Thank you to all of you who have sent in your pre-order forms for Liz A. Stratton Closes the Store! Here is some added incentive for those of you on the fence:
Since I originally posted the pre-order offer, I have decided to market the paperback at $13.99, not $12 as I originally said. However, you can still pre-order the book for $10! You will save $3.99 if you order the book now!
Also, I want to extend the offer to anyone who'd like to review the book: I will send you a free e-copy of the book if you will post a review to Goodreads, Amazon.com and/or wherever else you think it might be read or seen. If your review is especially nice, I can include it in the front matter of the paperback and on the book's website!
Thank you all for your support. This venture is pretty terrifying to me, and it is nice to have so many people believe in me.
m
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Monday, February 6, 2012
Free short story #2--Halloween!
Here's another bit for the "Original Content" month. This story was written, guess when, in October last year as a response to NPR's 3-minute fiction contest. However, it was not finished before the deadline for entry.
No worries. Now you all can enjoy it!
m
No worries. Now you all can enjoy it!
m
Halloween
by Maren Bradley
Anderson
Some people swore
that the house was haunted. They were wrong. It was just me hiding out. I guess
I can understand how they’d make that mistake. I didn’t look right, and the
house was creepy and empty, and I only came out after dark ‘cause Sam was at
work then.
See, Sam didn’t
know that I was pregnant or that I was still in town. He thought I was in
Albany, going to art school—so did everyone else. I passed as just fat for a
long time, but when the baby got to wiggling inside me, and my belly started to
round out, I knew it was time for me to disappear, though I couldn’t afford to
be far away.
Some guys, you
know, just can’t think about being dads. One I was with was hurt by his
daddy—actually, most of the guys I’ve been with were hurt by their daddies,
come to think of it. But, anyway, most of them don’t never want kids. Sam was a
little different: he said he didn’t want kids now. That’s why I hid. Sam
could say “no” to a pregnancy, but he wouldn’t say it to a baby. A boy baby,
especially if I named him “Sam.”
It wasn’t so bad,
living in the “haunted house.” I hid my car out back, so Sam wouldn’t see it.
It was still warm, so I slept with the windows open. I figured out where to
turn the water on, and when the utility company came, I hid in the house and
turned it back on when they left. When I needed food, I walked to the Circle K
and got enough burritos to last a while with my school money. On Thursdays, the
public library is open late, so I went and checked out stacks of books on
babies to read during the week.
Sam called my cell
almost every day and told me how much he missed me, though it wasn’t every
day after a while. He said he was busy and asked when I was coming home. I
would pat my round beach-ball belly and tell him “soon” and imagine the look on
his face when I knocked on the door holding his son. It made me smile and love
him even more.
I don’t really
know what I was thinking. Maybe that the baby would just slide out of me, and I
could surprise everyone with him? But on Halloween, my belly hurt for the whole
day. When I started howling in pain, I finally dialed 911. The operator
actually said, “Isn’t that the haunted house?” when I gave her the address.
When they heard me shrieking inside, even the EMT guys hesitated on the dark
doorstep as the trick-or-treaters who had been daring each other to ring the
bell ran away. Cowards.
The baby was
backwards, and, insurance or no insurance, I needed a C-section. He is so
beautiful, with hair so blond it makes a white halo around him. But I couldn’t
leave the hospital without someone’s help. I chickened out and called my
surprised parents.
They were going to
call Sam, but I begged them not to. Instead, I convinced my dad to drive me to
Sam’s place with Little Sam so I could tell him myself. I dragged my sore body
to the apartment’s front door with our baby in my arms and rang the bell,
grinning ear to ear.
Polly answered it
clutching a filmy robe and a cigarette.
Nothing was ever
the same again after that.
Sunday, February 5, 2012
Pre-Order LASCTS for only $10
http://dl.dropbox.com/u/10615079/PreorderLiz.rtf
I am holding a pre-order sale for Liz A. Stratton Closes the Store!
All orders postmarked before the book's official launch date (sometime this spring) will be $10 each. Regular price will be $12.
Click the link above and fill out the form. Mail the form and a check to me, and I will send your book to you the day it is available!
Be the first on your block to read the saucy adventures of Liz and her friends!
m
I am holding a pre-order sale for Liz A. Stratton Closes the Store!
All orders postmarked before the book's official launch date (sometime this spring) will be $10 each. Regular price will be $12.
Click the link above and fill out the form. Mail the form and a check to me, and I will send your book to you the day it is available!
Be the first on your block to read the saucy adventures of Liz and her friends!
m
Friday, February 3, 2012
Thursday, February 2, 2012
LASCTS Proof Arrives!
I have the proof copy of Liz A. Stratton Closes the Store in my hands!
It feels goooood.
It feels much better than the beat-up manila folder which holds the only other current draft of the book. Looking at it, I could actually believe that someone might give me money to take it home with them. It makes my head a little swirly.
It is also a little surreal.
I mean, that beaten-up pile of pages held together by a monster binder clip represents a work, more specifically, a work in progress. The book is, well, a book. It's done. It's all it can be.
This shouldn't bother me. I've completed another novel and have begun edits on a third novel since I sent Liz out to the first editor that rejected it. I am so done with writing this book.
But that loud Editor's voice is still hollering in the cage in the back of my mind, "What if???" Then she rattles the cage bars and bangs her cup against the floor. She's quite noisy.
She is right that the proof needs to be gone over carefully, at the very least to clean up any random orphans (single lines/words on a page), and other formatting things that will make the book scream "SELF-PUBLISHED BY A HACK." I'd prefer to avoid the "hack" part of it. But I'm not re-writing the book at this stage.
The other scary part of the proof is that once the physical book is done, I still need to launch/promote it. I'm still figuring that part out. But one part of that is to put myself out there and attach ME to the book.
You know the Editor in her cage? Her sister, Ms. Self-Doubt has a cage behind the editor. I try never to let her out, but, fuck, she is even louder than the Edtior.
"What if your book doesn't sell? What if it's an embarassment? What if people laugh at you for even trying this? You are so pathetically grandiose. What a fraud."
The Editor I can ignore until I need her. Ms. Self-Doubt has the ability to crush me into inaction. However, the answer to all her criticism and fear mongering is the same:
What's the worst that could happen?
What's the best that could happen?
Here goes.
*holds nose and dives in*
m
It feels goooood.
It feels much better than the beat-up manila folder which holds the only other current draft of the book. Looking at it, I could actually believe that someone might give me money to take it home with them. It makes my head a little swirly.
It is also a little surreal.
I mean, that beaten-up pile of pages held together by a monster binder clip represents a work, more specifically, a work in progress. The book is, well, a book. It's done. It's all it can be.
This shouldn't bother me. I've completed another novel and have begun edits on a third novel since I sent Liz out to the first editor that rejected it. I am so done with writing this book.
But that loud Editor's voice is still hollering in the cage in the back of my mind, "What if???" Then she rattles the cage bars and bangs her cup against the floor. She's quite noisy.
She is right that the proof needs to be gone over carefully, at the very least to clean up any random orphans (single lines/words on a page), and other formatting things that will make the book scream "SELF-PUBLISHED BY A HACK." I'd prefer to avoid the "hack" part of it. But I'm not re-writing the book at this stage.
The other scary part of the proof is that once the physical book is done, I still need to launch/promote it. I'm still figuring that part out. But one part of that is to put myself out there and attach ME to the book.
You know the Editor in her cage? Her sister, Ms. Self-Doubt has a cage behind the editor. I try never to let her out, but, fuck, she is even louder than the Edtior.
"What if your book doesn't sell? What if it's an embarassment? What if people laugh at you for even trying this? You are so pathetically grandiose. What a fraud."
The Editor I can ignore until I need her. Ms. Self-Doubt has the ability to crush me into inaction. However, the answer to all her criticism and fear mongering is the same:
What's the worst that could happen?
- I'm embarassed.
- I lose a little money.
- I learn something.
What's the best that could happen?
- I'm celebrated.
- I make lots of money.
- I learn something.
Here goes.
*holds nose and dives in*
m
Wednesday, February 1, 2012
Free Short Story!
In the spirit of "Original Content Month" here is a free short story for you. This is the first of many, I hope.
Enjoy!
This story was written a couple days ago, based on the image linked to below. The image is from the Postsecret blog. That blog is a treasure trove of story ideas. Go check it out (after you read my story).
See the picture.
Yes, I am drawing the people around me on the train. I also want them to confront me about it. So far, only one person has. No, it wasn’t him, that guy today who nodded off even though he made eye contact when he noticed me staring. I would have liked him to stand up and wobble over to me like the molded Jello he resembled and asked me what the hell I was doing. Instead, he allowed his chin to sink into the folds of his extra chins and his fat eyelids to slide into his cheeks. When he snored, his jowls rippled. It took me the whole train ride, but I made a flip-book that captured that ripple. Unless a miracle occurs and he loses like half his body weight, he’ll be dead before I’m thirty-five.
Yesterday, I drew a skinny girl who was all knees and elbows who had that “I am starving myself to be a model” look to her. I could tell she wasn’t drinking enough water by the way the skin bunched around her elbows and knuckles, but that’s not a good opening line, you know? “Hey, your makeup looks great, but if you don’t drink two pints of water before you hit that audition, you’re just going to dry up and blow away.” When she noticed me sketching, she tilted her chin up and turned her head to what I know she thought was her “good side,” just like all those girls do, assuming that I was trying to capture her particular beauty. Actually, I was fascinated by that rough, pinched elephant skin on her elbow. She would have freaked out if she’d seen my sketchbook, with its page of cross-hatched joints and puckered hands. I was tempted to drop it in her lap as I exited the train, but I’m honest, not sadistic.
I digress.
A month ago when it was not as cold—in fact, on the last fine day of fall—I boarded the train, picking my victim/subject even before I sat down. He had a romance novel-cover ruggedness about him; just the kind of person I normally reject as a subject. Seriously, beautiful people are way over-rated as artistic subjects. My all-time favorite painting is one by Renoir of an ancient lady. The quality of the light was beautiful, the stroke work magnificent, yadda yadda. But in the miles of creases and lines on her face, the painter catches the weight of the years and the sadness as some sentimental old feeling wallops her, but she tries to hide it because she is sitting for a portrait by the famous painter. God, I wish I could paint like that.
You never see that kind of emotion in a beautiful face.
Well, I never had until that guy on the train. He was looking out the window. No, he was leaning on the window, his classically chiseled jaw with its end-of-the-day stubble pressed against the glass. He had a catalogue-shoot ready grey scarf draped around his shoulders in a big “O” over his navy pea coat. If it hadn’t been for his posture and the truly tortured stare wound around his eyebrows, I would have sketched the amputee with the cigar sitting a row in front of him.
I opened my pad, tried to be discrete as I pulled my yellow pencil from behind my ear, and set to work, focusing on Mr. Ima Torturedsoul. His posture was a little challenging because I had to think of the glass as a solid thing, without drawing it as solid, which is something I’ve struggled with. Finally, I got his head-set right and began working on those eyes. The way he looked heavenward every now and then reminded me of an archangel in one of Michelangelo’s paintings, those angels who are supposed to be in “rapture,” which my mom used to say was churchy-talk for “full of God.” I always thought they looked ready to come.
Not Mr. Torturedsoul. He looked like he was trying not to cry in public by tilting his head back so the tears couldn’t escape his eyelids. That’s never worked for me, personally, but I loved the way his chin pointed to the sky like a butte, and his throat undulated down to his Adam’s apple.
When he finally threw his arm across the seat in front of him and buried his face in the crook of his sleeve, I actually said, “Shit!” out loud, but not really loud enough for anyone to hear over the train noise and the music blaring from Mr. Iwillbedeaf’s earphones behind me. I flipped to a new page and attacked the whiteness with the side of my now-dull pencil, scrubbing to get as much dark pea coat onto the paper as fast as I could. The drape of the fabric, the way gravity drew his shoulders toward the center of the earth, he looked like a Dali painting, melting, dissolving, weeping.
The train lurched. I will have to erase that line later, I remember thinking to myself. But this time when I looked up at my subject, he was staring directly at me. There was no tragic beauty about his face now. The chiseled face was stony. The eyes, flinty. I felt myself shrink away from his anger. The train slowed, and I knew I had to get off, no matter which stop it was, so I stood and scuttled down the aisle. I glanced over my shoulder and said “Shit!” again because he was standing and following me. I made it to the door before he caught me by the elbow and spun me around.
“Who the hell are you?” he hissed into my face.
“Just Jack,” I said.
“What were you doing?”
“Sketching.”
He snatched my sketchbook and stared at the drawing of him draped over the back of the bench. He flipped to the other page of him as an archangel. He visibly relaxed and handed the book back to me.
“Nice,” he said. “Remind me to sue you for invasion of privacy.”
The train doors opened, and I backed out onto the platform.
As the train slid off, he flipped me the bird.
Asshole.
*****
Did you like it? Leave a comment below!
Didn't like it? Tell me why!
Enjoy!
This story was written a couple days ago, based on the image linked to below. The image is from the Postsecret blog. That blog is a treasure trove of story ideas. Go check it out (after you read my story).
See the picture.
Sketchy
Yes, I am drawing the people around me on the train. I also want them to confront me about it. So far, only one person has. No, it wasn’t him, that guy today who nodded off even though he made eye contact when he noticed me staring. I would have liked him to stand up and wobble over to me like the molded Jello he resembled and asked me what the hell I was doing. Instead, he allowed his chin to sink into the folds of his extra chins and his fat eyelids to slide into his cheeks. When he snored, his jowls rippled. It took me the whole train ride, but I made a flip-book that captured that ripple. Unless a miracle occurs and he loses like half his body weight, he’ll be dead before I’m thirty-five.
Yesterday, I drew a skinny girl who was all knees and elbows who had that “I am starving myself to be a model” look to her. I could tell she wasn’t drinking enough water by the way the skin bunched around her elbows and knuckles, but that’s not a good opening line, you know? “Hey, your makeup looks great, but if you don’t drink two pints of water before you hit that audition, you’re just going to dry up and blow away.” When she noticed me sketching, she tilted her chin up and turned her head to what I know she thought was her “good side,” just like all those girls do, assuming that I was trying to capture her particular beauty. Actually, I was fascinated by that rough, pinched elephant skin on her elbow. She would have freaked out if she’d seen my sketchbook, with its page of cross-hatched joints and puckered hands. I was tempted to drop it in her lap as I exited the train, but I’m honest, not sadistic.
I digress.
A month ago when it was not as cold—in fact, on the last fine day of fall—I boarded the train, picking my victim/subject even before I sat down. He had a romance novel-cover ruggedness about him; just the kind of person I normally reject as a subject. Seriously, beautiful people are way over-rated as artistic subjects. My all-time favorite painting is one by Renoir of an ancient lady. The quality of the light was beautiful, the stroke work magnificent, yadda yadda. But in the miles of creases and lines on her face, the painter catches the weight of the years and the sadness as some sentimental old feeling wallops her, but she tries to hide it because she is sitting for a portrait by the famous painter. God, I wish I could paint like that.
You never see that kind of emotion in a beautiful face.
Well, I never had until that guy on the train. He was looking out the window. No, he was leaning on the window, his classically chiseled jaw with its end-of-the-day stubble pressed against the glass. He had a catalogue-shoot ready grey scarf draped around his shoulders in a big “O” over his navy pea coat. If it hadn’t been for his posture and the truly tortured stare wound around his eyebrows, I would have sketched the amputee with the cigar sitting a row in front of him.
I opened my pad, tried to be discrete as I pulled my yellow pencil from behind my ear, and set to work, focusing on Mr. Ima Torturedsoul. His posture was a little challenging because I had to think of the glass as a solid thing, without drawing it as solid, which is something I’ve struggled with. Finally, I got his head-set right and began working on those eyes. The way he looked heavenward every now and then reminded me of an archangel in one of Michelangelo’s paintings, those angels who are supposed to be in “rapture,” which my mom used to say was churchy-talk for “full of God.” I always thought they looked ready to come.
Not Mr. Torturedsoul. He looked like he was trying not to cry in public by tilting his head back so the tears couldn’t escape his eyelids. That’s never worked for me, personally, but I loved the way his chin pointed to the sky like a butte, and his throat undulated down to his Adam’s apple.
When he finally threw his arm across the seat in front of him and buried his face in the crook of his sleeve, I actually said, “Shit!” out loud, but not really loud enough for anyone to hear over the train noise and the music blaring from Mr. Iwillbedeaf’s earphones behind me. I flipped to a new page and attacked the whiteness with the side of my now-dull pencil, scrubbing to get as much dark pea coat onto the paper as fast as I could. The drape of the fabric, the way gravity drew his shoulders toward the center of the earth, he looked like a Dali painting, melting, dissolving, weeping.
The train lurched. I will have to erase that line later, I remember thinking to myself. But this time when I looked up at my subject, he was staring directly at me. There was no tragic beauty about his face now. The chiseled face was stony. The eyes, flinty. I felt myself shrink away from his anger. The train slowed, and I knew I had to get off, no matter which stop it was, so I stood and scuttled down the aisle. I glanced over my shoulder and said “Shit!” again because he was standing and following me. I made it to the door before he caught me by the elbow and spun me around.
“Who the hell are you?” he hissed into my face.
“Just Jack,” I said.
“What were you doing?”
“Sketching.”
He snatched my sketchbook and stared at the drawing of him draped over the back of the bench. He flipped to the other page of him as an archangel. He visibly relaxed and handed the book back to me.
“Nice,” he said. “Remind me to sue you for invasion of privacy.”
The train doors opened, and I backed out onto the platform.
As the train slid off, he flipped me the bird.
Asshole.
*****
Did you like it? Leave a comment below!
Didn't like it? Tell me why!
Monday, January 30, 2012
Launch ideas for "Liz A. Stratton" and FREE book
I have just ordered a proof copy of Liz A. Stratton Closes the Store from CreateSpace.com, and it will be here in a week. It will be fun to see the manuscript in book form! Once I decide the proof is up to snuff, I'll figure out when I can make it available to the masses.
One thing I have to decide is how to handle the "launch." Book launches can be tricky things. In order to play the game correctly, one has to create enough buzz before the book comes out so that everyone goes to Amazon.com ideally at the same time on the same day to buy the book so it rockets high up in the Amazon "rankings" for the book's category. This, in theory, will help create more buzz for the book, and will probably make the title easier for consumers to find when they search Amazon.
Do any of you have ideas for effective book launches? I would be very grateful for some advice.
In fact, I will give a copy of LSCTS (in any one format, print or electronic) to anyone whose idea I use to launch the book. (Yes, giveaways are launch strategies, but I could use some giveaway ideas, too).
Thank you in advance!
m
One thing I have to decide is how to handle the "launch." Book launches can be tricky things. In order to play the game correctly, one has to create enough buzz before the book comes out so that everyone goes to Amazon.com ideally at the same time on the same day to buy the book so it rockets high up in the Amazon "rankings" for the book's category. This, in theory, will help create more buzz for the book, and will probably make the title easier for consumers to find when they search Amazon.
Do any of you have ideas for effective book launches? I would be very grateful for some advice.
In fact, I will give a copy of LSCTS (in any one format, print or electronic) to anyone whose idea I use to launch the book. (Yes, giveaways are launch strategies, but I could use some giveaway ideas, too).
Thank you in advance!
m
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