Guess What? The New Book is Out (Almost)!

I woke up at 3:45 yesterday morning and couldn't get back to sleep, so I turned on my MacBook to do some work. It took my eyes a good 45 minutes to adjust to the light of the screen, however, even with using that great little program Brightness Control. After that, I did manage to plunk out about 1,000 words before it was time to get up and make breakfast for the kids. I hoped to get back to work on NaNo once they were off to school, but I couldn't get back into it. Instead, I answered emails (a task urgently overdue) and then I went back into real estate mode. I had to show a house over on West 136th Street. The buyers and their agent were nice, but I don't know ... Buyers are definitely taking their time these days. Anyway, I returned home after that, and trust me, my NaNo time was done by then. I spent the rest of the afternoon updating my main website to reflect my new book.

Speaking of which, I guess I should bring everyone up to speed on that.

(1) I changed the title. It used to be Black Pearls. Now it's Darkness & the Devil Behind Me. I liked the first title, but I like the second one much better, and it's more appropriate to the story, too.

(2) I came up with a new cover, which I'll upload in a minute. And I did the graphics work on the cover by myself. I'm so proud. (Pause ... pause ... while writer frantically tries to get photo uploaded with right resolution. Then a sigh of relief.) It was a heck of a lot of hard work, but I think it paid off, don't you?

(3) The book is now available for download from my website as a special digital edition. I already have one sale! I'm so proud. A great shoutout to Ms. Lillian Anthony. Thank you, Lillian!

(4) My publisher tells me that we're talking a mid-December release date for the trade paperback. (Did I mention that "my publisher" happens to be me?)

(5) I'm thinking about serializing the book before then. Hmmm ... I thought it would be a good idea, but now I don't feel comfortable with it. But there are excerpts: Chapters 1, 2 and 3 are available online or as a PDF for download.

There's still a lot of work to do. I plan on making an audiocast of the book, as well as of the short stories in the SAW Project. I will place audio samples on the web, also.

And of course, I have to let the world know that the book has arrived. Yippee!!!

Boy, am I glad that I did some work on the site. It was in desperate need of updating. Still more to be done, but now I'm caught up -- which reminds me ...

This made a great and productive divergence from NaNo, but I'd better get back on the ball.

NaNo goal for today: 13,336 (1,667 words/day x 8)

Personal goal: 15,000 (about 1,000 less than the 16,000 I should've reached if I'd kept up 2,000/day)

Love ya!

Will be blogging with you later!

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Cross Over

OK, here it goes again. You don't realize this, of course, 'cause you can't see it, but I just wrote this really, really long entry to this blog and I was so darn proud of myself -- and then I looked at it in preview and darn if I didn't press the wrong button, but it suddenly evaporated and now here I'm left with trying to come up with the whole thing again.

First, let me try to remember what I was saying .... Oh, yeah.

Generally, I try to keep my life as a real estate agent and as a writer separate. I don't know why -- yeah, I do actually. I think I'm ashamed that I haven't succeeded in earning enough as a writer and have to work as a real estate agent. (Never mind, that I didn't earn enough as a real estate agent and so now, in ADDITION to selling real estate, I'm working in a law office -- madness -- but I'm getting away from my story...) Anyway, I'm usually pretty successful at keeping these two sets of identities separate, but every now and then, someone discovers my secret.

Last week, I showed this beautiful townhouse on Strivers' Row -- an incredible, historic section of central Harlem -- to an agent and his little crowd of customers. After they left, I locked up and thought no more about it. They were appreciative, but they didn't give off vibes of interest (which is a shame 'cause the house is fantastic, and well-priced to boot!).

But a couple of days later, my cell phone rings and it's this lady -- one of the people the agent brought over. She said she'd picked up one of my little personal brochures (personal as in it's about me, as opposed to one of the bigger, prettier brochures about the house) and she'd read in it that I was a writer and the author of Harlem Redux. (Yes, I do mention the fact that I'm a writer in the brochure, but that's about the only place I ever mention it.) Anyway, she said she'd read the book. "I absolutely loved it," she said. "And I told all my friends about it." Words to warm a writer's heart. If only my agent could hear her, I thought, she'd see, she'd realize that there's someone somewhere out there, just waiting to read me again ...

But then she had to go and ask the 64-million-dollar question: "Are you working on anything now? When's your next one coming out?"

Ouch!

So you know what I did? I can't believe I did it, but I must've cause I've still got the evidence: a sheet from a yellow memo pad with this lady's address. What I did was this: I cleared my throat and then took a step out of my body, while I heard this strange woman using my cell phone say: "Well, actually I am working on something. Only my agent is having a problem with it. Would you be interested in reading it -- and giving me some feedback?"

The question stunned her -- as evidenced by her silence.

"Hey, your name might even appear in the acknowledgments," I said.

That did it. She agreed.

In for a penny, in for a pound. I'm now putting together a list of people to whom I intend to forward my manuscript. Regular people.

Meanwhile, I'm going batty with my regular author's website. I thought to take advantage of the new Blogger beta's offer to have this blog appear under my "custom" domain name (i.e. my name), but after a week of noodling (i.e. struggling) with DNS and CNAME and Google taking my site off and error messages, I give up. For now, this site's gonna have to stay under the less than prosaic but perfectly good URL it has: persiawalker.blogspot.com. I'm thinking about resuming the site I had under the Author's Guild. I dropped it because I was bored, bored, bored with the AG's site builder. The AG says it'll be announcing a new sitebuilder this week. I can hardly wait. If it isn't up to snuff, though, then I'll go with GoDaddy. That's the registrar for my URL. It's affordable and it probably makes sense to host with the registrar. That way I don't have to worrying about forwarding, masking, transferring or losing my emails. Yup ... but I really wanna see what the AG's gonna offer.

Writing -- or rewriting -- one The Palmer Affair, my sequel to Harlem Redux -- has slowed down considerably. I've reached that point when I'm bored with the story and am thinking about totally revamping it. But when an author is bored with the story, it could be because he or she has reread it so many times that it no longer has any surprises -- and the boredom stems from the rereading, not from any lack in the story itself. Too bad. I think I'll revamp it.

Meanwhile, check out two new blogs I discovered: The Lipstick Chronicles and Poe's Daughters.

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Putting a Spin on It

By the standards of any normal, sane person, today was not a particularly good day. By the standards I choose to adopt, however, it was a marvelous day. It was a day of emotional release (heated arguments, in other words) and unintentional irony.

After getting a phone call from a weeping woman who was not my client, but was the buyer for a property I represented and sold to her and her husband, I then had a horribly emotional fight with the seller -- who was my client -- and ended up weeping myself. I then spent another very unproductive three hours at the office, too emotionally drained to think clearly, but too physically exhausted to even think about making the trek home. I had just gotten myself together and was about to leave when the telephone rang -- again.

This time it was a girlfriend calling to ask me to help her work on her mother's obituary -- her mother died Wednesday, alone in a hospital, while her daughter (my girlfriend) and I were having lunch. I've been miserably upset about her mother's death, and finally let myself feel the pain today -- while screeching at my client, no less. I told my friend I couldn't work on the obit with her. I was too tired, I said and meant it. So I came home, in a daze, walked in the door and got some mail. Among them was a rejection letter from the Chelius agency. Oddly enough, the only thing I thought of was, "Where's my nail?" To hang up the letter, I mean.

So now, I'm propped up in bed with my trusty but overworked Apple laptop, trying to get a grip on my feelings. I feel heartsick. Not over the rejection letter, but over the denouement of the relationship with my seller. I loved that man. Really loved him. No, he wasn't my lover or anything like that. But I thought of him in truly heroic terms. I guess I still do, but more in the Shakespearean sense of the word.

If I remember my high school English correctly, Shakespeare's characters were often wonderful people whose major flaw, often a fatal one, was an extreme overdevelopment of one particular virtue. My seller's "extreme" virtue seems to be loyalty. He'll defend his friends -- or those he considers as such -- to the bitter end. And I do mean bitter. It seems to be more important to him to hold on to his illusions about them and bear the consequences, than surrender his illusions, learn the truth and move on.

But I don't want to get sucked into talking or writing about that, anymore. I just wanted to admit ... that I'm heartsick.

I once read, with great envy, that Stephen King had a collection of more than 400 rejection letters. I had a collection in Munich. But I abandoned them once I got published. Now, I could start them all over again, I suppose.

But do I want to?

I felt an odd sense of relief at opening that letter. Being published is important to me -- but not all that important. I feel as though I'm due some kind of nudge from the universe -- sort of a sign, if you will. Maybe, this is not the direction in which I'm meant to go. I mean, I really do love writing. It's an end in and of itself. It's only when I'm among published writers that I remember the other part of it -- the celebrity, the money, the awards, the busyness (tours, signings, interviews, etc.). It's only then I think, "Why that's what I should be aiming for, isn't it? It certainly looks nice -- from here."

But I'm tired now, and don't care. I wanted an agent in New York, not someone on the other side of the country. I wanted an agent who will keep me with an editor. Now, I have no agent at all, and it doesn't bother me.

I'm relieved. I can write now, in peace, for myself, the way I wanted to. It's back to me, myself and I again. And that's not a bad way to be.

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My Life as a Real Estate Agent

In the past week, I've done little or nothing that does not have to do with real estate. I have worked 12 hours a day -- more actually -- on getting up my real estate website. This, in the fond hope that I will eventually attract some business. The holiday week began with the buyers pulling out of a deal that had been slowly dying. I forgive them. Actually, there's nothing to forgive. Both the seller and I agree: Their decision was perfectly understandable. Nevertheless, it leaves me in the unenviable position of having to admit that it's been a year and I haven't earned a penny.

Tonight, I return to the world of writing. I'm trying to move my author's site to another host and I'm trying to decide whether to add a blog to it. I feel, almost compulsively, that I should. I just don't know why. I love the anonymity of this blog. So why would I go off and start a blog in which people know who I am? Silly, isn't it?

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On Writing in Order: Advice for the Messy Mind

This is a piece I wrote one year for NaNoWriMo. November, our beloved National Novel Writing Month, is only a short time away. The goal for NaNo is to write an entire 50,000 word novel within 30 days. It's doable. I've done it and tons of other people have also. Anyway, one of the joys of NaNo is the sense of community surrounding the event. The encouragement and vitality is unique. It's the best online convention of writers of all stripe I'd ever hope to encounter. I do hope you'll go to NaNoWriMo and sign up. You won't regret it. I'm preparing myself for the NaNo onslaught by writing a minimum of 1500 words a day. To hit 50,000 unedited words of NaNo, you have to write an average of 1667 words a day. So 1500 is a good warm up. In the meantime, I've dredged up this old post to a NaNo of year's prior. Hope you enjoy it and find it helpful.>

Sometimes writers bemoan how they can't manage to get their thoughts 'in order' and write a story from beginning to middle to end. Whenever I hear that, I think to myself, 'What a waste of energy.' If you ever find yourself thinking that way, stop. Dig down and find a sense of trust -- in yourself.

Very few writers write a story/an article "in order," that is from A, B, C ... to X, Y, Z. And that's for two good reasons -- A) the untrained mind doesn't work that way and B) even the trained mind rarely works that way. I've met few writers or reporters who can sit down and just spew out their bit with logical consistency, from lead-in to concluding line. Many can scratch down a thin outline or synopsis, but adding the flesh and blood to any lengthy piece is something each writer has to sit and worry his or her lower lip over.

So whether you're working from middle to beginning to end, or end to beginning to middle or any other variation thereof -- it doesn't matter. Relax. The pieces will fall into place ... if you give them all a chance to float to the surface.

Stephen King, one of my favorite writers, has a great metaphor for the process of how a story presents itself in the writer's mind. He speaks of his "boys in the basement." They're moving men, and although they theoretically work for him, they have minds of their own. They move what they want to move, when they want to move it. They move the furniture that's in the basement (the scenes buried in his subconscious) up to the house (his conscious) in whatever order they please. Sometimes they bring up stuff for the kitchen, sometimes stuff for the livingroom, sometimes stuff for the bedroom -- all in what for him is a jumbled mess. It's his job to receive each piece happily, thank the "boys" warmly, and sweat to put the pieces in their proper place. A great metaphor, I think.

King, being King, has a second metaphor for the psychology of writing: working on an anthropological site. As every anthropologist knows, you rarely uncover an entire skeleton with every bone laid in place, or even in the same layer of dirt. Again, it's your job and your joy to receive every little bone -- or big bone -- with love and respect, trusting that each will eventually fit together. At some point, you'll have enough bones to figure out the whole animal. But only if you hang in there long enough to uncover them all -- and only if you have faith in your intuition.

To reiterate: Believe in yourself.

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The Poconos

Spent much of day at my boss's house in the Poconos. It's a beautiful place, on a hill near a lake, with a cascading fountain in the garden and a huge deck that makes you feel as though you're sitting suspended in air. Shades of Agatha Christie. The place just calls out for a story about secrets and anger, conspiracy, mystery and murder. Unfortunately, the folks at the party are such a good bunch I couldn't possibly use any of them as characters in good story. Time to put my thinking cap on and come up with a whopper of a tall tale!

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Naivete

It's Wednesday night -- late Wednesday night -- and I'm stunned at how fast the week is flying by. I don't want to think about how much writing I haven't gotten done. I know I've tried every day to put something down, but I have no sense of having been successful. For those of you who just might happen upon this site and need some background information, my other life is as a real estate agent. There are always phone calls and appointments and lots and lots of running around. But it's not the phone calls and running around, I think, that's causing difficulty with the writing -- though they don't help. It's the different mindsets. As a real estate agent, I'm often listening to other people's thoughts. Their concerns, their worries. I'm also in a sociable mindset. Outgoing. When I'm writing, the only thoughts I listen to are my own. The only voices I hear are those of the characters inside my head. When I first started in real estate, a year ago this summer, I thought, I hoped the two fields would compliment one another. The sociability of the real estate world would balance out the solitariness of the writing one. Instead, I find a tension between them. It's interesting.

Well, that's all for tonight. I have to try to write a bit more on the sequel for Harlem Redux. About two thirds of the first draft has been done. I wanted to rewrite the opening chapters, then rework the body of the investigation. I'm writing this story for me. I'm not sure I'll attempt to have it published. I want to rediscover the joy of writing, and I'm thinking that keeping the story tucked away might be a good way to do that.

Or am I being naive?

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