Signs of a "Good Book"

From Will Schwalbe's The End of Your Life Book Club, pages 42-3:

"One of the many things I love about bound books is their sheer physicality. Electronic books live out of sight and out of mind. But printed books have body, presence. Sure, sometimes they'll elude you by hiding in improbable places: in a box full of old picture frames, say, or in the laundry basket, wrapped in a sweatshirt. But at other times they'll confront you, and you'll literally stumble over some tomes you hadn't thought about in weeks or years. I often seek electronic books, but they never come after me. They make me feel, but I can't feel them. They are all soul with no flesh, no texture, and no weight. They can get in your head but can't whack you upside it.

Ahh.

I started Mr. Schwalbe's book late this afternoon, and I've dogeared 10 of the 48 pages I've read. A good sign, I think. This one will be hard to put down.


Before letting myself start the Schwalbe, which had been coming after me for the past week, I forced myself to finish the two other books I was reading.


The first of the finished books was volume three of that series all of us ladies read last summer -- the one which was delightfully lampooned on SNL as the ultimate Mother's Day gift. You know the books of which I speak. I had stopped reading that final book in the series when school started, and despite a serious lack of interest in finishing... Well, No-television January means either doing the unpleasant jobs on my to-do list (taxes, cleaning closets) or distracting myself by finishing whatever books are lying around unfinished. And, like I said, the Schwalbe was coming after me.

I had purchased the ebook to read on my Kindle, and that probably had something to do with my being able to set it aside for so long. It hadn't come after me.

The second of the finished books was P. D. James' lovely Death Comes to Pemberley. The prologue alone -- wherein James retells Pride and Prejudice in ten quick pages, deftly mimicking Austen while casting aspersions on the tale by taking the point of view of a village gossip -- was worth the cost of the book.

Upon turning the last page, I felt the grief of the reader -- the sad fog that fills one's day after bidding adieu to beloved friends. Another good sign.

PS My sadness was exponential as The Lizzie Bennet Diaries are coming to a close before too long. I'll be saying goodbye to Elizabeth and Darcy again within the month. Sniff.

Small Town Book Club Thoughts

One nice thing about living in a small town is that I get to be friends with people with whom most people don't. Like my doctors and dentist and community leaders and owners of and workers at the businesses I frequent and my boss(es) and local law enforcement... You get the picture.

The people, I imagine, that most residents who live in larger cities would consider acquaintances or less -- merely members of the world who exist as background to their days.

But I get to be actual friends with these people. It's pretty cool.

So at book club last night, my dental hygienist (and friend!) Anne told me she had just finished SPOTD: The Hero Chronicle Continues and loved it. I do too. I love the characters, and I love the fun powers that Chase gets to play with in volume 2. I love the story's dramatic arc, and I love the direction the book heads leading up to volume 3. Most of all, I love that the world the characters inhabit, though imperfect, feels safe. There is no question that Chase, Addy, Charlie, Johnny, and Kat are loved. And that love makes their world secure, even when things go terribly wrong.

I'm glad that my book is next on the list of books to be read by my friends. Especially after the book we just finished. You see, for book club this week, we read Laura Hillenbrand's Unbroken, and although the group enjoyed the book and talking about it, we were left with a sense of sadness over the evil so easily to be found in our world. The story is heartbreakingly brutal, forcing us to face the inhumanity that can occur when people stop recognizing others as people deserving of love and security. When people become merely background.

Happily, we are able to find our humanity and the joy of connection with each other. That's a great part of being in a book club. Especially one in a small town.

Happy New Year!

Twin Cities Book Festival

Instead of the usual breaking-a-bad-habit or starting-a-new-one resolution, I used to pick an annual challenge. Sleep out under the stars. Canoe on the Minnesota. You get the idea. I had an entire year to accomplish the task. I always made it happen.

Once, my challenge was not to talk ill of a particular person (who shall remain nameless here) for the entire year. And I did well on that one too, though I admit I reveled in the attention the resolution garnered from friends. Mention of the goal was enough to both set them laughing and inspire their own unpleasant comments regarding the person. All in all, there was no net loss of negativity toward the individual.

Last year I switched it up and had a January challenge: ridding myself/my house of one unneeded object each day. It was kind of fun.

This year, I have a genuine resolution list.

1: Remember the No-TV February that kicked started my whole self-publishing venture? It's back. No-TV January.

2: Less television viewing will lead to better habits regarding my nails. TV is my trigger for poor fingernail habits.

3: I bought the treadmill desk. It's time to get serious about using it. Every day.

4: I want to learn Illustrator and/or Photoshop this year.

5: Posting more regularly on this blog. It's pretty sad that my last entry was back in October! Since then, I've had successful Twin Cities Book Festival and Christmas in the Village days. I met wonderful people in the industry and in my town who were encouraging and inspirational. And they bought my books!

A picture of Donna and Sheri visiting my TCBF table is above. Here are two more photos:

My table area. It was nice to be on the end of a row.

A surprise visit from my Aunt LeAnn!

I encourage you to visit Neil Gaiman's Journal (link on sidebar) to read his 2013 New Year's Wish.

And as he would say,
Bravery and Joy to you all --

Ann

Twin Cities Book Festival

I am so honored to have been selected to be an exhibiting author at this year's Twin Cities Book Festival, which will be held this Saturday from 10:00 am to 5:00 pm.

If you are in the area (St. Paul State Fair Grounds), I'd love to see you. Stop by and say hello, sign up to win a free book, and wander through the premier literary event in the upper Midwest. It's all free, including the parking!

Maybe you'll even meet a famous author (here's a list of who'll be speaking) or find a great new book to read this fall or winter.

Written Wednesday...

I sold four books today. That's nice, but in itself not why I'm blogging.

At the end of the day, I felt blessed not by the purchases themselves, but the various routes people took to get their hands on my book.

Book #1: A good friend and colleague had asked for a copy several weeks ago, so I slipped it into his box at work. He showed up this morning, requesting a signature on the book for his nephew and a second book for himself. Having such support from a person I see nearly every day, whom I count among the reasons I love my day job? It's proper cool.

Book #2: My mother met me in Willmar to help me set up a table at the regional Education Minnesota (Go union!) Fall Drive-in. I wasn't allowed to sell books, but I could give out information to teachers about Skyping with me, getting free Kindle versions of the books for classroom use and discounts on class-set purchases, and such. The very first woman to approach our table squealed in glee, "Oh! I just bought that book from Amazon and it arrived this week!" (So she was the one, I thought.) We had a nice chat about how she'd heard of the book, which was a conversation she'd been in where others told her it was a wonderful read and recommended it to her. I blushed. I felt humbled. And proud. Random people in Morris are chatting about this little project on which I embarked a few years ago... And they liked it. Wow.

Book #3: Meanwhile, the mother of a current student, who is "me" for all intents and purposes at a neighboring district as she teaches the same curriculum there as I teach here, asked me to slip her a copy surreptitiously and vowed to send a check along tomorrow via the aforementioned student (her daughter). She is an amazing teacher -- one for whom I have so much respect and admiration. I don't know how people do my job and always have a perfect haircut and run marathons and raise families, but they do. And they do it well. She is such a person.

Book #4: The phone rang after 9:00. My first thought was, this will be a phone solicitor. Do I even want to crawl out from under the covers to check? On the off chance that it was NOT a phone solicitor, I did manage the crawling bit, and was delighted to see a local number on the caller i.d. Turns out it was a retired teacher who wanted a copy of the second book for her grandson in North Dakota. She offered to drop off a check at the high school in the morning if I'd leave her a copy in the office.

So. I've done a fairly meager amount of marketing, resulting in fairly meager sales. But each sale is a story that I enjoy hearing and making happen.

PS I tried having a nonpublicized "free" Kindle day last week, just to see the difference between the first free day, on which 238 copies of the book were downloaded, and what would happen when I didn't do any promoting. In other words, I wondered approximately how many of the first free day's "sales" were random ones from Kindle owners trawling the free books list and nabbing whatever sounded interesting. Turns out that number is 40. This means that most -- 200ish -- of my giveaways on the first day were from loyal friends and supporters. How cool is that?

Unveiling Cover #3!

Ryan and Sean (and I) have been working on and off for 5-6 weeks developing the design for the third and final volume of my series, Super Power of the Day: The Final Face-Off, which will (fingers crossed) be officially published in January of 2013.

Drum roll...

I have to say, this is the most fun project. I love working on it, talking about it, and sharing my journey with friends. So many life-hacking-type websites encourage people who want to be successful, or be happy, or whatever, to just DO whatever you want to do. We are living in a moment where, for writers at least, that is more possible than ever in history. Literally. And I don't use that word hyperbolically.

I am glad the stigma of self-publishing is slowly fading. Over a fourth of Amazon.com's current top Kindle sellers are self-published. Wow. That's a lot of happy people!

Open House

Thank you, Montevideo Public Library, for hosting my open house book signing! It was a pretty low-key affair, but I enjoyed the company of many beloved people and met a few fans...

This was my favorite part:

Nephew Ethan ("E" on the volume #1 dedication page) proudly sported my Chase Cooper super cape all evening, flying around the room helping people to free bookmarks and stickers. Doesn't he look like the cover illustrations?

I think the $5 I offered him to be the official mascot of the night, which he renegotiated up to $5.50, was money well spent.