Michelle4Laughs- It's In The Details: Getting the Call: Mariam Kobras

The Story of my Life: 

"Some things in life happen when you least expect them.

When I woke up on that cold and dreary November morning in 2010 and decided to write a novel, I had no idea that only two years later, it would be published, and go on to win a Bronze Independent Publisher Book Award."

Read the whole story on Michelle Hauck's blog, where I'm a guest blogger today.

Thank you so much, Michelle! 

Michelle4Laughs- It's In The Details: Getting the Call: Mariam Kobras: Call stories come in all forms, but this one takes an unconventional path.  See how Mariam Kobras befriended her way into showcasing her talent for a publishing contract…

I'm A Believer!

Rio Tinto Stadium, July 28th, 8.30 pm: HE takes to the stage.
His band has started off with the intro to Soolaimon, and I'm very happy about that because it's spectacular and brings the audience to their feet right away, never mind the really, really rotten sound in that open air venue. In fact the sound quality is SO rotten that it makes me cringe. These guys are normally so much better at this.

Anyway. This is not supposed to be a concert review. Everyone knows I'm a big Neil Diamond fan, have been for forty years. I like the music, I love the band, and I adore the Vocalist - and I know well I'm not the only one. But it took me all this time and a long trip to see him live in Salt Lake City to realize that there's actually a lot to learn from Neil.
It's actually quite obvious, and very easy.

Here's lesson No. 1: Be yourself.

If you found out what works for you, do it. Don't be deterred by what others say: if you feel good with what you're doing, do it. Neil Diamond did it, and it worked for him. He's an icon now.
This is a valuable lesson for anyone who wants to be a writer, you see, and the basic message here is: follow your instincts. There is only one YOU, and if you figure out how to use this in your writing, you will have your own voice, which is more valuable than anything else in writing. You can learn only so much from textbooks, classes, conferences or whatever. In the end, it always boils down to this: be yourself. In music, in life, in writing.
Neil Diamond is distinctly himself. Everyone recognizes his songs. They are unique. Sometimes a bit on the cheesy side, sometimes too melodramatic, but always clearly his. This is good!

Lesson No. 2: Be confident.

Believe in what you do!
If you don't believe in your own work, who else will? If YOU don't think it's worth the effort and the time, who will? Let those others smile and scoff, but don't stop believing in yourself. Ever.

Lesson No. 3: Never give up.

Because you never know which novel will be your breakthrough, and you learn with every sentence you write.
Just, you know, never give up if you really believe you have something worth writing. But that's something you have to figure out by yourself.

Lesson No. 4: Reinvent yourself.

Who says you have to be the same old self all the time? Wear them sparkly shirts when you think you have to, and when you think you need to tone down, wear a black business suit. Go on, surprise your audience! But whatever you decide to wear, always be dressed well and perform at your very best. And if the sound system fails, make sure you keep the show going without it.

Lesson No. 4: Stay humble.

Seriously: Stay humble. If you make it, then you made it because your audience and readers have helped you there. They are your friends. They love your work, and they probably admire you for your achievements. But: stay humble. Others work very hard too and maybe never make it, and the only difference between you and them is that one spark of luck or serendipity that gave you a head start. In the music business or in publishing hard work alone will get you nowhere. You need that golden moment of sheer, outrageous luck.

And finally:

Lesson No. 5: Age doesn't matter.

It doesn't. That is all. Just look at Neil: Seventy-one, and he still puts on a two-hour, no intermission, and he's the sole performer. No warm-up band, no guests, nothing. Just Neil, and his band of nearly half a century. If he can do it, so can we.

And now let's go out into the world and rock it with our writing the way he rocks it with the music!

Oh, btw: I'm in purple sparkles today, and off to write my novel No. 4. My publisher is waiting for it!

Insights. The Healthy And The Wise. Random.

You may have figured this out by now: I'm not the world's best blogger. I'm not even in the top fifty percent.
Blogging is awkward.
There is this deep anxiety of having to write something profound, something that will mean something to others, instead of blabbering about myself or my writing or whatever else I'm doing, or what I had for breakfast. Blogging, for me, means someone else should profit from it. 
And that's something I rarely can provide, because my life is so boring and slow, there's just nothing anyone else could learn from me.


Take the writing. 
What do you want to learn from my path to being published? Nothing.
One morning three years ago I woke up, and while I was lying there in bed, staring at the early spring sky and the geese passing by outside my window on their way back home, way up in the North, I decided I'd get up, make coffee, and start writing a book.
Just like that. And that's what I did. I got up, made coffee, opened my new laptop, and began writing, and I didn't finish until the book was finished.
Then, when that was done, on another random morning, I posted a page of it on this blog. Hours later, I was talking to my publisher, and weeks later I had a book deal.
End of story. Boring. 
By now, I have two more books written, signed, and on the way to being published, and a new project is looming on the horizon.
It's a job. I work for Buddhapuss Ink. 
I get up in the morning (as before) make coffee (also, as before), start writing, and stop when it's time to stop. It's a fun job, and I do it with a passion, but it's a job and pays my bills.


So if this counts as an insight, I'm fine with it.


My husband is sick.
Not mortally sick, not invalid sick, he just has what many men of his age have who like their food and drink too much and don't go for regular checkups: the famous "metabolic syndrome". In normal speak: high blood sugar, blood pressure and cholesterol. 
Last Sunday, he had to be taken to the ER in an ambulance because we thought he had a stroke, but no, it's only a paralysis in an eye muscle, thank you, diabetes. It was a huge, loud, cannon ball shot of a warning, and I'm quite certain he'll take all those pills and stick to a sensible diet and all those things.
But.
For a while there, while I was waiting for the first results at the ER, all by myself, I was wondering how our life was about to change.
It COULD have been a stroke. An aneurism. A tumor. All those were real possibilities. 
This Sunday could have changed our lives forever. 
He'll have to change his diet and lose some weight. He'll have to learn that a meal without meat is still a meal, and that a bowl of fruit for dinner is enough, you don't need a pastrami sammie to feel full.


The insights I've won from this week for myself, though, are wonderful. 
I've learned that whatever happens, I'll never be alone.
Even while I was waiting at the ER until my kids arrived, my publisher messaged me and asked if there was anything I needed.
The darling woman, I wonder what she'd have done if I'd replied, "Come here! Come here NOW! I need you here!!!"
But anyway, that would have been mean, and I know what she meant  - she was there for me. 
As were all the others. My Facebook friends, my Twitter friends, those I've met in person, those I'm going to meet this year, even those in places I'll never go to, people I'll always only know through the internet, they were ALL there, virtually holding my and my husband's hands, praying, sending good thoughts, asking how it was going, offering support. Quite a lot of them messaged me their phone numbers, asked me to call them if I needed someone to talk to, a couple of doctors offered medical advice.


Just so you know: the first thing I did when my hubby had his diagnosis and I saw him there in his hospital bed was to slap his arm, and hard.
He smiled at me and called me "darling". He knew I did it because I was so relieved to see him well.
He's home now.
After the Easter holidays, on Tuesday, he'll have to go and see our own doctor for his medication, and from now on,  go for regular visits to the lab. It's a small price to pay for a big, big scare.
We are still a family.
I am grateful today.
And that is the most important insight of all: don't take your loved ones for granted. 
Never, for a moment, believe you'll have them forever. Tell them that you love them, every day, all the time. Show them you love them, by caring about them.
Because, you see, there may come one Sunday when you look into their eyes and see something is wrong, just like I did.
Only maybe you'll not be as lucky as I was.
It may just be too late then.










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The Dolphin Of My Heart's Desire.

I talked to a friend yesterday. We were best buddies in high school, during grades eight to ten. We did everything together, all the time. There wasn’t one weekend when we didn’t sleep over at each other’s houses, not one day when we didn’t spend hours on the phone after school, no lunch break we didn’t hang out together.

We had the same hobbies, shared the same passions…well, almost.

Carol always loved horses and dogs, and I’m scared of horses (they are so HUGE!) and I’m more of a cat person. 

She preferred rock music, while I was (in the early 70s) more of a Neil Diamond, Albert Hammond and Simon & Garfunkel girl, with some Joan Baez and Janis Ian thrown in. There may or may not have been a Barbra Streisand album or two thrown in.

I remember learning some English words from Neil Diamond that were definitely not in my text books, like “transcend” and “overhear”. It must have been around that time when I decided I wanted to know every English word there was.

Carol and I wrote stories. 

Like most teenage girls, we had our secret loves, TV stars, pop stars, and we made up stories about them. Well, Carol made up the stories. I designed the “covers” and came up with the titles. And I watched her write.

I helped her make up the plots, and I did write a bit myself, but generally I was too lazy.

I didn’t see myself as a writer. Carol was the writer. She was the one soaring in her imagination. She was the one who brought wonderful sentences to paper.

Her novels had a plot, they had a beginning, a middle, and an ending, there were characters in them that seemed alive and real. Normal, living people, while the heroes I made up were always some kind of celebrities, famous, rich, and carefree.

You see, there was enough dreariness in my real life to want to keep it out of my dream world. I wanted to escape to nicer, happier places, like California with its eternal sunshine. The music business, creativity, those were my subjects, while Carol wrote about a family living on a ranch, with horses and dogs.

My people had to struggle with their creativity, with their loves, but never with money, and certainly not with animals. They didn’t even have time for a potted plant, let alone a pet, they were that busy creating and loving.

I lost Carol when we were in 11th grade.

She drifted off into the drug scene, and I went to Canada for the summer. When I got back, she was in a clinic, and I changed schools.

We met once more, about ten years later. I was married by then, my first son in pre-school. My husband and I stopped for a brief visit with her.

She was married too, had three babies, and was living in an apartment overlooking a factory yard, as far away from that ranch and the horses as you can imagine.

We never reconnected after that, until yesterday. She had found me on Facebook.

I called her on the phone, and we talked.

She told me she is a widow now, her husband died of a brain tumor six years ago. There were four kids, she had to raise them on her own, and it wasn’t easy.

The family lives out in the country, in an old farm house, with horses and dogs and cats. Carol doesn’t have a lot of money, but, she told me, she’s happy.

When she asked me about my life, I told her about my just published book, about the new contract I’ve just signed with Buddhapuss Ink, about last year’s book tour, and the one coming up next year.

“I’ll be going to New Yoek,” I told her, “And Salt Lake City."

There was a long pause.

“Wow,” Carol said, “I’ve never left my home town. We went on vacation once, but that’s it. I’m still here.”

She could hardly believe my life. She could hardly believe it when I told her I was a published author now, and my book was selling and getting good reviews.

“You lived our dream,” she said, “You’re going to all those places we were dreaming about, you are a published author! How did you do it? Where did you get the spark?"

The spark?

There was no spark. There was only a lingering dream, a constant, soft pull I had ignored for most of my life.

It almost felt like the dolphin of my heart’s desire playing in the ocean of my life, sometimes breaking through the surface, but never long enough to make much of an impact.

I don’t know what changed.

All I know is that, on a gloomy day in November of 2008, I woke up and knew the time had come. Suddenly, with every fiber of my soul, I knew I had to write that book.

My hubby bought me a laptop, and I sank into The Distant Shore, forgetting everything else. Often enough, there was no lunch for the family, and no ironed shirts for my husband.

I was too busy writing.

And I didn’t stop until the book was finished. I had left the surface, and I was dancing with the dolphin. The moment I put that first sentence on paper was like jumping from a cliff into that ocean where the dolphins were waiting, and I was free.

I’m still down there, frolicking in the freedom of the sun-dappled water.

And I’m never coming back.

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Ending Friends

Today's guest post is by crime author Sam Hilliard. His book, "The Last Track", is one of the very few crime novels I've ever finished. He's pretty cute, and very funny.

He also a fellow author at Buddhapuss Ink. 

Some day in the future, we may yet write a book together. Because I think we are friends.

There is one question that people almost never ask writers, which is fortunate, since it’s the very question writers most want to avoid—especially in a public forum. It’s safe to ask them about the writing process, or the inspiration for their main character.  Or possibly how long it took to write the book. If the writer is in a good mood, an entertaining (and often winding) story might follow.

Yet lob this bomb during a writing panel discussion, a setting where a writer is flanked by peers, and it will elicit a very different response: an awkward sort of reaction, like when a groom realizes that the bride is not terribly late for the walk down the aisle, rather, she’s not coming to the wedding.

Which brings me to the taboo query: can two writers really be friends? 

And by friends, I don’t mean in a Facebook or Twitter kind of way, where every acquaintance, no matter how incidental, constitutes a “friend.” Can two individuals, who both consider themselves writers, maintain a healthy friendship? Or at least be the sort of people who could sit next to each other on a grounded plane for more than twenty minutes? 

The answer hinges on how an individual author views the actual business of writing, which has very little to do with the craft. At the risk of oversimplifying the argument, I submit that there are two basic viewpoints, and generally authors adhere to one or the other, albeit not too vocally.

If a writer sees publishing as a zero-sum game, and any bit of success someone else attains detracts from their personal luster, then they cannot be friends with another writer. They probably can’t be very good friends with anyone, but they certainly can’t be friends with a peer. Sooner or later, one of them will be more successful than the other, and the flames of resentment will ignite. One clue you are dealing with a zero-summer, these sorts of authors will not write blurbs for your first novel (or probably anyone else’s who isn’t at least as famous as them).

But if both writers see the business of publishing as a limitless blue ocean, a sea of opportunity with as many possibilities for either of them as well as anyone else, well, there’s a chance they can be good friends. These are the people who look forward to reading what their friend is working on, and cheer each other on from the sidelines. Where appropriate, they might offer constructive advice and support. 

They might even write a book together. 

Find Sam here: http://www.samhilliard.com/wordpress/

                          http://buddhapussink.blogspot.com/p/sam-hilliard.html

I Am, I Write

I've been in a mind to write about writing for a while now, but it always seemed presumptuous, and I don't really have time for it, and anyway, I don't care too much for blogging. Yes, I know, big mistake, authors have to have a blog and post regularly, and so on.  Have you ever had a feeling of distance on your computer? Like, some pages, files, whatever, are simply farther away from what you do daily than other stuff? Well, that's how I feel about my blog. It's in the farthest corner of Safari, somewhere DOWN THERE WHERE THE WILD THINGS ARE and I don't like to go there. It involves work.

Sometimes there's a subject I'd really like to rant blog about, but I'm not that stupid, and I keep my trap shut until the moment is over, or I do in fact write the blog post, but then my poor publisher gets dumped with it, and of course has to comment or leave me still in ranting mode, and unhappy. Publishers have a hard life sometimes, and sometimes they are more babysitters than publishers.

Anyway. I'm rambling.

What I really wanted to write about today is... writing.

I don't believe you can teach writing. There, it's said. I believe you can teach technique, grammar, maybe even style. There may be a way to teach plotting, storyline, dialogue, characterization, even description. You can put all these together, and maybe a couple more that I forgot, and you have the classic creative writing program. Oh yes, punctuation. Ah, and... contractions (*doffs head to publisher*).

But if you put all these together and shake well, all you have is CRAFT. I want to compare this to creating a clone. You can grow a perfect clone, the prettiest girl on Earth, or the most adorable male, and yet they are empty husks, nothing but bodies, because the main ingredient is missing: the soul. The thing you cannot teach is the feel for writing, how to make it come alive.

A writer has to be able to observe. I'd almost go so far and postulate that this is a major ability for a writer. Everything that goes into a story, every emotion, every expression, the way a twig bends under snow, you must have observed it to put it into words. If you don't see your surroundings, you can't describe them.

Just as important, I believe, is visualization. To write a scene, you have to see it in your mind. It's as if the characters are doing private theater scenes in your head. They act them out, you write them down. They deliver the dialogue, all you have to do is listen. And write.

Writing is not a job. It's something you do, or you don't. There's no half-way writing. It happens all the time. Either you're at your desk, typing, or kneading the story in your head, or collecting impressions, or doing research or playing out dialogues while you clean the bathroom. You may not even notice you're writing, but the next time you sit down to actually type, you'll notice.

Either you're a writer, or you are not.

That's basically all. I said, BASICALLY. This is a declaration of faith, and nothing more. I've said my piece. Generally, I think talking about writing is a waste of time, when I could instead by writing a story.

To say it in the undying words of Yoda: There is no try. Either do, or do not.