You never know what we'll churn up in cleaning a stall
The author misuses “that” for “who.”
Or uses single quotation marks randomly where a double is required.
It really smacks of amateurish, a warning of some less than savvy writing ahead. Still, there’s a chance the content will outweigh faulty prose – no guarantees, though.
Creatively, I’m feeling a lull or perhaps more accurately adrift.
After my Cape Cod presentation via Zoom earlier this month, I have no other Quaking Dover events on the horizon. Nor do I feel compelled to undertake another big writing venture.
Authors these days are often saddled with the promotional end of any publication, and I’m coming up on a year of launching the marketing push on my latest book. Admittedly, I am proud of my public appearances on its behalf – each one unique, reflecting what another writer declared a “rich feast of a book” – but it’s also exhausting, especially, as I hate to confess, at my age.
Do I cut the ties and say it’s time for the book to sink or swim on its own, or do I find new ways to try to generate a buzz? It is the one book that seems to speak to a wider audience, especially, say, than poetry or my hippie novels.
The blogging hits have slowed down, perhaps as many viewers have shifted to other platforms. Social media and mass media both appear to be hemorrhaging there, so I can’t say I’m alone.
I’m certainly out of touch with youth and often can’t understand their conversations. That really hurts. I believe there’s so much knowledge that needs to be handed down but don’t know where to begin. Besides, I’ve often found them a source of great energy in my own outlook.
In short, I don’t have a big project calling for my attention and devotion. That part feels really weird.
I do have a big backlog of periodicals and books to finally tackle as well as a shelf of personal journals that deserve visiting, so that points to an overdue reading orgy.
There’s plenty of outdoors around here to indulge in, too.
I may even have to look at my remaining possessions and reorganize and cull them.
As I’m saying, I’m feeling a bit strange.
I’ve loved the phrase, “island garden,” even before we relocated to Moose Island, Maine.
The resonance comes in a classic book of that title by poet Celia Thaxter from her efforts on Appledore Island at the other end of the state. Her volume is illustrated by the great American Impressionist painter Childe Hassam, an addicted summer visitor. He made some stunning paintings on the island.
My wife and I did make a pilgrimage to the site, which once included a hotel considered by many to be America’s first artists’ colony. Nowadays, you do need permission to land there – we arrived on a research vessel as guests of the University of New Hampshire, which shares a major ornithological center with Cornell in what had been a World War II watchtower and bunkers.
Moose Island, in contrast, connects to the mainland by a causeway – no need for a ferry – but it’s still an island, an element that grows in awareness the longer I’m here.
Celia’s text often laments the arrival of garden slugs on the previously uninfected island, a pestilence we certainly understand, even before relocating from New Hampshire.
Alas, we do have those slimy destructors here. Apparently, Celia was unaware of the advantages of using seaweed as a mulch, one that repels the offenders in both its fresh and dried states. It’s something I’ve previously posted on. And something I need to reapply here.
While her garden was mostly flowers, ours skewers more toward edible items. And that adds a further layer of offenders, as you’ve been seeing here: deer. The ones with voracious appetites.
Offering the ebook edition of my new book, Quaking Dover, for free might look crazy, but let me put it into perspective.
Books get lost in the outpouring of new publications these days. Yet for publicity, nothing beats word of mouth, especially when it comes to getting folks to pick up their own copy.
In the old days, I would have sent my paper editions to potential reviewers, but there was no guarantee that would lead to any results. I know, having picked up many free books as a newspaper editor that way, as well as my experience with my first novel, Subway Hitchhikers.
So let’s cut to the chase. Smashwords.com has an annual promotional sale this month, and I’m participating by offering my latest book for free, hoping that if you like it, you’ll give it a brief review on my page there along with five stars. Maybe you’ll even want to give paperbook copies as gifts as a result. Either way, I get a much-needed boost. We’re back to word-of-mouth.
But first you have to download it. Just go to Smashwords and follow through.
Honestly, it might even leave you prepared to order more of my ebooks once you’re comfortable with the process.
Is it a deal?
Do you read ebooks? If so, here’s an offer you really can’t pass up.
For the month of July, the digital version of my history Quaking Dover is being offered for free at Smashword.com’s annual summer sale.
The paperback edition has been selling very nicely, thank you, but I do want to share the excitement during the city’s 400th anniversary and, well, here’s one more opportunity to get in on the story. Yes, little Dover is older than Boston, New York, or, well, any other city along the northeast coast other than Plymouth and Weymouth, Massachusetts. (Bet you didn’t know that!)
For details on obtaining this limited-time offer, go to the Jnana Hodson page at Smashwords.com.
It really is quite a tale.
Binge watching the episodes of the runway project, I’ve been struck by how many times his sage advice included basic English words the younger generation totally missed.
Well, words that seem basic in our household.
Look, kids: A big vocabulary takes you from black-and-white to full, vivid color. And then beyond. It’s full of nuance and possibility. A spice of life, even.
It’s kinda like that fabric store you raid. And one more reason your mentor on the show is as remarkable as he is.
If you’re a musician or writer or some other kind of performance-potential artist, you probably find being part of an open mic event invigorating. Not just because you get to air your own work and see how it fares on exposure, but also because you’re amid so many kindred spirits.
Tonight has a kind of hybrid version — six featured published writers at the wine bar downtown — and it is creating a buzz in our small community. Each of us gets about 15 minutes in the spotlight, as well as a book-signing and chat time afterward.
I’ll be reading a chapter from my new book, Quaking Dover, one that details a remarkable but often overlooked outburst in early New England, the bohemian colony called Merrymount. I had settled on that excerpt, a side I hadn’t yet presented in my presentations, before realizing how appropriate it is for this weekend’s ArtWalk festivities, many of them reflecting Pride awareness.
So, here we go … just as the summer season is beginning in our oceanside setting.
Coming up at the Phoenix wine bar downtown on Thursday from 6-8 pm, I’ll be one of six local writers reading from our books.
It’s organized by Catherine SJ Lee, whose wonderful collection of short stories Island Secrets is well worth acquiring. One secret she doesn’t mention is how many fine writers and other artists dwell on the charming island I now call home. Honestly, I feel honored to be among those invited to read and am certainly looking forward to personally meeting others.
Each of us will present a 15-minute selection of our work and then engage in a meet-and-greet over a bookselling and signing at the end.
These days, presenting my case without including an accompanying PowerPoint does feel a bit strange. Still, as a writer, I do love having the text itself be the sole focus, as I have enjoyed in our monthly open mics at the arts center.
The wine bar event is part of the first ArtWalk weekend of the season in Eastport and Lubec. Other planned activities include gallery tours, rock painting, sidewalk chalking, games, musicians around town, an outdoor contradance, and perhaps a street dance or two.
If He’s so perfect, why didn’t He do a better job of it? (See any masculine references here as traditional and object to them as you wish.)
Even in Hebrew, so I’m told, many key passages are unintelligible. As for the King James English, which many Protestant fundamentalists hold as inerrant (meaning flawless, perfect, unblemished), let me object. There’s a lot of clumsy translation – and outright mistranslation. Add to that the ways our own language has shifted in the centuries since. (To wit: I find myself having to retranslate many key Quaker writings from the mid-1600s on for modern readers, even those with PhD credentials. Those early Friends were conversant with the KJV lingo. Does thee understand?)
For perspective. When’s the last time you read Shakespeare? Without relying on footnotes?
More to the point. He (yes, He, in the current argument) certainly could have used a better editor, in any language. As for revisions? Let me contend that no work of language is ever perfect, it is ultimately a human artifact. Including the arcane collection known as The Bible.
For me, the best we have in those pages is all the more exalted because of that edge of imperfection and decay. It allows humanity to creep in. I’m thinking of some very cutting-edge contemporary poets, actually.
My fascination with that divine text has turned to the struggle to accurately record our own, very personal, experiences of the Holy One. Name it as best you can. And, from the other direction, the ways our own lives have reacted to the struggle from our own first-hand encounters with those haunting great mysteries.
I’ve come to see – and treasure – what we have in that book more as a set of deeply personal journals of individual and group experiences, including their failures, than as any set of how-to steps to eternity.
Reading can be an intimate connection between an anonymous individual and a writer. The action really is one-on-one, even for a bestselling book.
Too often, though, it’s one way, like therapy with no one piping up on the other end.
Authors typically work in isolation on a work of passion and then step forward in a state of exposure. It can be especially tense if you’ve taken risks, knowing they can backfire.
Unless you’ve been there, you have no idea how much a reaction, positive or negative, can feel. There really is a shock and elation when you see that someone else “gets it.” Or even if they don’t, they’ve at least engaged.
Typically, though, there’s silence.
That’s why I’m still astonished by people who tell me they love the tone and content of my new book.
In addition, even a brief review or comment can help a writer sharpen the direction of future work.
Reactions to Quaking Dover are definitely encouraging fresh perspectives for my own public presentations around the work. Remember, one publishing house rejected the book because they detested first-person. Thankfully, I listened to a wise beta reader and reacted accordingly.
I definitely look forward to hearing your reactions. In addition, if you like the book, please leave a brief review plus stars at your retailer’s website or other places. Nothing beats word-of-mouth, either, in the book world.
Jnana's Red Barn 