from August 3:15 2008

I was cruising Art Predator’s blog (highly recommended as a worthy distraction) and was inspired by THIS ENTRY of one of the poems she wrote for last year’s 3:15 Experiment.

I grew DETERMINED to get the rest of my 2008 and 2009 3:15 poems typed up and logged on the the official 3:15 site!!!

As I was doing so, I came across this little goodie from Aug 2008. I don’t recall writing it, I don’t recall if it’s from a dream or a TV show or a conversation. I just thought it was really cool.

3:15 AM
August 25, 2008

pulling 3 monsters in a red wagon
no one knows how she found them
dead or how they were placed   she
was all grins    speechless but sparkling
we take her in     traumatized she speaks
not for 13 years

one day she is looking out the window
like a cat she has always been
cat-like      she turns and asks
what’s for lunch?   and
who is T.S. Elliot?
her afternoons measured     out
like spoons               her words
ring silvery in the living room
we pretend not to be shocked at
her sudden vocalization
egg salad we say
famous poet we say

she turns back to the window
I prefer tuna

 

for Gabrielle Bouliane (1966-2010)

Gabrielle’s last live reading.

The poem below is the best I can do right now… and it doesn’t feel like enough. How, ever, can words communicate what is ripped from the heart. I feel like I should watch this video every day, so that I remember how to live.

for Gabrielle Bouliane
(1967 – 2010)

you disappear on a full wolf moon but not really
in the age of a technology you shaped from, created you
send messages across miles and friends echo
that feisty stance, fiery angel,
oh, poet, gift-giver, love-master, my hours
in your presence are locked, sealed and
delivered  - – my dream-memory
days and nights spent on projects for literary minds
together building a factory to keep those hearts alive
smoke breaks outside the office in rusty Seattle
mother hens to spoiled wordsters all worth
while, our while, through earthquakes and madness
and divorces and spilled salt
we know life turns, tears, surprises for the
girls next door, tomboys and hippies and
drive, you had it, rode long highways, following
a bliss only shadowed by your gracious love

I can’t say good-bye, not here, not now
not with those wide-eyes in mine –

I’ll see you backstage, poet, that’s a promise
and meanwhile, this light you lit, I’ll shine.

 

Interview with Indie Debut Author Jo Ramsey

I’m putting all my White Forest novel series and Indie Debut 2010 information on my new website: The White Forest

If you have a moment, take a look-see. I just posted an interview with debut author Jo Ramsey, who is the first Indie Debut 2010 to launch a book this year with her YA metaphysical fantasy Connection.

 

Indie Debut 2010’s First Debut of the Year!

(First off, anyone else out there wear potentially conflicting hats in the blog-o-sphere? I started The Accidental Novelist so I could talk about the writing life ups, downs, ins, outs… for an adult audience. It’s not all that risque, but definitely has contained some mature themes. Because my novel is a children’s novel, I’ve started to watch what I say around here. I’ve never been one to censor myself, so I’m having conflicting thoughts. Eventually, I’ll move all my kid-o-sphere material over to my novel series website: The White Forest)

AND NOW…

I belong to a fabulous collective called Indie Debut 2010. We are a group of writers who all have debut children’s books being released in 2010 by Small and Independent Presses.

The collective was started due to the marketing and distribution challenges of small presses. In my previous post, I mentioned how small presses couldn’t usually get on the shelves at major bookstore chains and were reliant upon online distribution, social media, and good old grass roots footwork.

When asked in a recent interview why she began the group, founder Amy Cook stated:

Frustration.  I saw how much buzz was being built by marketing groups like “Class of 2K9” and other debutante groups.  I wanted to join but was told over and over that I wasn’t eligible, because my press wasn’t listed in Children’s Writers and Illustrators Market.  A lot of small presses aren’t…  I knew I couldn’t be the only person in this situation, and being a die-hard ‘do-it-yourselfer’, I thought I’d put together my own group. I also hoped we might be able to capitalize on the recent groundswell of support for Indie Bookstores to generate publicity for our publishers and our books.

The first book to launch out of this group is Jo Ramsey’s metaphysical fantasy YA novel Connection, which will be released next Friday (the e-book was already released last week). She’s been doing a blog tour this week and will be over at my new website: The White Forest this Friday.

This is so very exciting for us. There are a total of 12 of us for 2010 (and one author on board for Indie Debut 2011). It’s also a lesson that when we start to feel alone, frustrated, or overwhelmed we can always create a community of like-minded people and work together to ease the pressure.

 

Indie Bound, Indie Books

Last year at a writers’ conference, a small press publisher was giving a talk and mentioned that her press doesn’t sell their books at Chapters (or Borders or Barnes and Noble). You could see the audience of writers collectively twitch. What did she mean? How could her press afford NOT to have books at any of the major chains?

The issue is, that they cannot afford TO sell them there.

She explained:

Borders has over 500 stores. Lets say that they require you to send 5 books per store. That’s 2,500 books. And lets say only 2 books sell per store and they return the rest (to make room for new titles). Guess who pays for the shipping BOTH ways. The indie publisher. Not only that, the returned books are very often damaged. If this indie publisher only comes out with 3-4 titles per year it will most likely LOSE money by selling at major chains… unless they garner a major hit. And garnering a major hit is difficult for an indie publisher that can’t afford to have a separate marketing department. There might be only 2 people doing all the work.

Most people know there is a huge discrepancy between indie music and film production and the big budget music and film producers. The same holds true for the book industry as well. The internet has leveled the playing field for the indie music scene (you can create a grassroots movement online through MySpace) and technology has made it much easier to make a film for under $1 million dollars. However, it’s still extremely difficult to get your indie film into major theaters because all the space is taken up by big budget films that have major marketing campaigns. Let’s face it, indie filmmakers usually blow their wads making the actual film and can’t compete with the $20 million advertising budget of a large studio. Heck – it costs $500 just to get one bus shelter ad in Vancouver.

Internet distribution models and Print on Demand publishing have leveled the playing field somewhat for indie publishers. Especially since so many people buy books on line (it’s not like shopping for clothes, you want a book, you buy it)… but still, the discrepancies are there and because of the economy, many larger publishers aren’t taking risks on new writers.

Indie publishers are a wonderful service to up-and-coming writers. And Indie Bookstores are a service to the indie publisher and indie author, often supporting local and regional writers in ways that Borders or Chapters don’t. I remember the irony of being a featured reader at an event set up at Borders Books. I couldn’t get my books into that store. I asked them why not? I was doing a reading there, after all. I was told they didn’t deal with small presses.

I’m writing this today to remind folks that writers and publishers have to start somewhere. They have to be able to find homes other than just on line. They need places to read and interact with the public and stores that will support their work. Not everyone can get the publicity of Stephanie Meyers or Stephen King. Indie bookstores can also supply material for niche markets… like Banyan Books (spiritual/personal growth books) or KidsBooks.

I’m not saying don’t ever step into a Borders or Chapters ever again. Just think about exploring your local indie booksellers so that you might discover something new. Indie bookstores means more choice, more diversity, not just buying what the big pub houses want us to. They also put money back into the local community. I read somewhere that 20% more of your money stays local when you shop at an indie bookstore.

A great place to look for indie bookstores is INDIE BOUND, an online community of indie booksellers and other indie businesses. It’s also a great resource if you’re an indie author planning a book tour, because you can pick up the phone and talk directly to the person who can help you set up a reading. And they will even carry your books on their shelves… possibly as a featured author.

 

The Best Year of My Life… Seriously?!?

If someone told you that you could have the best year of your life, would you

a) fold your arms across your chest and go, “oh yeah? okay, give me the best year of my life.”

OR

b) jump up and down excitedly and shout, “awesome! what do I need to do? Tell me and I’ll do it!”

If you answered A, then this post isn’t for you. Well, actually it is for you, but you’re not ready. So, bugger off. Go on.

Okay, now that those A people are gone…

I think most people tend to want the outside world to make them happy. If only THIS would happen, then I’d be happy. I learned a long time ago that it’s the other way around. I have to get happy first.

A friend of mine desperately wants to find a partner. She’s even said to me, “oh, it’s easy for you, you have a husband.” I nearly burst a gut laughing. Yes, I just found a husband and suddenly life was great! I told her marriage is hard work and I’ve fantasized about the freedom of being single. I know plenty of unhappy married people. She wasn’t too appreciative when I told her that she needed to get happy first. Then she’d find the perfect husband.

Think about it… happy people make happily married people. Grumpy, bitter, resentful people… not so much.

The most important thing I’ve learned over the past several years is that I am the one responsible for my own peace and happiness. Stuff might happen out there, stuff that I consider bad, hurtful, wrong, immoral, but I am the one in charge of how I let it affect me. And, more importantly, how I let all those righteous feelings stop be from getting what I say I want.

I am in charge of my own success. I am the only one standing in my way. Trust me, if you made an effort to honestly look at how you stand in your own way, and then really get out of your way, I bet you’d be more successful then you could ever imagine. The ways I get in my way are sneaky ninjas. I have denied, justified, blamed, and made excuses. Many of those excuses I didn’t even REALIZE were excuses because I thought they were the truth.

In Debbie Ford’s book The Best Year of Your Life, she challenges readers to get out of their own ways and create the best year of their lives for themselves. My GBF and I took her up on that challenge. But preparing for this new best year took some time.

The first chapter is on setting your intention. This isn’t as easy as it sounds. It took us a week after we realized what a huge responsibility we are. Having this intention and being committed to that intention meant for an entire year we could no longer blame anyone else for anything. Not only did we have to stop denying the ways we sabotaged our own success, we had to do something about it. We had to take action. There would be no excuses.

One of the things Debbie tells readers to do is to post notes all over the house that say “this is the best year of your life” as a reminder. Did you just cringe a little? Yeah, me, too.

Most people live with other people. And a lot of the time we care about what they think of us. And sometimes we don’t do things just because they might think we are stupid or silly. As I was showing my GBF the signs all over my house. I pointed to one in my bedroom and said – I hesitated with that one. You know, cuz Baby might think I’m being silly.”

“Would you rather he think you’re being silly or would you rather be happy?” he asked.

The sign is still on my nightstand. There’s one on the refrigerator, too.

 

Start the Year with Kindness

Several years ago I had the privilege of working for Puget Sound Community School in Seattle, WA. At that time, the school was only a few years old and had no fixed address. Classes were held in different places on each day of the week (from a retirement home to a community centre to a church to a frat house). Mondays we had field trips and/or community service and on Fridays students had mentorships in the community. There were no grades. Discipline happened democratically. The kids were amazing. I was having so much fun I couldn’t believe I was getting paid to work for them.

The founder and director, Andy Smallman, is a visionary educator, although I don’t know if his down-to-earth nature would call it anything other than passion. And his passion is contageous.

While I was working there, Andy facilitated an online “Kindness Class” – a way for the larger community to be involved with the school’s program. The assignments involved committing random acts of kindness and then sharing and discussing them.

He hasn’t run the class in several years and was inspired to bring it back last fall. Little did he know that when he did, the idea would spread around the globe!

We promoted [the Kindness Class] here and on the PSCS Facebook page. The idea spread and 250 people signed up. Steve sent a press packet about it to The Seattle Times. Their education reporter, Linda Shaw… came out and did a story (http://tinyurl.com/yct838d) that appeared in last Sunday’s paper. Local TV station channel 13 then did a quick news story on it last Sunday night (http://tinyurl.com/kindnessQ13 & http://tinyurl.com/KindnessQ13-Take2).
…I have been made aware by people interested in joining future classes that the Times article has been featured in newspapers in Raleigh, NC (http://tinyurl.com/y9o8n45), Greensboro, NC, Jasper, AL, Dayton, OH, Springfield, OH, Ontario, Canada, and likely others. It’s also making the rounds on Twitter, most notably having been “retweeted” by Deepak Chopra. And today it became the “Idea of the Day” on bestselling author Dan Pink’s blog (http://tinyurl.com/y8goczb). I’ve had people from as far away as Australia ask to join.

He had such a great response that he decided to run it again this term. I was so thrilled for Andy and PSCS that I signed up for the class, too. And, it’s not too late. YOU can sign up, too. It’s completely free:

…the idea is pretty simple. Each Sunday night I’ll post that week’s kindness theme via email and on a special blog set up for our class. Your job is to consider the theme and, in a way that is meaningful to you, act on it. After completing your act, you go to the blog and post what you’ve done so the rest of us get to learn about it. Imagine each of us interpreting the same theme each week in our own way and spreading ripples of positive action out in the world. It’s a revolution of kindness…

…As a virus, your acts will impact (some might say inspire) others, even people outside of the class. Being mindful, you’ll start noticing more of the kind things happening around you. You’ll become happier, more peaceful. You’ll sleep better. You’ll exercise and eat better. You’ll feel great. You’ll infect others with optimism.

How’s that sound for a way to start off the year?  Interested? E-mail Andy at pscs@pscs.org.

Or, Check out the PSCS Kindness Class BLOG.

Remember there’s no such thing as a small act of kindness.

Every act creates a ripple with no logical end.

-Scott Adams

 

Brigitta is on the Loose (or, the History of the Accidental Novel) – Part Two

(continued from the PREVIOUS POST)

I am not ashamed to admit that the original Brigitta of the White Forest screenplay was written for the purpose of making money. I had made the decision that writing was not a hobby and that if I didn’t start making a living from it sooner rather than later, I was going to get seriously depressed. Since my dark indie dramadies weren’t pulling in the dough, I figured if I wrote something totally commercial, simply to sell and get back to my passion (i.e. dramas with dark comedic elements), I could support myself doing what I love to do. Plenty of artists did commercial work to support their other projects, right?

The problem came when I fell in love with my creation. I spent one too many moonbeats (a measure of time in my imaginary world) hanging out with Brigitta and her sister Himalette and creating an entire faerie history. I grew very attached to it and had strong feelings about the way I wanted it to be produced.

I was positive it had to be a live-action film ala Chronicles of Narina… which I knew was a hideously expensive proposition for an unknown property (as opposed to a KNOWN property like Chronicles of Narnia).  I had also worked so hard to create this world and wanted to explore it some more! When a company became interested in the script, my agent told me they would probably want the entire rights to it. The whole thing. Which meant good-bye to any plans I had for it. When that same interested company started talking about it being an animated film, I decided it was time to rethink how I wanted to release Brigitta into the world.

As I mention in my About section, a screenwriter friend of mine had adapted one of her original screenplays into a novel. The novel was published, which ironically got the screenplay optioned. I asked if she would consider adapting my screenplay into a novel. She told me to take a year off and write it myself.

But I’m not a novelist, I said.

Neither was I, she responded.

I took a year off of screenwriting and birthed the novel version of Brigitta of the White Forest. I took another year and wrote a few more drafts. The story got deeper and darker and my imaginary world got richer. I realized I really liked writing novels and that this imaginary world had many more stories that needed telling.

I started sending out my agent queries and that’s when things got wonky. I was taken on by a fabulous agency in the UK, Brubaker and Ford. Two gregarious and generous men run that boutique agency, and I was in writer heaven with the amount of affection they poured forth. They left voicemail messages sending love and praising my work. I saw success right around the corner! This was it!

Only the book wouldn’t sell. We were told the fantasy market was oversaturated. We were told the economy was uncertain. We were told new technologies were changing the book industry. We were told nobody was taking financial risks with new authors. Nobody said they didn’t like the story. Most of them praised the writing. I was so confounded that I was literally pulling my hair out (see trichotillomania) – luckily, I have a lot of hair.

After a year of approaching all the big houses and it not selling, we parted ways, as much as it broke our hearts. I decided to do one more rewrite to get rid of a bit of the exposition, and then run it through a focus group of teenagers to see if I was crazy thinking this thing was any good! B & F had suggested I find another agent and submit the new version back to the same big houses under another title. I started querying again, but my heart wasn’t in it. I got one offer for representation and I turned it down b/c it just didn’t feel like the right fit.

I decided the hell with agents and big publishing houses. Did I really want to wait three more years for this book to come out? I had already drafted the sequel! I was ready to take the show on the road! I approached a few boutique publishers and Tod McCoy of en theos press (who has published my books of poetry in the past) decided it was just the new direction he wanted to take his small press. Not only is this a person I trust, I was going to be involved in the whole process, something that doesn’t happen with a larger publisher. This made the control freak side of myself very happy indeed.

Another rewrite later and I was in much better spirits. I was actually THANKING the universe that the previous version of my novel wasn’t published because this version was so much better! After some very positive feedback from my pre-teen focus group (some begging to see the 2nd novel as soon as possible), and a significantly smaller rewrite and editing, it was finally done. Done done. Off to the copy editor done.

It only took 7 years from the day I received the idea to the day I let it go.

 

Can I get a hey? a hip-hip-hooray? a WHEW! (Brigitta is on the loose)

At long last… no seriously…loooooong laaaaaast… I just handed (okay, I e-mailed) the FINAL DRAFT of my accidental novel Brigitta of the White Forest to my copy editor. It’s officially out of my hands.

Do you even know how unreal it was to let it go?

This story began in late 2002 when I was visiting my brother’s partner in her most-awesome store EARTH CENTRAL. A cavern of magical items, books, tarot cards, and piles of faerie-like clothing. I was tending her store and pondering something my EX-screenwriting agent had said to me after reading my 3rd dark, dysfunctional, indie dramedy.

Danika, could you please write something BIGGER?

Bigger I thought… something more mainstream… something with merchandising potential, perhaps… all of this stewing in my brain while being surrounded by FAERIES!

Lady Luna on her Doorstep

You can say inspired, kissed by a muse, or downloaded – but the idea for the story was simply suddenly there. I could picture the two faerie sisters in my mind. So, I let the story percolate, my usual mode of development for a new idea. My mind just plays with it, tosses it around, pokes at it, and asks it a few what if questions.

And then, fortune of fortunes, the next summer I was hired to work on set on the magnificent Sunshine Coast. If faeries live anywhere, they live near skookumchuck narrows on the Sunshine Coast. I knew it was the perfect opportunity to write the story. I made my goal to finish it by the end of the gig… four weeks.

Skookumchuck Narrows Park (from M/V Just Playing)

I did just that and even met some fabulous hippies with an old VW van (painted with faeries, of course) and told them the whole story. My first audience.

That was when the screenplay Brigitta of the White Forest was born. Since I had created an entire world with its own rules, magic, flora, and fauna I decided before I wrote another draft I had to figure out how this world worked. I wrote a 25 page world book and glossary for my own reference and 4 more drafts of the screenplay over the next two years.

In 2005 I got a call from an agent in Vancouver who loved Brigitta and wanted to market the script. I was thrilled, of course.

But it was still not a novel. It wasn’t even an idea for a novel. It was a mainstream, big-budget, family film with merchandising potential. It was a SO THERE to my EX-agents who complained that i didn’t write BIG enough…

(TO BE CONTINUED)

 

Artless PSA by BC Filmmaker

It’s happening across north america, the tendency to let arts funding go (in schools, in our cities) when in an economic crunch because it isn’t deemed vital to society. Here in BC the government has been steadily making ridiculous cuts to arts funding and will continue to do so over the next few years.

This is so short-sighted on so many levels. Not even taking into consideration how art enriches our lives, the arts and cultural sectors and B.C.’s creative industries generate $5.2 billion each year and employ 78,000 people. I’m one of them. And so are most of my friends.

What kind of mixed-message is BC sending when in its bid for the 2010 Olympics, our government boasted about our province’s vibrant arts and culture scene?

A friend of mine, director Kryshan Randel, created this beautiful piece to demonstrate, visually, what an artless life would be like: