John Locke, the author- not the LOST character-though both have pretty amazing stories, has recently signed a distribution and sales of print only deal with Simon and Schuster (who seem to be all over the board this month).

Is this the end of traditional publishing as we know it? Or an exciting pre-eminent takeover by authors?

Locke was the first self-published author to sell a million e-books through his own company. Which pretty much tells us he knows what he’s doing. And now, with this deal… he’s kind of a hero around here.

Kudos to his agent, Jane Dystel of Dystel & Goderich Literary Management, who handled the deal.

Locke-ism for the day: “When I saw that highly successful authors were charging $9.99 for an e-book, I thought that if I can make a profit at 99 cents, I no longer have to prove I’m as good as them … Rather, they have to prove they are ten times better than me.

The first e-book offering from little old me.

Yep. I did it. It wasn’t traditional. It wasn’t even my favorite book. I know, you shouldn’t say that. But I have become filterless in the last short while… beware the “f” bomb, people.

I blame it on the world. I am, like most writers filled with doubt about the publishing world- the book as we once knew it is probably changing forever. And along with that, is the way we acquire, market and buy both the author and the book.

So what’s a girl to do? Give up her dream? Stand there and just take it? Nope. Not my style. I have been patient. I have been understanding, forgiving and kind. Ask my agent.*

I believe there is “the right time” for everything, but seriously… does it take 4 months for an editor to reply? I know I always think I can do something better than the guy in charge, but imagine this… an email comes in. You read the query.  You say, nope. not for me. you reply. You delete, and repeat. A pitch comes from an agent, you like it, you request manu.  She sends it, you skim, trust your gut. Offer or decline. Done. Next?

Don’t even get me started on the army of marketers and accountants it takes to push a manuscript into book form. Or the way most people only read what they find listed on a BOGUS best-seller list. ANd please, we do not want to talk about the way some writers are more magic web masters and salespeople than wordsmiths.

ARGH.

Let’s just say, I want to keep writing novels, even if no one ever reads them. Even if I have to buy the whole stock myself and fly around the world reading chapters to blind people . I want to believe in the power of words, be sucked into the imagery of a place I will never go nor have never been. I want to be responsible for taking one person out of their reality and dropping them smack into a place from my dream. I want to mess with your head and I want you to love me for it.

Well, there. that’s why we write. For love. Or… to annoy the shit out of you.

I do both.

*note to agent   forgive my candor…now go pitch We’re Not Waving, We’re Drowning, and 3 Women Walk into a Bar

Time for a little positive energy around here.

Kids are in school and learning a whole bunch of life defining skills- including school bus survival. I kiss and hug them and tell them every morning to go out there and knock ‘em dead. To hold their head up high and believe in themselves. My husband tells them every night how proud he is of them, how much he expects of them, how worthy they are. They are learning life lessons- that you don’t get what you don’t earn- and no one hears the whining.

It’s time I went on a little positive mental attitude reinforcement trip of my own. And that includes clearing out the cobwebs some creepy little negative energy spider threw up when I wasn’t looking.

Beliefs start early, from what you see in your home, to your mentors at school, to what you fill your mind with, from reading and music and film, to your guidance at church. I am thankful for growing up in a strong, healthy, loving family, for my unerring faith in God, for my husband and children who both need me and make me feel loved and wanted, for my encouraging yet competitive writer pals, and of course the strong women friends I have found in Georgia. This is the longest I have lived anywhere, and God must really think I have my act together, because he’s been giving me a whole bunch of tests, just to keep me on my toes.

I don’t welcome them- who would want trials? But, as a writer, a wife and mother, I see every experience as something to grow from, to use as a metaphor, as a character’s motivation, as a teaching tool for the children, as something to enrich and build my marriage, as something to let me know ME better.
I’ve run into some snags along the way, as I believe in finding the good in everyone, in giving them the benefit of the doubt, of forgiveness and of unconditional love. My husband will look at the bum with the dog and say he’s faking his broken leg and I’ll want to give the bum lunch, wash his dog and hear the whole story of how he came to be here on this corner.

It’s not always easy. I still have a problem going back to stores that mistreated me, or dealing with repairmen who took us for a ride around the block- an expensive ride around the block.
Sure, it may take a bit of grousing and a few mumbled but-why, or we should have- scenarios before I get over the whole thing. But I get there.
Life is too precious, and for some, too short to spend it wallowing in negativity, surrounding yourself with doubters, accusers, and judgmental critics.To allow your own belief system to be soiled by those who don’t get it yet.
(I won’t call them haters, or evil, or wrong, or bad or even toxic- a term thrown around lately, because then, aren’t I lowering myself to their standards?)
I’ll just delete the unfitting comment or post, forward the email to a prayer group and walk away. Into a very pretty sunrise in a very blessed place, where a whole new day of good things awaits.

I know there are more days that are coming that I will not want to read what is written about me. Already, I have my dissenters, but I have learned that it’s not me. It’s their issue. It’s their unhappiness, their belief system that broke down. I can’t let their problem become my own.

In this house, we don’t say, “can’t.” We don’t say something is too hard or impossible. We see only the finish line, not all the pebbles in the path, and we never ever stop believing, because we want a mural, a panorama of life.

“The thoughts we choose to think are the tools we use to paint the canvas of our lives.”
Louise L. Hay

I suppose we all have our runaway stories. My kids have both done it- or at least attempted it.
Not sure what that says about me as a Mommy.
Granted neither one of them got far, they were definitely missed and certainly the reason behind the attempt wasn’t taken lightly.

I know I had my share of runaway attempts growing up. The worst part was when I’d thought I’d runaway from home- had packed my favorite stuff, taken some food and a book, managed to stay away for hours and hours and hours… yet when I came home, no one had even known I was gone.
That sucked.

I remember that woman back in the ’80′s who holed up in her kid’s tree house saying she was going on strike- as their mother. I thought she was nuts at the time- especially when her kids lured her down with a plate of homemade brownies- but later, when I was a mother and a wife… I pretty much got where she was coming from and started wishing for my own tree house.

Sometimes, that’s what it takes. A strike. A packed suitcase. A white flag on a stick.

Like the 41 year old SAHM who picketed in front of her house in Indiana, saying she was unappreciated and wanted some help around the house… her point was made, even though she got a bunch of hate mail from single working moms and husbands who still believe in the barefoot and pregnant role of house wife…

( of course, you can’t be all crazy and do what this mom did. because then you have to go to jail.. and while that sounds like a bit of peace and quiet, I don’t know how many of you would be comfortable using that toilet… and no, I’m not going to tell you how I know about using the toilet in a jail cell. )

At any rate, know this. Thinking of running away is perfectly normal. Disguising a little runaway as a guy’s golf weekend, high school pal reunion, girls’ getaway or spa retreat is also acceptable.
AS long as when you return home, you want to be there, you feel like you’ve been missed and you are in a hurry to unpack and settle in.

Little Runaway Interlude

“The writer must not really know what he is knowing, what he is learning to know when he writes, which is more than the knowing of it. A writer loves the dark, loves it, but is always fumbling around in the light. The writer is separate from his work but that’s all the writer is – what he writes. A writer must be smart but not too smart. He must be reckless and patient and daring and dull – for what is duller than writing, trying to write? And he must never care – caring spoils everything. It compromises the work. It shows the writers’ hand.

The writer doesn’t want to disclose or instruct or advocate, he wants to transmute and disturb. He cherishes the mystery, he cares for it like a fugitive in his cabin, his cave. He doesn’t want to talk it into giving itself up. He would never turn it in to the authorities, the mass mind. The writer is somewhat of a fugitive himself, actually. He wants to escape his time, the obligations of his time, and, by writing, transcend them. The writer does not like to follow orders, not even the orders of his own organizing intellect.

The writer doesn’t trust his enemies, of course, who are wrong about his writing, but he doesn’t trust his friends, either, who he hopes are right. The writer trusts nothing he writes – it should be too reckless and alive for that, it should be beautiful and menacing and slightly out of his control. It should want to live itself somehow.

The writer is never nourished by his own work, it is never satisfying to him. The work is a stranger, it shuns him a little, for the writer is really something of a fool, so engaged in his disengagement, so self-conscious, so eager to serve something greater, which is the writing. Or which could be the writing if only the writer is good enough. The work stands a little apart from the writer, it doesn’t want to go down with him when he stumbles or fails or retreats. The writer must do all of this alone, in secret, in drudgery, in confusion, awkwardly, one word at a time.

The writer is an exhibitionist, and yet he is private….The reality of his life is meaningless….He drinks, he loves unwisely, he’s happy, he’s sick…. It doesn’t matter.

The writer doesn’t write for the reader. He doesn’t write for himself, either. He writes to serve . . . . something. Somethingness. The somethingness that is sheltered by the wings of nothingness – those exquisite, enveloping, protective wings.”

– from Joy Williams’ UNCANNY THE SINGING THAT COMES FROM CERTAIN HUSKS, published in WHY I WRITE, edited by Will Blythe

On my FACEBOOK page, I linked an small speeding article written by the talented and amazing Tom Chiarella from Esquire in a section about minor violations… why we do them and what’s the cost? Read it, read the whole magazine, for good ness sake and sure, if you want? Friend me.

Frankly, I know I speed more than is necessary. I’m usually not doing it because I’m late, except for that time my pedicure ran over and I almost missed my plane to London, and then I compounded the speeding indiscretion with driving solo in the HOV lane. What the hell.. in for a dime, in for a dozen, I say. I wasn’t stopped for either. And they held the plane for me.

I used to drive according to whatever was on the radio. Even now, I find myself cruising along minding all regulations when the Spa channel is on, but when I twist the dial to garage rock or alternative and hair band satellite stations.. all bets are off.

I have my favorite speed spots. I know where the potholes are and where the Sheriff tucks his long white car in the bushes. I know a nice long stretch of smooth blacktop from Atlanta to Myrtle Beach where 110 feels like 40 and a curving road on the way south where I can pass car after car after car even if the lines look like doubled yellow.
I have learned to turn the music down and appreciate instead the growl of the engine, the whine and shudder of downshifting gears, the blast of air in my face and the whipping of hair against bare shoulders as I’m slammed back in my seat.