Brain Tug of War

The human brain is a strange thing. I assume they’re all strange, even though the only one I know intimately is my own. Part of its strangeness is the battle between wanting to write all the time and never wanting to write again. The last two years have been a perpetual tug of war on that front. I got sick, and then as a result of getting sick, I was injured, and because of my injury, I ended up having to move. There was a whole raft of things related to my mother’s estate that I had to deal with. My dog got sick, then died. Even though I wasn’t sure I was ready, I took in another dog who desperately needed a permanent home.

In the middle of all that stress, I started to feel like I would never write again, and part of my brain simply accepted that. That part began imagining a life where I would get a job at the turnpike tollbooth near my house and maybe go back to playing Zelda in my spare time. The other part of my brain insisted it was ready to go back to writing, but it only manifested that by writing random paragraphs about characters and stories I’d never thought about.

The thing about tug of war is that eventually one side has to win, either through trickery or through stamina. In October, I had a vague idea for NaNoWriMo, and I thought having a deadline might help me get back into the rhythm of writing. I made a few notes, so that I wouldn’t forget my idea, but then I got up the next day and started writing. The next day, I wrote some more. This is why I’m generally not interested in books or movies about writers. It’s a bit boring reading about someone writing, isn’t it?

At any rate, between October and February, I wrote a book, which definitively answers which side of my brain won the tug of war. The book went to my agent, and she sent it to my editor, and now we all wait to see if it’s worth a damn. The important thing, at least, is that having finished a book, I think I might finish a few more.

Meanwhile in reading, I’m not remotely close to catching up on my TBR, but I’ve been getting some reading done. Apparently I’m in the L’s.

Read Full Post »

Small miracle but a big feeling

There are a lot of literary prizes in the world, but not that many awarded on the basis of readers’ votes. This is why one of my favorite second place finishes was when All the Ugly and Wonderful Things came in second in the Goodreads Choice Awards in 2016. Nearly 28,000 people voted for my book, and it beat out such big name authors as Jodi Picoult, Ian McEwan, and Jonathan Safran Foer. My mind was boggled that so many readers voted for my book.

This year, sadly, The Reckless Oath We Made didn’t make the first round. Then something amazing happened: readers wrote my book in. Enough readers that it moved on to the semifinals. You still have about 12 hours left to vote in the 2019 Goodreads Choice Awards. You could even vote for The Reckless Oath We Made, if you wanted. It would be an even more astounding little miracle if it moved onto the next round.

Even if I don’t make it to the next round, however, I feel like I’ve experienced one of the things that writers don’t talk enough about. We talk about awards, we talk about reviews, we talk about advances, and we talk about the disappointments and frustrations of publishing as an industry. So rarely do we talk about that small piercing feeling of joy in community that comes from connecting with your readers, and hearing from them that they connected with your book.

For writers like me who are extreme introverts with mental health issues that make appreciating ourselves difficult, it’s a huge feeling to know that you’ve stitched this fragile thread between your work and its readers, to know that there are people out there who are nodding along as you tell your stories, and they’re passing those stories onto others.

So while it feels like a little miracle that my book garnered enough write-in votes to end up in the semifinals of one of the few really big reader awards out there, knowing that my people have found me is a big deal. Thank you for the part you’ve played in that.

Read Full Post »

Where lightning strikes

My new book, The Reckless Oath We Made, is nearly here. In just one week, it will be on sale everywhere, but even now it’s out in the world. People have advance copies to read, and if you’re a Book of the Month member, it’s one of the August selections.

I’m starting to hear from people who’ve read both All the Ugly and Wonderful Things and The Reckless Oath We Made, which is a little scary, because people can’t help but compare the two books. The verdict? They’re very different books.

The funny thing about having an unexpected bestseller like All the Ugly and Wonderful Things is that it creates expectations. Publishing wants me to write another book that is somehow exactly like my bestseller, but different. Readers who’ve only read that one book by me expect that all my books will be like that one.

The problem is that I’ve never been interested in writing the same book over and over. There are authors and genres that specialize in recreating the same sensations and feelings over a series of books. In fact, that’s one of the big selling points for a known author with a particular style: you always know what you’re going to get.

It’s true that I frequently revisit certain themes in my writing–poverty, drugs, mental illness, dysfunctional families–but I like to investigate those themes through different characters, different points of view, even different styles. I suppose I could try to recreate the feeling behind ATUAWT, but I don’t see the appeal. Lightning may strike the same place twice, but why would you want it to?

So if you pick up The Reckless Oath We Made expecting it to be exactly like All the Ugly and Wonderful Things, you might be disappointed. If you come to it looking for a new story with new characters, I think I can show you something interesting and moving. Does The Reckless Oath We Made have poverty, drugs, mental illness, and dysfunctional families? Oh yeah. It also has a lot of other things: knights, a waitress in distress, a prison escape, suitcases full of weed, a castle in the Flint Hills, love, loyalty, a heartbreaking betrayal or two, and even some medieval dirty talk.

You still have time to pre-order it from my local bookstore. If you do, you’ll get a signed hardcover first edition and some bonus book swag.

Read Full Post »

Cash Only: tattoo culture and gentrification

To celebrate the release of the paperback edition of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things on October 3rd, I’m giving away temporary tattoos that I had designed. Kellen’s tattoo becomes one of the things that define him in different ways for different characters all through the book. Aunt Brenda is horrified, Amy is mesmerized, and Wavy is protective over that tattoo, so I thought it would be fun to have people wear them. If you’d like to get a free temporary tattoo, just shoot me a message with your name and address. (North American only right now, as this is for the NA paperback release.)

On the topic of tattoos, I went in to see my tattoo artist for a little work last Friday, and met someone who got me thinking again about how mainstream acceptance of tattooing is butting up against traditional tattoo culture. My father owns a couple tattoo shops, and two of my sisters have worked on and off as tattoo artists for most of their adult lives. I grew up knowing I wanted tattoos as part of my cultural heritage, but also being told that they would harm my career and my dating prospects. As a result of those conflicting messages, all of my tattoos are in what we call “the employment zone.” They’re all easily hidden by the clothes I wear to work, and most people are surprised to find out I have multiple tattoos, because I’m “so clean looking.”

I’m not kidding, I have had employers and coworkers use those exact words to describe their dismay at learning that I have tattoos. I guess they think people with visible tattoos are “dirty looking”? Over the course of my life, though, I’ve watched tattooing get more and more mainstream, and people with tattoos be accepted as normal members of society. This is good. What I find strange, though, are the attempts to gentrify tattoo culture itself.

The woman I met on Friday was there as a walk-in to get what she described as a “small, personal tattoo.” (I think this means mine are large, personal tattoos?) I heard her on talking with the artist who was going to do the work. “Can it be smaller?” she asked, then again, “Smaller.” And a few minutes later, as he tweaked the design: “But smaller.” I never saw the tattoo, but I started to imagine it like one of those pictures painted on a grain of rice.

Not surprisingly, with something so small, it was done in a matter of minutes, and it was cheap. The woman opened her purse and took out … a credit card. The tattoo artist looked at her like she’d farted in church. Honestly, all of us there looked at her that way. The sign clearly says CASH ONLY. I’m sure there are tattoo shops in the world that accept credit cards or checks or maybe even chickens as trade. I have never been to one. When this woman was informed that it was cash only, just like the sign says, she got very angry.

Why don’t you take cards? Everybody takes cards. I don’t carry cash around.

Cash only, lady.

Instead of apologizing and making a plan to get cash, she doubled down.

I’m a small business owner and I can never imagine doing business this way. It’s outrageous. (She really said outrageous, like the artist had demanded part of her soul as payment.)

She ended up leaving her driver’s license there as surety, while she went to an ATM to get cash. When she came back to pay, she spent another few minutes lecturing the tattoo artist about how to do better as a small business owner.

After she was gone, the artists took turns telling stories about people who didn’t realize there are actual rules of etiquette around tattooing. They’re stories I’ve heard plenty of times from my father. People who bring in pics of other artists’ original work and wanted it duplicated. (Flash is one thing, but real original tattoos, no.) People who demand to see final, full color renderings of their tattoos before their appointment. (The art is in producing work on the skin, not drawings on paper or computer.) People who want to micromanage an original piece. (The whole point of an original piece is that it’s collaborative. The artist and the recipient work together to produce the final image.) People who want to be reassured that it can be removed later with a laser! (!!!!)

With tattooing going mainstream, it’s an inevitable clash of cultures. With all things, you have your choice of how to interact with a different culture. You can demand it on your terms, and no doubt there are tattoo shops who specialize in such things. Places where you can demand a full color mockup of your final design and pay for it with your credit card. I’ve heard there are places that offer numbing creams to make the process less painful.

Or you can accept that getting a tattoo is a cultural experience, not a product. Leave your cultural expectations at the door and embrace what it means to get a tattoo: receiving a permanent, collaborative, painful work of art that is your own.

Or you can ask me for one of these badass custom Tattly temporary tattoos. 😉

Read Full Post »

Like other girls

On this, International Women’s Day, I wanted to talk about the evolution of my personal experience of womanhood and femininity.

Two of the women who raised me were not what you would call feminine. They didn’t wear dresses or heels, and they didn’t put on makeup or style their hairs. They did perform many of the socially expected chores of women in the 1970s. They cooked, cleaned, and raised children, but it wasn’t really a natural fit for them. My grandmother was a farmer, who rode a tractor, and my mother worked for a natural gas company doing chemical analysis. They were boots, jeans, and pickup truck women.

Despite the best efforts of my other grandmother (a secretary) to turn me into a feminine woman, she failed. I became a secretary, but by most other measures, I’m pretty butch. I know more about guns and motorcycles than I know about makeup and manicures. I’m more comfortable with power tools than babies. These are all things I’m okay with. I like being the Friend with a Truck, the one who’s not afraid of getting dirty or throwing a punch.

What I’m not okay with is the idea that this makes me different from other women. I see these t-shirts sometimes, the ones that say, I’m Not Like Other Girls. I’m never sure what to make of them, but I frequently suspect I’m seeing myself in an alternate reality. One in which the notion that being rough and tumble means I’m not like other women, and the completely unsubtle suggestion that this makes me superior to other women.

I was raised to think that. I was raised to think men were superior to women, and therefore any inroads I could make into being more masculine would automatically elevate me above those other girls. It was such a desirable thing to be unlike other girls that I was even encouraged to make male friends. My childhood friends who were male were always made more welcome and judged less harshly than my sisters’ female friends. No one warned me that when we hit our teenage years, those boy friends would turn on me like a pack of hormone-crazed Highlanders, preparing to fight each other. There can be only one!

Thirty years on, how did I end up with some of my closest friends being female, instead of wearing a Not Like Other Girls t-shirt? Short answer: books. I read books in which girls and women were valued. I read books in which womanhood and femininity were not lesser or derogatory things. I read books in which female friendship mattered.

Also, I started writing, and in writing characters who weren’t men I learned about all the ways that masculinity wasn’t the most important, most valuable, most world-revolving trait for a person to have. I learned to value all kinds of people, because to write them, I had to know them and empathize with them.

This is why it matters that we have books with girls as heroes. Books with girls of all types doing all the many things that girls do. It’s the most important step we can take to break down the barriers that classify us and pit us against each other. It’s how we get rid of the message that there’s something wrong with being like other girls.

Read Full Post »

Book of the Year?!?!

Well, I may have been number two on Goodreads, but the Book of the Month Club has declared All the Ugly and Wonderful Things Book of the Year! This is really amazing, because this is the first time in their 90-year history that they’ve awarded a Book of the Year. They even have an adorable name for the award: The Lolly. (Named after their first Book of the Month Club selection, Lolly Willowes by Sylvia Townsend Warner. Fun fact: fellow Kansas William Allen White was on that first panel of judges who selected Lolly Willowes for the Book of the Month Club.) The Book of the Year even got a write-up in Parade Magazine!

To celebrate being Book of the Year, I’m going to be taking over the Book of the Month Club’s Twitter feed tomorrow, January 4th. It should be fun.

Also coming up is a live Q&A with me on Facebook. If you’ve read All the Ugly and Wonderful Things and would like a chance to discuss it with other readers and ask questions of the author, that’s what we’ll be doing on Tuesday, January 17th, 7:30-9:30 pm (CST). For more information on the Q&A, just visit the official event page on Facebook.

Read Full Post »

Cheers to second place!

When I was in high school, I was in the marching band. Depending on the venue, I played either the baritone saxophone or the bass saxophone. All 5’5″ and 90 lbs. of me, so it was no easy feat. During my sophomore year, we traveled to an away game that would decide whether the football team went on to the state championships for our division.

During that game it rained, it sleeted, it snowed. The marching band performed valiantly, and the football team a little less so. We lost to a team whose quarterback would become my brother-in-law a few years later. By the time we loaded onto the bus for the long ride home, the marching band was mostly frozen into our uniforms. We were lucky they were heavy wool, because although we were all soaked and frozen, we were fairly warm sealed up inside that wet wool. I spent most of the ride home with the harness for the bass sax still attached, because my hair was frozen to it.

On the drive there, we’d done much cheering and chanting, but the ride home was more subdued. A well-meaning, but misguided cheerleader started up a familiar cheer. At the point in the cheer when the audience was supposed to respond with “We’re Number One!” I answered in my loudest, crowd-piercing voice: “We’re Number Two!” I got some glares, but the tired and frozen brass section behind me took up the chant. Honestly, we weren’t bitter. The team had made it further than anyone expected us to. There was no shame in having come in second.

That’s how I feel this morning, upon being informed that All the Ugly and Wonderful Things received the second highest number of votes in the Goodreads Choice Awards for Best Fiction. 27,000 people voted my book! I got more votes than Jodi Picoult (mind=boggled).

So in honor of all the second place runners up, I am celebrating!

I’m Number Two!

And thank you to everybody who voted for me! If you’d like to celebrate with me, please consider leaving me a review on your preferred online venue. Reviews really do make a huge difference.

Read Full Post »

My Halloween costume: default reader

Did I dress up for Halloween? Not really. I always wear black and I’m wearing black today, so I basically look the same as I do every other day of the year. My costume is on the inside.

I had a couple of interviews published over the weekend, and in the comments of one, a reader tried to inform me that I was in error to have a “personal” interpretation of a piece of literature. This reader informed me that I was missing or ignoring the “universal meaning” of the book in question. Well, holy shit. My surprised face, let me show you it.

This idea is not new to me. After all, I have a couple literature degrees, so I’ve spent plenty of years in intellectual servitude to the “universal meaning” of literature that any given professor espoused. When it was for a grade, I could regurgitate the meaning I was supposed to have absorbed from a novel, play, poem. I could reproduce the meaning traditionally ascribed to the author of the piece.

Once I got free, however, I started having my own interpretations of meaning that didn’t require me to check in with anybody else, including the author. It was a pretty radical experience, even inside my head, to not check in with the dominant cultural point of view as I read. Having been trained to view books from that POV, though, it’s easy to slip back into that mode. To have discussions about literature based on the perspective of middle-aged upper class white men.

I almost let it happen this weekend, but then I remembered that I hadn’t read Lolita as a middle-aged upper class white man. I read Lolita as a working class pre-pubescent girl. While it’s all well and good for Nabokov to have had specific intentions, I was under no obligation to feel what he wanted me to feel. I experienced the book from my own particular perspective, one distinctly different from the received wisdom about the “meaning” of Lolita.

So today, on the inside, I’m the default reader. My interpretation of a book’s meaning is valid. If you want, you can join me in being the default reader. It’s easy and it doesn’t require grease paint. Just go through the day feeling confident that your perspective and interpretation of any piece of literature is correct. If we make it through today, we’ll try again tomorrow, until it’s not a costume.

And if you’re curious, my two interviews are here:

For the Kansas City Star‘s FYI Book Club (jointly hosted by the Star and the Kansas City Public Library.)

On Writer Unboxed, interviewed by Liz Michalski, author of Evenfall.

My November newsletter goes out tomorrow with more deleted scenes from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things. There’s still time to sign up.

Read Full Post »

One deleted scene coming right up!

You all were busy this weekend, as I woke up to more than a thousand reviews on Goodreads.

I guess that means it’s time to take a look at the poll for deleted scenes…

I think one of the hardest things I had to cut from All the Ugly and Wonderful Things was most of Donal’s story after he was taken away from Wavy. When one is a famous, established author, one can get away with producing a sprawling 800-page saga, but publishing frowns on that for unknown, unestablished writers such as myself. So most of Donal’s life with Sean got axed early on, because it required the reader to follow and invest in two rapidly diverging story lines.

Because that’s such a big chunk, and I’m essentially a devious person, I’m not sending it all out at once. I’ll send the first two chapters tonight, and the next two when I hit one of the other two goals. Over on Amazon, only 26 reviews to go to hit 200. Mwahahahahah. If you’ve already written a review on Goodreads, it’s easy enough to copy and paste over to Amazon or B&N.

Or you could try giving your friends who’ve reviewed on Goodreads sad puppy eyes to convince them to post their review elsewhere. Here, you can use Josey.

Read Full Post »

ATUAWT Deleted Scenes: The Poll

If you saw me at any of my recent events, you may have heard me admit that the first draft of All the Ugly and Wonderful Things weighed in at a hefty 200,000 words. Nearly 80,000 words more than the final, published version.

So what became of those roughly 300 pages that I whittled off? I’ve been saving them in a file called Lost Scenes. What’s in there? All the stuff I wrote that just never quite had a place in the book. Some of it I was sad to cut. Some of it I knew I wouldn’t be able to use, even as I wrote it.

How can you get your hands on those deleted scenes?

I’m sending them out to my newsletter subscribers, so step one: sign up for my newsletter.

I’ll be sending out deleted scenes as I hit certain review numbers on Goodreads and Amazon. (Darn it! There is a catch.) So step two: leave me a review, please. I’ll send out the first deleted scene when ATUAWT hits 1,000 reviews on Goodreads, another when it hits 200 reviews on Amazon, and another if it hits 50 reviews on Barnes & Noble.

Basically, the more reviews I have, the happier my publisher is, and the happier my publisher is, the more likely they are to want to buy another book from me. I believe that’s a win-win, if you enjoyed ATUAWT.

If you’ve already done steps 1 and 2, and you’re killing time, you can also vote in this poll to help decide which scenes I send out first. You can vote for up to three.

Read Full Post »