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.
I’m taking an unexpected day from teaching at the university. Today was supposed to be my first class day of the semester (I teach Tuesday/Thursday and keep office hours on Monday). Instead, I am sitting at home listening to Classical Motivation and typing this in my sweats. I am enjoying a snow day, the dreams of children and teachers of all ages.
It feels strange to hype myself up for teaching only to not teach. I feel disorganized, although I can teach this stuff with my eyes closed. Though it’s nice to have an accidental break. And the snow is pretty.
I sit at my computer and write this blog, feeling ahead of the writing-related things I do. I have written character sketches for my two main characters for Kringle Through the Snow, so I’m closer to writing that book. (Next, break my procrastination. Or take a nap, because this day is a gift.)
Last November, I decided I would not write another Kringle romance, and I spent my NaNo time finishing and editing Avatar of the Maker, and then beginning Carrying Light (which I am currently struggling with).
Two things have happened that made me change my mind about continuing the Kringle books. First, at the Maryville Public Library book sale, I sold several copies of the Kringle books. The library has added all of my Kringle books to their collection. They seem to know their readers well, as they’re not as interested in the fantasy books. Apparently, people are reading my books.
The second thing that happened was that one of my readers plugged the series on her Instagram. That felt good, and very encouraging.
And there is a third — I feel stalled out on Carrying Light, and even more stalled out on the other book I have an excerpt written on, Walk Through Green Fire.
So, it looks like my winter project is another Kringle book, which needs to be written and cleaned up by October 1. I came up with the plot for it in about 5 minutes chatting with my husband. Whew! When am I going to do this?
If you’ve been following me the past couple of days, I have been plotting my Big Audacious Goal. (Not a Big Hairy Audacious Goal, which is very corporate focused and jargon-y.) A Big Audacious Goal needs to be extraordinary, must challenge yet be attainable, and must push one’s self-concept forward.
My BAG fits all of those conditions for me. It’s a simple goal, but one that requires a lot of courage on my part. And the BAG is … attending one writers’/fans’ conference to sell my books.
This sounds like a simple decision for an indie writer, but it’s one I’ve been putting off for years. Why? Because it’s scary promoting my books in the Big Leagues. I don’t always have faith in my books, and I am afraid to fail. I have done two writers’ open houses at libraries, and at the last one successfully sold 11 books (which is big for me).
This would be a step up for me, perhaps even a big step. St. Louis has a big science fiction/fantasy con with book sellers. It used to have a writers’ conference but no more. Kansas City has a writers’ conference that might include science fiction/fantasy. There’s a big conference in Colorado somewhere that intimidates me.
Face it, these intimidate me.
That makes selling at a conference the perfect Big Audacious Goal.
I think I’ve mentioned that there are two types of goals — there’s goals, and there’s Big Audacious Goals. We probably agree on goals — they’re expressions of desired outcomes, and we make plans to bring them into place.
Big Audacious Goals (BAGs) share that definition with ordinary goals, but BAGs have an added dimension. Big Audacious Goals are goals that lie beyond our comfort zones, demand that we believe in ourselves, require more from us. Big Audacious Goals start with wishes we believe are not possible for us. Fulfilling them changes our definition of ourselves.
My BAG this last year was to publish Apocalypse. I’ve published several Kringle romances and the prequel in the Hidden in Plain Sight (or Archetype) series, but Apocalypse was different. I had trouble letting the story go, because it was bigger and more important to me. It will be published January 1, 2024. Publishing it felt like a risk, and it still does. I don’t pretend it’s going to vault my career to stardom. But I’ve announced to the world that I am the person who wrote an alternative path to the end of the world, and an alternative path out of it.
I have to come up with a Big Audacious Goal for the New Year. Goals are easy; big audacious goals are not. Where is the place I need the most challenge? What will help me become a different person once I’m done? (Positive goals only; it occurs to me there are many serial killer routes that could be audacious in the wrong way.)
So, over the next week or so I need to find my Big Audacious Goal for the year. Any suggestions?
After the incident with the cat peeing on my Surface, and wrestling with a used replacement Surface, I wanted a new computer for my work on books (writing, editing, formatting, creating covers, creating advertisements, etc). The computers I was working on were over three years old, and I could see their end-of-life coming soon.
So, confronted with a $500 off sale on out-of-box Galaxy Book 3 Ultra, we bought it. After a day of playing with it, I have a few observations:
Out of the box, it’s heavy. The specs said 4 lbs, but they forgot to mention the weight of the power brick, which is a metal power adaptor that, if thrown, could kill someone. It is apparently lighter than its direct competitors (mid-level suitable for most graphics tasks).
It has one TB storage and an i7 processor. And a graphics card. So it’s set up for the graphics I do (designing book covers and advertisements). I might push my knowledge base further and see what else these graphics are good for (within my meager ability).
The screen has visually stunning clarity. The book covers my niece designed for me positively glow on it. I’m hoping this clarity reduces eyestrain.
It’s fast. See also i7 processor. (I suppose I could have gotten the i9 model, but it’s too expensive and I don’t know if my skill level deserves that power).
It doesn’t have a touchscreen. Why would it? It’s not a tablet like my Microsoft Surface was. To be honest, I never used my Surface as a tablet. But I used the touchscreen when the Surface got one of its occasional glitches.
So far, so good. No weird glitches (as I have suffered with a few times on the Surface.) Working smoothly. Looks great.
I’m sitting in the lobby of The Elms in Excelsior Springs, Missouri celebrating a very mellow Christmas Eve. Having no children or grandchildren, this is how our holidays go.
We eat at the local restaurants, we shop, we soak up local history. We got our massages yesterday (and that was marvelous!) and have had time to write. We’ve had time to relax, and heaven knows I needed that.
I’m posting my Christmas greetings to you now, because I will probably be busy watching Christmas movies tomorrow in-between writing and the buffet.
I occasionally throw my characters into other situations where they have to have a close interaction with another character. This is the way my characters teach me who they are. These also become short stories to be included in short story collections (such as Stories Within Stories, which will be out January 1st.)
For example:
What does a vision quest look like in a big city?
How do two enemies interact when one is having a very bad day?
How do two characters navigate a cultural divide?
How do a human and an immortal negotiate having a child?
How do you confront a mythical creature?
There are hundreds of ways to write these, and I’ll argue that what really determines where the story goes are the characters. Two enemies that have millennia of conflict may have a rapport. How to confront that mythical creature may depend on whether it has kidnapped your grandma — and, for that matter, whether your grandma can take care of herself.
The thing, though, is that not only do the characters make the story, but the story turns around and makes the character. I learn new things about my characters from writing these stories, especially things like their vulnerabilities and idiosyncracies. Things that make my characters real.
I’m an author. I have self-published and sold books. I don’t have much of a following, and I don’t have the confidence-boosting event of an agent liking my work, but I’m serious about writing.
I still don’t know where writing will lead. I suppose I should assume that if my writing hasn’t gone anywhere in the five years I’ve been self-publishing, that it’s not going to go anywhere. But I’m optimistic, because the most important thing to me are the words and their meaning. Everything else is beyond my control to a great extent.
I don’t know if I believe in God, but I pray for success. I don’t specify what success looks like, because I don’t like telling God what to do. I also don’t think God is going to get me a publishing contract, but maybe They will help me see success when it’s in front of my eyes. Maybe I’ll see a new way to publicize my work. Maybe I will have a strong desire to let writing go.
My definition of success is having readers who want to read the next novel in the series. Readers whose imaginations visit Barn Swallows’ Dance or the neighborhoods of Chicago where my characters live. People who know who their favorite character is. I want people to feel welcome in my world. Maybe I can have that success.
We shall see. I will never have any success if I give up.
Did I mention my darling geriatric kitty, Me-Me, peed on my computer the other day*? I didn’t know until it started ticking. And zapping. And smoking. And sizzling. Then I watched its battery meter plummet to zero, and that was the end of my computer.
I would do very poorly living in the future I’m imagining for my friends at Barn Swallows’ Dance right now, one in which they wait for the technological world as they know it to collapse. I have discovered that my computer is an extension of me — at least an extension of my creativity.
I know I could write on paper, but the convenience is gone. With the current technology, I can write and edit in Scrivener (a composition software), proofread in ProWritingAid, and format in Atticus. I can download the ePub file or pdf file which will go straight into KDP for publication. I can create covers for the book in Photoshop. If that sounded like a bunch of babble to you, I just described the steps of writing a novel from writing to publication.
I now have a new — well, used — Surface Book 2, hopefully temporary. Once I got rid of the glitch that caused mouse clicks to fail and me to consider yeeting it through a window, it’s working pretty well. It’s a pretty muscular machine with a separate video card and an i7 processor (That’s technobabble for “good for graphics but not top of the line video professional specs”).
My goal for our tax return is to get a similarly-situated machine with updated specs, maybe a faster i7 chip. The biggest thing about a new machine over this one is that this one is not only technologically obsolete, but is probably at the end of its service life, or how long it will live before it breaks. And I don’t want to be without a computer again anytime soon.
*You may wonder what would possess a 14-year-old cat to crawl on top of a table and maneuver herself to pee on a computer. I myself wonder. My best guess is jealousy, as I pay a lot of attention to my computer.
Today I was recognized at the university for 25 years of service.
It’s an odd feeling to realize that it didn’t seem too long ago. As my memory always works, there are a handful of snapshots I can bring to mind, with little recall of when they happened except that they happened here at Northwest Missouri State University and I was younger then.
I have survived financial exigency and the loss of the Family and Consumer Sciences department, a bipolar diagnosis, several budget cuts, many boring meetings, a couple ice storms, and the football team not making playoffs. I have experienced the university’s centennial, six national championships for the football team, the world’s shortest St. Patrick’s Day parade, and gratitude for all the people I have known here.
Eventually I will retire. But not right away; I’ll make it to my 30-year recognition.
Words Like Me 