Memory full of people

More than anything, my memory is full of people.

It’s to be expected — I am, after all, 57 years old. But all the best memories I have involve people. It’s as if the memories I have of work, of time spent alone, have faded away, and what is left are the stories of people I have known. The gatherings to watch Star Trek and the flirtations that ensued, the time I ate popovers with a gathering of neighbors, getting stuck in the elevator with my wedding party. All of these are years past, sometimes many years past.

Even random encounters with people stay in my mind longer than solitude. The guys in the supermarket who said “Pizza is serious business, ma’am” thirty-some years ago. The autumn day when a young man got on the bus, bedraggled by rain, dazzling in his long-haired beauty.

I have been alone more often than not lately, in part due to COVID. At work, we stay in our offices unless we teach. I have done little more than wave at people in the hallways. I only sometimes go to my neighborhood cafe, and there are no football games or campus gatherings this semester. So I have been building fewer important memories.

I talked to a friend yesterday over the phone, and some of those old memories started replaying. I believe we’ve known each other for 30 years at this point; it doesn’t feel that long ago.

I don’t feel so old that I must rely on memory to sustain me. I need to make more memories in this place that I am now. By that, I don’t mean Maryville, MO, but this particular point in time, at this particular age, when I have grown up enough not to be trapped by dizzying crushes. What moments will I make now that I will carry into the future?

Live Under COVID Six Months In

Life under COVID six months in:

I never forget my mask anymore. I have a selection of several masks, actually, including the Northwest Missouri State University mask I wear below.
My weekly restaurant date with Richard (my husband) is no longer, because restaurants are rife with COVID and are a major contagion source. We do take carryout.
I can now teach live and on Zoom at the same time. I hate it. I can’t move out of the sight of the camera and all the Zoomies see is my head.
I dream of the Grotto at The Elms, a cabin at Mozingo, a celebratory dinner at Bluestem. An orchestra, shopping in Macy’s in Chicago, Christmas at Starved Rock, an Amtrak train across the country. What I have is a predictable path from my house to the university and back, with an occasional stop at the cafe.
I curse our leadership for letting COVID get this entrenched in the country. Countries with early quarantine, frequent testing, and well-equipped hospitals have gotten back to a near-normal.
At least I haven’t gotten COVID. I attribute this to the strong controls my county and my university have — masks in public, contract tracing, disinfecting surfaces, office hours by appointment only and socially distanced.

I know I will celebrate when the virus is taken down. I will go on that writers’ retreat and eat in that fancy restaurant to celebrate my novel. I’m holding on till then.

Coffee (an oldie but goodie)

The Power of Small Rituals

Sunday morning, and our Sunday ritual once again — classical music and coffee. No newspaper, although we pull up the news on the Internet. Two of our cats linger downstairs — the big Chuckie with the tiny meow, and the loud and insistent calico Girly-Girl. Me-Me and Chloe the kitten are scrapping it out upstairs.

We don’t play anything but classical music till afternoon, and then we’re likely to play jazz. (Except today, when we will break the “no carols till Thanksgiving rule and play my playlist for Kringle in the Night through for tweaks.)

Meanwhile, the scent in the room is Silver Birch, a very autumnal scent. Outside, there’s one maple tree with leaves starting to turn red to remind us that the seasons do pass even when we’re too busy to look.

I’m thinking about my ritual to commemorate my book being published. I have a Moonman C1 Christmas Edition fountain pen coming in the mail, hopefully before the first of November. I will fill it with red ink and use it for Christmas things.

Rituals, as I have said before, are important. They help mark the seasons, the days, the milestones. They help commemorate the everyday and the phenomenal. They help with closure and with focus, with devotion and with loss. Don’t ignore the power of small rituals.

The Upside of Self-Publishing

Ok, it’s really strange looking at my Amazon book page. Or my Amazon author’s page. It’s odd saying “my book is on pre-order”. Or wait for the proof copy so I can finalize the book version. This is all amazing to me, especially the part where I have my hands in the process rather than waiting for someone else.

I still don’t know if I want to put my contemporary fantasy books in the same treatment. I still think I want to publish those traditionally, even though that process from acceptance to publication is about three years. I want to know that I can succeed traditionally. But self-publishing is a lot of little rewards.

I worry about sales. I’d like to sell the realistic number of 200-400 copies, but that will take lots of promotion, and I’m the only one who will do it.

Unless you want to help.

I need a handful of people to help me publicize my book on launch day, which is November 1st. I can provide you with visual materials you can plug in.

Please let me know in comments if you can help me, or email at lleachie@gmail.com

Hard at work? Or working too hard?

I think I may be pacing myself too hard. I spend six hours straight on the computer on my days out of class (Tuesday and Thursday) catching up on work. I’m in the zone when I do it, so it’s a good thing, but the tunnel vision makes me disoriented the next morning when I have to go to work and teach those classes. It’s almost like standing up in front of a class with Zoom going is a vacation from those days of extreme focus.

It feels good to accomplish things, though. That’s the reason for the focus — it’s rewarding. It’s getting me moving, accomplishing. It’s what I like to do.

But maybe I should learn to relax more. Maybe I should get back into meditation (although that’s hard with a kitten who likes licking my nostrils.) Something to just shut off my brain …

Milestones, Rituals, and a Vague Dissatisfaction

I believe it’s important to have rituals to celebrate and commemorate one’s big accomplishments. Graduation, birthdays, marriage, childbirth*, and other milestones have their parties, their recognition from the community that something important has happened.

That being said, I don’t know what I will do to recognize my accomplishment of self-publishing this novel. I swore to myself that I would have a book party (the real name escapes me) but that was before COVID — I wouldn’t chance a gathering now because people I love are at high risk.

I used Canva to make an advertising poster and print it in 12×16, and it’s now framed and looking for a home. That seems terribly symbolic of my feelings right now. I don’t want to get to publication day and say “That’s nice, now what?” I need to find that ritual so self-publishing feels like the accomplishment it is.

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* Just don’t get me started on gender reveals, because gender is complicated and messy.

No Turning Back

Yesterday was a grueling day putting together my book materials and making sure they’re formatted right. Everything’s uploaded to KDP; there’s no turning back.

I could, if I wanted to, turn my back on it and not give it any publicity. I could do that. But I won’t. I will do the best I can on publicity, although this too scares me.

Publishing Kringle Conspiracy is an experiment, to see what goes well and what I could do better next time, if there is a next time. It’s a way of seeing whether this is a way I would want to go again.

At the moment, I feel more exhausted than excited, probably because I spent six hours on it yesterday. I need to work on the positives to keep going.

Wish me luck!

Panic time on the publishing front

So it’s Tuesday morning and I’m having misgivings about publishing. I don’t know if I’m doing it right because I’m not putting up advance reader copies (unless you’d like to read and review), I don’t know if it’s any good because it’s not as complex or serious as other things I write, I just don’t know …

But here I am, on the verge of submitting my materials to Kindle Direct Publishing. The cover I made myself, the layouts I’ve worked on, the words that hopefully are important.

What do I do? I’m panicking!

Odds and Ends

So, I spent a busy weekend getting writing things done. Finalizing my Pitch Wars packet, writing a piece of flash fiction for a contest, writing a little on a short story. And then last night, the silly little Chloe woke me up in the middle of the night licking my nose. Slurpslurpslurpslurpslurpslurp.

Morning comes, and I feel absolutely tuckered today, but it is Monday and time to go to work. I hope the coffee gets here soon. I really don’t know how to function without it today.

Coffee is with me now. Brazilian coffee, deep and chocolatey. I think I’ll live.

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I’m pretty much ready to submit the book to Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) except for one thing — I don’t want it posted to Kindle right away. The official book drop is November 1st, just in time for the Christmas season. I don’t want it posted before then. I should ask KDP if they can hold off on posting the electronic copy before Nov. 1st. Otherwise, the timing is all nervewracking — I know it will take a couple days for them to process it, but if things go wrong it might take more. How will I time that to get the book out of the 1st? A frustrating conundrum.

I should put some well-thought-out emails today to the KDP people.