My Strange, Snowy, Cold Semester So Far

This has been the strangest first week of the semester, and the strangeness is extending into week 2.

A little background: I go on campus Mondays, Tuesdays, and Thursdays during Spring semester. Monday has office hours and meetings; Tuesdays and Thursdays are when I teach and hold office hours again. (Another class is online and yet another conducted over email and meetings as it is the internship class).

The days I don’t go into work allow me to work on class plans, research, and internship site visits (which won’t happen for a few weeks). They allow me to do this, in addition, without dressing up for work (except for those internship visits.) I work, but I don’t teach. It’s a lot more relaxed.

As I mentioned last week, the university closed because of an energetic snowfall dumping 7 inches of snow over a 12-hour period. With students coming in from the countryside and plows unable to keep up with snow and wind, we canceled school for Tuesday. My first day of class was Thursday.

Four days at home followed this because Monday is Martin Luther King Day, and then I would be back to teach Tuesday. Except that my university is cancelling classes on Tuesday because of dangerous windchills, making my next day in to teach on Thursday again.

It feels strange having this much time outside of office, with the flexibility of work it creates. It’s equally strange not having face time with my students. I’m going to have to work on how to get the students caught up with class topics. But it’s not as strange as teaching under COVID, where I taught a semester online with no face time with the students.

So here’s to another couple days of working while playing classical music, drinking hot chocolate, and with bunny slippers on!

Midwestern Female Syndrome Redux

I envy those people who can assertively promote themselves — “Here’s my book and this is why you want to read it.” I have to push myself to promote myself, and my plugs are more like “Here’s my book and I hope you don’t dislike it too much.”

I don’t think I’ve written about Midwestern Female Syndrome lately. It’s a malady, almost completely among women, where one wants to be simultaneously perfect on the inside and mediocre on the outside so as not to draw attention. We berate ourselves for “only” a 95% on the exam and tell people we got an 85%. We say our work is “not bad” but tell ourselves it’s horrible. We can’t promote ourselves because not only do we believe we’re not good enough, but we don’t want the attention of being good enough.

Photo by Polina Tankilevitch on Pexels.com

Does Midwestern Female Syndrome actually exist? Not in the annals of psychology, although I almost submitted it to the Journal of Polymorphous Perversity. But I’ve seen enough students raise their hands over the years to make me suspect otherwise.

Now, time to wrestle with my inferiority complex. See you soon!

Today is a Snow Day!

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.)

I Guess I WILL Write Another Christmas Romance

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?

I Found My BAG!

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.

Time to Think About Big Audacious Goals

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?

New Computer

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.

Time for me to go play with it some more.

Happy Christmas Eve from The Elms

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.

Merry Christmas!

Getting to Know My Characters

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 need another story to write!

Staying Optimistic

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.