Hill House

 I've been on a bit of a Shirley Jackson journey lately, mostly because I'm teaching We Have Always Lived in the Castle in the context of Jackson's female gothic. Also, I'm a sucker for anything New England gothic having written my own nonfiction volume on the history of Danvers State Hospital. I'm currently watching the 1999 version of The Haunting and hoping to finish the Netflix version of We Have Always Lived in the Castle with the kids on Monday as their semester ends Thursday. Because of the trials and tribulations of remote learning, we haven't been able to go quite as deep as I hoped.

Despite all the COVID restrictions and the fact that I haven't left my house since...well...last March, our library has begun doing curbside pickup and it's become something of an addiction for me so this week I picked up Susan Scarf Merrell's Shirley, a novelized imagining of Shirley's life told from the point of view of their young houseguest, Rose, whose professor husband has accepted a position working with Shirley's husband Stanley at Bennington College. 

I really, truly wanted so much more out of this book which was adapted to film in early 2020 starring Elizabeth Moss as Shirley. The movie was exceptionally well done but the book itself was equally disappointing. I had a hard time buying the fictional Shirley. While I clearly never met her, I've read enough about her and enough written by her to have a solid idea of what Shirley Jackson might have been like. In this novel, she's painfully unlikeable and very much a slave to domestic life. Where she did indeed wind up trapped in domesticity, she did not sit back and accept her lot. She rebelled in her writing and against her husband. Instead, this book portrays her as a woman who has given up, given in to her husband's proclivities for cheating with his students. The narrator of the story, Rose, is equally difficult to empathize with. She idolizes Shirley, which of course is understandable, but she also lets Shirley bully her and push her around. When Rose finally makes an attempt at writing something of her own, Shirley chastizes her and essentially tells her that writing is her sin, her calling-- not Rose's. 

I'll admit that I found myself simply skimming a good deal of the book. There was too much tell without much show and the endless narration became tedious and did very little to move the plot (of which there wasn't much) along to a satisfying end. Overall, a bit of a disappointment. I think I'll stick to reading Shirley herself!

SURPRISE! A book review!

 Thanks to the global pandemic I'm working from home so I don't have many educational adventures to draw from to revive this blog. Instead, I've got some book reviews to share because let's be real, I've had a lot of reading time on my hands. So what do you say? Ready for an onslaught of my unsolicited opinion?

Let's talk Every Last Fear, an ARC I was excited to request from NetGalley. (If you're a reader/reviewer and don't already have a NetGalley account, be sure to sign up!)

So, the book. 

Matt Pine has been living with his brother's incarceration for years. Older brother Danny was convicted of murdering his girlfriend after an argument at a house party. Matt's family had a hard enough time dealing with his incarceration on their own until the Adlers got involved, a husband and wife director duo who created a documentary for Netflix about Danny's case, a film that proclaimed his innocence and portrayed their hometown as a cesspool of hicks marching around with pitchforks and torches. The Pines-- Liv, Evan, Maggie, Tommy, and Matt- were forced to relocate and their lives were upended by Danny's case.

Now a film student at NYU, Matt learns even more devastating news: the rest of his family, having taken a spur-of-the-moment vacation to Mexico, has been brutally murdered. With the help of FBI Special Agent Keller, Matt tries to unravel his family's last days, figuring out why they went to Mexico in the first place and, more importantly, why they became the target of this heinous crime that was clearly staged to look like an accident.

This book is a nail biter. I stayed up late trying to finish it because I could not put it down and was absolutely not prepared for the twists and turns. I'm generally able to figure out who the real perpetrator is early on in a novel but this book kept me guessing until the very end. The dialogue was realistic, every character drawn out and drawn well, even those who were eliminated in the very first line of the book. No character was expendable; each one played a part and no one was introduced just to have more names on the page. If you like cookie-cutter, cozy mysteries this is not the book for you!

Where's the writer?

My internship with SFWP couldn't have come at a better time as we are about to put out two new releases on May 1. Wendy J. Fox's If the Ice Had Held and Elizabeth Geoghegan's eightball are currently in presale on Amazon and SFWP's website and we have been working hard to push both books.

Given that SFWP is such a small team and there are only two spring releases I've had the opportunity to interact with both authors during the presale marketing process. Both Wendy and Elizabeth are extremely active on social media and both just attended AWP where their books went out into the world for the first time (ARCs don't count!).

The part of the process I did miss out on for their books was the initial editing phase and cover creation though I have to say, in my extremely humble opinion, that both books came out absolutely beautiful. My job has been to work with both authors to find the best outlets for marketing the book, getting shoutouts and early praise. Both books received positive Kirkus reviews and a heap of advanced praise. Wendy's book was included on BuzzFeed's 37 Amazing New Books To Add To Your Spring Reading List. I'll also be helping both authors find contests that they're eligible for.

I'm also helping with the final go-through of the upcoming fall release, Dan Ford's Body Broker. I'll have the opportunity to do marketing for the book when we get closer to its release.

Beyond that, I've had the chance to read a number of contest submissions which has been an interesting experience. I use Submittable for Dark Ink so I'm generally fine with being rather ruthless about turning down a submission because it's for my own magazine and I know exactly what I'm looking for. With the contest, I have to weigh out more factors. Is this something I think has wide appeal, or am I the only one who's ever going to like it? Does this author seem to have a voice of his/her own, or does it sound like something I've read before? It's a different way of approaching the writer in the process since these contest submissions are supposed to be blind. We have to judge the writer simply by what we get off the page in one reading. It's an interesting, and challenging process.

Overall, this entire experience has been very enlightening, especially watching how each individual author has created a platform and markets their work. I also have enjoyed watching how they interact with Andrew. The relationships are very strong and very easy going, but Andrew isn't afraid to tell his authors what he needs from them to make their books a success. I'm looking forward to what's still to come in this internship!

Surprise!

This week's question is what surprised me about my internship.

To be honest, there hasn't been much. I don't know if it's because I was already neck deep in running my own press, or because I had nerded out enough and done enough research that I saw most of the work coming a mile away.

However, I will say that I learned something that has been imperative to my growth as a potential publisher. When I started Dark Ink I was taking over something that was already established. I bought out a press that was failing but had already established its structure and overall business practices. The previous owner relied strictly on Amazon as a "distributor" and that's what we stuck with when we rebranded as Dark Ink. We discovered almost immediately that Amazon is NOT friendly to independent authors or independent presses. In fact, they do their level best to throw up roadblocks that make it very difficult to do high volume business. In order to combat that problem, we started using IngramSpark which was designed specifically for indie publishers. They function as a print on demand warehouse so that indie publishers can make their books available to stores like Barnes and Noble-- essentially expanded distribution that functions better than Amazon's limited distribution options.

One thing that happens to be very important to stores like B&N and even a lot of small indie stores, is the ability to 1) order at wholesale prices and 2) return unsold copies. Neither of those options is available through Amazon because they are too busy trying to scrape the very last penny out of the soul of every indie publisher who uses the service. Once we started using Ingram, we saw an uptick in orders and distribution but we were still moving fewer than 100 units per month of any given book at any one time (except for Dee Michel's Friends of Dorothy which flies out of the warehouse faster than it can be printed).

When I started working with Andrew distribution was the first thing I asked him about. He had mentioned a company called IPG which functions as his "warehouse". However, they do far more than that. They also handle a good deal of the marketing including printing and sending out ARCs, soliciting reviews, and pushing sales. That pushes the selling volume into the 10,000s and puts authors in a much stronger marketing position.

I was surprised to learn that this option existed because I assumed that all marketing in the indie world fell to the publisher and the author. What IPG does bridges the gap between indie and traditional publishing in a creative way. It makes me hopeful that there are options for indies that will actually allow them to gain a greater foothold in the market, allowing them to play on the same field as the traditional houses.

A surprise that makes everyone smile.

A Few of My Favorite Things

But first, a shameless plug for Ed Farrell's debut novel with Dark Ink Press:
White Angel. Clergyman Mickey Powell has been accused of murder...

And that's all I'm going to give you. The book is stunning, set at General Seminary in New York, which coincidentally has appeared in numerous episodes of Law & Order. Mickey Powell is the perfect embodiment of the human side of an Episcopalian minister, desperate to clear his name and solve a murder he most definitely didn't commit.

Ed has also entered his book into the Santa Fe Writer's Project's 2019 Literary Awards! I may be a bit biased since I published this book, but I think it's a winner. Hopefully, guest judge Carmen Machado will think so too.

When I was first assigned to SFWP for my internship I didn't know what to expect. Would I be treated as an equal, or a lowly MFA student who couldn't do much more than proofread emails? I wondered whether I would be happy with my internship and learn anything valuable, or if it would be just one more thing I'd resent having to add to my schedule.

A few weeks before the semester started and our internships officially kicked off, Andrew sent out an email asking if Beth and I would be interested in starting our internships early. Of course, we both said yes because who wouldn't? I jumped in on social media and helped straighten out the Instagram account which, prior to the start of the semester, consisted mostly of photos of Andrew's weekends at the Mussel Bar in Bethesda. Of course the weekend Instagram crowd still loves the cocktail shots but it's been a blast creating and posting a variety of content that helps promote the current catalog, new releases, the literary magazine, and the contest. I've also found that grammar humor goes a long way for the reading crowd! Who knew?

What I love most about this internship is I was allowed to slide right in and start working as if I had been there all along. There was no awkward "getting to know you" phase, no moments of feeling measured up or judged. I was just accepted as part of the team and allowed to operate using my best judgment. I was given access to all of the social media accounts after Andrew joked that it wasn't worth stealing his identity or personal information, and I am constantly being sent items that can be posted. I'm never at a loss for content. If anything, we have far more than we'll ever have an opportunity to use.

The best part of working with Andrew is being able to tell him what I want to accomplish and he provides me with everything I need to do it, including sending me hard copies of books and connecting me directly to the authors he prints. He's even given me the opportunity to do small projects for the authors above and beyond my media work.

I've also gotten to be chief reader on the contest entries that we get in which has actually been a blast. I love reading people's work and seeing what they've decided to send out into the world, knowing that it's one of the scariest things a writer can do. I'm pulling for each and every one of them while occasionally being astonished by the patent lack of preparation some writers put into their submissions. All I can say is, don't submit until your piece has been edited to its best!

Now I'm embarking on a final read of a manuscript that will be coming out in the fall and prepping the media for that novel. I'm also prepping media for the two releases coming out in May which both just earned favorable Kirkus reviews which was really exciting.

All in all, I think it would be really difficult for me to find something I DON'T like about this internship...

All Good Things

I'm taking a break from everything by watching a psychological thriller called All Good Things with Ryan Gosling and Kirsten Dunst. I do this a lot while working on my thesis to help ground me in my work. The movie is based on the real-life disappearance of Kathleen Durst, wife of New York real estate heir Robert Durst. It's live action creative nonfiction in a way and makes me think about my tone and my approach as I'm writing. I also watch a lot of documentaries. A favorite is Cropsey, a doc about an urban legend that grew from the foundations of the abandoned Willowbrook State School in Staten Island. Rewatching Cropsey actually helped me re-form the beginning of my thesis.

I thought that writing my thesis while doing an internship (plus working and running my own press) was a recipe for stress and possible disaster. Funny enough, I've never felt more organized and settled. I fell into a groove with my internship that was like slipping on a favorite sweater. Andrew welcomed me onto the team as if I had always been there, had always been a part of the team. He assumed I knew what I was doing and treated me as such. So far I think I've done well proving that his confidence in me was just.

It didn't feel like a beginning of any kind, more like a continuation, even though this year has been a new beginning in many ways. I started my married life, transferred to a new school, started work on two new books.

But it was also a continuation of things. Continuing on the path to my MFA, continuing to work on the house.

Then there were the restarts. Picking up my art again. Then striking a deal with a publisher to restart the first book I ever wrote ten years ago, prepping it for a relaunch.

So here I am, learning the ins and outs of SFWP which is the press I would most like Dark Ink to look like, and I'm having a blast. I've had the opportunity to learn more about marketing, evaluating full-length pieces for a contest, and pulling marketing material from the short pieces that will make up the current issue of the Quarterly. I've gotten to see how a strong, effective team of readers and writers works together to make the press run smoothly.

I've also gotten to watch, first-hand, Andrew's passion for the books that he publishes and the authors he works with. Even though his own work is part of SFWP's catalog, he's more concerned about getting his authors as much exposure as possible and that their work is handled with the utmost care and enthusiasm.

This week he sent me a small collection of works that I had requested from him so that I could start taking some staged photos of the books like the large publishing houses do. My favorite bookstagram feed is Putnam books. Every image is carefully taken and curated to highlight their publications in a smart, and marketable way. They create images that people want to share and that's what is most important in the world of social media marketing. You can't just catch someone's eye-- you have to make them want to tell the rest of the world about what they've seen.

Stupid me, I went and looked at their feed and just got distracted for a good ten minutes. I also may or may not have entered a contest for a free copy of The Editor by Steven Rowley.

What was I talking about again? Oh yes. Beginnings.
I'm beginning to appreciate even more that books, reading, writing, and teaching all of the above were all the right choices.

Intern(al) Affairs

All I want for Christmas...
...Is two weeks of my life back. Rather than celebrating the holiday with my family in the comfort of my home, I celebrated it in a fog of anesthesia and painkillers. The weekend before our last week of school leading up to vacation I found myself in the emergency room doubled over with a stomach ache that felt a lot like a small dumpster fire right below my rib cage. It was 4:00am when I woke my husband up and dragged him out of bed to take me to the hospital. By 11:00am the next day I was in surgery having my gallbladder removed. Turns out it was four times its natural size (not that I know what that is but it sounds bad) and super infected. Next time my stomach hurts like that I'm just going to go play in traffic.

The best part of the whole scenario is that I had never had surgery before and it turns out I'M A GIANT BABY. I left my husband in my room when they wheeled me down to the OR but the minute the nurse started explaining the surgery to me I started to sob. Uncontrollably. Ugly crying with no way to wipe my face because I was connected to every machine they could find. I was so freaked out they had to call up to the floor and have them send my husband down.

So they give me the sedative as they're wheeling me out of prep and down the hall to the operating suite and I remember asking the nurse how old the OR was because it had that cool old turquoise tile on the walls. She said it was about fifty years old, then asked me why. That was about the time the sedative started to kick in and they got me on the table. The last thing I remember is the nurse asking me if I knew anything about Belchertown State School. I think I mumbled something about it being my favorite and may have mentioned my thesis...

The moral of the story? Even under anesthesia I still babble about asylums.

A few weeks before I had elected to start my internship with the Santa Fe Writers Project a little early. I agreed to take over doing social media marketing as the press wasn't seeing the level of interaction the founder, Andrew Gifford, had hoped for.

As authors, most of us have discovered the value of an active social media presence. As much as we might hate it, Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram have become necessary evils. Luckily SFWP has a lot going on right now, making it really easy to create content and post daily. The press just opened up their annual literary awards contest which is one of the largest events the press hosts. This year Andrew was hoping to increase the number of entrants so we took to social media to do it, reviving the press' Instagram feed.

Even though Facebook is currently the largest social media platform with the greatest number of users, Instagram has overtaken Facebook in relevance. The algorithms that allow Facebook posts to reach a tailored audience are complicated and can't yield any kind of marked results. Instagram, on the other hand, has simple algorithms driven by hashtags, much like Twitter. Many social media users have actually abandoned both Facebook and Twitter in favor of using just Instagram which multiplies engagement opportunities exponentially. All that is a long-winded way of saying there's already been a major increase in traffic to the SFWP feed, most of it direct interaction with the posts and the individual authors whose work is being tagged and shared.

Starting this week I'll continue to work with SFWP's social media accounts but with a greater focus on the next issue of the Quarterly. The contest is open and running until July 15th so I will continue to post about the contest but I will also be working to solicit submissions to the Quarterly, post Kindle daily and monthly deals, and promote the spring releases which I'm very excited about.

Since I'm already in the swing of things, I know that I will be getting a great deal of experience in marketing and working with a team to create engaging content. I also have the pleasure of working closely with Anne Pinkerton, a Bay Path MFA alum! Andrew will also be having me read some of the contest entries and some of the Quarterly submissions which I'm also very much looking forward to.

I'm sure that my understanding of this internship will continue to grow and change as the semester goes on but right now I'm really having a great time watching the interaction and the excitement that SFWP stirs up in writers and readers alike.

Signing off for now but I insist you go check out SFWP!
xoxo

The Book Store Desert

To steal a phrase from one of my MFA classmates, I live in a bookstore desert. One would think that in a place like Springfield where there are nine library branches that there might also be a bookstore but there isn't. We have a new casino, but no bookstore. The Mass Mutual Center, but no bookstore!

Once upon a time, in a city long, long ago, there was an oasis in that desert: Johnson's Books. When my grandmother was young she would walk from her house in Winchester Square down to Main Street just to go to Johnson's so she could buy art supplies. That was in the late 1940's when she was a student at the High School of Commerce (where I now teach creative writing). Then, forty years later, when I was just a tot, I remember my parents taking me to Johnson's and plopping me down in the basement where they had a children's section and play area. They would go upstairs and shop for books while I played with the other children under the watchful eye of the children's bookseller.

I don't remember the exact date that Johnson's disappeared from downtown Springfield (WGBY's Gone But Not Forgotten tells me it was in 1998; I would have been a senior in high school), but I do remember feeling its loss keenly. Of course, by then there were bookstores in the Holyoke Mall. We had Waldenbooks and Borders, eventually a Barnes and Noble in the plaza that sprang up behind the mall. As long as I had a place to buy books, I didn't really think twice about it.

It wasn't until I self-published my first book in 2006 that I began to see the distinct difference between the indies and the big chain bookstores. Broadside in Northampton was the first store willing to carry that book (which was terrible by the way, but Bill still managed to sell it); Borders at the mall was the second. Even though it was a chain store, Borders operated very much like an indie. Each franchise manager had a great deal of freedom in event planning and they chose to support local authors as often as possible. Sometimes I wondered if that wasn't what contributed to their eventual demise.

Barnes and Noble, on the other hand, wanted (and still wants) nothing to do with self-published authors. They are willing to deal with indie authors as long as they stock their books through a warehouse service like Ingram Spark. Because they're more concerned with the bottom line than with discovering the next great writer, B&N will only carry a book if they can get a deep discount by buying wholesale. They also want the option to return unsold copies of the book and get some sort of return on their investment which is not something that indies do.

Having been on both sides of the fence-- as both indie author and now indie publisher- working with bookstores like Broadside, Blue Umbrella in Westfield, and Book Club Bookstore in South Windsor makes my life a whole lot sweeter. Jess Martin at Blue Umbrella was my greatest supporter when my first novel came out and again when I launched my independent press. She ordered as many copies of my book as possible and offered great consignment rates, knowing that I would likely reinvest a good deal of my profits back into the shop (she knew I couldn't walk out without buying at least one book for myself). Later when I launched Dark Ink Press she hosted book launches for my authors, talked up their books, and even made sure that there was media coverage for each and every book.

Independent bookstores have become the nexus of the communities in which they reside. Blue Umbrella was instrumental in the revitalization of downtown Westfield and on its coattails rode the burgeoning art community that has now made Westfield a destination. Broadside has been an anchor on Northampton's main drag since 1974. Johnson's, though defunct for many years, still carries with it the memories of an entire city. My mother still has a Johnson's bag tucked into the cabinet under her sink. Some of us (ahem) even collect Johnson's memorabilia. And, in a giant twist of fate that can only happen in the world of books. my business mentor is none other than...Mr. Charlie Johnson of Johnson's Books.

And with that supreme book nerd moment, I leave you to run out and patronize the nearest indie bookstore you can find.
Bon chance!

xoxo
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Meet the Press

As part of our Intro to Publishing class, I had the opportunity to talk with Beth Collins, Production Manager at Beacon Press. Having majored in English and minored in film, Beth had initially planned to make documentaries. A few years after finishing her undergrad at Mount Holyoke, she went to Boston University for television production but found it difficult to find jobs that weren't freelance, which is certainly a common complaint amongst documentary filmmakers. Eventually, Beth started working as a temp at Houghton Mifflin while still making documentaries on the side. Thus began her road to publishing.

After realizing that she wanted a home in publishing, Beth found that Emerson College offered a certificate in publishing and she completed the program, adding some crucial publishing skills to her repertoire. Soon after finishing the program at Emerson, Beth was hired at Beacon.

As a production manager, Beth works closely with the finished manuscripts to get them through publication and ready for marketing. After a manuscript has been edited, Beth's department has to book for up to nine months, prepping it for printing. At any one time, Production may have up to ten books in different phases of production and each book may be in a different phase on any given day.

The production team, with Beth's guidance, works to ensure that the edits have been input correctly, that the covers look good and the jacket copy is correct, and that the finished product is ready for manufacture. Prior to production, cover designers have chosen a font package that will be used throughout the book and the cover itself is created. All of this is fed into InDesign and the book layout is finalized. The manuscript is then sent out to be typeset and printed to one of the group of printers that Beacon works with consistently. The production director (Marcy Barnes) is responsible for maintaining the list of printers as they do change frequently. If the book will become an eBook or Audiobook, those services are outsourced to companies that specialize in those formats.

At Beacon, authors can be certain they will be working with the same production specialist throughout the entire process, ensuring continuity through the entire project as production is where all the finishing touches happen. In many cases, Beth says, the books are rather straightforward academic texts that don't vary much in layout, making the process relatively simple to streamline. On occasion Beacon also produces books of poetry, in which case the author is generally responsible for directing the layout and appearance of the book as poetry takes its own form in the printing process.

As a reader, Beth says she's excited about a couple of Young Adult titles that Beacon will be producing which is something they haven't done before. The books have quite a few images and text boxes and Beth says she is looking forward to seeing what that process is like. Knowing my interest in mental health, Beth recommended The Protest Psychosis: How Schizophrenia Became a Black Disease by Jonathan Metzl. "I was a production assistant at the time this book was published so I just reviewed the page proofs and jacket, but it’s stuck in my memory," Beth said of the book. Now Beth has a great deal more responsibility but says she greatly enjoys being a part of the production team at Beacon and having a hand in producing meaningful works of nonfiction.

Time Travel

"Imagine yourself as a young twenty-something who would like to work in a large publishing house."  

When I was applying to college I told my parents I wanted to major in English because I wanted to become a writer. Here's how that went:

Me: I want to major in English.
My mother: ......
My father: .......
Me: No really. I want to be a writer and I need an English degree for that.
My mother: .......
My father: What the hell are you going to do with an English degree? You can't make money as a writer. You need a backup plan. Like teaching.

And so, that's what I did. I went to Elms with the intention of majoring in secondary education so I could teach high school advanced placement English and creative writing while I wrote the great American novel in my spare time.

Then came my early 20's when I accidentally fell face first into special education. It's a long story, and one that involves getting a mechanical pencil jammed in my hand (see earlier posts) but I found myself working at a residential treatment facility and researching my first nonfiction book (even though I didn't know that's what it was at the time).

Even though I was enjoying teaching and applying to grad school for special education, I still occasionally crept through the job postings in the publishing industry. I was never brave enough to apply for them but I certainly dreamed. I thought I wanted to be an acquisitions editor, slogging through the slush pile to find that one diamond in the rough that would become the novel of the year, of the decade, the voice of a generation. I pictured myself kicking off my Jimmy Choos and propping my feet up on the desk in my cubicle while I read manuscripts. Later I thought I might want to be an editor, going through manuscripts with my red pen, helping to shape a book the way Max Perkins did with Thomas Wolfe.

Then I discovered that I hate editing. I hate reading raw material. I also discovered that I'm much better at interacting with authors and helping them build a platform for their already finished book. Eventually, I also discovered the production aspect of a book, creating a schedule for a book's creation and launch, writing jacket copy, having input on the cover design. Laying out a book and formatting a text gives me a much greater sense of accomplishment than editing does. In fact, I've discovered I have neither the attention span nor the patience to edit a manuscript.

I still enjoy the thrill of meeting a new author who has something to say and hearing them pitch their work. I love discovering writers who have an incredible story that wasn't right for other publishers but might be right for a small indie press that can devote more time to the work. But most of all I love being the last person to touch a book before it's released, the person who coordinates all the moving parts and makes the author's vision a reality. Production is the behind the scenes machine that makes the book an actual thing, a product that we can put in a reader's hand and say, "Enjoy".

I'm still teaching and still an idealist when it comes to publishing. I now have friends in the industry and I love listening to them talk about the authors they're working with or the great manuscript they found that they hope the editors will love. I still sometimes wonder what that would be like. But I'm also a realist and I know that I want to be on the other side of the fence, behind the curtain, working to put the finishing touches on a book. Just call me The Wizard....

xoxo
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Mistakes Were Made

This week we were asked to take a look at some common publishing terms and reflect on our understanding of the business jargon.

The word of the day kiddies:
Errata.

And no, I didn't choose it because it sounds like erotica. Get your minds out of the gutter.

In publishing errata is a loose sheet detailing errors found in a printed book. It's a literal accounting of your failures as a writer even AFTER having gotten published. Now isn't that a slap in the face.

I find a certain kinship with this word because this list of errors reminds us that at every step of the publishing process we are all human. Even though there is a team of professionals working tirelessly to make your work the best it can be for public consumption, nothing can ever be 100% perfect.

When I wrote my first novel I assumed I would just edit it myself. I would print it out, chapter by chapter, and line edit my own work.

Then one day my eyeballs exploded and my brain liquefied.

No, not really. But that's what it felt like. So I hired an editor and I thought, now it will be perfect.

I got it back and my head exploded a second time.

My editor and I swapped that manuscript back and forth at least four times and likely could have done it more (if I hadn't gone broke) and still found more errors.

Once it was published, what's the first review I got on Amazon? One star because the book was "loaded with errors".

That's it. I quit.

No, not really. But my first thought was, how the hell could this book still have errors? I've been staring at it for SIX YEARS. It has to be right by now! But it will never be right. It will never be 100% because the human brain can't pick up every error every time. There will always be mistakes and I've come to the conclusion that these are what makes the book human and reminds the readers that there is a real living, breathing person behind those pages. A whole team of them in fact! And none of them is perfect.

All of this is a longwinded way of saying, don't pick on authors when you find errors in their books. Even the largest publishing houses miss typos or small grammatical errors.

And no, your author friend WILL NOT appreciate you handing them your own carefully constructed errata after you read their book. If you do this, you will no longer have friends.

xoxo
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The Adult Thing

Today a student was trying to guess how old I am, which is a popular game for all ages. It's great how skewed their sense of time is because most of them assume I'm in my 20's. Although I'm beginning to think they're judging less on looks and more on maturity level...or lack thereof. So I finally tell them that I'm 38 and one student tells me I look younger than her mother who is 33. I almost said, "That's because I don't have a teenaged girl in my house" but I caught myself. Her next question was, "How old was your mom when she had you?" I told her both my parents were 30 when I was born and of course she blurted out, "That's OLD!" I laughed because their concept of "old" is so warped, but then she seemed to reconsider her opinion. "Actually, that's not old. That's responsible!" Gotta love teens.

This week in class we are being asked to consider what it means to be an "accomplished" writer and it's funny because this is something I think about often. Like most people, I buy a book, I read it, and sometimes I'm left with barely lukewarm feelings and all I can think is, "How did this person get published and not me?" I think it's only natural that we as humans spend a lot of time comparing ourselves to others. If you asked me ten years ago what I would consider accomplished, I likely would have said something about the NYT bestseller list and a piece published in the New Yorker. At one time I even had dreams of seeing one of my books become a film.

By the time I actually had a finished book in my hand, I lowered the bar a bit. Accomplished began to mean simply published. I thought getting an acceptance from an agent or publisher would mean I had "made it" as a writer, until I started papering my office with rejection letters. I knew I had a good book and it occurred to me that an agent/editor's job is so largely subjective-- I would never be able to please everyone with my work so I had to work to fulfill my own desires.

Once my first book was self-published and I ambushed the world with it, I realized that true accomplishment as a writer is having someone come up to you with your book in their hands as they tell you how much your book meant to them in some way. My greatest accomplish became the conversations I had with folks who had read my book and come away from it having learned something. I enjoyed the press, I saved every article (and still do) written about my work, and though I could collect these little mementos of accomplishment, it meant more to me that I had started a long-running conversation.

I didn't consider myself successful until I started getting messages from strangers who thanked me for my work. When you write about something as complicated and socially taboo as mental health, positive reactions to your work are cherished. When someone reaches out like that, it means you've broken down a barrier, scaled a wall, kicked a stigma in the face. The greatest success I've had as a writer is turning my book into someone else's accomplishment. Some folks who read my books would never have openly discussed mental illness without my books as a vehicle. I've raised their social consciousness in a very small, but powerful way. On top of that, participating in the MFA program has helped me remember, regularly, that as long as I keep writing, I will have accomplished something profound, even if it never sees the light of day.

Blogging Out My Laziness

So as you can see, I haven't updated this blog in two years.

TWO YEARS.

My goodness, what have you missed? Let's see. I got engaged, changed jobs twice, wrote two more books, under contract for three more, started a PhD, dropped a PhD, started an independent publishing company, adopted a handicapped dog, and pissed off an entire town.

I've tried a number of times to maintain a blog or even keep a journal and I've learned one very important thing: I suck at it. Do I write every day? Absolutely. Do I have the discipline, hell the organizational skills, to blog or journal every day?

OBVIOUSLY NOT.

However, after a false start with a PhD that made me miserable (more on that later) I decided I wanted to finish my MFA in Creative Nonfiction instead and classes start on the 27th. I was looking over the syllabus for one of my classes and realized there was a module about blogging which necessitated either maintaining a current blog or creating a new one and let me tell you, I panicked. Hard. The only reason I'm even able to update this blog is that it's tied to my Google account otherwise I don't think I ever would have remembered the login info. I'm not kidding.

Now here I am, writing an entry for the first time in two years so I don't look like the laziest grad student ever (I'm not-- I promise. I just have literary ADD) and I don't even know where to begin! I started the MFA in CNF two years ago, shortly after my last post. Originally I had started in Creative Writing-- pure fiction- but the program wasn't what I was looking for. I finished and published my first novel in between that program and the new one but I had always loved nonfiction and wanted to learn how to make my work more accessible to wider audiences.

Here's something you might not know about me: I like asylums. No seriously, it's true 😂When I started writing in 2006 I was determined to write just nonfiction. I wrote very clean, very fact driven accounts of each asylum accompanied by full-color images that I had taken. My first book, Behind the Walls: Shadows of New England's Asylums was exceptionally well received. It sold out every time we printed it and it became a worldwide bestseller. It launched my career and got me a lot of press, but I noticed a rather disheartening thing: the people who attended my lectures were the same folks over and over again. They were nurses, psychiatrists, teachers, professionals in the mental health field. They were the people who were already used to talking about mental health every minute of every day. No matter what I did, I couldn't seem to broaden the scope of my work, this book I had worked so hard to produce, that I was so proud of, that was now held in college libraries up and down the East Coast.

I eventually realized that it was my writing that was the problem. I was the problem. My approach was dry, factual. I was never really able to convey what it felt like to walk into one of these buildings with nothing but a camera and walk the halls of some of the most infamous buildings in human history. So I turned to fiction instead. I wove my favorite asylum into a novel using as much historical fact as I could while weaving this tale of mystery that could have happened on the wards of Northampton State Hospital in 1959. Hospital Hill also became a bestseller and eventually won a regional literary award; I suddenly saw a shift in the folks who were coming to my lectures, who were now willing to talk about mental health in the context of a cozy mystery. They connected to Valerie, my main character, and they reviled the evil doctor who made her life miserable. They wanted more.

So I wrote another novel. Another asylum. Another mystery. But I wanted to do more with my writing. I wanted to go back to my roots and write more nonfiction, but I knew I didn't want to produce another textbook. I wanted to write something that people would enjoy reading, like a novel, while learning a whole ton of random stuff about asylums and mental health.

Enter the MFA in CNF. It was the kick in the ass I needed to learn how to write for a reader, a real reader like the ones who might pick my book up at the bookstore. I stretched my own weird reading boundaries (very weird, trust me) and started reading writers like Cheryl Strayed and Ariel Levy. I picked up memoirs by my favorite actors like Lauren Graham and missives on writing by Stephen King and Charles Bukowski. I even got up the nerve to cold call some of my favorite authors and bend their ears about their own books.

Am I babbling? I'm babbling. Dammit.

Long story short, my goal this semester is to keep this up to date and let you all in on my writing life. I'm beyond excited about this particular class this semester and for completing my thesis, but also about the next few books I have on tap. I realize too that I'm not the only one going through this process, especially the process with my current publisher, and it might be nice to share with other writers. Who knows, maybe I have some wisdom to impart! Let's hope...

Do come back.
xoxo
Poison

The Paint Chip Post

I don't know how many of you fine folks are aware of this, but I decided to take my writing to the next level and make it official: I'm getting my MFA in Creative Nonfiction at a local university and at the beginning of the semester we were asked to choose a paint chip color that represents us right now. Now no one who follows this blog should be surprised by my answer- gray. Shocker, right? In fact over the past few years that we've actually been putting the house together rather than taking it apart, I've chosen to paint each room a slightly different shade of gray. The kitchen has a blue undertone while my studio is more of a minty shade. My love of gray is lifelong but right now, here is how I came up with my response:

I chose the paint chip, "foggy day" but not for the reasons one might think. First, I have a deep and abiding love for the Victorian era and there is no more Victorian weather than fog. As a kid I grew up watching Jeremy Brett star as Sherlock Holmes in the miniseries and I became addicted to the image of 19th Century London with its gas lamps and cobblestone roads. The color gray was synonymous with the air of mystery that wound its way through Arthur Doyle's prose, making his stories come alive.

Later, when I started developing an interest in history, gray also lent itself well to my growing appreciation of all things mysterious and creepy. Gray has gotten a bad rap, being generally associated with doom and gloom, but often times it is doom and gloom that inspires incredible bouts of creativity—like every horror film ever made. Most every corner of my imagination is clouded with fog; the fog of history, of spirits, of death.

I have some very vivid memories associated with the color gray, most of them of photographing various buildings. The first time I photographed Northampton State Hospital for the Insane was in the fog. It was winter and the ground was covered with snow. Because the hospital is at the top of a hill in the bowl of the Pioneer Valley, the fog settled in and hovered just about the roof line of the asylum, floating in wisps in and out of the empty window frames. The fog made the red brick of the hospital look like granite instead, like a desaturated photograph.

There is a great deal of mystery in the fog and dark and because of that, human beings have become inherently frightened of both, yet the waning light brings us closer to a state of true meditation where we are uninterrupted by the demands of the day. But instead of embracing the fading of the day, human beings have learned how to fight the darkness with artificial light that draws out the hours, pushing back the nights when we could be embracing the darkness of thought and the spark of imagination it ignites.

I love gray, rainy days when all I want to do is sit, cozy in my reading chair with my old Rochester lamp burning and my cat in my lap, pretending I’m in 19th century London around the corner from Baker Street. Or I imagine I’m walking through the haunted halls of Ohio State Reformatory, or the back wards of Westborough State Hospital. I will settle in with a cup of tea watch my favorite thrillers, or perhaps an episode of Masterpiece Mystery, the opening credits of which also fostered my love of grey scale, the muted, less colorful sibling of black and white. To this day when I hear the sounds of the lady fainting in the opening credits, I get a thrill and remember watching Agatha Christie's Murder on the Orient Express for the first time.

Strangely gray fog also transports me to our campsite on days when summer thunderstorms rock our trailer and a heavy mist rolls off the reservoir. Sometimes we will take the boat out after one of these storms and it feels as if we are the only ones on the water in a land that time forgot, bobbing along on the gray, misty waves until the sun breaks through and warms the day, chasing the gray away.

In many ways, the grayness of fog is also the herald of sun and light. It is the end of the storm, the gray day that breaks and brings warmth and new beginnings. It is the absence of color, yet the foundation of so many. It is the fog of creativity in which I live on a near constant basis, and I find I’m alright with that!

So there you are kiddies, don't be afraid to think gray thoughts and if any of you teachers out there are looking for an activity to try with your students, grab a few paint chips at your local hardware store (go ahead, they're free!) and ask your kiddos to do the same. I bet you'll get some interesting answers!

xoxo

Paste

#GiveaBook

Given that I'm sitting on my couch surrounded by pets and piles of books, now seems like a good time to make sure everyone knows about #GiveaBook. For every time the hashtag is used on social media, Penguin Random House will donate a book to First Book, a literacy nonprofit. Use the Give a Book  website and giving map to find a drive near you and give the gift of reading!

That said, I'm off to keep reading Maggie Mitchell's Pretty Is which I highly recommend to anyone who enjoys a good bit of mystery.

Happy holidays!

xoxo
Paste

Foot in Mouth Disease

Wow. I really need to get on the stick and keep up with this blog but honestly, my students fry my brain to the point where I have taken up drinking heavily. In fact last year one of my favorite students asked me if the job was making me an alcoholic. Hmm. How did he know?

The other day we were sitting in the teacher's room discussing some of the boneheaded things the kids have said since school started. I'm working in a new program with a whole new team and unfortunately there isn't an ounce of maturity among us which makes for a very entertaining work day.

Yesterday's gem was one of the kids having a meltdown and telling a staff member (and remember I'm quoting this as coming from the mouth of a child who is locked up, NOT condoning his use of language in any way):

"Dude, you're so retarded you need a helmet and a short yellow bus." *mic drop* Kid walks out of the room.

However I would have been the winner this week had we been playing "How Far Can You Stuff Your Foot in Your Mouth" and the answer would be all the way up to my hip. One of my students attempted to steal one of my pens by shoving it down his pants (their uniforms don't have pockets for safety reasons) and then he showed me what looked to be yet another pen. This is the conversation that ensued:

Me: Don't you dare steal my pen. I'll get fired.
Kid: (no response, shoves pen down pants)
Me: Dude, how many pens do you have in there right now?
Kid: (no response, raised eyebrows)
Me: Ok. That's it. GIVE ME EVERYTHING YOU'VE GOT IN YOUR PANTS RIGHT NOW.

FAIL.

Dude, I Just Want to Chill

I know I've been a little shouty about my job lately. In fact one of my coworkers who perhaps knows me best out of everyone here has avoided calling me that last couple of days because I can't control my internal volume when I talk to her about work. It could also be because I admitted to her that I get so angry that I spit all over myself while talking...

Yesterday I went to check in with a student who's technically no longer on my caseload but I have a misplaced sense of responsibility to my students who I believe deserve some level of continuity and support. I talked to him for a minute about his progress reports, his impending academic graduation (he'll still be locked up for a few more months after graduation), and his plans for after his release. Not too long ago he told me that he had decided he wanted to try going to a community college, just to see if he could do it. Of course I told him I would do everything in my power to make that happen for him because I (naively, apparently) believe that everyone deserves an opportunity to explore their futures and discover their bliss, as the kids say.

When I went to check in with his current teachers, they asked me why I would encourage this particular student to go to college because he just doesn't "have it". They told me it was a waste of time to think that this student would ever be released and make something of himself.

Erm...what?

Aren't we paid (handsomely I might add) to do just that? Ok, maybe the majority of these kids will walk out our door just to return in as little as a day, but does that mean we stop encouraging them altogether? I can't understand the attitude that, because these kids are locked up, they shouldn't be told what's out there. I love talking to these kids about my college experience; it truly was the best years of my life. And even though I preface most of those conversations with the reminder that I'm the world's biggest nerd, my passion for education is occasionally catchy. The kids see how much I love to learn and how much I love to share what I've learned which is why some of them do finally say, "Hey, I'd like to try it."

Why on earth would I ever stop encouraging that?

"It's a Fun Day to Be Incarcerated"

It's 8:17 am and I've already taken three Excedrin.

See, last November I changed jobs. Again. Raise your hand out there if you're surprised by that. No? No one?

I'm sure if you scroll through my blog archive you'll see that the longest I have ever taught in one place is the year and a half at the Dark Side and the year and a half I just wrapped up at the Dark Side's Satanic twin, the Center Ring of Hell School. Most people would say that at this point there must be something wrong with  me, but those of you who read this blog regularly also know that I've worked in some of the most hellish and horrible places you can imagine. I've been kicked, punched, bitten, spit on. I've had poop thrown at me, had my nose broken, and wrecked my knee (for which the "Shut the F*$k Up Ice Cream" kid still feels terrible). And now for some reason I've decided it would be a great idea to start working with incarcerated youth. After 15 years of this crap, you'd think I would lose a bit of my idealism but OH NO. I still think I can make a difference. Pfft.

The first few months here were amazing. I scored an office, I don't have to write lesson plans for every subject under the sun. I get to be part of a team working with some of the toughest kids in the state. At the same time, I'm working with some of the toughest kids in the state.

Throughout my career the hardest part of what I do hasn't been the constant fear that a fight is going to break out or that I'm going to get smacked in the face. The hardest part has been realizing just how much of a disservice we are doing when it comes to these kids. In fact, just this morning, my favorite professor posted a status on Facebook that definitely hit home: the average cost per year of incarcerating a juvenile is $88,500, and most of them are in for non-violent crimes like possession. My prof then asked his grad students to figure out what the per-year cost of a Harvard education was.

$67,000. More than $20,000 cheaper than incarcerating a youth. Education is cheaper than incarceration. Who knew?

Oh wait....

This past week has been rough. And heartbreaking. You can't help but love these kids because when they're incarcerated, you frequently get reminded that they're just that: kids-- the oldest is barely 18. Watch the science teacher break out a bottle of bubbles; then watch the kids go wild trying to catch them. Listen to them giggle uncontrollably at the lamest joke in your arsenal. Sit with them when they discover that you can do math on your desk with dry erase markers.

Then remember that once they're discharged there will be no continuity, no support. They may go on to a treatment program but what kind of treatment will they receive? Will they get the assistance they need to start over and go straight? Or will they go back to their block because there's no one there telling them that there's more to life than the streets and easy money? When they're incarcerated, they dream. They say they want to go to college, become engineers or lawyers. The bars make them feel safe, safe enough to imagine a life that doesn't involve drugs and weapons. But they know in their hearts that the rug will eventually disappear from under them and they will go back, often to a home that is more toxic than anywhere else in the world they could be.

I know, I know. The first lesson they teach you in teaching school is not to get attached. But when you do what I do, opening your heart to these kids is what gets them to trust you. Seeing an adult who cares about them just  because they can is what makes these kids feel secure enough to try, secure enough to learn. Why can't we provide them with that BEFORE they land themselves behind bars? Our school to prison pipeline is out of control and our programs have waiting lists that are sometimes 7 kids deep. Kids languish in programs, waiting to take the next step on their journey back to society-- time that slowly chips away at whatever optimism they may have built.

I also know I'm rambling. It's the stress melting my brain. But I needed to vent and I promise I'll keep this more up to date because knowing that you all are reading this is the best therapy I could ever invest in.

So tell me what you think. How do you feel about our juvenile incarceration system? How do we fix it? Where is my Excedrin?

RAW Boston Artists Showcase

Hey! Guess what! I'm still alive!

Not only am I still alive, but I have fantastic news.
My photography will be featured at RAW Boston's upcoming show on January 26 at Rumor in Boston. Click on the flyer below to visit my profile page and purchase tickets.
Even if you can't physically make it, a ticket purchase will support my show and defray the cost of the venue.
Otherwise, come hang out with us, meet some amazing people, and see some amazing art!

A Worst Nightmare

As usual I apologize for the radio silence. It's been a crazy year so far but tonight my post is not about me (insert snarky comment here).

Tonight my post is on behalf of a former classmate and friend, Shauna Hadden.

Every day we see scam emails and Facebook posts declaring that you or one of your loved ones has been robbed in a foreign country. The scams then go on to request that money be wired to an account to secure your release. Generally you receive a phone call from a loved one who sees this message and you all have a great laugh when you realize that you were not indeed in Beirut on vacation, but slaving away at your desk the whole time. You change your password and call it a day.

Unfortunately for Shauna and her 6-year-old daughter Ava, this is no scam. In 2005, Shauna's now ex-husband came to the United States illegally and settled in Massachusetts where the pair met and were married; Shauna welcomed Ava into the world two years later. By the time their daughter was just 3 years old, Shauna and her husband divorced and he was summarily deported.

Fast forward to May 21, 2013. Nearly four years after her divorce, Shauna has taken Ava to visit her father in Brazil, a good faith arrangement made to give her daughter the opportunity to get to know her estranged father. The moment Shauna stepped off the plane she discovered her good will had been a tragic error in judgment and she is now begging anyone who will listen to help her and Ava get home.

Shauna's ex, Donizete, immediately began threatening his ex-wife and child. Shauna did the only thing she could and asked a friend to help her put some distance between herself and her ex, but on June 6th, five federal police officers ordered Shauna to surrender her passport, as well as that of her daughter. Their names were flagged on all airlines and Shauna has been threatened with prison should she attempt to leave the country.

It has been over a month since Shauna arrived in Brazil. Though she is a United States citizen, the country of Brazil has blithely stripped her of her rights and has informed her that she will most likely be an unwilling guest of their country for some time. Though she has tried her best to work through the appropriate channels, Shauna is being told there is nothing that can be done to bring her and Ava home.

I know you, my audience, have been faithful readers of this blog for many years and I hope that you take the time to not only read this post but share it in as many outlets as possible, especially those of you who are actual citizens of Brazil. Perhaps you have some insight that might help Shauna and her daughter come home to all of us who miss them very much and are gravely worried for their safety. Thank you all! 

xoxoxo  Paste