Tag Archives: debut novel

Live it

With your head in the Dryer…

2 Comments

This week was kind of a disaster.

I dried a pen. Yes, you heard that right. I put a pen in the dryer (not on purpose, I’m not that dumb, people), but as you can imagine, the results were pretty horrendous).

IMG_1831.JPG
All that blue…yeah that’s the ink. It did eventually come out…but when your heads down in there you don’t think it ever will. Just ask my mom.

Then I walked into a painted doorway. Yes, you heard that right too. A painted doorway. Paint all down my arm. The doorway had no damage. My sweater on the other hand, DOA.

The printer at work decided to stop working, I was late to a meeting, I fell—twice (that’s not really uncommon, but it still sucked), and to be frank, I was tired all week long for no real reason.

And yet, I’m still alive. I have a great place to live. I’m healthy. I’m having brunch after church with my best friends. I had breakfast yesterday with my parents and grandparents (yes, my grandfather who had surgery just a couple of weeks ago on his stomach had breakfast with me yesterday morning!) and I still managed to write 13,000+ words in Clara’s Chance (and I’ll be a toothless monkey if I don’t hit 20,000 today by gum! I had an AWESOME dream last night!). Jimmy, my aloe plant, is even still alive and kicking and growing another little sprig!

IMG_1833.JPG
Jimmy and his new sprig–can you see it?

My point is this: Yes, some weeks seem to be mired in the dregs of disaster with your head stuck in a dryer scrubbing for hours (thanks Mom for helping out with that yesterday—she’s really the only reason I didn’t throw the whole thing out–yes I did consider this. I went through a whole lot of scrubbing before she fixed it. And that’s kind of what Moms do.), but your heads only in the dryer for so long. Once you pull it out, you realize how bright the world is outside and there is so much more to life than ink stains and scrubbing.

And that’s what we really have to live for.

IMG_1610.JPG
Mom, Dad and me at my book launch in August–heads out of the dryer (a picture of our heads in the dryer really wouldn’t have been very flattering)

 

 

Write it

Who I Write For

Leave a comment

Today I’m writing this for you. Yes, you. Because you are who I write for.

talking with hands

When I first started writing, I thought I was doing it for myself. The goal, I told myself, was to someday be published, but the stories were mine so it didn’t really matter who or what my readers thought.

I was wrong.

Audience 95% of literature. Once it’s been created, it’s out there—out of the author’s control. You only have “control” for that fraction of a moment that you are creating it, but once it is out there—it’s OUT there.

I think this might be why authors sometimes struggle to finish their creations—they are holding on to that last bit of control because they know once they stamp “done” on it, that’s it; it’s all about the audience, baby.

In 1884, Mark Twain published The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.  With it he published this author’s note:

“PERSONS attempting to find a motive in this narrative will be prosecuted;persons attempting to find a moral in it will be banished; persons attempting to find a plot in it will be shot.”

He knew what would happen when he let go of that manuscript because he had been around the block more than once by that point. Once the manuscript goes to print, it’s about the audience, not about the author.

Huck Finn took about seven years to write, but it has been in the audience’s hands for 130 years.

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/22770148-huck-finn?from_search=true

Likewise, Pride and Prejudice took about a year to write, and 15 years to publish, but has been in the audiences hands for over 200 years (published in 1812).

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/1885.Pride_and_Prejudice?from_search=true

So unless you are writing in a private journal or diary, if you are writing a story, your audience will, in fact, take over your work.

Which is not necessarily a bad thing, but it can affect your perception, not only of the writing that you do, but also of the quality, time, effort and ideas that are generated by your writing and/or adaptions of your writing.

Do you change your story to fit what an audience would expect/know/like? Why/why not?

If someone critiques your work and “gets it wrong,” how do you react?

What does it mean for someone to be “right” or “wrong” about your work?

What exactly does the audience expect of the author?

All of these are questions I am asking you—the reader—my reader. Because in my ideal world, the reader and the writer are friends; they can have an open conversation about the work and the work is in a constant state of flux—ever changing because of this constant conversation we are having.

The story never has to end.

Write it

Valerie’s Vow Debut: Book Launched

1 Comment

10613129_520595634737259_2059340997168730348_n

For those of you who were unaware or unable to attend the book launch for my debut novel, Valerie’s Vow, yesterday I have decided to post my short speech and the page numbers of the readings I did. We sold over half of the books we had ordered and had around 60 guests at the event. For a debut novel, I call that a success.

1454604_520595708070585_9080632956255699067_n

Here is the transcript of my speech:

Speech for Book Signing

 

10443988_520595651403924_8075332953232901830_n

As most of you know, school is getting ready to start for me, so like all teachers I am getting ready for school this week. In preparation for class, I pulled up a PowerPoint that I use to teach my seniors. In this presentation, I have my students participate in a reflective exercise in which they state what their number one goal is. As any good teacher knows, you need to give your students a good example of a goal—for the past 4 or 5 years since I’ve been teaching seniors I’ve used the same goal: publish a book. And that’s when it hit me. OMG! I have to change my PowerPoint and find a new number one goal, because though it may have taken a while, I have realized that goal at last. And I want to thank all of you for your support and for being here. It means more to me than you know, whether you read the book or not, that you’re here today celebrating this achievement with me.

The novel itself does have story behind it, so I’ll give you a quick rundown for those who don’t know it.

This is the product of NaNo—which is National Novel Writing month. Now that being said, yes I did write a lot of it during the month of November, but that’s kind of an understatement because the idea had been bouncing in my brain for a couple of months before and in October I outlined the novel—but in order to have it ‘count’ as my NaNo book 50,000 words of the novel were written during the month of November alone, which, as it turns out, was exactly when I needed to be writing this novel. As many of you are aware, a good friend of mine, of many of us, passed away in November. It is to her that I dedicated this novel and in a lot of ways the novel is an homage to her amazing legacy as seen through the friendship of Valerie, the main character, and Beth, her friend who has passed away.

That being said, I want to stress that I am not Valerie and Sarah is not Beth. Both Valerie and Beth are fictional characters but as with all fiction there are echoes of reality as an honor to her memory and my friendship with her and others in my life.

The first passage I want to read is a flashback. Valerie is thinking about the first time she ever met Beth and what/why that friendship is so valuable to her [read page 2-4].

The second passage is very emotional for me and the main character, Valerie. She’s had a pretty rough holiday—the first without her friend, and it didn’t go well, so she’s a bet unstable when one of the love interests pops in for an unexpected visit and the result is a bit explosive. [read page 105-108]

The final passage is the vow and what drives Valerie psychologically through the story. It’s told as a flashback and I’ll only read part of it for you [read page 154-155]

So now you’ve had a little taste. Do you have any questions?

 

10568856_520595621403927_6011993672089491774_n

A brief Q & A period followed with many great questions and many thanks to those who have supported me throughout this process. As I continue to move forward with writing, and hopefully publishing and selling more books, I would just like to say just how blessed I feel to be a part of a community of people who are so excited to see a co-worker, friend, sister, daughter, nice, grandaughter, and ultimately, a writer succeed.

If you haven’t purchased a copy of Valerie’s Vow, you can do so at…

www.secondwindpublishing.com or http://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/valeries-vows-ashley-m-carmichael/1120162687?ean=9781630660406

Or you can purchase the ebook at…

http://www.amazon.com/Valeries-Vow-Ashley-M-Carmichael-ebook/dp/B00MV36X32/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1408915939&sr=8-1&keywords=Valerie%27s+vow or http://www.smashwords.com/books/view/468297?ref=BudgetMadridGuide