The Writing Life Archives - Page 29 of 62

Indie Author Day 2016

October 13, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

Saturday, October 8th was the first annual Indie Author Day celebration. Nationwide, libraries, book stores, and book festivals showcased authors who have self-published their books. Th event introduced readers to authors they might not have known, and we authors networked with each other.

I spent my first Indie Author Day at the Vineland Public Library in Vineland, NJ. At 5:30 AM, my child woke me up complaining of a sore throat. By the end of the day she would be running a fever of 102. Still, I left my supportive husband in charge of the child and made my way to Vineland.

The trip should have been straightforward, but I roadwork delayed me. Note to self: When your GPS warns you about a backup, take the alternate route offered. Then the rain began, but I made the library with 2 minutes to spare.

The Vineland Library is snug and welcoming. Four other authors made up the showcase with me: Kathryn Ross, Denise Hazelwood, Eloise Sulzman, JoDenise Muller and Buddy the Chihuahua. Buddy is a therapy dog, and was quite the draw for kids and adults alike!

The rainy weather kept traffic down, but we authors had a great time chatting with each other and exchanging war stories. They gave me quite a few tips about self-publishing that will come in handy in the future, and enjoyed the camaraderie of others also in the marketing trenches.

I publish as a hybrid author: as small press published my novel The Witch of Zal in 2015, while I self-published my genealogy reference book The Warren Family of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and Their Ancestors in 2014. As I see it, the future of publishing for every author will exist somewhere on the self-publishing-to-hybrid continuum. Some will choose to stay completely self-published, some will have some percentage of titles also carried by traditional presses, and some will want to always have a publisher.

There is no doubt that self-publishing is here to stay, but self-publishing is also changing at a rapid pace. Indie Author events like this help the authors keep abreast of changes, and allow readers to find new authors. It’s a win-win, and I hope to participate again next year.

I now get a week off from “eventing”, then my next event will be River Reads on October 23rd. I am so excited for that event—a massive showcase of 46 authors. I’ll talk more about it next week!

Save

Collingswood Book Festival 2016

October 6, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

The Collingswood Book Festival is a massive annual outdoor book fair held in Collingswood, NJ. Music, food, author panels, and a children’s area round out a street full of book sellers and authors. If you love books, it’s the place to be the first Saturday in October!

Weather is always a concern when you hold an outdoor event, but never fear! In case of rain, the Festival management has a plan—they move everyone inside the nearby high school/middle school. This year, a full week of rain showed no signs of letting up, so the managers moved us indoors.

This was my first year as a vendor. I’d been to the Festival a couple of times as a browser, and it was dizzying to see the vast array of books laid out across several blocks. As a vendor, the sight of tables packed into the gym—all with books piled high—created excitement.

The weather didn’t dampen the energy at the Festival. Maybe being indoors magnified it as it ricocheted around the gym, but the buzz began long before the first customer walked through the door. The camaraderie of fellow authors made the long day go by quickly, and the streams of book lovers that braved the weather to visit us brought smiles.

All in all, my first Collingswood Book Festival was a great experience. I met some other authors, networked with a few people holding other book festivals in the spring, sold some books, and chatted with people who get as enthused about books as I do. I’ll be back next year—but hopefully outdoors!

This Saturday, October 8th, I’ll be at the Vineland Library for their Indie Author Day celebration from 12-3 pm. If you’re in the area, stop by!

Save

Marketing Madness

September 29, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

This past Saturday kicked off my busy marketing season. My event schedule starts with three book events in a row.

First was Eastampton Day, the yearly celebration of Eastampton Township. In spite of a cloudy start to the day, it didn’t rain, and the sun broke through the clouds around 1 pm. The pleasant day brought plenty of people to enjoy the bounce houses, carnival games, and dunk tank.

I had a good time chatting with my table neighbors and the people browsing the tables. I met one woman who runs a book club, who invited me to speak there, and several other customers excited about the book. All in all, a successful day!

My next two events are a little farther afield. Saturday is the Collingswood Book Festival in Collingswood, NJ. I have been there as a browser several times, but this is my first as a vendor. It’s usually a wonderful day if you’re a book lover. I’m hoping it doesn’t rain!

October 8th will see me in Vineland, NJ, at the library’s Indie Author Day showcase. I have never been there before, but it promises to be a day of local authors showing their wares and talking books.

Although authors are often nervous about marketing events, I’m looking forward to both events and chatting with book lovers of all ages. If you’re in the area, stop by and say hello!

Save

Book Fair Fall 2016: Bookaneers!

September 22, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

Ahoy there, mateys! This week I’m helping out at our Fall Book Fair at school. Scholastic’s theme for the Fall Fair is Bookaneers!

Our Book Fair happened to coincide with Talk Like A Pirate Day on Monday, and a number of the teachers and staff got into the spirit of the day by dressing like pirates and speaking pirate-speak. Even our Principal/Superintendent dressed up!

The Book Fair started on Monday, but yesterday was my first day helping out. We had a Kindergarten and 2 first grades come through to make Wish Lists to take home to their parents. I so enjoy the little kids’ excitement when they come in! Their eyes get big, and they would probably take home every book if they could.

This year, I also saw some amazing community spirit within the school. In one period we had some 6th graders help the first graders write their lists, and when the Kindergarten came in some 8th graders came down especially to be buddies and help them out. I saw one energetic young man juggling 3 different clipboards as he jotted down the information for his charges. The older kids all did this with patience and good spirit, and it made the little kids feel special to have their own buddies.

The community spirit in our school extends beyond our classes, though. This year we set jars out (one for each grade), and kids could put in the change they got from their books. All the money raised is going to a school in Louisiana that lost their library in the recent flooding. And the class that donates the most money gets tickets to dunk our Principal in the dunk tank at our Township Day this weekend.

The Book Fair has been a favorite of mine since I was in school. Working at it as an adult has given me a whole new appreciation for how books can energize kids, and how eager kids are to read if they can just find books that speak to their interests. The more books we sell at the Book Fair, the more money the school library gets to buy books for itself. In many schools, the money raised at the Book Fair is the ONLY money the library receives all year to replace worn out books and buy new ones.

I encourage you to support your school’s Book Fair as much as you can—it really is full of buried treasure!

Save

Back To School

September 15, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

Back to school is the time of year parents rejoice and children cry. That the same event can cause such different reactions in two separate groups is a lesson in point of view, but that is a topic for another blog. While children view school as 10 months of incarceration, parents see freedom.

Back to school restores routine and sanity to parental lives. Children no longer need 24/7 care—even when kids are old enough to entertain themselves for a few hours a day, there are still summer camps, activities, and play dates to fill the calendar. Summer writing becomes a haphazard affair—I have written at swim practice, karate, even in the car waiting. Back to school means more concentrated writing time.

Sure September can be crazy because you have to start juggling the after school activities plus the homework plus activities such as the Book Fair and Back To School Nights and Open House and PTA volunteering, but those of us who work from home get about 6 splendid hours a day to do the things we need to do.

Already my writing in September has been much better than my summer. My worst month of the writing year so far has been July. In July my word count was 11,700. August wasn’t much better at 11,900. We’re only about halfway through the month of September—school started less than 2 weeks ago—and already I have passed both July and August with a grand total of 13,600 words. Things are looking up.

For all that back to school can be an adjustment, the routine is key for me. If I get it right, a routine makes me crazy efficient. This week I had one day where I revised 3,300 words (3 chapters). In one day I did 28% of the total I had for either July or August. Color me happy!

The concentrated writing time makes a big difference for me. Yes, I can jot down words at a swim practice, copy edit, write a blog post, read the blogs I follow, but to get deep into the voice and character of the story or to revise on a large scale I find I need a block of time. Time to fall into the story world and give my full focus to it. That sort of time is rare in the summer.

Summer is a wonderful time to spend with your family. I wouldn’t pass up the memories we made or the experiences we had for anything. But getting back to a routine that gives me time to write alleviates the pressure I’ve felt all summer—that tug of war between feeling I was neglecting my kid or feeling I was neglecting my writing (which is also neglecting myself).

So here’s to back to school! It has its own set of challenges, but for those of us who are parents and writers, it’s the time when we start to feel a little bit more like ourselves.

Happy back to school (and back to writing)!

Save

Summer is a Beach

September 8, 2016 By Kerry Gans 1 Comment

Summer is over, my daughter is back in school. And although I am glad to get back to a routine and overjoyed to get my writing time back, I found myself thinking about what summer means to me. While images of ice cream, heat waves, and the pool popped into my head, the brightest image by far was that of the beach.

Having said that, I will say that I am not an all-day-every-day beach person. If I get to the beach a few times a summer, I am happy. I dislike the heat and the sunscreen and those nasty greenhead flies. But I do find something soothing in the sun on the water, the warm breeze, and the roar of the surf. Water has always been a soother of my soul.

This year, my daughter got to the beach more than I did. She went with Daddy while at the Gans Family Reunion, and while I was at the Ocean City Authors Showcase. She described the waves the day of the Showcase as “fierce.” But she had a good time.

I went with her (and my mother) to the Long Island Sound during our last week of summer. We spent a day on the beach, building sandcastles…

Catching fish in a bucket (released back into the water)…

And swimming in the calm water.

As the tide went out, sand bars appeared and we were able to walk to “islands” far out in the water. Daughter named one of them Mossy Rock Island because of the algae-covered rocks all around the sand bar.

It was a relaxing day (aside from the bees attacking my daughter), and we all enjoyed whiling away the time. The water chilled at first touch, but then became pleasant—especially as the tide went out, creating warm shallow pools between the beach and sand bars.

We finished off our vacation at the playground near the harbor, where hundreds of boats bobbed peacefully in the sunset.

A wonderful way to end the summer.

Summer means beach to me because I lived my whole life close to the beach. Other people don’t live near the water. What does summer mean to you? What memories of summers past do you cherish most?

Save

Authors Showcase, Ocean City, NJ

September 1, 2016 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

This past Sunday, I participated in the inaugural Ocean City Free Public Library Authors Showcase. It was a beautiful day, perfect beach weather. I dropped my husband and daughter at the 17th Street beach and headed over to the Library to set up.

The Library is housed in the Ocean City Community Center. The Showcase set up in the Atrium, a sunny, open area right in the middle of everything.

We had good foot traffic coming from the library’s book sale. The library itself is beautiful, with amazing murals in the kids’ section. If I was a kid, I would never leave.

The showcase had a festive atmosphere. Hey, it’s a day down the shore, what’s not to like? The other authors all seemed to enjoy getting to know each other. I sat next to Kimball Baker, author of For Those In Peril: A History of the Ocean City Life-Saving Station and we discovered a mutual love of genealogy. We passed the time chatting about family lines and brick walls, and the joy of finally finding a piece of information that confirms a new generation.

The other authors at the showcase were: Carol Brill, Tim Kelly, Jane Mayer Lueder, Laura J. Kaighn, Jennifer Shirk, Dave Rhodes, the Fabulous Gabriel, David Webb, Victoria Devine, Mary Ann Bolen, Catherine E. DePino, John Sweeden, Jonathon King, Kimball Baker, and Kiernan Shea.

I thoroughly enjoyed my experience at the Authors Showcase. I thank Julie Brown for setting it all up, and the Ocean City Free Public Library for hosting us. I hope they do it again next year. If so, I will be there!

Save

A Powerful Message to Our Children

August 25, 2016 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

When you are a parent of a young child, you often have the pleasure of watching the same movie over and over and over. The one good thing about this is that you get the chance to dissect the movie into itty-bitty parts in a way that you never thought possible. (I could write a doctoral thesis on some of the movies my daughter has binge watched.) Sometimes, even if it’s a movie you’ve seen before, you suddenly see a message or theme you never did before.

That’s what happened lately with me and Disney’s The Rescuers. That movie was one of my favorites as a child, so I thought I knew it pretty well. But after seeing it for the 100 billionth time, I suddenly realized it had a theme I had never noticed before. (SPOILERS BELOW)

Small people can make a big difference.

Now, perhaps that should have been obvious—I mean, it does star mice who rescue people. I just never saw it before. In the beginning, Rufus the cat asks, “Two little mice? What can you do?” And when the mice first talk to Penny, she asks, “Didn’t you bring somebody big with you? Like the police?” And the mice themselves, in their darkest moment, wonder if they are capable of helping at all.

But, of course, they are perfectly able to save the day—with a little help from other small animal friends.

This theme of being small but capable may be why I loved the movie so much as a child. My author theme is that every child has the potential to change the world—an extension of this very theme. It seems this theme has been in my heart for a lot longer than I realized.

I’ve talked before about another good message kids can take from The Rescuers, but I think this one is something all kids need to hear:

You are small, but not helpless.

In a nutshell, giving kids the idea that they can change the world for the better sends them perhaps the strongest message of all:

You matter.

And isn’t that a message we all need to hear from time to time?

Save

Children: Not Just a Mini-Me

August 18, 2016 By Kerry Gans Leave a Comment

I know many parents joke about their child being a “mini-me”—so much like them that it’s scary. And sometimes it’s actually true. But just this week I was struck with the opposite realization: my daughter is very much NOT a mini-me.

We were playing with my Breyer horse collection when it occurred to me (not for the first time), that this child of mine is almost nothing like me. She plays with my horses in a way I never did. I played that they were horses—they lived in a corral when not running in their pasture (my carpet was green), I had a doll who could ride them, and saddles and bridles for them. My daughter puts them into family groups and has them getting married and having children.

In fact, she has everything she owns get married. Horses, stuffed animals, dolls… She re-enacts marriage scenes from Disney movies. I can’t remember ever playing getting married when young.

I only ever had 2 dolls that I can remember, while Kinder-girl loves her dolls. They are often her babies (making me a young grandma!), until she gets tired of that, then they become her sisters and I suddenly have many more births to my name than I remember.

She is in love with all things pink—a color I have spent a lifetime rebelling against.

Playing dress-up and changing her outfit multiple times in a day is the norm. I couldn’t be bothered with tiaras and necklaces and rings, and if I had my choice I’d be in jeans and T-shirt all the time—both then and now.

Our most obvious difference (aside from our polar opposite physical appearance) is that she is an extrovert, and I am an introvert. She loves going out, and everyone she meets is her friend. If I never had to leave the house, I would be happy.

I do see some glimpses of me in her. She is artistic—although I lean toward realism and she likes her art colorful and full of fluid shapes. She’s a creative, and enjoys writing—something she gets from me, and not from my husband, who is a great reader but dislikes writing. She has a tendency to over-think, to be a disorganized mess, and to get lost in a book she’s reading or a project she’s doing. She can be stubborn, argumentative, fiercely loyal, and scary smart. She is a complex mix of fear and courage, confidence and timidity, and joy and sorrow.

In other words, she is fully human, and fully herself.

She is not just a mini-me.

While this makes parenting her a challenge—I am not sure if it is harder to parent the parts of her most like me or most unlike me—as a writer I can take a lesson from this. When I create children, I mustn’t make them carbon copies of their parents (unless the story demands it). Certainly, some of the child’s characteristics will reflect their parents, but those characteristics will refract through the lens of that child’s uniqueness.

So I go back to writing while raising not a “mini-me”, but a fully-realized “her”.

Save

Productivity and Expectations

August 4, 2016 By Kerry Gans 2 Comments

Worst. Month. Ever. July’s word count scraped the bottom of the barrel. My productivity hit the lowest monthly number since I started tracking in January. So, naturally, I have beaten myself up over this failure for many a day.

I managed 11,700 words in July. Which is not nothing, by the way. 11,700 words either drafted, revised, or copyedited. Not a terribly small number. Many writers would be proud of that number.

But.

Among all my data, for the month of July sits a big goose egg next to Veritas, my current work in progress. Zero. Nada. Nothing. Not a single word on my WIP. For an entire month.

It’s killing me.

I went to the Writer’s Coffeehouse in Willow Grove over the weekend, and afterwards got to talking with Marie Lamba. I lamented to her about my lack of productivity, that I had not worked on my WIP all month, and how upset that made me. She said:

“Your problem is that you expected to work on it.”

That stopped me. Because she was right. I knew my writing time would be almost nil. I knew I had other obligations that would take up what writing time I had. I knew I’d have a small shadow pretty much 24/7 for July. And yet I had somehow expected to work on my WIP in some significant manner.

Because I always expect too much from myself.

I always think I can do more in a given time frame than I can. I always think I will have more time than I do. I always think I will have more energy than I have. I always think life will not throw me obstacles the way it does. Always.

In other words, I have unrealistic expectations.

And that will always lead to disappointment.

Now, I don’t mean not to push myself to the fullest or to use this as an excuse to get lazy. Because, yes, I need to up my productivity where I can. But I need to get better at understanding when I actually CAN increase productivity and when I merely BELIEVE I can. Successfully parsing those two will result in a much healthier attitude.

By adjusting my expectations, I hope to gain more contentment in spending time with my daughter, lose the guilt of work left undone, and stop beating myself up so much.

So what about you? Do you lay unrealistic expectations on yourself?

Save

Follow Me

Indie Author Day 2016

Collingswood Book Festival 2016

Marketing Madness

Book Fair Fall 2016: Bookaneers!

Back To School

Summer is a Beach

Authors Showcase, Ocean City, NJ

A Powerful Message to Our Children

Children: Not Just a Mini-Me

Productivity and Expectations

Archives

Categories