What She Said

From Steph Bowe's blog:

No matter how much you accomplish, there will always be someone better than you. Someone funnier, better-looking, thinner. Someone who has sold more books in more countries and has more friends and seems to have their life totally sorted.

External circumstance is not going to make you happy.  ... If you're not good enough for yourself without a book deal, you will not be good enough for yourself with a book deal.

Win a Free Signed Advance Copy of Reed Farrel Coleman's New Moe Prager

If you don't know Reed Farrel Coleman's books, here's your chance.  INNOCENT MONSTER, which Publishers Weekly calls "darkly impressive," is the sixth in the Moe Prager series (from Tyrus Books). Not that you can't read them out of order.

Brief description: Seven years have passed since the murder that tore Moe Prager’s family apart and six years since Moe brushed the dust off his PI license. But when his estranged daughter Sarah comes to him with a request he cannot refuse, Moe plunges back into the opaque waters of secrets and lies. Sashi Bluntstone, an 11-year-old art prodigy and daughter of Sarah’s childhood friend, has been abducted. The cops have gotten nowhere and the parents have gotten desperate.

I've read the book, and it rocks. This is a rare Advanced Readers Copy, signed by the author and inscribed to you or whomever you wish.

This is an easy contest:

1. Comment. Leave a comment, and answer one of these questions (or two, or all three - whatever you like):
   Why would you like to win this book?
   What do you like about Moe Prager books?
   Why would you like to host Reed Farrel Coleman on your blog?
   
2. Spread the word. Tell your friends. Blog or tweet or Facebook about the contest, linking to this post, and let me know where. Or offer to host Reed on your blog. Extra points for more than one. 
3. Don't hide. Uh, I'll need to contact you if you win. You can email me at sara(at)sarajhenry(dot)com or leave your email address in your comment.

Rules:

1. The contest is open to anyone, international entrants included. 
2. You will be disqualified if you spell Reed Farrel Coleman wrong. Seriously. We'll come to your house and take back any Moe books you already own. (Hint: It's the middle name that most people misspell.)
3. Contest closes Tuesday midnight EST, Sept. 2.

Game on.

Note: Winner has been notified, and we're awarding some consolation prizes as well. Great entries, guys, and thanks for playing!

Where Else Can You Tip Your Handyman with Books?

In Vermont, of course.

Handyman is over this week assisting with projects I find too distasteful or difficult, in this case a horrid scraping/sanding/multiple-coats-of-primer job on a room that left me in tears last August when I had finished repainting much of the room and then when I lightly scraped one uneven area the paint started coming off in huge pieces, the new paint and the old paint. (Yes, you may be thinking I've never heard of such a thing - it seems the result of crappy chalky builder's paint slapped atop decent-but-ugly paint, then good paint atop the bad paint, which held on until I tried to repaint once more. And now I have a witness, Handyman, who said I've never seen such thing.)

(Yes, it's been a year since this debacle, and this room has valiantly existed with walls an ugly mix of white, areas of under-pink where I tried scrubbing off the white, and chunks of tan that wouldn't quite peel off. Hey, I've been busy.)

And because I've been moving bookcases, I'm sorting books and discovering duplicates. So I turn them over to Handyman, who on Day 1 gets a Kate Atkinson, a Daphne DuMaurier, a John Dunning, and a mystery/thriller whose author I can't recall. The next day he's delighted to get a duplicate copy of Nevil Shute's The Pied Piper.

And this is one of the reasons I love Vermont, where you can discuss Nevil Shute and which of his books was your favorite - while you are having your walls sanded and primed.

My Brother Called Me Yesterday

My brother never calls me.

Not quite true. He always calls me back if I call him, and he calls me if he's heading over to where I am and I've asked him to call en route. (Mind you, he might call just before he pulls into the driveway, and point out that well, he was still en route.) And he called me the day our mother had devastating small strokes followed by extreme hallucinations. So I know, when I hear his voice, that it is not good news.

I need some advice, he says.

My brother never asks for advice. My brother gives me advice. Not much, and not often, but it's always good: Don't use that ax; it's dangerous. No, you shouldn't buy a chainsaw. Keep your knives clean and sharpened. Wear all natural fibers when you fly.

He's in the parking lot of the vet's office in the town where we grew up, and his dog - my Bridget's mother, his first-ever dog, his much-loved, constant companion, his intensely loyal cattledog he got 10 years ago as a shivering petrified rescued dog that had nearly starved to death when abandoned in a pen with a male dog (hence puppies, not all of whom survived - I took one puppy, and he took her mother, and painstakingly nursed her back to health) - has suddenly gotten very ill. I call the vet, whom I know, and I call my brother back.

It's cancer so pervasive there is no saving her. And my brother has to make the decision to let his best friend go.

And so within four days of each other, his dog died and one of my dogs died.

And today I wish I were not more than a thousand miles away from my big brother. And I hope he knows how much I care for him.

Why I Find Twitter So Entertaining

It's the visit to the water cooler; it's having coffee in the break room; it's chatting over the backyard fence. Done with clever writers, from the comfort of your home office desk chair, with your dogs at your feet and your iced tea near at hand.

On Twitter:

quinncy: @annepmitchell I wouldn't consider myself an expert on baby-wearing; I think you need to have more than one child for that title.

SaraJHenry: @quinncy What exactly is "baby-wearing"? Is it carrying them in one of your sling thingies? Oops, I mean THE HIPHUGGER BABY SLING.

quinncy: The trademarked term is Former Child Actress Quinn Cummings Baby-carrying Hip-something Dealies.

This makes me laugh out loud.

Quinn is a wonderfully clever writer who, yes, invented or invented a clever baby carrier. You can read her blog at QC Reports; you can buy her lovely book, NOTES FROM THE UNDERWIRE. Tell her I sent you.

If Anone Can Meet Stormtroopers at a Book-signing Event ...

... it's A.S. King (rocking wonderful author of DUST OF 100 DOGS and PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ*, books I adore, and my honorary sister). You go, Amy. (She claims she hugged the stormtrooper right after this picture was taken.)

Later she tweets me and others who expressed stormtrooper envy: These are not the droids you're looking for. Move along. 

PS - Amy is running a contest for a free advanced reader's copy of PLEASE IGNORE VERA DIETZ - all you have to do is write a 56-word story containing one of these words: classy, pizza, crooked, radio. Enter here.

Sometimes You Need to Follow Your Impulse

This time yesterday, I took my dogs down to the river. I was tired and busy, but the sun was shining and one thing I've learned in Vermont is that when the sun shines, you need to take a break and go to the river. And at the last minute I took Wendy, who was desperate to go. I hadn't planned to take her - she had stitches due to come out and a vet appointment that afternoon, but thought, what the heck. She had a lovely time, in the sun, on the rocks, stepping in the water, exploring the bushes.

And this morning I buried her in the back yard, under a tree, wrapped in old sheets.

She had survived her second surgery for a tumor and had been doing great, but suddenly got ill yesterday afternoon and I moved up the vet visit. We found another ailment and I got medication for her, but late yesterday evening she got worse. I consulted the vet and I gave her her meds and let her snuggle on the bed next to me, then made her comfortable on a nest of blankets, and stroked her head as she drew her last breaths.

It was a life far too short.

But I am so glad I followed that impulse and took her to the river yesterday.

And now I'm headed back there, with the other dogs, where I'll sit and think of her last afternoon on this earth and the joy she brought me.

It Is Possibly Pathetic That I Get Excited When David Pogue Tweets Me ...

But there you have it.

As I've said before, I'm a David Pogue groupie. Whether or not any of my friends have any idea who he is.

"I Was a Teenage Literary Agent"

A friend of mine has just become an associate literary agent - at the age of 18, a month or so out of high school. Which she'll do while attending university full time. And no doubt do a bang-up job.

This makes me feel very tired, and very old. Novel writing and keeping up with my house and yard and dogs and doing a few editing and web jobs is all I can handle. And I'd admit that sometimes house and yard are sorely neglected.

(Yes, I'm envisioning the book she can write about her experiences - after she becomes a full-time novelist - called I Was a Teenage Literary Agent.)

How Do You Make Yourself Finish Your Novel?

On a writers forum I belong to, someone posed the question: To those who have completed a manuscript, how did you do it?

I had joined a writing group that was meeting in a bookstore cafe, and a former member of the group happened past. As he chatted with the group members, it became clear that years ago he had written five chapters - but never any more.

I realized at that moment it's easy to write five chapters - but finishing it is much harder. I went home determined not to be someone who years later still just had five chapters.

What kept me going:

• Writing very fast - if I had stopped to think (or plot - yes, I paid for this later, by having to reverse engineer plot points into the book) I would have convinced myself I couldn't do it.
• Meeting weekly with another writer and exchanging chapters - I wasn't going to show up empty-handed (thank you, Mac Clayton)
• Handing off chapters to a neighbor friend to read, who expressed proper amounts of enthusiasm (thank you, Linda Yoder)
• Having an ending scene I loved, and determined to write a book that would reach that last scene.

I think classes or how-to books or writing conferences would have stopped me dead - it would have been too much to take in (refer back to would have convinced myself I couldn't do it). Mind you, I had to rewrite extensively to turn it into a salable book (LEARNING TO SWIM, coming out from Crown Books in February) but this was what worked for me.

How you write the second novel: Well, you have a deadline, and an advance you'd have to return if you didn't finish - this time around you're not writing as fast, because you don't want to have to fix plot points and rewrite as much - but you still have friends you share chapters with, and an ending scene you can't wait to get to.