To Be Continued

There were a few dried leaves in the open doorway. My footsteps echoed on the wooden floor as I entered. Most of the tables were gone. There were a few lonely books on the remaining bookshelves. It was the last day that Spellbound bookstore was open.

I shook Brett's hand and took back the copies of my novels. He told me he doesn't know what he'll do next, but he acknowledged with a smile that there are a lot of opportunities. I wished him well.

Then he said something that sort of surprised me: he wanted me to let him know when my next novel comes out.

It surprised me for a few reasons. First of all, I was touched that even in his situation, he wasn't thinking only of himself, but was reaching out to someone else.

Second, it reminded me that I have another novel to work on. That might sound silly: how could I forget that I have this novel to finish? Well, this has been kind of a tough year for me, and several factors combined to give me a pretty tenacious case of writer's block. The novel kind of slipped out of the Top Ten things I was considering ... until Brett reminded me.

As I walked to my car, I made myself stop and consider the plastic bag in my hands. It held four novels and they were all written by me! When I was younger, the mere thought of that would have made me do a silly little dance of joy. And those books made me realize that I want to create another one. It's been sitting on my computer and needs me to finish it.

So I want to thank Brett one more time. His dream hasn't ended: he's just going to move on to the next one. His attitude about that has been positive and hopeful, not angry or disappointed, which is a lot better than I would have reacted. And he's inspired me to keep up with my own dream. I have actually written seven whole sentences today and I'm going to keep going!

I think we'll both be okay.

I wish you all the best in 2017.

Farewell

I just learned this past week that our local bookstore, Spellbound, will be going out of business. Once again, this town will not have a bookstore! A few years ago, I wouldn’t have thought it possible that a university town could exist without a bookstore, but I guess times are changing.

I know we’ve made great progress in technology, and I can’t imagine life without the Internet, but I sometimes ask myself if it’s all for the better. I want to wander among the bookshelves, letting a particular cover catch my eye. I want to flip through a few pages, or check out the back cover. I want to find something unexpected. I can’t do any of that on a website where you have to search by author or title. I don’t always know what I want!

I went into Spellbound to express my condolences. While I was there, I investigated the shelves, letting my eyes roam. I bought a book that I never would have expected beforehand, a book about eloquence. It was a good find, one I never would have made if I had to search for something specific. I’ll miss that feeling of discovery.

I realize that I could browse among the books in a library sale or at the recycling center, but that has a drawback: if I buy a book that way, my money is going to a good place, but not to the author. As you can imagine, I want to do what I can to support other writers.

I’ll miss Spellbound for other reasons, too. Brett and Marcy are two of the nicest people you’ll meet and they’ve been very supportive of me and other local authors. They held a book signing for several of us and they held a short story contest that got me out of my comfort zone last year, something I needed. They were always friendly and fun to talk to. I wish them the best and hope they’ll find some new endeavor that they’ll enjoy.

This also means I don’t have a local outlet for my novels right now. Some people don’t buy things online (amazing as that seems) and I liked to be able to tell them they could get one of my novels at Spellbound. Now the only outlet in town is the trunk of my car, which holds three copies of each novel. I don’t take credit cards or offer espresso, though.

I realize that we can’t stop progress. I realize that most people are perfectly happy shopping online because it can be quite convenient and lets them avoid the crowds. (I especially understand that at this time of year.)

But I’ll miss the personal service, the friendly face of the proprietor. I’ll miss the sense of surprise when I turn a corner to find something I never expected. I’ll miss the warm atmosphere.

I guess I’m old-fashioned.

      But I also think it’s possible that some things that are left behind shouldn’t be.

Halloween Story

To get you in the mood for Halloween, here's my entry from the short story contest last year. I hope you'll enjoy it ... and have a spooky Halloween!

Fall

The ice cream truck’s days were numbered.

All summer long, Alice had gritted her teeth and turned up her iPod so she could try to ignore the siren song of “Pop! Goes the Weasel.”

She’d drawn the shades and kept her eyes focused on the monitor to erase dancing visions of the Choco Taco, the chocolate chip cookie sandwich, the Nestlé Crunch bar, the Drumstick.

She’d nibbled on dry-roasted peanuts and dried fruit, reminding herself of the many advantages of working at home.

But now winter was peering at her over the horizon, its icy claws and cold breath only weeks away, while autumn lay faint upon the landscape, wrapping colored leaves around it to stay warm.

Maybe because she saw it as her last chance, Alice let her gaze stray from the spreadsheet and wander as if by chance to the front door. She peeked at the little tin of peanuts on the corner of the desk, imagining them covered in melted chocolate, and then at her billfold, remembering the lonely five-dollar bill inside.

She could hear the truck inching along the street, its peppy song faltering at her hesitation.

“Oh!” She dug through the billfold to claim her prize and ran out onto the lawn. The white truck was already two houses down so she cried out, waving the bill over her head.

The truck’s red brake lights glared at her.

Alice hustled along the side of the truck, panting, and stopped to consider her choices. As she did, two small figures darted from the truck and ran in irregular spirals on the lawn behind her, chittering and jabbering.

Happy customers? The vendor’s children, glad to be temporarily free?

Alice focused on the list of enticements.

A voice spoke from behind her: “That’s the wrong truck.”

The two spiraling figures halted. Alice thought she saw one turn its head for an instant, revealing what looked like a gaping skull, but it quickly averted its face. She realized it must be wearing some type of mask, although it was still early for Halloween.

Alice pivoted to see a small, blond-haired girl on the lawn behind her, standing with arms crossed and lower lip jutting out. The girl wore a blue dress with the faces of Anna and Elsa on the front and looked to be about six. When Alice checked, she could see the girl’s mother sitting on the porch steps, absorbed in her phone. A teddy bear lay forgotten on a blanket near the porch as the girl approached Alice.

Alice knelt down so she was almost at eye level. “Would you like to go ahead of me, sweetie?”

“No, it’s the wrong truck,” the girl insisted. “Run away!”

Alice blinked away the enchanting images of ice cream treats to see both childlike figures turn grinning skull-faces toward her and extend clawed hands in her direction. When she looked over her shoulder, she saw a plume of black smoke rising over the top of the truck like a wave. Dark shadows moved inside. The girl hadn’t been fooled, and now Alice wasn’t either.

Alice clutched at the bill in her hand and closed her eyes against the horrific visions. She wanted to live! She wanted a better job, friends, someone who cared what happened to her. Ice cream wasn’t the answer.

All Alice had to do was scoop up the little girl and run …

Then Alice heard the girl scream and opened her eyes.

Not two feet away, the girl’s mother was leaning forward, extending a hand with two crumpled bills in it toward the gaping maw on the side of the truck.

“No, Mommy!” the girl cried. “Stop!”

“Mommy will be with you in a minute,” the woman said in a faraway voice.

Something dark inside the truck was reaching forward.

It was as plain as the spreadsheet in Alice’s empty house: the little girl had left the safety of her blanket to warn Alice and now she was about to lose her mother because of it.

Alice took one last look at the little girl’s tear-streaked face before jumping up to knock the woman aside.

“No,” Alice said in her loudest voice as she held out her hand, “I was here first.”

She felt something cold and scaly close on her wrist. The five-dollar bill slid from her grasp, to be replaced with something even colder and squishy. Alice didn’t look at it as she took a large bite.

It was the most delicious treat she’d ever tasted. Chocolate and vanilla, with a hint of peanuts, all swirled together into near perfection. Alice smiled.

The wind sucked in its breath. The purple sky spat lightning and coughed thunder. Smoke enveloped the truck, Alice, the shrieking goblins. With an orange flash and a popping sound, all of them vanished.

Mother and daughter were left clutching at each other, kneeling on the lawn with their heads pressed together. After a few moments, they looked up.

“She was a nice lady,” the girl said.

The mother shook her head. “Who? I don’t remember.”

“That’s okay, Mommy.” The little girl smiled at the vacant spot near the curb, where the last wisps of smoke were dissipating. “I do.”

©Diane McCallum 2016

The Little Things

I write about a lot of different topics on this blog. I've detailed some of the joys of writing and some of the frustrations. Sometimes I'm thrilled and sometimes I'm dejected. That comes with the territory, I guess.

Sometimes when I'm a little down, a great event will raise my spirits. Those are the good times! More often, however, it's something small ... and I have to be willing to recognize it. Here are three examples.

I needed to double-check some tax information recently. (Even when you make no money, you have to report your earnings and expenses to the IRS. I joke with my husband that I'm helping reduce our tax rate with my lack of sales.) I found a discrepancy, so I had to look at some of the reports online. While I was doing that, I looked up Outsider on amazon.com (that still hasn't gotten old) and scrolled through the information. As I did, I noticed something strange:

Amazon.com Feb 4, 2016

The last time I looked, Outsider was at about five or six million in the Amazon Best Sellers Rank, certainly not 224,181. This could only mean one thing so I hopped over to Createspace.com and ran a report. Sure enough, for the first time in over two years, I'd sold a copy of Outsider on Amazon! I don't know how this happened or who bought it, but it was cause for celebration. (To keep things in perspective, I noticed that my other two novels are still ranked at around five or six million.) To that lone buyer out there: thank you!

I stopped in at the local bookstore this weekend to check on my inventory and chat with the proprietor. When I arrived, there were others ahead of me so I browsed while I waited. As I did that, I heard the proprietor say to another woman, "That's one of our local writers." I looked around, but there was nobody else in the store ... so then I realized that she meant me! That doesn't get old either.

Last but not least, I was at a medical establishment recently, waiting for someone to actually come see me after I'd waited for about 45 minutes. I was annoyed, trying to think of some way to catch someone's attention so I could voice my displeasure. Instead, I allowed myself a bit of whimsy: I imagined my characters storming the place, pistols in hand. I saw terrified office assistants cowering while my characters spread out, shouting, "Okay, what's the deal? Why's no one seeing Diane? Get to it!" I actually smiled and was in a better mood when the doctor did arrive, so I didn't even say anything snide. That's a win.

Each of those little things added up to something that made my week better than it would have been otherwise. I try to notice and embrace these kinds of things because they're what make the not-so-good times bearable.

What are the little things that made your week better? Be on the lookout because they can try to sneak by without you noticing them. Take note ... and enjoy!

Contest Result

I hope you had a fun and entertaining Halloween! How it got to be the end of October is beyond me, and I feel a renewed sense of urgency about working on The Other Side. Once the Two Big Holidays get here, things will get crazy and it will be harder than ever to find time, so I'll try to get as much done as possible before then.

Since I spent two whole blog posts on the short story I was writing, I didn't think it would be fair if I didn't let you know how I did in the contest. Out of five entries, I came in second. I think that's respectable, don't you? (I was actually quite pleased.)

I want to thank Spellbound Bookstore & Cafe for holding the contest. Some of the entries were quite chilling! If you're in the Pittsburg area, you can stop by the store and check them out. Mine is called "Fall."

I have a friend who's going to partake in NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) next month. If you've never heard of that, it's a group that encourages writers to write 50,000 words of a novel during the month of November. You can find out more here: NaNoWriMo

I did NaNoWriMo in 2006 and it was incredible to me how many words I had to write each and every day. That's not easy, especially for someone like me, who often writes in short bursts. It was a struggle and the result will probably never see daylight, but it was good for me and I did it!

All of this reminds me that I need to keep pushing myself and my writing. I don't want to fall into a rut and I don't ever want to find that I've stopped writing altogether, no matter how hectic and crazy my life gets.

Thanks again for following my blog. Please help me spread the word about my Penumbra series of novels.

Keep It Short Part 2

Believe it or not, I finished my short story and submitted it to the Spellbound bookstore contest today, one day short of the deadline. Whew! My husband was a big help, with a lot of good suggestions, as I rewrote it several times. I think it's pretty good now and we'll see what happens.

Now I have a much better idea about what makes a short story different than a novel. I touched on this last week, but here it is in a little more detail:

1. Character development happens a lot more quickly. It seems you've barely identified the character before you have to demonstrate how that character evolves. I'm used to letting a character evolve over chapters, not paragraphs.

2. You have to get to the point quickly ... and you can only have one or it's going to get messy. This is very hard for me because I usually have a bunch of points I want to make and I'm not that fast at getting to any of them. I had to listen closely to my character to find out what she wanted to tell me about her wishes and decisions for this story.

3. Almost everything in a short story has to be there for a reason. In a novel, I can have some scenes that might set the tone or give you a little more insight into a character but aren't strictly necessary to the story. In the short story, I couldn't do that. I had to cut out all kinds of descriptions and sidetracks. Now almost every word has a reason: a "lonely" item reflects its owner, a spreadsheet showing the character's job at the beginning is used to show what choice she must make later, etc. This was more of an issue in this story because I was limited to less than 1,000 words, but I think it's true in most short stories.

4. My favorite aspect of a short story, though, is that you can pay close attention to every sentence because there are fewer sentences to work with. I went a little crazy with metaphors, but I really enjoyed getting to use more of them and stretch myself a little. I included more details in some scenes than I might have done if I was in the middle of a long chapter. Whether it made the story better or not might be up for debate, but usually more detail means a stronger story.

This does not mean I'm going to stop writing novels! I might try this again, but I think I'm too hooked on novels to give them up in the near future. I leave it up to you if that's good news or not!

Thanks again for reading my blog. Please spread the word about my Penumbra series!

Keep It Short

As if I didn't have enough distractions to keep me from working on The Other Side, I'm now in the process of trying to write a short story.

This all started when the local bookstore, Spellbound Bookstore and Cafe, posted on Facebook that they're having a costume contest and a short-story contest this month. I know I would fail miserably if I tried to come up with a good costume (although one year I did go as a Ghost Writer), especially one based on a fictional character, but writing is sort of up my alley.

One problem is that the story is supposed to be scary. To quote their Facebook posting: "In 1,000 words or less, writers are challenged to weave a tale of fright and intrigue that will leave our customers with the shivers." A tale of fright and intrigue is not exactly up my alley. I find that I tend to go for the upbeat, not the horrifying. (Is that a bad thing? Not necessarily!)

The main drawback is the maximum word count of 1,000. I don't write short stories, usually, because ... well, because I'm wordy. You should know that if you've read any of my novels. I do know how to go on, but not necessarily how to get to the point (or how to limit myself to only one point).

And I guess that's one reason I'm doing it. I need to rein myself in, learn to get to the point a little sooner. I need to see what's really important in the story, instead of throwing a lot of words on the page and hoping something good comes out of them.

Also, it's a chance to do some "real" writing. What I mean by that is writing, not editing or rewriting or trying to come up with a blurb. Creative, fun, "all-new" writing, which I haven't done much of for a while.

It's a lot of fun. It's frustrating as can be. I hope it's good for me.

If nothing else, it's good practice. We'll see if I can come up with anything good.

As always, thanks for reading my blog.

Browsing for Books

Today I had a fun experience that I hadn't enjoyed for a while: I went into a bookstore and browsed.

I've always loved to read, but I'm afraid I haven't done as much of it as I should have for the past several years, mostly because I've been spending a lot of time writing, editing and trying to get noticed. I still enjoy scanning a shelf, though, letting my eyes guide me to something interesting, so it was nice to have the opportunity again, thanks to my local bookstore, Spellbound. (And yes, I walked out of there with three books.)

Some people don't have a local bookstore, sadly, and this is becoming more common. So what should you do if this is the case? You can try a site like amazon.com, but you kind of have to know what you want there. Most of the time, book shopping isn't a matter of knowing what you want in advance.

Thanks to Facebook, I have found a website that can help. If you like to browse through books without exactly knowing what you want, this is the place: iAuthor
(It's based in the U.K. but has authors from the U.S. as well.)

The fun thing about this site is that you can search for books by either genre or theme. There is an amazing variety of themes, too: Fiction written in the first person singular, Books with a fiendishly clever twist, Female Protagonist, Funny Mysteries & Crime Fiction, etc. When you select a theme, you will see a whole page of book covers (and you can click on 'More" at the bottom). When you hover over a cover (wow, look at that fun phrase!), you can see a blurb on most of them. If you click on the cover, you can see all sorts of information about the book, the author, how to buy it, how many people liked the cover or the blurb, and how many people have recommended it. You can also learn more about the author.

I'm afraid I could get lost in there, but that wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing. Give it a try sometime.

In case you're interested, you can find my novels in the themes Character-Driven Sci-Fi, Science Fiction and Space. I'll probably add them to more themes when I can. It's another way I hope to get my novels discovered.

I hope you'll take a look. Who knows? You might find your next favorite book!

Spellbound Book Signing

I made an appearance at Spellbound Bookstore and Cafe today as part of their Grand Re-Opening at their new location in Pittsburg, KS. I want to thank Brett for inviting me as one of the local authors for a book signing. If you go to their Facebook page, you can see a photo of the local authors in attendance (including me) and read reviews of their books (including Outsider). Here's the link: Spellbound FB Page

It was fun! We were there for two hours and I had plenty of time to chat with the other four authors, each of whom provided me with insights and good conversation. We all learned things from each other. Thank you to Kathy Manning Gronau, Loren Chancey, Melissa Fite Johnson and Richard Crooks!

Diane at Spellbound Bookstore 4-25-15

Quite a few people came in while we were there and I was asked some very good questions. It's always fun to "talk shop" and revisit how I managed to write my novels. I got some good feedback on Outsider and even sold two copies, so I'd call that a success.

It was good to see people supporting the local bookstore, too. I hope that will continue because it was sad when Pittsburg didn't have one. I wish Spellbound continued success!

I'm ready to do it again!

Distractions

I've been trying to work on the fourth novel but there have been a few distractions.
I finally got over my virus, only to be struck by monstrous allergies, which are threatening to rob me of my voice again! Argh. (See last week's blog about my voice.)

I also spent some time finishing up my second video, this one about my second novel, Another Shot. If you haven't seen it yet, I encourage you to do so here: Another Shot video  Let me know in the comments what you think. It was fun to make, although this one seemed a little harder than the first one. I think I was trying too hard this time around because I wanted it to be better than the first. I don't know if I succeeded or not, but at least it's out there.

I've also been spending entirely too much time on Facebook lately. I "blame" it on my good friend Bill Zahren (we met at Morningside College), who keeps posting updates on his first two novels. He's hoping to get the first one published this year and I wish him every success. He has a page where you can follow his progress here: Bill Zahren-author FB Page

Despite all this, I am getting some work done on the fourth novel. I'm pleased with the first seven chapters (although they could always use a little tweaking), but now I need to move on to the rest and make them better. In a few weeks, I'll let you know the title of the novel, but I'm still swirling it around in my head to see if I think it works.

The local bookstore, Spellbound, is planning some type of event for local authors in Pittsburg, KS, next weekend and I'm hoping to take part in it. I don't have any details yet, but I will post them on Facebook, Google+, my Amazon author page and my Goodreads author page as soon as I get them. Stay tuned!

And that's the latest! Thanks again for your support.

Shop Locally

I know the phrase is usually "shop local," but I have trouble with that so I hope you'll forgive me for my title. Once an English major ...

However you want to say it, it's a good plan to shop the smaller stores in your area. I'm not one of those people who will say the big chains are evil, because they do employ a lot of folks, but it's nice to support the entrepreneurs who start a business in your town/city/community. I've never had the courage to try it, but my mother ran her own bookstore successfully for years, so I know how much it means for customers to bypass the big chain store and stop by the smaller shop.

As a writer, I also want to support my local bookstores. I've had copies of my novels in the Vintage Stock store in Northpark Mall in Joplin, MO, for a few years now, but since Hastings closed, I've been unable to offer them in Pittsburg, KS. That has now changed! All three of my novels are now available at Spellbound Bookstore and Cafe in Pittsburg!

Here's their Facebook page: Spellbound Bookstore on FB

I want to thank Brett for taking a chance on my novels and offering them in the new location at 1012 S. Broadway. Check them out if you get the chance!

Thanks again for your support.