2018 Summer Newschat

Zestful Blog Post 274

2018 Summer Newschat

If you're already on my newschat list, you should have received everything in here. If you're not a newschat subscriber, I encourage you to join, because I can't post the links to the free stuff here. (You can always unsubscribe after getting the free stuff--I won't be upset.) Here's THE LINK TO NEWSCHAT SIGNUP.

Dearest Correspondent,

I’m gonna start with a list of contents, because this message is so crammed with cool stuff:

·       Free starter pack of my writing exclusively for newschat members

·       New short story collection

·       Royal Caribbean mystery writing cruise with me!

·       Florida Book Awards silver medal

·       Murder on the Beach workshop

·       Palm Springs weekend

·       Mystery writing course at Ringling College

·       Latest Writer’s Digest features

·       Calling all STARs

·       What’s next

It’s been so long between newschats because I’ve been writing free stuff exclusively for you, publishing new work, and awaiting the OK to release some incredibly exciting news. Here we go!

Free Starter Pack

I’ve created three short, complete works as exclusive giveaways for newschat members, published under my personal imprint, Spruce Park Press. They represent a healthy taste of my work, both fiction and nonfiction. The newschat signup is now automated (learning curve for me there), so any new signups will get the free stuff automatically. But for you guys, here’s the goods, with my compliments:

Deep Trouble, a Lillian Byrd novelette, stars quirky freelance journalist Lillian Byrd, whose life is never easy. It’s the first Lillian novelette I’ve ever written, and I had a lot of fun with it. Special thanks to my STAR team for pre-reading and feedback! (More about STARs later in this missive.)

Download your copy of Deep Trouble by clicking below:

GET DEEP TROUBLE

Next up is a brief for writers, 9 Fast Character Hacks for Creating Vibrant, Believable Fictional People. If you’re a fiction writer hungry to improve, you’ll immediately apprehend the ideas in this piece. I use examples from the work of James Dickey, Sinclair Lewis, Judith Guest, Mark Twain, Mary Higgins Clark, and others. It’s short and sweet, and available nowhere else. (I might add that even if you’re not a writer, you’ll almost surely find the piece helpful in building your insight as a reader.)

Download your copy of 9 Fast Character Hacks by clicking below:

GET 9 FAST HACKS

On to something more personal. A while back, the editor of Mystery Readers Journal asked me to contribute an original essay on being a Midwestern writer. I did so, and the piece was published in 2017 (volume 33:1). Frankly, however, I didn’t feel I fully explored everything I wanted to in that essay. So I’ve done some editing and expanding of the piece, which is here exclusively for you. While developing it, I found myself focusing on the Great Lakes, and on my father, who lived and died on the water of that immense ecosystem.

You can download your copy of The Lake Effect by clicking below:

GET THE LAKE EFFECT

I’m happy to give these books away. My greatest hope is that you enjoy them! And I’d like to hear your opinion of them, good or bad. And again, if you're not signed up, here's the signup to get free books.

New Short Story Collection from Spruce Park Press

If a story by Flannery O’Connor and a story by Chuck Palahniuk got together and had kids, they would be the intense, bitingly sharp tales in Go-Go Day: Four Literary Tales with a Dash of Dark. Basically, I dug as deeply into the heart of humanity as I could, crafting characters who start out knowing what they want, and end up knowing what they need. Their paths are rutted and dangerous. In “Dixon Amiss,” a lithograph pressman gets a visit from a couple of guys with a life-changing message for him. Regina, a routinely shamed student in “The Cashmere Club” has a shitty life, but seizes a chance for a strange yet comforting makeover. The manchild at the center of “West Forkton Days” teaches himself a searing lesson about chance, love, and art. And the heroine of “Go-Go Day” yearns to be doted on, yet seeks ultimate liberation on her own terms. These are stories for readers who love to think—and who love life.

Buy Go-Go Day: Four Literary Tales with a Dash of Dark by clicking below:

GET GO-GO DAY

Royal Caribbean Mystery Writing Cruise

If you’ve been wishing to study with me in person while drinking mojitos, this is it. Royal Caribbean is partnering with Florida-based Go Travel to introduce “Forensics at Sea: Mystery Writers Cruise,” a 7-day western Caribbean cruise on Oasis of the Seas, sailing March 31-April 7, 2019 from Port Canaveral, Florida.

I must brag that I beat out dozens of other mystery authors and teachers to get selected as the instructor and writing coach. I’ll be joined by Kelly Gillis, coroner and forensic anthropologist, and Jeffry Mouer, crime scene specialist and advisor to TV’s “Forensic Files.” Is this not the coolest thing in the world? I’ll be giving an expanded version of the mystery-thriller workshop some of you have attended, which will include tips and techniques on doing research, plenty of Q&A sessions, and more. Kelly and Jeff will present all kinds of juicy material on crime scenes and forensic technique. And get this: We’re going to put together mock crime scenes for you to examine as we sail through the tropics!

Promo materials are still being developed and edited, but the cruise is live and ready to book. Rates start at $1,063 per person. Learn everything about the whole shebang—and get the early registration discount—by clicking below:

FORENSICS AT SEA

I would be so thrilled if you’d come! If you do sign up, please drop me an email, OK?

Florida Book Awards Silver Medal

I’m honored to report that the novel I released last year, Crimes in a Second Language, won the Florida Book Awards silver medal in general fiction this past spring. My beloved Marcia and I traveled to Tallahassee for the ceremony and had a great time making new friends with writers and readers. My favorite thing is knowing my subversive, profanity-laced writing is sitting on a shelf somewhere in the governor’s mansion, as well as in a display case in the library at Florida State University.

Murder on the Beach Workshop

This one’s coming right up. I’ll be teaching my “Fearless Writing” workshop at Murder on the Beach bookstore in Delray Beach on August 18. This is part of their Authors Academy series, it costs $25, and you can learn more and sign up by clicking below:

FEARLESS WRITING

Short Story Writing in Palm Springs

The wonderful folks at the Palm Springs Writers Guild (California) have invited me for the weekend of November 3-4 this year. I’ll give a talk at their Saturday luncheon, where guests are welcome, then on Sunday I’ll do a daylong workshop on short story writing. The workshop costs $85 for members and $100 for nonmembers, and you can find out all about it by clicking below:

SHORT STORIES IN THE DESERT

Mystery Writing at Ringling

Once again I’ll be serving as an adjunct professor in the creative writing department at Ringling College of Art and Design in Sarasota. This fall term I’ll be teaching “Writing Mysteries and Thrillers,” and I’m sorry to say the class is already full. But I want to show you this cool poster produced by art students at the school. I’m sorry I can’t give credit by name at this moment.

Latest Writer’s Digest Feature Articles

I’ve been continuing writing articles for the leading writing magazine, Writer’s Digest, in my capacity as contributing editor.

A feature of mine on writing comedic characters, “Funny People,” appeared in the Comedy Issue, July/August 2018. Coming up in December will be a piece I had a great time writing, about old-school technology. Over the course of a weekend, I wrote with a quill pen, a pencil, fountain pen, ballpoint pen, and 1926 Underwood typewriter. And then I wrote about what it was like, with takeaways for writers. If you get hold of it, I’d love to hear what you think of it.

Calling all STARs

A select group of you are on my Special Team of Advance Readers. If you’d like to join, let me know. STARs get selected new work in advance, read it, and give me feedback. In return, they get my thanks and their own free finished copy of the work before anyone else. Their input on Deep Trouble was invaluable. In the (hopefully) near future, I’ll be calling all stars to read new nonfiction on writing, which will be published and for sale in series form, as well as future projects. I’m looking into more freebies and premiums for stars going forward, as well. Would you like to be a STAR? Just drop me an email. esims@elizabethsims.com.

And the Future?

I’m commencing work on

• box sets of my fiction, and
• a series of short books on writing, working title The Writer’s Garret series

And I’m planning new fiction (Lillian Byrd yes) and nonfiction. All for you, my dearest ones!

With thanks and love,

Elizabeth

What do you think? To post, click below where it says '0 comments' or '2 comments' or whatever. To get these posts automatically via email, look to the right, above my bio, and subscribe there. Thanks for looking in.

Awards Night Survival Guide

Zestful Blog Post #260

OK, so I promised to follow up on Zestful blog post #255, “Awards Versus Happiness.” Marcia and I went to Tallahassee last Thur-Sat to attend the Florida Book Awards dinner and participate in other very nice events: a morning-after breakfast at the Midtown Reader and a panel talk and signing at Word of South, an annual music/books festival at the pretty fabulous Cascades Park.

My most burning question before the awards dinner was whether we would just be handed our medals, or whether the bling would be given Olympics-style. Thankfully, we got handed a little box with our medal in it along with our name tags and drink tickets at check-in. No stress. 

  

[For my standalone novel, Crimes in a Second Language. Sorry if you saw this already on FB.]

  

I was glad we went; it seems the awards are a bigger deal than I thought, and the evening was swankier than I expected. Lots of very smart and accomplished people in the room, all interested in, and many devoted to, quality writing, research, and expression. And given that Florida State University is in charge, meaning actual paid staff handle things, you could count on things going smoothly, and somebody there to fix problems right away. Nothing against events run exclusively by volunteers. God bless them. I have volunteered at events. But you know what I mean.

OK, based on having attended many awards dinners, and received prizes at a few, here’s my survival guide. Do these things and you are 75 percent less likely to lie awake later, silently insulting yourself:

·       Arrive sober. If you’re a social drinker, consume one drink immediately, which will loosen you up during mix and mingle. Then nurse the next one for the rest of the evening, so you don’t look like a lush. Everybody at your table counts everybody’s drinks.

·       For non-drinkers, you have far less to worry about. You probably don’t know this, but you are envied by social drinkers in these situations. For instance, if a drinker says something they later think sounded stupid, they’re like, “Oh, hell, I shouldn’t have had that wine.” But in their heart of hearts they know it was just them. Non-drinkers don’t have to do any mental/emotional gymnastics.

·       Realize that everybody is a little or a lot nervous. If you act cool, that helps others relax and makes you look good. Act cool by being friendly. My opening line was, “Hi. Who are you and what did you win?” which always drew a grateful smile and started a convo. Nobody expects you to know who everybody is and what they did. Another good one is, “Hi. What’s your role here tonight?” Or, “What are you up for?”

·       Try to be attentive to your spouse/partner, introduce them around, and mention their accomplishments at dinner. Often the spouses have the most interesting stories!

·       Write out your remarks in advance. I consider this a no-brainer, but have witnessed unprepared speakers get flustered. And you’re there because of your work, so make your comments mostly about that, rather than yourself. (FWIW, my remarks for FBA are reproduced below.)

·       Tell your table-mates they did a good job when the come back from the dais. Everybody appreciates this.

·       If it’s the kind of uncivilized event where you don’t know who won what until it’s announced, steel yourself for disappointment. I hate events like this. Needless to say, if you lose, try to congratulate the winners. The key is to remember this too shall pass; there’s always next time. If you won this time, you might lose next time, and the other way around.

·       Thank everybody as the evening unfolds, and don’t forget the wait staff. Put a buck or two into the bartender’s cup.

·       These days everybody’s pretty cool with posting selfies, etc. on social media during events. So post away, but avoid looking like a twelve-year-old by fiddling on your phone only a little bit.

·       Be neither the first nor the last to leave.

·       Send follow-up emails of thanks to the organizers, etc. Handwritten notes are great too!

Special shout-outs to:

Jenni McKnight and Chase Miller, Florida State University

Wayne and Shirley Wiegand and the Abitz family

Kaitlin Silcox, Museum of Florida History

Sally Bradshaw and her staff and bookstore, the Midtown Reader

Mark Mustian, Word of South

Laura Lee Smith, gold medalist and co-panelist par excellence

For the heck of it, here’s what I said when called up to the dais that evening:

[Remarks for winning FBA silver medal, Tallahassee, April 12, 2018

It’s great to be in the winner’s circle, with so many talented authors. Thank you to the Florida Book Awards and all the organizers, Florida State University, and all the affiliates.

Thank you to the judges in my category—Chris, Jennifer, Dianna. Having been a judge for literary contests, I know it’s a difficult task, and largely a thankless one.

Moreover, I’m extremely gratified that the judges took CRIMES IN A SECOND LANGUAGE seriously: a book I released under my own imprint, Spruce Park Press. I have been published by a Big Five house, Macmillan, and by smaller publishers. But there have been massive changes in how books come to market, and I appreciate this organization’s recognition of that.

CRIMES IN A SECOND LANGUAGE is a standalone novel, apart from my two series. It was prompted by a true situation. By the way, it is not a book about Florida. It’s set in Los Angeles. I wanted to bring in the flavor of all that Hollywood hustle, and because I’ve spent a lot of time in Los Angeles with family, and with friends in show business. My uncle and aunt lived near LA, and they were retired, and they employed a young housecleaner who had been recommended to them by a neighbor. The cleaner, Maria, was from Mexico, and she didn’t speak English. And my aunt and uncle didn’t speak Spanish, and so every time Aunt Tracy needed to tell Maria something in particular, she had to go get the neighbor who spoke Spanish.

One day Aunt Tracy, who had been a kindergarten teacher, asked Maria if she’d like to learn English. Si! So Maria started coming one day a week to clean, and another day to learn. As soon as Aunt Tracy started teaching her English, she discovered that not only did Maria not know English, she knew very little about anything else, because she had only gone to school in Mexico through the fifth grade. So then Aunt Tracy started teaching regular school to Maria. Elementary subjects. Because of this bonding over learning, those two women became lifelong friends.

HOWEVER. This teaching and learning did not sit at all well with Maria’s husband, Jose. He barely spoke English, and he didn’t want Maria to get ahead of him. Aunt Tracy offered to teach him too, but he said no. And he tried to get Maria to stop learning.

And when I heard about this, and I met Maria, I started thinking, well, what if there was a more nefarious reason that Jose didn’t want his wife getting more educated? What if he was up to something seriously criminal, yes, and what if Maria knowing how to read and write English could be dangerous for him? And that set me onto a plot where (spoiler!) the Jose character is much more sophisticated and educated than he let on. I brought in Hollywood in the form of a film-producer neighbor, and an aspiring author who writes technical manuals about machines that make airplane parts, and I introduced themes of corporate sabotage, money, greed, idealism, and true friendship. Another spoiler: the two women in the story become lifelong friends.

And I had a lot of fun with it. Oh, and one last thank-you, to my supportive and wonderful wife Marcia.

Thank you very much.]

Do you have an awards-dinner anecdote to share? Was this post interesting/potentially helpful? To comment, click below where it says, 'No Comments,' or '2 Comments,' or whatever.

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Awards Versus Happiness

Zestful Blog Post #255

Awards Versus Happiness

If you read this blog, you’re my friend. At some point before we’re all dead, I’m gonna send out a newschat, but today you guys will learn a little bit of news in advance, along with my Facebook friends, who saw this yesterday. Gonna talk about awards here. If you are an author, especially, please read to the end of this post to get my most heartfelt and useful advice. Last week I learned that Crimes in a Second Language is receiving the silver medal in the Florida Book Awards, general fiction category. Which is nice. But upon hearing the news, I was like, shit! Because I had wanted and expected gold! That’s how I am: totally confident in my superiority as an author. Which, though arguably delusional, has not proved to be any serious handicap.

During the most recent cycle of the Olympics, I read somewhere that psychologists have determined that the least happy medalists are the ones who get silver. Because of course the gold people are happy that they won the top prize, and the bronze people generally are ecstatic that they got a medal at all. The silver people go Aw hell, should have gotten the gold! And that was exactly my first reaction to this silver medal. But I’m over it. I’m gratified that the other two medalists in my category were published by major houses in hardcover, while I released Crimes independently, under Spruce Park Press, my personal imprint. The gold went to Laura Lee Smith for The Ice House (Grove Atlantic) and the bronze went to Randy Wayne White for Mangrove Lightning (Putnam). I hope to meet them both, along with the winners in the other ten categories, at a dinner in Tallahassee next month. Will someone actually put the medals around our necks, like at the Olympics? The thought makes me nervous. I’ll report back.

I give major credit to the judges for taking my book seriously and not discounting it because it’s a humble indie. Their identities are public information on the FBA web site, so I’m going to thank them here: Chris Coward, Jennifer Pratt, and Dianna Narciso. All judges are past winners of FBAs. I highly approve of having judges be identified, because it makes the process transparent. Yeah, I guess an author could try to coddle up to a judge or send a case of Scotch to their house, but the risk of something like that swaying a judge doesn’t cancel out the benefits of transparency.

[From the Florida Book Awards website: The competition is run by the Florida State University Libraries and co-sponsored by the Florida Center for the Book, the State Library and Archives of Florida, the Florida Historical Society, the Florida Humanities Council, the Florida Literary Arts Coalition, the Florida Library Association, “Just Read, Florida!,” the Florida Association for Media in Education, The Center for Literature and Theatre @ Miami Dade College, Friends of the Florida State University Libraries, the Florida Writers Association, and the Florida Chapter of the Mystery Writers of America.]

When you think about it, most of us have competed for lots of things. Grades in school, the affection of a parent, athletic contests and games, and so much more. Competition is a part of life. Some competitions are completely objective. You skate the fastest or you don’t. You jump the highest or you don’t. You earn the most money or you don’t. Then there are the subjective contests, which play so much havoc with artists. Your pirouette spin wasn’t as pretty as hers. Your book wasn’t as good as his.

I’ve cursed judging panels when books of mine have been snubbed and books of inferior quality (in my opinion) given prizes. “Pearls before swine!” is my go-to rant, meaning the judges’ tastes were so coarse they couldn’t recognize quality when they saw it. I’ve been a judge in literary contests, and I know how subjective the process can be. (Certain things you can be objective about: the mechanics of writing, for instance. Then there is literary merit. Let the brawl begin!)

The sad reality is that awards do drive readers’ choices. Just the other day I participated in a group reading with other authors; all of us had some books for sale. As I was signing a copy of Left Field for a reader, she said, “I bought the one that won the award!” That copy happened to have a GCLS Goldie sticker on it, one of a bunch they give you for such use.

Some authors get depressed when they don’t win an award, and that’s just so wrong. Understandable, but wrong. You gotta either get mad for a while (pearls before swine), or shrug and say, “Who cares?” You cannot let the non-win affect your self-esteem. It’s the same when a negative review smacks you in the face. The hell with it.

So, publish your work, enter competitions, go for the gold, but remember this tremendously important fact: Your work is not you. Your work is your work. It is separate from you. And remember the corollary: A win doesn’t mean you’re special. It means a particular piece of your work was judged to be worthy. That’s all.

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