I’ve written a guest post for Writers’ Co-op: Selling Your Baby, and I’d like your feedback.
Writers’ Co-op is a new open forum to share ideas about marketing our books — what you’ve tried, what works, what doesn’t. The more writers who join, the more creative solutions we can come up with that will help all of us.
Come on over! If for no other reason than to read my piece, and tell me what you think, okay? Thanks very much!
Helen Espinosa’s theme for this week is “Summer”. My choice is the 1960 classic novelty song (hit the title for the YouTube link to Brian Hyland’s American Bandstand performance),
(If we’re friends on FB, you might remember seeing this about 3 years ago — not that I expect you to remember everything I’ve ever posted… 😉 )
Outings to the Zoo, the museums, the merry-go-round and the train, the beach, the bank, the ferry. Listening to Dad read Alice in Wonderland waiting in the car outside the grocery store while Mom shopped. Semi-annual trips to Disneyland; car trips from California to Wisconsin, by-passing the Grand Canyon because it was out of the way. Family dinners every night. Speed math rounds. Kites. Edmund’s Scientific projects. Heathkit build-it-yourself electronics. Oscilloscopes. Photography — shooting, developing, printing. Working on the car. Watching while Dad fixed whatever we kids needed fixed. Making bullets, going to the range. Watching.
Loving Christmas.
Big Band music. Lectures on economics, politics, mistakes. Instruction. Help and advice only idiots would reject. Strong. Stubborn. Brilliant and independent, authoritarian and irreverent, determined and responsible. He was the most grownup man I’ve ever known and the biggest influence in and on my life, but I had to love him against his will.
I don’t have any pictures of Dad and me together. This one is from Christmas of 1950, before I was born. Dad holding Patty, beside Grandma Jenkins, and Grandma Ranscht.
They need Books Not $$$
Readers: Send them 1 book you think is worthwhile
Writers: Send them 1 of yours
Just. One. Book.
I live in a town of 1200 people in the Northern Sierra Nevada –where it meets the Cascade Range near Mt. Lassen National Park and about two hours drive northwest of Reno, NV. Two hundred of that population is students. Over the years as the population dwindled after mines closed, then mills–nothing except tourism and retirement have emerged as ‘industries.’ Many businesses have closed down and with it many things we take for granted—like libraries.
The local junior/senior high school has not been able to purchase new books since the 90s. Some of the “check outs” for old books are in the 1980s. There are no books by people of color in the library. Hardly any books by women are in the few book cases except your standard Austen and Lee. It’s an uninviting place. There hasn’t been a librarian for nearly a decade. And volunteers weren’t allowed. The…
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Helen Espinosa’s theme this week for Song Lyric Sunday is “’90’s Music”.
That was a time when, as a single parent, I home schooled my son, earned my living as a licensed Child Care Professional, and costumed a Children’s Theater group where all the shows were Musicals. The only radio stations we listened to in the car were either Oldies (1950s , ’60s, and ’70s) or Classical.
Even so,
This week’s theme for Helen Espinosa’s Song Lyric Sunday is Breaking Up. I’m guessing most of us have played both parts, the breaker and the breakee. I know I have. It feels like I was on the losing side more often than the other way around, but when I look back, it was pretty much even.
So, why does it feel lopsided?
What did I do this week that was kind? Um, no. I am not gonna write about any kind thing I may or may not have done.
“Why not?” You
Maybe my perception of behaving kindly reflects my parents’ generation and their admonitions:
“Don’t brag.” “Don’t fish for compliments.” The Greatest Generation
I do kind things out of the goodness of my heart, and I think telling people about the kind things I do diminishes the goodness of my heart. It’s fine if nobody else feels that way, but I do, and hey, I’m the one I have to live with.
But because of something that happened yesterday, I have a single exception I’m willing to make to share a single story.
Space, Time, and Raspberries 
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