Inspiration for Isolation

In my youth I was an idealist. Maybe that’s not that uncommon, but I lived out my idealism as an activist. When the United Farm Workers sought better conditions, I boycotted grapes. When I was in college, I wrote letters to Congress in church-related efforts to feed the hungry. When a friend ran away from an abusive home, I began volunteering at a women’s shelter. In the 80s, when the US and USSR were poised for anhiliation, I organized peace protests against nuclear weapons. Then I went to grad school and found I needed to focus my limited time. I didn’t stop caring, but I read little news, wrote few letters, rarely stood in protest. My values didn’t change, even though I wasn’t acting on them outwardly.

The germs of my novel Isolation came from the fear of a swine flu epidemic in the fall of 2009, changes in behavior that swept through the country, my concerns about the overuse of 99% bacterial killing soaps and sanitizers, and a line that came into my head: “laying a finger aside of his nose.”

The flu that year went pandemic, around the world, but not epidemic; it didn’t wipe out humanity. Though it killed tens of thousands world-wide, that’s a tiny, tiny fraction of the population. The fear, however, was palpable. The Centers for Disease Control in the US and the World Health Organization, among others, mounted campaigns to reduce the spread of the virus by teaching us to sleeve the sneeze and catch the cough. They produced posters about the importance of hand-washing which were bright yellow and still adorn the classroom walls on my campus.

Simultaneously, access to hand sanitizers became ubiquitous in many public places, like grocery stores. Though I’m not a scientist, I worried that we didn’t want to kill all of our bacteria because I knew that we needed it for digestion and to build a healthy immune system. Personally I wondered if we should use all of the 99% bacteria-killing soaps. But I was clearly in the minority.

One day while walking, I heard the line “laying a finger aside his nose” from the “Night Before Christmas” echoing in my head. I imagined a boy who found the children’s story in a box of old things from his mother’s childhood. Seeing Santa touch his nose, the boy recognized the book as contraband, since face-touching was not allowed in his world. He secreted the page under his mattress like the pornography it was until he could show it to a friend. Suddenly I was thinking about a world in which face-touching was prohibited; that reality didn’t seem far off.

Along the way I realized how much our food supply had already been contaminated by sudden and frequent outbreaks of E. Coli and other dangerous bacteria. I worried about the dangers of GMOs, though I knew little of the science. Given that I’d never lost sight of the farm workers I’d supported in my youth and given that I’d been a vegetarian more than once over the years due to concerns about Alar in apples, the way chicken is processed, or the dangers of raw spinach, it wasn’t a difficult leap to make Agri-Biz into the evil backdrop to the dystopia I imagined.

These ideas stayed with me for a couple of years. I read news about the various threads and occasionally wrote short vignettes that I shared with my writing group, but I didn’t imagine I was preparing for a novel until I had the opportunity for a sabbatical.

And even then, I was intent on not saying a novel was my goal. It was too frightening. As a writing center director I created a project which required me to write more than 100 pages of fiction. The intent was to recreate for myself the conditions college students face when they have to write a longer paper than they experience writing in a genre or discipline they have little experience in.

At that point, the stage was set for me to write Isolation. Though at the time, I kept emphasizing that I wasn’t writing a novel, just a long piece of fiction. Secretly I hoped for a novel, but I denied it to everyone outwardly. I didn’t want to fail.

Oh, and the activism of my youth, oddly, writing this dystopian novel has led me back to it—a bit. Promoting my book through social media has led me to follow several bacteria-related entities as well as anti-GMO and food safety advocates. They’re a good source of news as well as marketing opportunities—how life changes.

Originally posted as part of Isolation's Blog Tour on Always a Book Lover.

Dystopia: The World Falling Apart*

Notice my title says the world, not a world. For me, dystopias work best when they are recognizably the world we live in now, altered to become the future that’s imaginable yet objectionable, frightening. It’s the world we don’t want to occupy.

There are always other options for our actual future and that is another reason for loving dystopias—they call us to look at the world we live in and to reconsider the ways we live, the values we hold, the choices and consequences of those choices.

I love dystopias and have read many of them, so it’s not surprising that my first novel, Isolation, is dystopic. In case dystopias aren’t your usual read, let me offer an example of how dystopias work. In Farenheit 451, a favorite since my childhood, the world of ideas has become so threatening to those in power that all books must be destroyed. The government spoon feeds the population its rhetoric as entertainment. People are dumbed down by the parlor walls (think big screen TV).

Written in 1953, televisions gaining in popularity, a cold medium luring the masses to sit around and watch in silence rather than discuss the world of ideas. After WWII, with the U.S. leaving Korea and moving into Vietnam, from the quietude of the suburban 50s toward the uprisings of the 60s, civil rights, women’s rights, a peace movement that wouldn’t be still. But let’s not talk about any of that.

In ’53 the horizon was filled with ominous changes which would be averted if every woman was the quintasential housewife watching soap operas and eating bonbons. Every man the worker who did his job without question, even if that job were to be a fireman, one who did not quell fires, but started them, by torching books. Both of these roles are fulfilled brilliantly in Farenheit 451 by Mildred and Guy Montag. She’s depressed; he begins to question the state of things, fearing he’ll be caught in possession of the book he irrationally saves from flames.

Dystopia, the world falling apart.

In 2009 as the swine flu threatened epidemics of Black Plague proportions, the CDC and World Health Organization spread fear, changing behaviors overnight, getting people to sleeve the sneeze, and use hand sanitizers frequently. It was then I began to imagine the world of Isolation, a world in which the government, there’s always a powerful government backdrop in dystopias, banned citizens from touching their own faces, for human safety, of course.

From that premise, characters emerge, fighting one bacterial infection or another. Agri-Biz plays its role in creating anti-bacterial resistance through large livestock operations. Big Pharma keeps its hand in by developing anti-bacterial products one after another after another, lining their pockets while fleecing Homelanders and building anti-biotic resistance.

The stories in Isolation are driven by an illusive safety which everyone seeks, but no one achieves. The world falls apart—in California, West Virginia, Alaska, Michigan, Hawaii. The world falls apart and readers watches in horror, realizing how close this fiction is to the current world they live in.

Fast Forward—May 2014: E. Coli causes product recalls for hummus in Idaho and ground beef nationwide, as well as the need to boil water in Portland. Anti-biotic resistance is growing at a pace which threatens a near post-antibiotic future where bacteria will return to being a major cause of death, as was true pre-WWII.

The thinking person, the one who pays attention, reads a dystopia like Isolation realizing that this could be the future. The world could fall apart in just this way.

I love a good dystopia.

*This post first appeared as a guest post initiating Isolation's blog tour at So Many Precious Books, So Little Time.

The Blog Tour: A Modern Day Book Signing

When I mention I've arranged a blog tour, most people ask what that is. I explain it's a social-media-based opportunity for indie-authors to go on tour the way traditionally published authors sometimes appear in local bookstores to give readings and sign books. However, this way, I don't leave the comfort of my own home, nor do those interested in my dystopian novel, Isolation. 

So what does happen in a blog tour? There are reviews of the novel, written interviews, guest blog posts by me on others' websites, and giveaways. Who doesn't love a chance at a free copy of a great read.  

Sometimes people coordinate this themselves. In my case, this is one of the many gifts of having run a Kickstarter. (Many thanks to those who sponsored me!) I used some of the money raised to hire someone to set up a set number of tour sites. However, I had no idea the variety of sites that would sign on for my novel, nor the wonderful diversity of ways in which they would promote it. Thanks to each and every blogger listed below! I'm very excited to go on tour.

Here's the list of days and types of activity if you want to follow the tour, or just sign up to win an eBook or print copy of Isolation:

Teddy Rose Book Reviews Plus June 16 Excerpt & Giveaway

Library Educated June 17 Review

Creating Serenity June 18 Review

Room With Books June 18 Interview & Giveaway

Reviews From The Heart June 19 Review & Giveaway

Paranormal Romance & Authors June 24 Review

Always a Book Lover June 25 Review & Guest Post

Lightning Chronicles June 27 Review

Elizabeth McKenna Romance Author July 1 Interview

Deal Sharing Aunt July 2 Review

Deal Sharing Aunt July 3 Interview  & Giveaway

Books & Quilts July 9 Review

Mary’s Cup of Tea July 10 Review & Giveaway
TreeHouse July 12 Giveaway

Book Talk With Alana July 14 Review & Interview

Nerdophiles July 15 Review

Nerdophiles July 16 Interview & Giveaway

She Treads Softly July 17 Review

Kritters Ramblings July 18 Review

fuonlyknew July 21 Review, Guest Post, & Giveaway

Open Book Society July 23 Review & Giveaway

Cassandra M’s Place July 24 Review & Giveaway

Giveaways and Glitter July 25 Review

Two Children & a Migraine July 28 Review, Guest Post  & Giveaway

JeanzBookReadNReview July 30 Interview

Naming a Press; Becoming a Business

If you self-publish, you need a name for your press. Kind of obvious, right? But what you don’t realize is that like most naming decisions (excluding children, perhaps), the need for the name happens suddenly.

It’s not like you weren’t aware you’d need it. It’s not like you hadn’t been thinking about it. Well, perhaps not concretely, but abstractly, like, I’ll need a name as the publisher. And I need more yogurt and a nice pen and a new car lease.

For me, the moment of decision happened like this. I was working through my Kickstarter layout. I’d drafted the basics, the rewards, the story. And then suddenly I was at the account portion. Account? Oh, sure, yeah, they’ll have to have a way to funnel the money to me that all my friends, and even people I don’t know, are spending to sponsor my novel publication.

I fill out all the easy stuff—name, address, etc. Then there’s a section for the business name, address, etc. I skip that and continue down the page. I hit "save" and a long list of red sentences pop up across half the screen. Turns out even though I don’t own a business, currently have no business license, was using Kickstarter because business makes me uncomfortable, even though all of that is true, I must fill out the business section of the form. And there it was, I had to have a business, to own one, to be an entrepreneur. 

See how I can’t even decide on business language, let alone make the decisions. No business, no account. No account, no Kickstarter. It had to be done.

I sat there befuddled. Then it hit me. I’d needed a press name when I created my letterpress triangle book. I wasn’t sure what I’d chosen. I’d done it when I was laying out the lead and needed to put in a press name, much as I did now. But the point was, I’d done it then and could reuse it now. Thus, DRS Press, was solidified. 

logo designed by rayane sholy

It was born at Penland in North Carolina. But it became my Press Name, my business name, the day I drafted my Kickstarter. That meant that when I filled out a business license, ordered checks, contracted with a printer—I knew who I was. Or is that what I was? Is that why business makes me uncomfortable? Does it turn me from a person to an entity? A thing? A what rather than a who?

Let’s hope not and move on.

Why Self-Publish?

In 2013 when I finished my novel, I searched for an agent who would then find me a publisher. I didn’t want to deal with the business end. And I think I wanted the glamour. I researched agents, wrote varied lengths of synopses, wrote and sent query letters. Waited. Tried to keep track of when I might hear from which agent.

But every time I talked to anyone, whether it was a class of students I was reading for or a friend who was asking how the novel was coming, I was always asked if I was going to self-publish. In the old days, and still today if you’re a traditionalist, it wasn’t called self-publishing. Self-published was said to come from a Vanity Press, as if the person was so vain he decided to publish himself after being rejected by legitimate publishers.

Now we all call it self-publishing, but it’s quickly becoming indie-publishing, moving more and more away from the pejorative to the attractive. The “real” publishers are starting to pick up self-published books that have made a big splash, like Hugh Howey. Why take a risk? They can capitalize on the success demonstrated by strong sales among the self-published. 

The paradigm has already shifted, but not everyone knows it yet. Paradigm shifts are like that; the majority don’t see the shift for awhile. Publishing is a huge industry, and it won’t go away over night. It’s a bit like what happened to music when Napster made song downloads available free or iTunes began selling individual songs—the music industry changed, not overnight, but quickly. Lots of other changes interceded as well, but in the process, new artists gained more access to the marketplace. 

Nonetheless, I still don’t want to deal with the business end of it all. I have to as a self-publisher and self-marketer. I’m wondering when I get to step away from the business of self-publishing so I can write again, especially as reviewers begin calling for my next work. (That's a treat, self-published or not!) In the midst of a full-time job, I rarely take the time to write. 

And yet, in a way, this is forcing me to write—if not fiction, blog posts and marketing materials and interview responses, especially as my blog tour nears. It’s a lot of writing. It keeps my hand in.

Indie-publishing has also meant a tremendous amount of learning. If I ever thought I wasn’t an autodidact, I was wrong. I keep propelling myself through the next area I need to learn about to get my book in print, in electrons, in the social media eye. It’s not all fun and games, but it’s all engaging and most of it is rewarding. 

Cutting Out Fish—A Process

Intercut vignettes weave my texts into a whole. For me, it was a common device, long before my novel. I even wrote about it in my dissertation. I’m certain other writers must go through similar processes, and yet I’ve never read about it. So here’s a brief attempt to describe what I do.

I write story after story. Sometimes they are parts of a single monologue, sometimes parts of a novel, sometimes parts of an academic argument I am making. But I start with parts. I don’t plot or outline. I write. With fiction, from the writing emerges the characters. I get to know them, go for walks with them, take them to lunch. I discover what makes them tick.

At some point, I have the body of the work drafted, and I start figuring out what goes where. This is where we get to cutting out fish. I can do all kinds of editing on the computer screen–large and small order. I sometimes have several documents open at one time and cut and paste among them to revise.

But when a text is truly composed of independent pieces which I want to intercut–meaning cut each apart and then paste them back together with part of story A followed by the beginning of story B followed by the middle of story A and then the opening of C, etc.–then I have to print them out and physically cut them into chunks.

I start that process by reading each vignette and selecting possible cut locations. When I’m smart, I do this on the computer before printing so that I have space to cut stories apart or even so that I have to cut fewer individual lines from one sheet of paper to tape to another. Though I often have to do that because I can’t always focus on the computer at this stage. It becomes visceral and I need to hold the pieces, to lay them out across the counter, to scan across quickly rather than read closely.

Once I have the cuts identified and completed, then I number them in a way to keep track of which piece came from which story. So I might have story A pieces 1, 2 and 3 or A1, A2 and A3. Though typically I label them with a word or name that makes sense to me rather than A, like Hawaii or Cho and Hosuk (a story location and the characters from that story in my novel, Isolation). Hawaii 2 makes more sense in the middle of assembly than A2 does.

To assemble the pieces, I read the beginnings and endings of chunks of text (the numbered aspect) to look for connections. The connections are not direct. I’m not looking for one character to talk about eating E. Coli-laden spinach and the chunk next to it to also mention spinach, though that sometimes happens fortuitously. I look for a connection–content is possible but so is mood, language, or activity. This is more intuitive than conscious.

To be honest, while I call this connection, it creates a kind of dissonance for a reader. With the spinach example, a reader might anticipate that she is still reading about the same character and situation because spinach is mentioned, but in fact, it’s a different character and place. The combination of connection and disconnection builds readerly engagement.

I don’t want readers to struggle with this too much or they could get frustrated. So once I have all of the texts cut up and ordered, I read the beginnings and endings again and ensure that I signal where the reader is after each break. I usually do this by mentioning a character by name in the first sentence or two though rather than character, it could be setting or really anything that situates a reader clearly in the particular story and not the former one.

At several places in this process I read the entire section of text I’m working with–all of the combined stories being cut apart. To be more accurate, I read until I stumble upon something I don’t like. Then I either stop and revise a bit of text or reorder again. This might happen repeatedly, or I might put them all together in a readable order the first time. Though even then, if stories change, I might need to redo the entire process–which is why this happens late in the process.

For example, I’d been “done” with Isolation for nearly a year, giving readings, seeking a publisher, sending out shorts to contests and literary magazines. In the process of getting it ready for self-publishing, I received feedback which suggested a massive cutting was in order. In the first section of the novel nearly 50% was cut. Needless to say, I had to re-order the cut pieces which now often started and ended differently than they had in the earlier version.

As I hit the end of page two of this blog entry, I think, wow, this must be complicated. But it’s really not. And it’s lots of fun. As humans, much of the meaning we make in the world comes from juxtaposition. You know the saying: "It’s all context"? Well, that means that the juxtaposition of “things” whether they’re stories or the contents of your refrigerator or the objects on your desk create meaning. Well, the things' juxtapostions don’t really create the meaning, we do—as we look, contemplate, rearrange, reconsider. For me, it's the essence of writing, the essence of creativity.

Somehow, the print I made several years ago “Cutting Out Fish,” which accompanies this article, provides a visual for this writing practice. Rock, paper, scissors. With more than two choices, randomness enters the equation. From the way I see it, that means we all win! Play with cutting up and reordering text. See what happens. And let me know.

The Hard Choices

You'd think that choosing character names and plot lines and ways to kill off characters would be the hard choices. They were. Once.

Currently the hard choices are about whether to read through the manuscript one more time, even though other writers have read it searching for error. Even though it's been professionally proofed. The hard choices are where to spend my marketing dollars and what to do myself.

Hard choices move around. They often have time lines. Consequences.

In writing, funding, and publishing Isolation, I've found hard choices at each stage. In writing, most of the hard choices were at the starting gate. In setting up and running a successful Kickstarter, what was hard wasn't so much the choices as the amount of emotional energy needed each and every day. In publishing, the hard choices have been surprisingly frequent. In fact, almost every choice seems hard. Maybe that's because there is no immediate reward. And though I pride myself on my love of delayed gratification, perhaps things are harder when there is no perceivable positive in the moment of (in)decision.

As I move into marketing, the hard choices just keep coming. Spend money online? Traditional routes? Perform social media tasks myself or hire someone? Do a little? Do a lot? 

Maybe it's a matter of perception. Everyone around seems to think I should be overjoyed: I'm publishing my novel. I am. Happy. But there are seemingly endless hard choices, and I let those feel heavy. I languish amid them. I become enervated. (Yes, passive voice. It's not a choice. I don't boldly get enervated. Obvious once I write it, right?)

"Habits learned early are habits for life." At least the characters of my novel find this cultural imperative begs repeating. 

It's not early for me, but it's time for a new habit of perception: choices are energizing. Good things come to those who make choices! I love questions, but it's time for exclamation points!!