story of On Sugar Hill.



I try to use real people as often as possible, when their families give me their blessing, knowing I won’t tarnish their memories. You’ll meet Rocky Venable, and Melvina Hosch in the latest release.



Another name of someone very dear to me is Bug Pugh. Bud appears by name in nearly every book I write. He was a great encourager to me. When I was the creative arts director for our church, one of my jobs was to recruit actors for the annual Easter or Christmas pageant. Have you ever tried to enlist people for those? Ninety percent of everyone gives a resounding no. But not Bud. He always said yes. He loved being in them. He was so enthusiastic, I learned to ask him first. It always started the project off on a positive note. He’s now passed on to Heaven, but I love to keep his memory alive and honor him. To me, no book is complete without his delightful self in it.



I’m truly enjoying writing in the late twenties and early thirties. I plan to camp out here for as long as stories show up on my doorstep. Lately, I’ve started doing a some of my writing at our town’s newly opened history museum, run by the Sugar Hill Historical Society. If you’re around our neck of the woods, be sure to stop in and say hey. We’ll show you around. Our downtown is one block long – but it’s a packed one block.

Ane Mulligan has been a voracious reader ever since her mom instilled within her a love of reading at age three, escaping into worlds otherwise unknown. But when Ane saw PETER PAN on stage, she was struck with a fever from which she never recovered—stage fever. She submerged herself in drama through high school and college. One day, her two loves collided, and a bestselling, award-winning novelist emerged. She lives in Sugar Hill, GA, with her artist husband and a rascally Rottweiler. Find Ane on her website, Amazon Author page, Facebook, BookBub, Goodreads, Pinterest, Twitter, and The Write Conversation.

Downsize, Upsize, Which is the Right Size?

Meloday Carlson

For some ironic and absurd reason, tiny homes have always fascinated me. The main reason I say it’s ironic is because my husband is 6’6” tall. Get the picture? He doesn’t exactly fit easily into small spaces. The absurd part of this flawed equation is my fault. I love home décor—things like pretty dishes and lamps and linens and furnishings—things that require space. These two factors do not lend themselves to less-is-more tiny house living.

Just the same I’ve enjoyed creating some fun ‘small spaces’ over the years. Like our redesigned RV, a renovated tiny beach cabin, a mini guesthouse, a scaled down writing studio and a few other compact habitats. I think it might all stem back to my favorite childhood toy—a rickety metal dollhouse filled with my homemade pixie sized furnishings.

So anyway, I got my first real taste of honest-to-goodness downsizing about six years ago when we went from 3,500 square feet of living space (that we’d occupied for almost twenty years) to 1,700. Let’s just say we had the biggest yard sale the neighborhood had ever seen. They still talk about it. Not much later, we downsized even more by selling the beach cabin and most of its furnishings. Naturally, our dramatic ‘downsize’ year resulted in a ‘temporary’ storage unit (which we still have!).

Although I liked our smaller home, it was an adjustment and a lot less space. Our three bedroom house (which held two office spaces) became a huge challenge for having guests? And I love being hospitable. But where do you put them? Another thing was troubling. We had this oversized never-landscaped lot. We loved living in town, but half an acre of dirt and weeds required massive work, followed by maintenance. Not exactly the downsized we’d been dreaming of.

So I got an idea. What if we split the lot and built on the other side? To that end, we constructed a ‘barn’ with two very small studio apartments above it. And then, just one year ago, we sold our 1,700 square foot house (in a matter of days!) and quickly moved into the apartments. Each studio is just over 300 square feet—real tiny living! We started summer with more donating household goods, more packing, more storing, more downsizing madness. Our friends thought we were crazy.

It wasn’t long before I thought our friends could be right. Besides discovering that 700 square feet—including two tiny kitchenettes and baths—is a formula for severe cabin fever (especially during winter and Covid!) we began to dream of upsizing. We began to design the home we wanted to create in the front part of our recently divided lot. I drew up plans for a house very similar the one we’d sold (which I greatly missed in our tight second floor quarters). Suddenly 1,700 square feet sounded like a mansion! Especially with the two apartments to use for guests after the house was finished.

But everything seemed to take longer than expected. While waiting on permits, we built a small ‘shed’ to use for storage now and perhaps my writing studio later. In the meantime, I’m writing in a cave-like book storage room in back of the barn. But we weren’t completely deprived. While it was still summer, we threw together a covered outdoor living room/kitchen (partly to store furniture) but also to enjoy during warm weather. And we hardscaped around it, adding a small raised garden and fishpond. Okay, I’ll admit it, our ‘downsize’ was steadily growing by ‘small’ increments. But it made things more livable. At least during warmer seasons. But winter was coming.

It was in autumn, with building finally begun, that my big husband got it into his big head to make our house bigger. He decided we needed a second story. While I was off visiting my sister, a second floor replaced what was supposed to be a small attic. I came home to find a tall house—much larger than the simple single-story ranch style home I’d envisioned. So much for downsizing. And, of course, this change brought a whole slew of new challenges with it. Not to mention severely slowing down what should’ve been a fairly simple build. I thought six months at the most.

So here I am, one year later, still living in small crowded spaces, longing for roomier ones, and suddenly my new novel Home Sweet Tiny Home is about to release. I had such fun writing that lighthearted story . . . back before my life changed so drastically. I lived vicariously through my main character. A widowed empty-nester, her McMansion was too much for her, and while binging on HGTV tiny house shows, she fell in love with the idea of a major downsize—and subsequently reinvented her life. Needless to say, I was still infatuated with small spaces while writing that book. I still believed less was more and that pixies could fly. Maybe I still believe in some of these things—tempered with experience.

What we have wound up with in our downsize-upsize adventure is a bit of both. Our nearly finished home of 1,700 square feet (plus an oversized unfinished attic) as well as a ‘barn’ with two studio apartments, a separate small studio, and an outdoor living area. Downsize, really? It’s like we created a compound! But it works for us. And with mostly hardscape, yardwork is a breeze.

So today, I must ask myself: what have I learned in my adventures of downsizing (and upsizing) over these past six years? Here is what I came up with: 1) People/relationships (like husbands and construction workers) are more important than things (like cabinets and plumbing fixtures). 2) Downsizing is not for the faint of heart or the wistful daydreamer. 3) Patience is a virtue I still need to work on. And 4) I never want to downsize or upsize again.

Melody Carlson has written more than 200 books (with sales around 6.5 million) for teens, women and children. That's a lot of books, but mostly she considers herself a "storyteller." Her novels range from
serious issues like schizophrenia (Finding Alice) to lighter topics like house-flipping (A Mile in My Flip-Flops) but most of the inspiration behind her fiction comes right out of real life. Her young adult novels (Diary of a Teenage Girl, TrueColors etc.) appeal to
teenage girls around the world. Her annual Christmas novellas become more popular each year. She's won a number of awards (including Romantic Time's Career Achievement Award, the Rita and the Gold
Medallion) and some of her books have been optioned for film/TV.
Hallmark movie ALL SUMMER LONG (2019) and another in the works Carlson has two grown sons and makes her home in the Pacific Northwest with her husband and yellow Lab dog. To find out more about Melody Carlson, visit her website at http://www.melodycarlson.com/

Why Do I Teach About Contemporary Women Poets?

 Sara M/ Robinson

I was asked this on the first day of my second fall UVA-OLLI session. The easy answer is because I like so many of the contemporary women poets. But that’s too easy; and I’m skirting around the issue. The issue is that women poets have not always received the recognition they’ve earned. I’m not sure I know why, but I can tell you that when I read bios of well-known women poets(i.e. Anne Sexton, Rae Armantrout, Maxine Kumin) I learn that most were influenced by well-known male poets(i.e. Ezra Pound, T.S. Eliot, Robert Frost, William Carlos Williams). You get the drift.


In one source, I did learn that Gertrude Stein mentored Ernest Hemingway through her famous Paris writing salon. I read in scarce commentaries of the influence of Edna St. Vincent Millay and Elizabeth Bishop; I do find comfort in that. However, it’s not enough for me. I want to see more of our spectacular women poets being cited and mentioned more frequently in journals and literary magazines. Even anthologies need to step up and increase the exposure. For example, I use the 2nd edition (2003) of the Vintage Book of Contemporary American Poetry in the course I teach. This text contains seventy-five outstanding poets, but only twenty-two are women! Not even half! In the Best of the Best of American Poetry (25th Anniversary Edition, 2013) there are one hundred poems, of which only thirty-eight are written by women. What gives? I could continue with my count, but again you get the picture. We have Pulitzer Prize winning women poets and yet one had to work pretty darn hard to find them in years past. And, by the way, out of ninety-one Pulitzer Prizes given for poetry, only twenty-five have been given to women. Having said that, to be fair, starting with 2010, all the poetry prizes have gone to women. So, maybe something is happening.

So, why do I teach a course on Contemporary Women Poets? Because I want to do my part in getting their voices out there. I don’t buy into the line that there are not as many as men. They are out there all right. We shouldn’t have to dig with a backhoe to find them either. I want to see shelves filled with Tracey K. Smith, Jane Hirshfield, and Sharon Olds books, Lesley Wheeler and Charlotte Matthews, too. I want to see more community-based readings where the list is balanced between the men and women. I want to read more essays about the influence of women poets on our current literature.

Sara M. Robinson, founder of the Lonesome Mountain Pro(s)e Writers’ Workshop, and former Instructor of a course on Contemporary American Poets at UVA-OLLI, was poetry columnist for Southern Writers Magazine and inagural poetry editor for Virginia Literary Journal. She has served as guest lecturer at UVA’s College at Wise, Wise, VA. Her poetry has appeared in various anthologies, including We Grew Wings and Flew (2014), Scratching Against the Fabric (2015), Virginia Writer’s Club Centennial Anthology (2017), Blue Ridge Anthologies and Mizmor Anthology (2018). Journals include: Loch Raven Review, The Virginia Literary Journal, vox poetica, Jimson Weed, Whisky Advocate, and Poetica. She is poet and author of Love Always, Hobby and Jessie (2009), Two Little Girls in a Wading Pool (2012), A Cruise in Rare Waters (2013 Stones for Words (2014), Sometimes the Little Town (2016), a finalist for the Poetry Society of Virginia’s 2017 Book Award. In 2019, Needville, her poetry about effects of coal mining on SW Virginia was released and in 2020 debuted as play in Charlottesville. Her most recent publication is Simple River (2020, Cyberwit).

Visit
https://saramrobinson.com/

5 Questions to Ask Ourselves Before Marketing

Susan Reichert

There are lots of questions we can ask ourselves when we get ready to market our books. But today let us look at five.



1.Why would a reader want to read my book?

This is a very important question. Can you list at least three reasons they should want to read your book? If you cannot answer this question, how can they?



2. Who is my audience? Or yet a better question would be, who should read my book.

You see there is a difference in who our audience might be and who should read our book. Think about this carefully.



3. What formats should I offer my book in that would make it easy for people?

There are several . . . paper, audio, digital. Can you think of anymore?



4. Where would I like to sell my books? Obviously, you would want it on Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble . . . but are there other places you would like to sell your book. (Remember who you determined should be your audience and where you would find these people.)



5. How much time, energy and money do I want to invest in marketing this book? Am I in it for the long haul, or am I just willing to do a little?



Marketing is not easy for authors. But it is necessary to get our books out for the people to read.



We must put time in developing a plan for our book and be willing to be flexible to add to what we are already doing to reach more people.



It is a plus if we decide up front what we want our efforts to achieve. Now, can we measure what our results will be? Yes, we can keep up with that, it just takes a little additional effort.

Susan Reichert, author of Between Me and You, God’s Prayer Power and Storms in Life. She has written numerous magazine articles and stories in anthology books. She is a speaker at writing conferences, seminars, and libraries.

She is the founder of Southern Author Services, and Editor of Suite T. Also, the founder of

Collierville Christian Writers Group (CCWriters Group), and founder and co-publisher of Southern Writers Magazine. A national magazine for authors and readers (which is retired now). At the time she was the Editor-in-Chief of Southern Writers Magazine. Reichert has a passion for writing about God in devotionals, prayers, and inspirational works.

She and her husband live in Tennessee. They have four grown daughters with families of their own.

Visit Susan at: https://www.susanlreichert.com/

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https://www.facebook.com/SusanLeeReichert

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https://www.linkedin.com/in/susan-reichert-55922a13/

Amazon -

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/54576850-god-s-prayer-power

Member of the: DAR; First Families of Mississippi.

WRITING FROM A SOCIAL DISTANCE

John M. Floyd

Question: When a book is published and released to the marketplace, if no one’s there to hear it land, does it still make a sound?

That’s what happened to me and my publisher in April 2020, not long after Covid-19 arrived. My eighth book was released then, and I think my diehard fans—thanks, both of you! —were the only ones who knew about it.

Here’s some background. I write mostly short mystery stories for magazines. I’ve written a lot of them, and Dogwood Press, a small but traditional publisher here in Mississippi, has produced seven collections of my short stories over the past fifteen years, a total of 240 stories.

For those who might be interested in how that works, we grouped thirty of my stories in each of the first two hardcover collections (Rainbow’s End and Midnight), forty stories in the third (Clockwork), thirty in the fourth (Deception), fifty in the fifth (Fifty Mysteries, which was softcover), and thirty stories each in the sixth and seventh books (Dreamland and The Barrens). Almost all the stories had previously appeared in magazines and short-story anthologies, and Dogwood Press allowed me to retain the rights to the individual stories should I choose to market them again in the future. Thankfully the books have sold pretty well—Rainbow’s End had a second hardcover print run—and I think it helped that each of them was “launched” at a signing at a large bookstore nearby. Mainly because of my publisher’s contacts, the books have been featured regularly at other signings at chain bookstores, independent stores, and libraries.

My eighth project with Dogwood Press was a bit different. It’s a book of 300 pieces of my light verse, all of them previously published in places like Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Writer’s Digest, Farm & Ranch Living, Grit, The Mystery Review, etc. That collection of poetry, called Lighten Up a Little, was different in another way also: it’s the book I was referring to earlier, the one that was published in the first months of the pandemic last year. At that time, we posted on Facebook that the book would available via Amazon and the publisher’s website, but because our usual launch venue had closed its doors to in-store customers by then, there was no kickoff signing. The collection sold a number of copies and is still selling occasionally, though not as well as it would’ve if I’d been out making appearances and signing books as I’d done with previous releases.

My publisher’s answer to all this, since things have begun opening more now due to the decrease in the number of Covid cases, will be to feature this most recent book at signings in the last half of this year, especially in bookstores during the Christmas season. The publisher and I are optimistic that the collection will get a good reception because it will still be “new” to stores and to most bookbuyers. (Note: I have so far done about a dozen Zoom sessions with literary groups and book clubs and have sold some books that way as well.) So that’s been my experience with new-book releases during the pandemic. What’s happened with the writing and selling of my mystery short stories, though, is a different matter. As terrible as these recent times have been, their effect on my writing has been minimal. The truth is, I wrote more short stories (35) in 2020 than the year before and have written 52 stories in the seventeen months since the pandemic began—probably because my wife and I have been home for the duration. No trips, meetings, gatherings, conferences, or even errands, so I’ve had a lot of time to dream up stories and write them down.

My story sales have been mostly unaffected as well. Some print magazines were forced to stop or slow operations for a while, but most are still afloat and thriving, and in these days of emailed submissions, sending stories into them and to online publications was easy. I’ve been fortunate enough to have 67 short stories published in magazines and anthologies since the lockdowns began, and I have 39 more that have been accepted (sold) but not yet published. Thank goodness for electronic submissions, proofs, edits, contracts, etc.

There’s one other bright spot, about my writing during these unusual times. Last year I received a note from a publisher in Moscow (they reached me via my website) saying they’d seen my short stories in The Saturday Evening Post and would like to publish some of them in a bilingual-edition book, with my stories appearing in English side-by-side with their Russian translations. (Another note: The print edition of the S. E. Post features six pieces of short fiction each year—one in every issue.) I immediately put the publisher in touch with my literary agent, and they soon struck a deal. That book, to be called Selected Stories by John M. Floyd, is due out later this year from VKN Publishing in Moscow. This opportunity was proof to me that short fiction in U.S. magazines do sometimes receive a degree of international exposure. In closing, I’ve found that yes, the pandemic has hurt the sales of my latest book—but

mainly because it prevented us from doing a proper in-person launch event and other signings when it was released. And I’ve experienced no negative impact on my short-story production or sales. Having said that, I’m glad—for many reasons—that the worst of the pandemic seems to be behind us now, and I wish my fellow writers good luck with all their literary endeavors in the future.

Keep reading, and writing!

John M. Floyd’s work has appeared in more than 300 different publications, including Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine, Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, Strand Magazine, The Saturday Evening Post, and three editions of The Best American Mystery Stories. A former Air Force captain and IBM systems engineer, John is also an Edgar Award finalist, a Shamus Award finalist, a four-time Derringer Award winner, the 2018 recipient of the Edward D. Hoch Memorial Golden Derringer Award for lifetime achievement, and the author of nine books.  Visit:  http://www.johnmfloyd.com/