FROM BOOK LOVER TO BOOKSELLER

Phyllis has been a book lover...well, I'm guessing her whole life.  I've known her online for years and years, and she knows her stuff and has ALWAYS BEEN a big, big, big supporter of authors.  A few years ago she decided to fulfill her lifelong dream of opening a bookstore. Yes, the economy wasn't great, but many of us have come to that place in our lives where we decide it's now or never.  And we dive in because not doing it is no longer an option.  That's how it is with pursuing dreams.   Coincidently, Phyllis and I both pursued our dreams at the same time. She dove in and opened a bookstore, and I dove in and wrote The Orchard. 


But the economy continued to slide, and print books... Well, we know how it's going with print books. And then...construction. I once did a signing at a bookstore that was surrounded by road construction, practically required a hardhat, and seemed in danger of falling off a cliff. The place was deserted because of course nobody could get there.  So I'm kind of imagining the same scenario with Phyllis's store. These construction projects are business killers. I see that all the time in Minneapolis and St. Paul.  But anyway, Phyllis ended up turning that open sign to closed.  Temporarily. She plans to find another (cheaper) location, and also plans to narrow the focus of the store. I think this is a doable plan, with more of a focus on local authors. This seems to be a successful formula for many bookstores.  But anyway, she's set up a funding campaign similar to Kickstarter.  Check it out and please pass the word.  We need our indie stores, and we need booksellers like Phyllis who love books and love to talk about books and love to share books.  


http://www3.indiegogo.com/darkhorserebirth

FLASH

 I've been going through my short stories, and I came across this piece of flash fiction written for The Clarity of Night...wow, maybe six or seven years ago?  

                                                           Midnight Road

            The strange object loomed above them.  “I wonder what that is,” Fontaine said.   But he didn’t really care.  It was silly to dwell on such things.

            “See those wires?”  Mary pointed.  “I heard they used to carry some kind of power.”   She slapped a pair of patched jeans against a rock.

            “My grandmother says that, but she’s nuts.”

            Mary nodded.  “Crazy as a full moon in June.”

            “Nutty as a nut tree.”

            Fontaine threw the last of the wet clothes into his basket and got to his feet.  “My grandmother refused to go through the mental cleansing.”  There, he’d finally voiced his family shame.

            “My mother says it’s vulgar to cling to memories.”  Mary stood and picked up her basket.   “A cleanse a day keeps the sorrow away.”

            The sun rises in the East.  All children turn toward the sun.   Fontaine turned.  “A cleanse in time saves a mind.”

            The darkening sky reminded them of the impending loss of light.  Side by side they hurried home, their shadows stretching and shrinking, bending and folding across the midnight road.

            

Jerome. Again.

A few more Jerome photos.

ZERO CALORIE READING SNACK

Free June 30 and July 1.
Right now you can download a really short short story for free.

I've decided to work on publishing all of the short stories I have lying around. This amounts to at least twenty, maybe more. At some point, I will bundle them into collections by genre. Lately I've been writing more phantasmagoric (The Pale Boy) stories, but I also have crime fiction, fantasy, and romance.  I'm designing square covers so they won't look like a typical full-length book.


Woman in a Black Veil is a gothic paranormal of about 10 pages.


Woman in a Black Veil

And as always, The Pale Boy is free.


Oh, and Woman in a Black Veil is a little sexy. Probably PG 13. 

JEROME

For the past several years I've had this recurring dream where I'm driving a car on this narrow road, winding around and around this cartoon mountain to finally reach the top. 

I saw that place for real when I was in Arizona. Forget Sedona.  Well, don't forget it because the area is breathtaking, but the town is...well, kind of one big upscale shopping mall. I couldn't wait to get through it and out of it. I think it was maybe another ... I don't know, 25, 35, 45 miles to Jerome. I'm too lazy to look it up. But Jerome. OMG. You have to go there. It was a copper mining town back in the day, and the terrain is so steep that buildings have actually slid downhill.  And just like my dream, the road winds around until you reach the town on the top of the mountain.

At one time Jerome had a population of 15,000.  Today it's around 400. But on weekends the town is packed. Lots of eateries, and...well, the place is just weird. And I like weird. It claims to be the biggest ghost town in the United States. I believe it.  And it's also supposed to be haunted. Well, I'm not sure I believe that. We stayed at the Jerome Grand Hotel, which has been featured on some paranormal shows.  It was originally a hospital, and still had  the original elevator and boiler system. And it sits on the very top of the town.  Oh, and 9,000 people died there. Or at least that's what I overheard in the lobby.  By late afternoon the town is almost dead. By 5:00 the shops are closed and the hundreds (thousands?) of people who clogged the streets during the day flee.

The phone in our room. It rang once. It was the guy at the front desk trying to help us find a place to get our flat tire repaired. When you're on the top of a mountain, and it's Sunday. We ended up going to a nearby town...  Guess.  Walmart. Walmart saved the day.

 

 Shop window

 Another shop

 It was pretty grand

 Elevator in hotel

 A cool thing in Sedona

outside the cool thing

Chapel of the Holy Cross

Spooky chair in the spooky hallway of Jerome Grand Hotel

And I don't know what's going on with comments.  I get email comments, but when I come here the comments are gone. I think blogger is deleting some of them. I'm not doing it.

Time Suck

I'd planned to blog about Jerome, Arizona, today, but I fell into that black hole known as cover and ad design. I have no real talent for this kind of thing, and I don't know what I'm doing, so I poke around until I figure a few things out. I'm stubborn, so I don't give up (when I actually should give up), and consequently this takes all day.  My main goal is to produce something that isn't embarrassing.  Ha.  This is what happens when writers wear so many hats. We don't have nearly as much time to write because we are designing and formatting and promoting and and editing and proofing. I was trying to figure out how much time I spend writing.  Years ago, before blogs, I spent 100% of my work day writing. Then I began blogging and that writing time dropped to maybe 70 or 80%.  Then 50%.  Then came Facebook and Twitter, etc, and all of the DIY that now goes along with writing. I'm guessing that I spend 5% of my time writing. But at the same time, I published four books in the last year rather than one book in  two or three years. That's partly because I had several stories "under the bed".  So anyway, today's time suck:

A reissue, this book should be ready soon. The LAST of my backlist!!


And then some ads. I like the Cat ad, but I'm not happy with the Man ad.  It's OKAY. 

AIN'T IT GRAND?

Cactus Garden

I lived in New Mexico for ten years when I was a kid, but I never saw the Grand Canyon. And really never thought I would at this point in my life.  But my daughter was planning a trip to Phoenix to attend a job-related conference, and she suggested I meet her there so we could see the Grand Canyon together. 


It was 105 when my plane landed in Phoenix. And I was wearing long sleeves, and black head to toe. What else?


 These cacti photos were taken in the Cactus Garden of the resort (conference) hotel in Scottsdale where we launched our trip. This place was way, way, way out of my league. A glass of tea was $8.00. A salad was $20.00.  Are you freakin' kidding me? It put me a little in mind of some of the hotels I visited while on book tour last fall. Where I couldn't afford the food, and existed on the power bars I'd stuffed into my bag before leaving home.

Cactus Garden

Cactus Garden

But luckily I was only at the resort one night. The next morning we headed north.  I expected bad, winding roads with a lot of traffic.

Nope.  

Highway 89

I expected heat. 

Yep. (It was 115 degrees by the time we left Phoenix for home.)

We lucked out and decided to begin our Grand Canyon tour from the Desert View (East Entrance) rather than the main entrance (Grand Canyon Visitor Center). I really think the Desert View ended up being my favorite view, with a tower on top  of the canyon that was amazing. 

Grand Canyon, East Entrance

We kept wondering where all the people were, because there were very few cars and very few people. We wondered if summer was the off season.  ??  But by late afternoon, we reached the main gate and found them. The people. Sun sets at 7:30, and many viewing areas are only reachable by shuttle bus. And the last bus returns to the parking lot at 7:20, which makes no sense.  The visitor center closes at 6:00. So we wasted an hour on the shuttle, not realizing that we didn't have enough time to get off, walk to the viewing area, and get back to the parking lot before the buses stopped running. If I had it to do again, I wouldn't even go to the main entrance. But anyway, we got back from a nightmare shuttle ride (the kind were sweaty crotches are in your face, and sick people are coughing on your neck) to just catch the last of the setting sun at the main entrance where we'd unwittingly left our rental car.  We never made it to the point that was supposed to be the prime spot, but I can't imagine that one view is so much more spectacular than another. 

Grand Canyon, Main Entrance

We stayed the night in a nearby motel. The next morning we headed for Jerome, Arizona, the biggest ghost town in the country.  More about that later.