Another pause for what they used to call "Station Identification"...

I just wanted to take a minute to say a HUGE "Thank You" to all of my faithful readers here!  In less than a year, almost 1000 of you have visited the blog and read my ramblings, either as one time visitors or repeat "offenders" (or "offendees" perhaps?).

While suffering with the fringes of a cold, I haven't managed to get my mucus-clogged head to focus on what Kelly is trying to show me from Scotland for the next chapter of "A Wild Tiger's Heart".  It's something like trying to swim in a mud puddle - lots of thrashing, but not a whole lot of progress.  So while pulling out the proper words to describe the scenery is like trying to extract DNA from a Q-Tip that was soaked in bleach, I've been checking traffic reports to the various places where such information is monitored for me by the various accounts I hold.

The above figure for this blog impressed me.  I started this as a way to prove to a friend that no one really reads his blogs except for his family and friends.  I purposefully chose a site for my blog that would show where the visitors came from, quite positive that the primary group who would come to visit my blog were going to be from the United States, and that a good percentage of those folks were going to be from New England, where most of my family and friends live.

I was SO wrong!

I guess it never really struck me that, when my publisher had me sign a "redistribution clause" when Write Words Inc bought out Ellsworth, Maine based ebooksonthe.net in 2002, they REALLY meant to distribute my work in any country who would be willing to pick the books up.  The number of countries represented as "hits" to this blog site blew me away.......

Of course, on the flip side, I was amused by the audience that goes to the web site I've had up since I was looking for something to amuse me in 1998, when I was out of work because of a bulge in a disc in my lower back, on heavy duty pain medication, and limited on what I could do by severe restrictions from my doctor.  So, what can a very active person do with life when restricted to "no bending, no lifting, no twisting"?  Obviously, they can learn how to program HTML pages and put together a web site to showcase poems, other writings, and photos.

"The Northern Bard" also attracts visitors from all over the world, but the amusing part is that most of them seem to be attracted to pictures that I posted in 2001, when my husband and I, armed with a large IRS refund, took our children on a two week long vacation to Florida and back, a trip made in a Dodge Caravan that we had purchased just shortly before leaving Maine.  (We were driving a Dodge Omni, but our son had just had a growth spurt and was no longer able to sit in the back, and my continued difficulty moving made it impossible for me to let him ride in the front seat for the duration.  We traded the Omni for the Caravan, as it had TWO back seats, allowing our daughter to take up one whole seat and our son to take up the other.)  The most popular page of my entire web site seems to be the photographs we took in Busch Gardens in Tampa, Florida....

(For those who haven't been to The Northern Bard, found at this link - http://galadriel_emmons.tripod.com/ - the photos of Busch Gardens are part of the story of the places we visited, the fun/odd things we encountered, and the reaction of our children to having one special trip that WASN'T a camping vacation.  The story is called "The 2001 Vacation Odyssey of Avatar and Galadriel", as we were still going into a chat room called "Quick Chat Cafe" at the time, and those were our "secret identities" that we used in chat.)

So, thank you again for coming to visit me here and for reading my words, such as they are, and giving your feedback, whether in public or in private.  I can't tell you how much it warms my heart to know that there are people whom I haven't actually met and who don't actually share my bloodline who have been to visit.  Now to go and apologise to the friend who suggested that I needed a blog.......

And the cat came back the very next day.......

A friend in college introduced me to this song, and when I discovered You Tube, I found this video of this song:

http://youtu.be/bETCusT5kNM

I'm hoping that it doesn't prove prophetic this morning, as the cats who've been sharing our home since just after Christmas have all gone back to their proper places.  Nothing against my daughter's cat, Meeko, or her former roommates' cats, Moses and Thomas, but it felt really good to go to bed last night without kicking cats out of the bedroom (so that they wouldn't wake me in the middle of the night by clearing the earrings off my dresser or knocking my glasses off the nightstand).  It also felt very good to be able to come downstairs, get my coffee and settle into my office chair without kicking someone out of the chair.  Even the little Shih-Tzu/Pomeranian we've been sharing our house with for almost 4 years now seems much more relaxed this morning, as it's the first time in about 4 months that he was able to eat his breakfast without having to chase any cats away from his dish......

Of course, the best part of the end of the fostering arrangement we made, as we had only promised to care for the cats until the girls got settled into new apartments, is the fact that the first part of the income tax returns have arrived in our bank account.  The ancient farmhouse that we call home has several places where the former owners did additions, but didn't do them properly, so this past winter, it was more like living in an igloo rather than an enclosed building.  Spots where there wasn't a proper foundation poured have rotted out, giving the cold winter air places to slip through into our living space.  Just outside the room where I'm writing this, we've had a tarp and two sleeping bags hanging all winter, trying to cut back on the cold winter breeze blowing past us, but it's been so horrifically cold, we've still been freezing our tail feathers off.

In short, over the next couple of weeks, we're going to be purchasing wood, plywood and drywall to first build a wall between the main house and the rotted part, then we'll be taking off the rotted sections to make this place the comfortable place that it has the potential to be.

What this means for me is kind of a two-fold situation.  On the one hand, it means that the former shed that was turned into a glorified outhouse, an unheated bathroom downstairs that everyone has hated having to use, is going to finally be taken away.  Smells and chills that have interrupted my concentration will be gone.  Trying to go into that bathroom after dark, on which the door was put in upside down, resulting in a doorknob that is closer to chest height instead of the regular hip height, will no longer be necessary.  (There will still be the properly done bathroom off the master bedroom upstairs.)

But there are a lot of things that have to find new places to be stored as the rooms disappear or the items that I've been storing will have to make their way to Goodwill if we no longer need them.  There will be sawdust and pounding noises to be dealt with.  Instead of being able to come home with my eyes glazed, seeing a scene that is demanding I sit down to transcribe it, I'll have to concern myself with helping my husband with the work that we'll be doing......

In short, although there's a good side to this needed remodeling, the work is going to be slowing down production on "A Wild Tiger's Heart".  I'm looking forward to getting the work done and being able to be warm for next winter, but I can't promise the next installment in The Tiger Series until some time next year......

And I keep hoping for a lottery win so that, instead of having to do this with just my husband and I doing all the work, we might be able to hire a contractor and have it happen in very short order, guaranteeing that we aren't going to be delayed by my husband taking off for fishing trips in the middle of the work.....

Let's see what tomorrow's review of my Astrological Chart with my friend, Ahura Z., tells me about the possibility of my actually being able to afford a professional instead of helping my husband with a DIY project......

:)

Looking for Mr (or Ms) "Goodbar"......

Although my little gathering at the Portland Public Library happened on a truly frigid day, resulting in nobody coming to hear the talk, I was able to discuss the differences between those authors who have good turnouts to such things and those who, like me, can't seem to catch a break.  These are some of the things that came from talking with the librarian:

1) The authors who manage to get their books into the local bookstores are the ones who get the attention, whether it be the local news stations taking notice and actually inviting the authors for interviews, or the general public, or the New York Times Best Seller people.

2) Having an online presence is good in this digital age, but still, it helps to get something - whether it's a regular paperback book, a comic book, a manga book or an audio book - into local stores.

3) My marketing research strategies ARE helping book sales online and are making me popular in other countries (especially when I look at my reach for things like my Facebook pages and this blog), but I need to work on getting the work out there in the old fashioned markets in order to hit the "impulse buyer", who will find a book in a bookstore quite by accident and become a major promoter via word of mouth.

So, if you're a writer or are otherwise creative, and you're following along with my learning process by reading my blog (for which you have my everlasting thanks), here are the things I've decided I need after the discussion on Friday:

I need to get some friends who are artists and are willing to have their works displayed as book covers (or possibly complete books, should we go the manga/comic book route) - either getting paid a flat rate up front or a percentage of the income from book sales.

I need to have a printing company that produces books at a reasonable enough per book cost that I will be able to get books picked up by local bookstores without having to go too deeply into debt myself in order to be able to cover the deal that basically comes down to selling the books on a consignment basis.

I need someone who is able to help me to record the books, as a lot of my friends and co-workers are getting into audio books, which isn't offered by my current publisher.

I need to reconnect with a couple of the legal eagles I've lost touch with, as they can help me with the legal wording for all the contracts that will have to be drawn up for the above things to happen.

And, obviously, I need to complete work on my web site for the business I'm going to need to get up and running to be able to carry out all of the above things and have a marketplace setting to be able to start selling all the resulting wares online.

Have I served myself up with a bit too large a piece of the pie to manage to get this all done before the end of 2014 along with the writing that Kelly Starbird is pushing me to do?  I sincerely hope not, but if so, this may all just bleed into 2015 and onward until I get it all done.

In the meantime, if you have someone you know who might meet one of the needs I've noted, please have them get in touch.  I'm not looking for "cover by Rembrandt".  I'm just looking for "cover by someone with more artistic ability than yours truly", as I have brilliant ideas for what I'd like to see for a cover, but I don't have the drawing ability to produce my vision.....

Thank you for continuing to show this blog your love, and Blessed Be.

Revisiting the Research

I was asked this question by a co-worker earlier this week:  "You write romance novels.  What kind of research do you have to do?"

Part of the research I was discussing with him at that time involved the current story, but there are also pages like this that I save to my bookmarks and go back to when I'm questioning whether I'm doing enough: http://blog.bookbaby.com/2013/06/10-free-or-mostly-free-book-launch-strategies/?utm_campaign=BB1326&utm_source=BBeNews&utm_medium=Email  (It's all about ways to launch a book that won't take away the IRS refund that needs to go into house repairs this year, which is the only source of income that I have that doesn't have to go to paying the monthly bills.)

Of course, since Kelly Starbird is taking some of her lottery winnings and scratching some things off her "bucket list" for "A Wild Tiger's Heart", there are also research sites about the places she's visiting - many of which are on my OWN "bucket list".  I have web sites saved about Blarney Castle (which my co-worker has been to visit himself), spooky places to visit in Scotland, Stonehenge, Paris and other French places to visit, Italy.........

As I visit these web sites, getting solid ideas of the things I need to be doing to promote sales for the books I intend on eventually selling for other authors or for solid visual descriptions for the places my characters are visiting, I also find links to other interesting things to research.  I've often wondered if I may have missed a call to be a genealogist at times like these, as some of the links I follow bring me to sites that have information about distant ancestors that I've located while tracing my own family tree.  One of the thoughts that I've had more than once is simply this:  Would I be making more than my current wage if I offered my research services for a fee to those who want to trace their family tree, but are as frustrated as I got with Ancestry.com when my lines petered out?

If you don't like doing your own research as a writer, I would suggest you get to know someone who likes to spend their days off in the library.  Watch for that person who always seems to be lugging a laptop into a closed space (like the Portland Public Library's Maine Room, where all their records for Maine history are kept) and strike up a conversation.  For $10 per hour, I'd be willing to set aside the research I'M there for in order to find something that YOU need........

This is the snow that tends to blow when you live in the House That Jack Built

The house we purchased in 1998 is very unique, which is why we fell in love with it in the first place.  It's a former farm (as there are granite blocks of foundation in the back yard from a former barn that fell to ruin) that the prior owners did some interesting renovations to, and it never fails to do things that I've never seen at other places I've lived.

This morning is a good example of this oddness.

A couple of years ago, before Hurricane Irene came through my section of Maine, my husband was spending most of his winter climbing up onto the roof to shovel off the snow in order to prevent the roof collapsing under the weight.  The wear and tear on the shingles made them susceptible when we got the glancing blow from Irene, which ended up being just a lot of wind and rain, so there was a spot where the shingles failed, causing a leak.

Having been researching what to do with the roof to prevent himself from having to keep climbing up there until we retired, my husband spent several months pulling off the old shingles and replacing them with metal.  The only problem with this concept is that we ran out of money for the metal before we ran out of roof, so there's still a small part of the house (with a flatter roof) that hasn't been covered in metal, and when we have storms like this year, he doesn't always manage to get up onto that flatter portion between storms to get the shoveling done.

So, as of yesterday's storm, we had a small snow bank outside the windows upstairs, where the metal roof above our bedroom had dumped the snow from the last two storms from this week.  Last night's storm came after a bit of freezing rain, so what was on the metal was ice that was sticking to the metal that then was topped with a layer of snow.  It was starting to slowly work it's way down, but the ice makes this a fairly solid sheet - kind of like our own little Maine ice age happening on the roof(s).

This morning, I got up and went to look outside to see how much snow we got last night, and the photo shows what happens when a solid mass from above meets a snow bank from below and the above mass isn't ready to break and finish it's slide.  (This was just after sun up, and it's an even more interesting view as the sun starts around the building, it's rays slipping under the upper mass and making the whole thing look like we're living inside an ocean wave.......)

Thank you for sharing in the insanity of living in The House That Jack Built....

Remembering why I got out of the acting field....

I was bitten by the acting bug in high school, and actually started college with the thought of becoming an actress.  My dad, despite teasing me about "wanting to be Marilyn Monroe", backed this thought over my mother's objections, even to the point of driving me to Boston to apply at Leland Powers School of Radio, Television and Theater.  (The school, which was in one of the buildings behind the Green Monster of Fenway Park, offered a very media intensive program over a two year crash course and had a fairly decent reputation - but they went bankrupt and closed just after I was accepted.)

Before every show I was ever in, I started getting nervous about the prospect of being in front of the crowd a couple of weeks in advance of the opening night.  My greatest acting job ever was pretending to the world that I was okay during that final couple of weeks, that I wasn't in total panic mode, and that I was confident that I was ready for opening night.

On opening night, if I made the mistake of putting food into my nervous stomach, I would be vomiting within the last hour before hitting the stage......

I kept telling myself that I would outgrow that problem.

I kept telling myself that, when I was doing more shows and/or getting in front of a camera instead of going onto a live stage, I would stop getting so nervous about that whole "crowd" thing.

I took speech classes with the intent of getting to the point that I could write a speech, NOT get nervous about the idea of presenting said speech to an audience, and NOT get physically ill before standing in front of the crowd.

Yeah.

About that.

Obviously, I never did outgrow that problem, as I'm at that "so nervous my stomach is churning" point with two weeks left before I need to be prepared to stand in front of a crowd and give my prepared speech.  Even though I'm supposed to be just putting out the prepared flyers today, I'm procrastinating rather than just getting dressed, finishing the weatherproofing of my flyers, and going out to start the car so that I can go to Portland and get them out around town.  I haven't even managed to get myself to eat breakfast this morning, as I'm afraid that I might get to that "need to vomit" stage before I finish hanging my flyers.....

Obviously, the 33 years of NOT going in front of the crowds didn't really mature me much, and even though I'm trying to tell myself that there's no reason for the panic state, myself isn't listening.

*deep, soul wrenching sigh*

Well, as the old commercial used to say, "It's time to make the donuts".  I'd better get myself dressed, get the flyers and my staple gun ready, and get the "invitation process" finished.  Then it will be time to meditate and try to calm myself before the stomach storm hits critical mass.....

Looks like it's time for me to dust off that acting side of me that will continue to function as if nothing's wrong while the inner claxon continues to bellow.  Perhaps when the insomnia strikes during the last couple of days, I can distract myself with working on "A Wild Tiger's Heart".....

And a final "note to self":  DON'T EAT ANYTHING ON FEBRUARY 28TH!  (At least, not until AFTER the speech.....)

So much time, so little to do! Strike that! Reverse it!

Over the past few weeks, I've felt like that proverbial "chicken with it's head cut off" (and having grown up on a farm, I can honestly tell you that the chicken's body really DOES continue to tear around the yard when the head is removed.  It's NOT a pretty sight, even when it's just me dashing around my house fast enough to do a little misstep that caused me to bash my right foot on a brick hearth, dislocating my pinkie toe for the hundredth time and bruising the heck out of the foot!).  During the past few weeks, however, I've managed to get a lot accomplished.....

In preparation for the Local Author Series talk and book sale, I've purchased a covered cart with wheels in which I can transport my books safely from my car to the Portland Public Library, even if it happens to snow on February 28th.

I have a locking cash box that I'm slowly gathering cash in, allowing me to have change for people who are purchasing the books without having the entire change amount having to be pulled out of the budget as a lump sum, as it's easier to pull a couple of fives and tens each week to add to the change bin.

I've practiced the speech a couple of times and am about to commit the "high points" (as my speech teacher called the most important bits that you want to make sure you place in front of the audience) onto the index cards that I've picked up to have available, just in case I get really nervous (as I used to do) and need to remind myself where this is supposed to be going.

As mentioned in an earlier blog post, I have the flyers made up and ready to be posted around the area to announce the talk.

I've been in touch with some of the local newspapers about a press release and am just waiting for responses before sending them the pre-written press release.

In short, I'm as ready as I can be for a speech that I still have three and a partial weeks to prepare for.....

And while all of this has been going on, Stefan Savoldi and Kelly Starbird have continued to show me scenes from "A Wild Tiger's Heart" that I've been doing research on before I write them down.....

The scene that I used for the title of this post keeps running through my head (and you can see it here: http://youtu.be/G_rKWdH-ox8), as I keep feeling like I'm forgetting to do something in the preparation, but can't come up with what I've missed......

Should you wish to get on at the ground floor on the newest "work in progress", I've also been working on the fan page on Facebook for "A Wild Tiger's Heart" (available here: https://www.facebook.com/awildtigersheart?ref=stream).  I have a couple of pictures that have come up during trips into search engines when putting in key words that might bring up models who could serve as the characters, there are suggestions as to items that Kyle Benton, that eccentric multi-millionaire, would include if given carte blanche by Kelly in the building of a unique cabin in the secluded Maine woods for her to live in, and photos of places she wanted to visit and cross off her "bucket list"........

Feel free to add anything you think might help me with the writing of the tale that YOU might come across, such as model suggestions, odd things to include in the house, etc........

In the meantime, I'm off again, running downstairs to try to finish the dishes and get some clothes that my recent weight loss has made improper for me to wear into boxes to give away to people in need.  (Frankly, when you go to put something into your pocket and, despite wearing a belt, you find you've pantsed yourself because the pants are now two sizes too big, it's time to give them up - even if they ARE your favorite fleece-lined blue jeans that have been keeping you warm for the past three years......)

Take care, my lovelies, and I hope to see at least some of you in Portland, Maine for February 28th.