Humility is a Good Thing...right?

     Nothing to keep a soul humble like the library of their own hometown choosing not to place that soul's literary accomplishment in circulation.
     That's right; my hometown library in Fayetteville, AR, the city where I was born, raised, baptized, graduated from high school, terrorized (strike that), got married and lived for eight years after marriage has declined to place Broken Road on its shelves.
     Don't know if anyone there read it, which I suppose is a good thing.  It's easier to swallow that they simply don't accept unsolicited editions, particularly ones that are not commercially published. I really don't want to know if someone there read it and was so appalled by it that they refused on those grounds.   
     So maybe it hasn't completely humbled me.

The details drive me crazy

This is not a blog post, per se. It's more in the vein of a caveat lector. 
Today is January 22, 2012 and we are quite frustrated with the ePub conversion for Nook and IBook. 
We are working to fix the glitches with Lulu. It's not that those eBooks can't be purchased and read; it's that some of the formatting is screwy. 
Okay, maybe I'm a little hyper about the details, but I can't help it.

Taking It Slow

     We went away for the weekend.  I had to get out of town.  The frustrations of the day-to-day grind have really been weighing on me in the last few weeks and I desperately needed a change of scenery.

     We went to a fishing resort about three hours away.  We didn’t go to fish; we went to go be in a cabin by the river.  It’s the off-season, so there weren’t a lot of folks there and the rates were affordable.

     I haven’t been able to concentrate very well on writing here at home.  But yesterday, listening to great tunes in the calm of the cabin, I was able to get back into my story.  Oddly enough, I didn’t do much new writing, just a lot of editing.  Got a little crazy and slashed entire sentences and even two whole paragraphs.  

    When I start a new story, I basically just barf words all over the page.  Any thought, any description gets in.  It’s only after I’ve re-read the darn thing seven or eight times that I read a line and think, “what in the world does that add to the storyline?” 

     Mike’s always told me you can’t edit at the same time you write; that’s so true.  I’ve discovered that I can’t edit until I’ve read and re-read and re-read.   The final edition of Broken Road has 33,000 fewer words than the first draft, but that took thirteen reads to happen.   
     A few people are anxious to read this second story.  I am, too.  But the author is going to take her own sweet time.  She’s learned how her editing brain works and it’s not going to be rushed.

We Are Not Mr. Tanner...

I listened to a lot of Harry Chapin when I was in high school and later too. This guy can really sing a story. 


I was too young, then, to understand the story he was trying to tell in the song, Mr. Tanner.


Mr. Tanner owns a cleaning shop in a small town, but his love is singing. He's a big fish in a small pond, but doesn't find his identity there, he just loves to sing. His friends and neighbors finally convince him to sing in New York and seek the big time, where he is panned by critics. He comes home and never sings again, except when he's all by himself in the darkness of the cleaning store.


Chapin's Mr. Tanner is a story about losing your love after taking it to the larger stage where for money and fame it is judged, compared with others, and evaluated for it's worth to the larger audience.


All this to say that we have entered Broken Road in a contest for self-published works through Writer's Digest. It cost us a whole hundred dollars, totally depleting our very humble Broken Road account.


But we did it just to see if we can get the attention of more readers. News of our incredibly amazing, big-screen bound story has moved disappointingly slowly. There is no doubt Broken Road is worthy of submission, but like Mr. Tanner, it may not be seen as something the larger audience would be willing to pay for. But it seems worth it to us for a chance to capture more readers.


Even if Broken Road receives no recognition at all, we're not folding this tent. We've heard way too many interesting and wonderful comments and reactions to the characters in our story. We're moving forward with this. When Roxie hears Sophie say Caleb's a slow mover she says, "Molasses in winter is a slow mover."


And right now, so is Broken Road.


Special thanks to www.rollingstone.com for the pic of Harry.

Woah...

I've been a little surprised at the reactions to Broken Road.  A couple of readers are upset with me about it; they object to the ending.  

That's not what surprises me.  I knew that would be the case for a lot of folks.  I've been caught off-guard because some folks have no trouble telling me that they feel that way.

I'm being polite, but I'd really like to say, "Well, then write your own damn book."  However, my mother raised me better than that, so I'll keep my mouth shut and just be glad folks are reading it.

The Pain of Self-Publishing

I don't think I felt anywhere near the grief writing Broken Road as Mike and I have experienced trying to get the dad-gum thing listed for eBooks.  

The rules for an eBook are a little different.  The front cover has to have the title and the author's name, and you must use one of a few fonts that the ePubs have deemed compatible for e-publishing.

Once you list the eBook, any revisions take forever to go through.  Consequently, I have no idea if the corrected version we posted Christmas day is being sold right now or if the edition with the horrendous error is still being downloaded by readers who will think I'm a moron when they notice the mistake.

I wish I could just shrug my shoulders and say "so be it", but mistakes, no matter how small, drive me nuts.

So, we'll see who wins...my sanity or the diabolical e-publishing that is trying to steal my soul.

Who You Were Supposed To Be All Along

Did you ever see the first Back to the Future movie?  Like any good story, it's rich with themes, but there is a scene at the end where a box arrives at the house; it's science fiction novels written by Marty's dad, George.


When we were in Chicago last November, for Cindy's "coming out" as an author, someone caught her off-guard with the simplest of questions.  "What's your book about?" Like any good book, Broken Road is rich with themes, and Cindy didn't know exactly how much to say.  When we talked about it later, I suggested that Cindy be ready to tell people that Broken Road is a story about "going home and discovering the person you were meant to be all along."  Yeah, I know, deep, huh!


A lot of us don't discover the people we were supposed to have been all along until much later in life.  Roxie sure didn't discover that until she went back to Derry.  And I think Cindy and I, in our own ways, struggled to know who we were supposed to have been all along, too.  


Then, a few weeks ago, this box came in the mail.  We got to have our "George Mcfly" moment.  And we know a little better, just who we are.

Broken Road News Report

Greetings!  Please allow me to offer you my own personal welcome to 2012.  May it be the best year yet.

It's already started as a great year for Broken Road.  Like many writers, we belong to a nice, but small community of writers who support each other and share in each other's work. A few of these folks read early drafts of BR, some so that we could get comments, some because they were going to have an integral role in its production. They all told us what a good book it was. "Couldn't put it down" was a common phrase.

And although they were wonderful comments that so encouraged us, I longed for a person who didn't know me, who had nothing at stake, who had never met my feelings and was totally unconcerned with hurting them, to say that BR was a good read. We new authors, we need a little affirmation, you know?  It's a little like motherhood.  WE know our kids are geniuses, but when they win the talent show, we feel like their value is seen by more than us, the biased eye.

Well, last night it happened. Someone who graduated high school with Mike had read the book and posted to Facebook, well, let me get the exact quote, because...uhem...it's worth it.  

"If you have not yet read Broken Road by Cindy Rush, you should.  This is a very good book. I found it hard to put down."

It was Mike who pointed out that it had happened.  What a blessing to get those words of encouragement.

Have a happy 2012!