Author: lleachie

I am an associate professor of human services at a regional Midwestern university. I am also a writer of fantasy and romance, hoping to get traditionally published. I have one husband and am owned by four cats.

Putting Myself Out There

An indie writer needs to market themselves. It’s perhaps my worst failing that I don’t do a great job marketing myself. I have trouble exclaiming to people, “You need to read my writing!” Call it Midwestern Female Syndrome1, but it’s real.

This blog is part of marketing myself. To be honest, the main purpose of this blog is to talk about writing and my thoughts about it. When you read my blog, I hope you’re thinking “That’s what it’s like to be a writer.” Hopefully, it also makes you want to read what I’m writing.

Just like my newsletter right now — blank.

I post now and again on Facebook/Twitter/Instagram using Loomly, a social media manager. I post mostly silly things (did you know it was National Kitten Day on Tuesday of this week?) but that’s to get my name out there. I also advertise my books there.

I also write a newsletter every three weeks. If you’re familiar with my blog, you’ll be familiar with what my newsletter is like. I talk about life as a writer, my books, and plans in a chatty way. I try for more atmospheric, with pieces of my surrounding life included. Once I wrote about the gift I received of an Emotional Support Pickle, for example. If you would like to be on my newsletter mailing list, please drop me an email here.

These are all suggested ways to promote one’s books, but I can’t help but think I’m not doing these right. I’m not good at self-promotion, as I have said above, and would like to get better. My Midwestern Female Syndrome keeps me from bragging too much. Would anyone like to read a book?

  1. Midwestern Female Syndrome is the internal desire to be perfect combined with the desire to be outwardly unremarkable; to be outstanding but not to stand out.

Every trip is a mini-writing retreat.

I’m at the Hotel Kansas City grabbing some breakfast and writing time before my next intern. I have a rose-lavender latte with me and am waiting for breakfast. The whole place has a private club vibe — as it should, because it used to be a private club. In its heyday, I would never have been allowed in, because private clubs were men’s only. The whole place smells of the fireplace in the restaurant.

We end up staying in these places randomly, because we use Hotwire to book the room for an overnight. Prices are reasonable, doubly so if you’re traveling on a weekday. If you’re booking in downtown KC, you’re more likely to get boutique hotels at our price point than typical mid-price chains. And Marriott and Hyatt are doing much to collect boutique hotels in their portfolio, so interesting gems like this are easier to find.

We splurged for dinner last night (the university does not pay for meals!) at the hotel restaurant, which had a James Beard-nominated executive chef. Imaginative food, small portions, intimate atmosphere. We weren’t that hungry after pork tenderloin and curly fries for lunch.

I have one more intern, but before that, I have an opportunity to write at this lovely table you see pictured. Mini-retreat plus internship visits; just what I needed.

Out of Office

I’m on a trip downstate to visit a couple of interns at their sites, so I don’t think I will have time to write the next couple of days. I will bring my go-kit (iPad, keyboard, mouse, power supply) in case I get some time to write on the trip. I’d have to find something to write, as Google Maps and the interstate system (long story) have foiled my story idea.

Have fun!

The Rabbit Hole of Research

I’m writing a short story based on the Hidden in Plain Sight books, about some characters I spend less time with. It takes place in Chicago, and I’m racking my brain to remember Chicago, which I remember as a disconnected series of commercial and residential areas.

I try to jog my memories (as inadequate as they are) by looking at maps — a Google map and a Chicago neighborhood map. I just reemerged from a two-hour reverie of putting names and places to various places I remember from over thirty years ago. The No Exit was in Rogers Park, which is almost Evanston. My boyfriend’s mother lived in North Austin, and his grandparents lived in Hermosa. I spent a spring break at a storefront loft in “unredeemed Bucktown”, as a friend of mine from (I believe) Lakeview. I remember a great Korean restaurant in Lincoln Square and had one of the most frightening experiences of my life in Lincoln Park.

Photo by Nate on Pexels.com

Two hours later, I have gotten no closer to writing the story. I don’t even know where I’m going with the story. But I have sorted out a series of mental Polaroids that represent my memories. As these memories are thirty years old, I had buried those Polaroids in a closet I seldom go into.

Excited? I‘m pretty mellow about the future

What are you most excited about for the future?

I don’t get excited these days. I’m sixty and I’m on good medication for my bipolar, so elation is a thing of my past. Thank goodness, because elation is exhausting, and it usually precedes a big depression.

That doesn’t mean I don’t look forward to things. I have a mini-trip to Kansas City to visit interns this week, and I look forward to both KC barbecue and getting internship visits over with.

I will be doing a major disaster preparedness exercise in August at Disaster Disneyland (official name: New York State Preparedness Training Center) that I have to prep for. I am the moulage coordinator for the exercise, which means I turn volunteers into victims.

The beginning of the school year is coming up sooner than I’d like. I am looking forward to all the beginning of school activities and teaching some new classes.

I’m looking forward to publishing Kringle Through the Snow on October 1. And, if I don’t chicken out, publishing Reclaiming the Balance on Jan. 1. I need a writing retreat, and am about to drop the hint to my husband (when he reads this). That’s something else to look forward to.

So, nothing exciting, but I have a full calendar to look forward to.

Blogging as a Writing Ritual

Lately, I have been blogging in the morning before I write (or edit), intending to use it as a warm-up to those activities. So far, it has been working well.

One thing it yields is a daily blog, and my regular readership has increased from four people to ten. I’m not sure what it takes to get my readership up further. But I’ll take any improvement I can get, so thank you readers!

Another thing it yields is more reflection on writing as a discipline. This helps me to think of myself as a writer. It’s strange; I rarely think of myself as a writer, just as a person who has a habit of telling stories to myself. But saying “I write my blog as a ritual before I sit and edit” makes me feel like a writer.

But the biggest reason for the blogging ritual is that it warms up my mind for writing/editing. It signals to me I need to focus on words. Even the suggestions ProWritingAid makes to my writing help me warm up.

There are other ways I could warm up, but blogging efficiently yields a useful result. And you get to read it.

Finding Inspiration for a New Book

I’m just about to where I will put Carrying Light into a drawer to mellow for a while. I’m repairing immediately obvious problems, including cutting a subplot out that wasn’t adding anything and modifying some wordy expository stuff (telling, not showing) at the beginning. Today will be looking at continuity of the main relationship. I got so immersed in the book I don’t want to let it go. For a few weeks, it was my reality.

It’s time to pick up a new project. But what? I feel singularly uninspired. I have a book waiting for me, but no desire to write it. Richard (my husband) gave me an idea for a book but I definitely see no reason to write a book that feels like a contractual obligation in my series. I don’t write the next Kringle book until November; it’s my annual NaNoWriMo ritual.

Oh, but there’s another book I need to write … it’s in the Hidden in Plain Sight series, and it tells of why there are only about 300 Archetypes and thousands of different ethnicity groups in the world. (There should be Archetypes to represent most, if not all, of the groups.) This was revealed in a previous book with a lingering question. I’m not sure what to do with that book idea, because as momentous as the implications are, I don’t know how to get to the momentous part. The action goes fast and then there’s the revelation, and then there’s a lot of heaviness afterward. There’s a lot of feeling, but not a lot of there there. It could be a short story, but can a short story carry that much of the secret of the Archetypes? I think not.

I suppose I could take a break. But it’s the middle of the summer, and I am ahead on my classes. I work on them in the morning, and then work on writing. The ritual helps me with my moods and with my productivity.

So what am I going to write? Toss me some ideas!

Writing in a Perilous Time

It’s an edgy time in the US, especially if you are part of the population that doesn’t want Trump to win. I don’t want Trump to win. The news is discouraging to Democrats, and many are urging Biden to drop out of the race, which would be a big setback for the Democratic Party — but so might staying in.

I can’t predict what will happen, but I can get anxious. And I am anxious about the political landscape. The United States usually muddles along even in bad times. I’m not sure how well we will muddle now.

Photo by Chanita Sykes on Pexels.com

How do I deal with my anxiety? I write a novel about the future economic and social collapse of the United States. That’s the book I’ve been working on, Carrying Light. Writing it has been a cathartic downer, to be honest. The collective Barn Swallows’ Dance has been holed up listening to the signs of a cataclysm from the radio as the tensions of their community boil over. They witness what happens when various factions pour gasoline on a million small fires.

Meanwhile, Barn Swallows’ Dance is facing their own crisis. They cannot be self-sufficient in an era of shipping disruptions and food shortages. They depend largely on purchases of wheat and legumes to feed the 65-person collective. To make things worse, their population is aging, and they have not found people to replace members lost by attrition. Because of their secrets, they cannot afford to let people in who cannot handle the world of Barn Swallows’ Dance. Only people who can accept preternatural members, a sentient garden, strange gifts among the populace, and a true story about the end of humanity can be trusted.

It’s a hell of a time to write this novel, which answers a question of “how bad can it get?” It can get much worse than at the moment, and my collective has to get through the darkness and out the other side. Writing this has not been an escape, but a weight upon my shoulders that never lets up.

Now that the main writing is done, I will look this over one more time and put it in a drawer to settle. And I will not write another book this heavy anytime soon.

Glutton for Punishment (figuratively)

I finished Carrying Light yesterday, promising myself I would put it in a figurative drawer for some time before going back to it. (By ‘figurative’, I mean putting it in a file on my computer labeled ‘drawer’.) Instead, I woke up this morning and with a burning desire to read through it and maybe do a preliminary edit. I literally (i.e. figuratively) jumped out of bed with the intent to edit.

Photo by Lisa Fotios on Pexels.com

I wonder if I’m just not ready to let this story go, or if I just want to work on something (anything!) and I don’t have a next project yet. But today I’ll sit (figuratively) with the current story.