Wife Swap - Where Would They Send Me?

My daughter recorded an episode of Wife Swap and I just watched a bit of it while eating my lunch. If you haven't seen the show, the premise is that they take two wives/mothers from very different households with opposing views and switch them for two weeks. So I got to thinking... hmmm, I wonder where they would send me?

First of all, they would send me somewhere very neat. The husband would expect a wife who was, how do you say? Duhmestick? Yeah, domestic, that's it. The other mother would be a neat freak who keeps her house spotless at all times, without fail. She would be terrified of the dust bunnies who currently nest in the inner sanctum I call home.

I currently do not bust my buns working out, other than walking my dogs, so they would definitely send me to a man who expects my body to be rockin' (not in a chair in front of Cracker Barrel either) and my diet to be pure. The poor receiving husband would likely be properly grossed out by my little muffin top and tell me all about it and how to get rid of it. He would make me do reps of this and that and run until I pass out, then expect me to make dinner. That brings me to the next point.

I don't cook, so they would probably pair me up with Betty Crocker's husband. Is he still alive? Was she ever married? Is Betty a real person? I don't know, but that's another post. Wanna know what I can cook? Here's what I can cook:

Java mama, Cindy Brown

Coffee. I can cook you a mean cup of coffee. That's what I can do. And something out of a box, like Hamburger Helper or spaghetti. And if you want something else for breakfast, then fine. I can open up a mean box of cereal for you as well.

I think they would also send me to the city where it is very noisy. I'm an insomniac, so that would be great [insert heavily sarcastic eye roll here]. I have this weird kind of insomnia where the sound switch in my brain doesn't shut off when I sleep like it does for normal people. It's some kind of sensory thing. Also, unless I'm really dead to the world, the slightest movement wakes me up. I woke up the other night because a tick was crawling on me. Really. It's that bad. Ticks weigh as much as air. How did I feel that?

They would send me to people opposed to both pets and nature, someplace drab and sterile, without artistic flair, where I would have a brick wall for a view. It would be really cold there, which I would despise.

There would be no Internet access (they'd be against it and all forms of technology). There would be no phone, no lights, no motor cars, not a single luxury. Sorry, I got carried away and slipped into the Gilligan's Island theme song there for a minute. 

This family I'd be placed with wouldn't fart or burp in front of each other and would be properly disgusted if I did. And who knows about me, I just might do that kind of thing. I believe stifling it will cause great pain (wouldn't want to find out what might happen if I didn't), but on the opposite side of that, I stifle each and every sneeze. I'm an enigma. Never know what I'm gonna do.

Oh, and the worst part about this family would probably be that they'd have no sense of humor at all. They'd be gulp -- quiet people. Nothing would make them laugh. It would be like pulling teeth. I'd hear crickets in response to each opening of my mouth. It would be like playing a game of Operation after taking out the Funny Bone. Not a good time, nooo... not good at all. I'm always very uncomfortable around people with no sense of humor. I think there's something wrong with them, genetically speaking. And if you're one of them, what are you doing on this blog right now? Furthermore, do not send me hateful e-mails about my bashing of the humor impaired. It won't be tolerated and I'll punish you by forcing you to watch Blazing Saddles on a repeated loop until you break down and cry like a baby.

In the end, the wives each get to spend fifty grand on the other family for something that would truly help them improve their family unit. I would buy them $50,000 worth of comedy DVDs and I'd come home to find my kids and husband working out in our new $50,000 gym and expecting me to cook something healthy for them afterward in the $50,000 kitchen.

Well, that decides it. I think I'll just stay home instead.

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Blog Tour

Blogging has been a major challenge for me. I never know what to say. I look at other peoples blogs and say I can do that. But when I get to the screen my mind goes blank and I just stare. Now I have something I can really talk about with No Remorse being released. I have been working on getting people interested in the book, but since I am new to this, I don't know all the tricks of the trade just yet. But I am learning. A friend and fellow author, Elizabeth Kolodziej, introduced me to the world of blog tours and blog hops. I participated in my first blog hop during St. Patrick's day and I can say it was a lot of fun, but lots of work going from site to site with all the different rules and requirements from each author participating. 

However, doing this got me into the right frame of mind and I realized the blog hop drove traffic to the authors different sites along with their fans that wanted to try to win a free book or swag. So, I jumped on the band wagon and my blog tour is scheduled for April 3rd through May 4th.  I have quite a few people lined up doing reviews, interviews and guest posts. Ryder Islington suggested I do a character interview which actually turned out to be a short story instead and was so much fun to write. I'm currently waiting her feedback on the story and am very excited to hear what she has to say. With the blog tour, setting up the schedule and getting everything ready for everyone participating has been a chore, but one I gladly continue to work at. 

Learning to manipulate a website from scratch was my biggest challenge, but I overcame it and my site is up and running  http://www.heartofawolf.com/.  Now, I just need to start blogging and get traffic to the site. Speaking of which, I had one of my blog tour reviewers contact me to see if I wanted to participate through her in a blog hop. She suggested that I donate swag and once again I jumped at the opportunity to get more traffic coming my way. 

I am finding all kinds of ways to advertise and get in front of people. In the Blooming Late Group, I also suggested allowing other authors to advertise their work for free on my website. Whoever is visiting the blog tour will see the advertisements and hopefully that will drive traffic to their websites. I also noticed that so many big authors are doing movie book trailers. As an indie publisher, I don't have the budget for this set aside, so I decided to give it a shot myself. I know it's not as grand as the big authors, but I am proud of my PowerPoint slide converted to movie and hope you will check it out and like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MTAozXT4r2o. 

I look forward to reading all the blogs that are posted and hope my first "real" blog may have helped someone in some way and look forward to hearing from you. MaryLynnBast@heartofawolf.com or Mbast06@yahoo.com

MaryLynn Bast

"Shifting readers minds one word at a time"

POV: WHERE DO WE GO FROM HERE? Lynne Favreau

Darn it! What’s a writer got to do to get a book published these days? Better yet, how do you sell one?

The world of publishing is in chaos. Seriously. Ask three question of any writer, agent, or publicist and you’ll get nine different answers. Even more frustrating—ask fifteen of them and you’ll get ever more divergent and dispiriting answers back.

The big publishing houses aren’t acquiring new writers at this time. Small publishers only want literary tomes from academics. Self-publishers are self-serving and will publish any crap you pay them to cause there are thousands of you they make money off of whether you sell anything or not.

Readers are expecting something for nothing because the electronic market sold them on the idea that their devices were essential and not the content they download to them.

No one is agreeing these day on exactly what it takes to get published because the minute you define a course of action, someone else comes along and does the exact opposite and throws the whole system into hysteria. Hell, the economy tanked and no one is buying books anyway.

Not to discourage or depress you but it’s grim goings out there. It’s unrealistic to think you can get an agent, or a publisher unless you have a successful online presence with a huge following, have published before, or write professionally for a magazine. You have to prove you have a track record for them to take a risk on you? Sigh.

Unless you don’t give a rats ass what anyone else says, and are willing to plug along doing whatever it takes to get your book in print and into readers hands then your writing is never going to see the light of day.

Still with me? I thought I might have lost a few of you with all that discouraging crap.

Who you are, what you write, your social media quotient, your personality, the quality of your writing, your tolerance for social engagement—yes, they are all going to matter. But how much they matter and by what measurement and how you will utilize them, will be tailored to what you are trying to accomplish. We don’t all have the same goals.

You might have come across this quote from Seth Godin sometime this week, it was making its way around the twitter sphere “Who said you have a right to cash money from writing?” It’s from this article, which if you have not read yet, you should stop and do so now. I’ll wait...

http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2012/interview-seth-godin-on-libraries-literary-agents-and-the-future-of-book-publishing-as-we-know-it/

I’m a Seth Godin fan. I think he relates ideas clearly, is forward thinking, and has a great sense of humor.

What I get from everything I’ve been reading is that we are at the dawning of a new industry. We are responsible for how our work gets out there, and for finding our readers.

Traditional publishing doesn’t exist anymore. They are still trying to figure out how to function and remain relevant in this digital, self-publishing age. I do believe someone will figure it out eventually creating new models of author/agent/editor/publisher relationships. But we can't afford to wait.

I believe that we writers are the ones to determine what those relationships are going to be. Since the traditional model of advances, publicist, and support are no longer available to the aspiring writer we need not adhere to old methodology of trying to engage them.

How about we make them come to us? What other ways do fiction writers have to showcase their writing? We write blogs, articles, interviews, tweets and essays. As Seth points out, we give it away till someone values it enough to want to pay for it.

I've overcome my initial reluctance to give away my writing, when I realized it didn't mean giving it all away. What it does mean is giving away free samples.

There is no right or wrong way to do this anymore. There is only experimentation, and trial and error.
We will each have to sift through the current approaches and find the ones that fit us.

Up Next: POV: Social Media

The Fog (Could Have Killed Me)

Fog brings up so many memories for me. It can be pretty, pretty scary to drive in, and even mystical to gaze upon. This past week, I was lucky enough to encounter a kinder, gentler fog. Leave it to me to turn it into a story. It's air, for crying out loud. It's water. It’s vapor, mist, haze. It's purely precipitation, in its simplest form. Saying that out loud just made me slip into a daffy duck voice. Please note that I am totally okay with that. Go ahead, try it. Ith fun!

"Ith purely prethipitashun in ith thimpletht form." Now, wipe the spit off your screen and continue.

Mmm, back to the fog. I leave my house dang early in the morning to take the kids to the bus stop, normally an uneventful thing. The sun is barely up at 7 a.m.  It’s still wiping the crust from its eyes while I’ve been up doing laundry, showered and dressed, gotten my husband and kids going, and if I’m lucky, had time for a cup of joe. This particular day, I crested the top of the hill near the bus stop and let out an audible gasp at the scene before me.

The Ocean of Fog  ©  Cindy Brown 2012

“The fog! Oh, I need my camera! I have to go back and get my camera!”

Figures, the one day I didn’t have it in my purse, there is a spectacular display of nature awaiting me at the bus stop. In the valley below lay an errant cloud fallen from the sky. It reached as far as my eye could see, as vast as the ocean, rolling over the landscape and covering everything in its path with mystical beauty. I felt almost afraid, but excited at the same time. Would I drown if I descended into the ocean of white? Who knows what lurks in there? Wild animals? School buses? No, silly, you can't drown in fog... or can you? Muwah-ha-ha-ha-haaaa!

Luckily, the bus came quickly. I did not miss my date with the fog. It’s such a fickle lover, fog. There one minute, lifted and gone in the next instant, without so much as a goodbye. I had no idea if it would be there when I returned or if it would look or act the same, for fog changes quickly. It's a shapeshifter, and you have to catch it quickly before it disappears into thin air. Literally.

Foggy Road  ©  Cindy Brown - 2012

I stopped on my road no less than three times for photo ops, and then ventured on my way for the day. I could see plenty far ahead of me, so driving in it would not pose a problem. I had a long drive, so I was thankful it was not “the scary fog.” As a teenager, I once was sure I would be killed by a blind date who was speeding so fast in his car through the thick fog that I literally cowered in fear in the floorboard. I was skeered, as Oprah would say. And I'm practically fearless! Worst. Date. Ever.

This, in contrast, was the pretty fog, the enchanting fog. This, my friends, was the best fog I’d ever had the pleasure of being involved with.

Nevertheless, I had places to go and little time to be stopping every whip-stitch to take pictures. So, here’s the part that could have killed me. Flying at approximately 55 miles per hour down a two lane highway, I decided to photograph the fog through my window as I was driving. Never mind the fact that I was actually pulled over by a policeman once for AMWD (Applying Makeup While Driving – I actually made the cop laugh when I told him why I had swerved), I was taking my chances. It was too beautiful not to photograph the scene before me.

You’ll be happy to know that I kept both hands on the wheel (I’m covering my butt just in case there happens to be a law enforcement officer reading this post today) and I never took my eyes off the road (thank you, invention of the 3” LCD). Was it worth the risk of dying? I’m not sure, but I think it might have been. My little black box (gold box, in this case) would have told the story of my demise in pictures. What a way to go! I can see the headlines now, "Area Woman Killed by The Fog." It sounds like that old horror movie. But for real.

I don’t even know how to describe the picture that I’m about to show you. I did nothing to the settings. I didn't apply a filter. It was taken through the front windshield of a 2002 Ford F-150 Lariat, not clean of debris either, mind you. It was taken with my Canon PowerShot SX210 IS, not a professional camera. I don’t know where the sepia toned effect came from. I don’t know how the planets aligned. All I know is that the result is one of my favorite pictures of all time. I was very satisfied with my fog experience that day and I have pictures to prove it.

© 2012 - The Fog, by Cindy Brown

If you want to see the entire "The Fog" album, you may visit this public link to the album, but please remember to credit me for the photos if you share any of them: https://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.3164396842091.142136.1630481512&type=3

Decisions, Decisions: Mr. Snake in the Road

We have to make decisions every day in life. Some are hard, some easy, some unexpected, some mind-numbingly mundane, but nonetheless, decisions are a part of daily life, like it or not. When you come to a fork in the road in life, you must make a tough decision. Which way do I go? If I choose the left, will it be "right?" If I choose right, will I be happy with my decision later on? Such quandaries can boggle the mind.

Sometimes, you just wing it and take a blind leap of faith and hope you made the right decision. Today was one of those days, when I ran into not a fork, but a snake in the road. No, I'm not making a clever allegory, I am talking about an actual snake in the road. I'll prove it. I took a picture.

And so, the story begins. It's gorgeous today here in central IL, and I was taking my three lovely dogs on a walk. I'm bouncing along, enjoying myself immensely, humming a little I-love-this-weather tune silently in my head, not a care in the world, "doh-ti-do-ti-doh" when suddenly, there it was.

Right. In. My. Path.

Apparently the snake thought the weather was nice for a slither as well. Decision time! Oh, so many options... I think I might need a bullet list!

• Turn around and go back home
• Step over the snake
• Scare the snake out of the way
• Go to the left of the snake
• Go to the right of the snake
• Scream and stomp on the snake, thus maiming or injuring the snake and possibly myself

I stopped dead in my tracks and said, "Hello there!" after my heart was positioned safely back in its ribcage. I'm not afraid of snakes, but it did give me a start. Jump-start my heart, Motley Snake! [Leave it to me to turn being startled by a snake into a Motley Crue song].

It was there, so I had to make a decision. Oh, and I was alone. The dogs were far ahead of me, already enjoying the creek. Slowly, I pulled the camera out of my pocket to take a picture. Like a good model, it didn't move an inch! Photo op out of the way, I put my mind back into gear. What next? After entertaining all of the above bulleted options, I chose to go to the right of the snake and continue my walk. That's when my mind went crazy with thought patterns and I knew it would be a blog post.

"Okay, I've made my decision, but now what if I step to the right (which is the way the snake's head is facing) and it sees me and decides to attack me? Does it even see me? Is this an attack snake? I don't think so. But how would I know? I'm no snake expert. I think it's harmless. It probably doesn't even have teeth. What would it do, gum me to death? Go on, wimp, do it. No fear. No fear of the snake!"

I did it. The snake didn't budge an inch. However, crazy thought patterns continued.

"What if it's one of those blue racers? Wait, it's not blue. Are they really blue or is that just what they're called? I don't remember! What if it chases me down and attacks me and climbs up my pantleg into my hair?"

At that moment, I had the actual visual representation of that scene in my head, me screaming and flailing down the road and hurling myself into the creek going, "Oh Lord, nooooo, it's killing me!" and I literally busted out laughing at myself. God, I love how my brain works. Anyway...

"So, I made it to the creek and now I have to go back home - right past the snake again. Where are my dang dogs? How did they not see this thing? Are they blind? I know it was being really still, but really? They didn't see it at all? What if I need protected? Useless. Wait, where's the snake? I don't remember exactly where I saw it. I don't see it anywhere! Did it move? Is it up ahead? Is it hiding just off the path, to the right or to the left? Did I startle it so much that it froze in fear (you know, the whole 'it's more scared than you are thing') and when I was out of sight, it slithered off to find a good spot to thrust itself at me, hissing wildly, on my way back through? Should I look for it or just walk on like a normal person and imagine I never saw the snake in the first place? I'm insane. This will be a good blog post."

I never saw the snake again, and in case PETA is reading this, I would never have actually stomped on the snake and no animals were harmed in the making of this blog post. It was just a panicked thought put into harmless words. The end.


To read more of my work please visit:
http://www.everydayunderwear.com

Reading your character's soul

How do your characters talk to you? In fact, how well do you know them? It's all very well to make a list of what your character looks like, where they were born or what they do for a living, but to embrace whom they really are can be more difficult.

1. Interview them. Flick through a range of celebrity interviews and compile a relevant question list then put the questions to your character. Don't force the answers out of them (some characters can be shy). Instead, let them speak for themselves You may be surprised what they reveal.
2. Find them a soundtrack. I've recently run a number of posts on my blog doing exactly this, matching the main characters in my novel with songs that speak volumes about them. It can be handy to imagine your character in a film and decide what song would accompany their appearance.
3. Discover their keyword. When I was having trouble writing one of my characters out of context, I decided to find a word that would describe his core, his motivations and his drive. I now have a reference point to return to if I get lost in his characterisation.
4. Finally, write and let your characters speak. Give them sufficient freedom that they can surprise you from time to time.

Written by Fi Phillips of Fi's Magical Writing Haven.