Oct. 20, 2106 – A very long time ago, at a holiday party thrown by the Montana Kaimin (the University of Montana’s student newspaper), I drew a “Booty Mix” CD as my gift. With such classics as Do Me!, The Humpty Dance, Push It and of course Da’ Butt, it remains some of my best writing music. Dialed it up yesterday and got more work done than I have in weeks.
Some Sentences Journal, Day Six – 3 a.m. revelation
Oct. 29, 2016 – That moment when you realize the relatively simple solution to the manuscript’s major issue.
Some Sentences Journal, Day Five – Mmmmm, bacon!
Oct. 28, 2016 – Friday is hell day at the newspaper, when we edit the Saturday, Sunday and Monday papers. So, to ease into the day, Scott and I always go to breakfast at the Catalyst – where today, they gave me extra bacon. Score!
Some Sentences Journal, Day 4 – Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz (not)
Oct. 27, 2106 – Brutal insomnia last night.
Finally gave up on sleep and dove into The Sparrow. Wowza!
When life gives you lemons, etc. 
Some Sentences Journal, Day 3 – Book group
Oct. 26, 2016 – I love book group. Great books, great people – and pie! Really, isn’t that all you need of life?
Some Sentences Journal – A run under the moon
Oct. 25, 2016 – Started the day with a run in the just-light under shoals of clouds, which obligingly parted to reveal a perfect sliver of moon.
Jumping on the 1- (or 2-, or 3-) sentence-journal bandwagon
With apologies to Master of the Form Chris LaTray, to my brother, and to any and everyone else who’s been doing this for years, I’m giving it a shot – mainly because I’m such an inconsistent blogger.
But a single sentence! Anyone can manage that, right?
It’s right in line with my theory of writing a novel. Stripped down to its barest minimum, even if you only write a sentence a day, after enough (OK, many, many, many) days, you’ll have a first draft. Me, I shoot for 500 words a day toward a first draft when I’m also working a day job, 1,000 words if I’m gainfully unemployed.
I’ll put that discipline to the test in January, when I start a new book. But before then, a couple of dreaded deadlines loom – the copy edits on my fourth novel, RESERVATIONS, out in March, and the manuscript for my fifth, at this point imaginatively named BOOK FIVE. Both are due in mid-December. Which makes me feel like this:
If I survive, I’ll probably go back to the occasional blog post. Until then, a sentence or two, starting with today’s:
Oct. 24, 2016: Spent most of my precious two hours of coffee shop time staring in horror at all of the inconsistencies in the end of the ms. Finally tore into them as the clocked ticked toward 9 a.m. Progress, right?
All hail the Pinckley Prizes
Four days after returning from Bouchercon, the annual crime fiction convention held this year in New Orleans, I’m almost recovered. Bouchercon deserves its own post, and will get it.
But one of the highlights of the long weekend was this year’s ceremony to award the Pinckley Prizes. The awards for crime fiction by women writers take their name from Diana Pinckley, who write the “Get a Clue!” crime fiction column for the Times-Picayune for 23 years.
Pinckley died in 2012 and, to honor her memory, the Women’s National Book Association of New Orleans established the award to honor her memory. There are two prizes—one for a first novel, and one for body of work—and I was honored to be the debut author who received that inaugural award.
Sara Paretsky
Christine Carbo
Laura Lippman won for body of work that year, and the prizes were given out at the annual Tennesese Williams/New Orleans Literary Festival. The 2013 winners were Nevada Barr and Adrianne Harun (debut novel, A Man Came Out of a Door in the Mountain), and this year, Sara Paretsky won for body of work. My fellow Montanan, Christine Carbo, won for her first novel, The Wild Inside.
I am in awe of the level of writing by Lippman, Barr and Paretsky, authors at the top of their game. The fact that the Pinckley Prizes puts debut novelists in proximity to those outstanding in the field is a vote of affirmation, and also incentive not to squander the faith that has been placed in us.
I wish I’d been able to meet Pinckley (all her friends refer to her by her last name). But this video, stemming from her involvement in Women of the Storm — a group of women who sought to bring attention to the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina — gives a sense of her personality. I’m told she also wore purple cowboy boots, clue to an exuberant spirit that might not come through in the video.
So, an annual thank-you to the WNBA and the Pinckley Prizes committee, and I’m already looking forward with great anticipation to see who next year’s winners will be.
Night owl to morning person. A horror story
I hate mornings. Scratch that. I like mornings. I like them for sleeping, preferably late. For long, slow emerging into consciousness, a cup of coffee and then another and maybe a third, the newspaper (OK, these days, a scan of the Times on my phone) and eventually—but slowly, slowly, dangerous to rush these things—the hard realities of shower, presentable clothes, work.
Night, now, that’s another matter. I love the night, the hush when everyone else is asleep and I sit undisturbed in the glow of my laptop, my brain alive, words magically appearing on the screen before me. Nighttime is—was—for writers. This writer, anyway.
Because, after three delicious years of full-time writing, I recently returned to the day job. A paycheck is a dandy thing, woo-hoo for benefits, and besides, I like the gig.
But it plays hell with my nights. Because by the time I get home from work, my writer brain is fried harder than an egg on a Philly sidewalk in August. The writing, it must be done, but the synapses, they do not fire.
I had two choices: stop writing, which is no choice at all, or … or … or …
Yeah. Mornings.
These days, my alarm goes off at 5:15. Minutes later, Scott, aka The World’s Best Man, sets a cup of coffee on the nightstand. That powers me through my shower and getting dressed, and then onto my bike to a coffeeshop where I write until it’s time to go to work across the street.
A pause, in homage to Glenda and the other saints at Clyde Coffee.
Here’s the thing. I haven’t quite achieved Poe’s appreciation of wakefulness, but still, I kind of like it. My route takes me along the river, whose routine beauty I’ve yet to take for granted. The combo of coffee and bike ride is just enough to kick-start me into creativity, and I make as much progress on the ms. in those couple of hours that I used to make in a whole day.
I’ve even started waking up before the alarm, once, so early that I brought coffee to Scott instead of the other way around.
“I don’t know who you are,” he said, edging away as I approached.
It’s a powerful, shape-shifty sort of thing, one that makes me wonder what’s next? Maybe I’ll turn plotter. Nah. Some lines should never be crossed.
The morning commute
Tales from the indie trenches – guest post by Craig Lancaster
Today I’m turning this space over to Craig Lancaster, a Billings, Montana, author whose Edward books – 600 HOURS OF EDWARD, EDWARD ADRIFT and now, EDWARD UNPSOOLED – introduced me to one of my favorite protagonists.
Sunday, March 16, 2014.Craig Lancaster
Photo by Casey Page
Although Craig – who also writes very fine standalone novels – has stuck with his main character through this particular series, the way I’m getting the books has changed. He’s gone from indie to traditionally published to back again, at least for this book. His reasons are intriguing and thought-provoking, and there’s a ton of good information in his post. Check it out. Me, I’m going to go back to reading EDWARD UNSPOOLED. FYI, the audiobook came out yesterday.
TALES FROM THE INDIE TRENCHES
By Craig Lancaster
On July 23, I launched my independently published sixth novel, EDWARD UNSPOOLED. I detailed the reason I chose to go indie in a piece with Last Best News and folded that decision into the larger context of independence in the creative arts in Billings, Montana, where I live. It’s a long piece but worth the time to read, I think. Cool things are happening.
Here, thanks to Gwen’s graciousness, I’d like to dig deeper into going indie: the costs of getting the title launched, the first-week results, options for distribution, and what I might choose to do with my next novel. (If there is a next novel, I should add. It took me too damned long to write one, let alone six, to blithely assume that I’ll write something publishable in the future.)
The decision
Deciding to go for it was the easy part. When the publisher of my first five novels passed on a third Edward Stanton novel on grounds that were not editorial in nature, I knew I wanted to find a way to bring the book out. Further, in many ways I’d been waiting for the opportunity. I self-published my first novel seven years ago, haphazardly and with no real strategy or expectations, before it was picked up by a publisher. I wanted to see what might happen if I approached an independent project in a more businesslike way.
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