Soundtrack for Gaia’s Hands

Every time I write a book, I put together a playlist (or as us old-timers call it, a mixtape). I try to capture the book’s moods in a list of music that plays for between half and hour and an hour.

The style of the playlist varies by the moods and general tone of the book. Voyageurs, a time-travel mystery of sorts, goes from a late 1880’s German wind ensemble place to Indigo Girls and Hoobastank. The energy of Kat Pleskovich and Ian Akimoto’s Buddhist calm exchange importance on the mixtape.

Gaia’s Hands, on the other hand, is a mystical exploration of permaculture, love, and the greening of the earth. The soundtrack is funneled through Jeanne Beaumont’s experience of having been young in the 70’s and introduced to a wide range of music. Here’s that playlist:

Voices — Cheap Trick
Brass in Pocket — Pretenders
Big Yellow Taxi — Joni Mitchell
Doctor My Eyes — Jackson Brown
Ancient Forest — Clannad
The Host of Seraphim — Dead Can Dance
The Book I Read — Talking Heads
For What it’s Worth — Buffalo Springfield
Mother Earth (Provides for Me) — Nitty Gritty Dirt Band

I would love it if you could share playlists with me and the reason you use the playlists!

Today’s the beginning

It’s February 28, and my Kindle Scout campaign is up and running! I myself am at the National Preparedness Institute, which is not nearly as impressive as it sounds. I’m setting up for moulage as you read this, possibly. This link should be live now:

https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/250Q7OJ0R0F8W

But here’s the story again according to Kindle Scout (2018):

A book is a new, never-before-published work of 50,000 words or more that you’d like to see published. In my case, the book is called Gaia’s Hands.
An author is the person who has written and submitted a book to Kindle Scout. That would be me, Lauren Leach-Steffens, also the author of this blog.
Readers (that means all of you) scout the site and nominate books they want to see published.
Nominations are how readers show support for a book. Readers can nominate up to three books at a time. This is what I’m asking you to do.
A campaign is a 30-day scouting period during which readers nominate books to be published. Mine is from February 28-March 30.
The Kindle Scout team makes the final call on which books are published by Kindle Press. This will depend largely on how many nominations. This is what scares me, because it sounds like a popularity contest and I’ve never been popular.
Kindle Press publishes the books discovered through Kindle Scout. This is my goal — not for the $1500 cash advance, or royalties. I want to be read and enjoyed and maybe make people think. (Although I could get a new computer with the royalties, one that can handle graphics so I can map my landscapes using SketchUp without bombing the computer)

Elegy for the Bookstop

To say that the Bookstop was a coffeehouse may be embellishing the place, for the Bookstop had started as a used bookstore owned by a retired English professor, and had lost most of its books and gained its antiques under new owners Mike and Sheila. But it retained its name.

This was the Bookstop in its heyday. The awning was designed by the owner’s son.

The Bookstop did sell coffee — decent coffee roasted by PT’s in Topeka. They sold espresso drinks, brought to an art form by dreadlocked Sharla, barista and cappuccino artist. They also sold homemade cookies and cinnamon rolls, and of a Saturday (as the old-timers say here), they sold a breakfast entreé.

Saturday morning breakfast. Are you hungry yet?

I used to go to the Bookstop every morning at seven AM in the morning (as the old-timers say here) as I walked to work, walking poles in hand and a heavy computer backpack on my back. What kept me coming back every day was not the chaotic jumble of antique booths that took up two-thirds of the score, nor the shabby chic of the walls, not even the coffee (although it was very good). It was the people.

In the morning, I could count on an eclectic group of people — Spencer, a retired lawyer and Marine, sometimes with wife Jennifer; Rod, a cagey old man with a strange sense of humor; Mark, an economics professor I sometimes talked shop with; the retired SeaBee whose language hadn’t gotten any less salty after the war; the weathered cook with his crooked teeth; the Hagemans, enjoying their retirement; mild-mannered Tom; and of course, Mike and the baristas, who were usually witty as well as great at their jobs.

The regulars would talk. Spencer would drill me on my opinions on economics and politics; Mark would rarely interject from his perusal of Wall Street Journal. Sometimes Mike and Spencer would goad me into bawdy talk (which is one of my secret talents). Rod would laugh in that awkward bark of his, and Jennifer would mockingly scold Spencer.

The Bookstop died after a protracted illness. It started by injuries from a fire in August 2011, when a tenant in the building next door set his apartment ablaze, and the rumor was that the fire resulted from his habit of relaxing with a joint or two. Although the Bookstop itself wasn’t affected by the fire, it suffered from some water damage. Just as Mike’s crews were starting to mop up the water, the demolition crew next door dropped a wrecking ball through the ceiling of the coffeehouse, and a torrential downpour caused much more water damage. The final insult was when the insurance companies — those of the building next door and of the demolition company — couldn’t settle with Mike in time to resurrect the business.

The fatal injury

For a while, a few of us regulars still drank coffee in the ruins of the Bookstop. This was a casual arrangement, word of mouth; Spencer unlocked the door in the morning, he and Jennifer kept the coffee flowing. We got the coffee for free. The back portion of the building was closed off with tarps to keep us from danger. The front area was cluttered with tools and coated with plaster dust. Sometimes Mike would show up. It was, in its own way, our wake, and it would not last for long.

One morning, the door was locked. And it never opened again.

I heard that the Bookstop building, sad and weathered, without its distinctive awning, was finally closed. I don’t know what will be done with the building now, but it could never be as shabbily welcoming as the Bookstop was.

Rest in Peace, Bookstop. Thank you for being a faithful friend.

My Kindle Scout Campaign — asking a BIG favor

I have been accepted for a Kindle Scout campaign which will go live on February 28, while I’m off at Atlantic Hope doing moulage for a humanitarian exercise (“Atlantica — You’ll have a riot here”)

Just in case you didn’t know who Gaia is.

This link will be available from February 28, 2018 12:00 AM EST through March 30, 2018 12:00 AM EDT:
Kindle Scout Campaign for Gaia’s Hands

The basics are:

Readers scout the site and nominate books they want to see published.

Nominations are how readers show support for a book. Readers can nominate up to three books at a time.

A campaign is a 30-day scouting period during which readers nominate books to be published.

The Kindle Scout team makes the final call on which books are published by Kindle Press.

Kindle Press publishes the books discovered through Kindle Scout.

I hate begging my readers for nominations, because it seems overly needy of me, but this is how Kindle Scout works. So I will not beg — I will only ask that you consider nominating me when this goes live!

Another (Moulage) Gig in my Future

When I talk about “gigs”, I’m not talking about music (I play Irish bodhran, but not well), comedy (my comedy career is restricted to teaching), or acting (my theatre career began and ended in high school). I’m talking about my other creative outlet, moulage.

Moulage is, as I may have said before, casualty simulation — or as I like to say it, gorifying people. Injuries are rendered by a combination of theatre makeup materials, homemade makeup, props, fake glass, sticks and pipes for impalements, and lots of skill and imagination.

This is done for the benefit of training community emergency response team (CERT) members, first responders, nurses, and humanitarian aid workers. I also provide my skills to high school safety docudramas, active shooter training, and creating zombies (although I’m not nearly as good at the latter as is my friend Rod Zirkle.)

I am entirely self-taught. I was recruited for moulage crew as an assistant in Missouri Hope (one of the CHSE exercises below) in 2013. I dithered around a lot, and the next year I was recruited as the moulage coordinator for Missouri Hope. With absolutely no real training, I studied injury pictures and makeup and that DVD from Simulaids where they practice all the techniques on a straight-faced student.

This gig is a big one — a major humanitarian service training program in Florida. You can learn a little about Atlantic Hope and the Consortium for Humanitarian Service and Education (CHSE) here. I will spend three days sleeping on the floor, eating beans and rice and bad coffee, and modeling burns for free (but I love it!) I will be trying to report from the field Wednesday-Monday.

Here’s an example of my work from last year’s Atlantic Hope:

Building up a burn.

Finished product. Beneath the skin, we’re all pinkish. This is not meant to be a profound statement.

I’m a perfectionist. If I had to do this again, I would not put the black at the outside, because it doesn’t look like soot, but third-degree burn (which it isn’t if it’s at the outer edge. I would slather it in thick gelatin around the edges and over the pink parts to give it a more three-dimensional look and maybe build up some blisters with gelatin.

I’ll be honest — I think I keep getting gigs because nobody’s found anyone else locally who claims to do moulage. I think I have about six gigs a year. Let’s see: Missouri Hope, New York Hope, Atlantic Hope, CERT training in the spring, the prison simulation and night training for the Emergency and Disaster Management students, and the high school docudrama. I guess that’s seven. I sometimes also do moulage for the Emergency Medical Responder testing, nurses’ training, and the active shooter training on campus.

It’s a lot of fun and I feel appreciated when I do this. I lead a crew of about 4-6 people (including my husband), I create better and better works through learning and studying moulage, and my time goes toward the greater good. It’s a largely anonymous job — you’ll never see pictures of me in any of the CHSE promotionals, and I’m subsumed as a member of the “moulage crew”. But when people compliment the moulage, I know that I’ve contributed my skills in moulage and teaching to the rest of the crew.

One step forward — Kindle Scout

I have taken an intermediary step between agents and self-publishing for one of my books — I have submitted my book details to Kindle Scout, and this is what should happen:

In 1-2 days, I should hear whether they’ve approved the book for eligibility
Then they submit it to a “campaign” where I see how many upvotes I get.
At the end, if the book gets enough votes, it gets published.

The best book cover free editing software can buy.

Why this process? Because it’s vetted. Self-publishing otherwise seems like throwing the book on the sea and hoping it floats. If it comes to that, I don’t know if I can do it. I don’t dream of being a NYT bestselling author. I dream of someone reading my book and liking it.

Face it, though, I’m afraid of rejection again. I’m confident that I write well, but wonder if my ideas are publishable or whether I can stand up to a popular vote. I’ve never been popular, after all.

The book may be too gentle for people who read things like “The Meth Chronicles” and vampire stories. I’m a flower child at heart. I believe in the Peaceable Kingdom and the strength of small groups to change the world. I love people in both the general and specific sense.

I’m not going to beg you to support me on Kindle Scout if I get that far. But I want you to think about it, because it’s my dream. And please, please, any support you can give me (preferably something that reaches my eyes or ears) would make me feel better about the process.

Considering self-publishing

I’d like some feedback from my readers: Would you read my e-book? Click the comment link below and comment. You can stay anonymous so you can honestly say, “I wouldn’t read your book. I don’t even know why I’m reading your blog except that I’m your long-lost great grandma and I’m so proud of you!”

I’m actually considering self-publishing for the first time, even though my books will probably languish there without anyone reading them except my friends (and I have few close friends who will go out of their way to read my work). Why?

Because I need some sense of closure.*
Because I can’t make an intelligent decision of whether to continue writing unless I get feedback**
Because I can’t change the world, even a little, with them on my cloud drive.
Because, although agents appear to disdain self-publishing, I imagine they disdain my queries, so I’m not behind.
TWO HUNDRED REJECTIONS.
Because, in a fairy tale, I might get discovered in e-book.
Because I believe in what Quakers call leadings***.

The book I would self-publish would be Gaia’s Hands, a prequel to my Mythos series. It doesn’t touch on that series directly — no Archetypes — but involves the origin of the modern Garden of Eden, and the influence of Gaia, the Earth-soul. It also involves two unlikely protagonists — a professor of plant biology and her much younger poet suitor — and a seemingly sentient bean stalk. If you squint closely, you’ll recognize the terrain as Central Illinois, my childhood home. (Aunt Peggy, Carla, and others who read a previous draft — this has been edited and rewritten extensively.

* Books on one’s cloud drive don’t feel like finished works.

** Again, why I keep hoping people will comment.

*** (Sorry to get minority religious here). Quakers don’t necessarily believe everything happens for a reason, so we’re not going to tell you God needed a little angel when your kid dies. However, they strongly believe God tells us to pursue something, and when we get that feeling, we seek clearness committees of our peers to sound out our leading. I never had a clearness committee on my leading to write, which may be the problem. I haven’t been able to suss out a meaning myself, because of my bad luck in getting an agent/getting published.

A poem about a hard truth

Attention is the Currency in the Marketplace of Ideas

Young white girls’ stories get told
When they disappear from the jogging path;
Young black girls just disappear.
Massacred teens’ stories get told
Until shouted down by rich white men.
The mentally ill are known only by their rampages,
and black men only by their records.
Black women are not heard, even in numbers.

Attention is the currency in the marketplace of ideas,
But its distribution is skewed.

Finding my Characters Again

I haven’t written much in a while. I find I’m barely writing more than a sentence at a time in either of my works in progress for at least a month. This is what depression and medication reactions (Today’s vocabulary word: Parasthesia) and rejections do to my motivation. No muses either. But I’m not going to whine about that.

I’m going to try to write today, though, because there’s not much else to do. A minor ice storm has packed a punch beyond its reputation, making roads slick enough that several semis and a MODOT (Missouri Department of Transportation) truck went into ditches. I wanted to go to Kansas City River Market to pick up some unusual Asian vegetables and see if I could find a Keiffer Lime tree, and to see if Planters had some intriguing plant stuff. It’s not happening today.

I think what I need to do is get introduced to my characters again.

In Prodigies, my main character is Grace Silverstein, a teenage mixed-heritage (black/Jewish) viola prodigy with a gift for influencing the emotions of her audiences. She’s been in residential music schools all her life and has had very little contact with her family before they died in a plane crash. She tends to be sardonic, probably as a cover for the very real loneliness she has faced all her life. She is currently on the run from shadowy forces that call themselves Second World Renaissance. They want to use Grace for her talent — or kill her if she will not cooperate.

Ichirou, another teen prodigy, has become her ally in their escapes. Ichirou, from Japan, is a former hikikomori, or recluse, which he entered into at a very young age. Through the residential program Renesansu, he has developed skills and resilience, but he is still a soft-spoken introvert. He has the unusual talent of evoking states of comfort, threat, compliance, and others through computer graphics. He is also on the run from Second World Renaissance.

Ayana, Ichirou’s former teacher and “rental sister”, has aided Ichirou and Grace escape the repeated attempts by Second World Renaissance to capture them. She has keen strategies to help them evade, but she seems to be keeping a secret about why she’s involved. Her demeanor is proper, as if she is still Ichirou’s schoolteacher, but hints of strong emotion sometimes leak through. She apparently has no unusual talents, but can speak several languages. She has never spoken of her past.

Greg, a mysterious man of mercurial mood and many disguises, appears to be an ally of Ayana’s, although it’s not clear how they met. He has rescued Grace and Ichirou from several scrapes, often unbeknownst to them. He hides many secrets, including his involvement with the group and a talent that causes him much grief.

I will leave the main character and one or two of the other characters for Hearts are Mountains later on. But I’m feeling better about writing today. And I’ll have plenty of time.

Flawed Characters

I’m thinking of the DC vs Marvel universe movie franchises, specifically two characters that are green: The Hulk (Marvel) vs. The Green Lantern (DC).

According to The Hulk’s origin story, Bruce Banner is a mild-mannered physicist who gets clobbered by gamma rays, and turns into a huge, green creature of the ID when he gets angry. As such, he’s a great superhero if one keeps him from smashing innocent bystanders and buildings. Bruce loathes his alter-ego, and this conflict adds depth and feelings of compassion toward his character.

The Green Lantern is a feckless dudebro who finds a lantern and a ring that link him to a network of intergalactic peacekeepers and superpowers. Readers are left wondering if a feckless dudebro should be allowed superpowers. Worse, though, is that we are left with the Hero’s Journey of a privileged male getting more privilege.

One of these is the more interesting character, and it’s not the dudebro.

We want our characters, especially our heroes, to have flaws that get in the way of their quest.

Dan Brown’s books (Inferno, etc.) feature a protagonist named Robert Langdon, who seems at times childishly helpless in his books, which is an intriguing flaw. He comes off as almost on the autism spectrum — focused on cryptology and solving puzzles, a bit clueless about people, led by the hand at times. However, Brown glosses over this with female characters who fall in love with him at the same time they want to mother him*, so there are no consequences of his flaw to him. In addition, everyone thinks he’s this cultured, articulate genius

Bella Swan in the Twilight series has an almost minuscule flaw — she’s clumsy. Unless she walks through mountains and upon tightropes without a net and almost falls while returning the Treasure of the Incas to the Incas, this flaw won’t affect her meaningfully. This is part of why Bella is discounted as being a Mary Sue, a perfect character designed as wish fulfillment for the author**.

Examples of good character flaws? In mystery, J.D. Robb created Eve Dallas, a horrifically abused child who grew up to be a good cop, but regularly struggles with nightmares about her past, difficulties in fathoming the rules of relationships, and being triggered by events from her professional life. Any character in Lord of the Rings (with the exception of Merry and Pippin) have baggage — Boromir is so focused on saving his country he is blinded to evil; Aragorn really, really wants to be king; Galadriel is tempted by power, Frodo struggles mightily with the Ring; Eowyn has a painful crush on Aragorn, who marries Arwen in a pragmatic marriage.***

We love reading character flaws, because imperfect characters becoming heroes give us the reassurance that we too, with all of our character flaws, can become heroes.

**************

* I wish other people considered unrealistic, but there is this charge laid upon American women to “change” their husbands, who don’t want to be changed. And who can blame either for this dynamic?

** The second reason is because female authors are routinely denigrated as writing Mary Sue characters, with the critics not noting that near-perfect characters like James T. Kirk (classic Star trek) and the aforementioned Robert Langdon are Marty Stus, the male equivalent of Mary Sue.

*** The movies portrayed Aragorn and Arwen as a love match. The book is much more pragmatic about that marriage. I wish the movie had followed the book in this case, because the triangle would have much more poignancy.