March Newsletter
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Here’s a sample of this month’s newsletter. To receive the whole thing (including freebies! This month’s had a link to a super-secret trailer chapter for my next novel), add yourself to the contact list HERE.
Dear Beguiling and Savvy Readers,
The end of March is nigh. This month has been about four-and-a-half months long, yet I am still getting this out near the end of the month. Why? So you will know the month is nearly over and remember we used to have these things called months which meant something. You’re welcome for that bit of nostalgia.
Before I go any further, I hope this finds you physically and mentally well and weathering this storm as best you can. I’ve been sending you flowers every day (digitally, through Instagram and twitter and FB) to try to bring some added beauty into your life, and I hope you are in good spirits. I’m in one of the Stay Home, Save Lives states (as opposed to the Save the Economy by Killing Grandma which Will Damage the Economy A Whole Lot More states), so I’ve been gearing up to try to teach my high school students as best I can when some have no internet (we’ll make it work somehow). I did something really important for my mental health: I got a dog. Meet E.V. She’s a rescue who had a really rough life before a wonderful foster family saved her, trained her, and brought her to me. Now it’s my job to make sure she knows she’s safe and loved for the rest of her life, and this sequestration is offering a lot of time for bonding. She also takes me for walks, so she’s keeping me healthy in that way, too. Good dog, E.V.!
Updates about my writing and publishing
Heather S. Ransom’s Back to Green hit shelves this month, and it’s already crushing it. Kate Ristau’s sequel to Shadow Girl, titled Shadow Queene, is now available for pre-order and will arrive on doorsteps or in Kindles the day of its release, April 28th, if you order your copy now. Not a Pipe Publishing had a big sale this last week where a whole bunch of our titles (the stand-alones, the anthologies, and the firsts in each series) were free on Kindle for the week. It was a huge success in a couple ways. First, it got a lot of our talented authors' words in front of a lot of eyeballs. That’s the main goal of the company, far more important than making money. As an added bonus, the downloads count as sales, so ALL of Not a Pipe Publishing’s authors have now become Amazon Best Sellers. I know that doesn’t translate into royalties for them or profit for the company, but it sounds cool, and I keep believing that once people read these great novels, they’ll tell friends and the books will take off. Why? Because they should. Because they’re great books. I know that’s not really the way the world works, but I think it’s the way the world should work, and I’m going to keep trying to make it so.
My book tour has been canceled, of course. I’m not even going to spill ink complaining about that in the current global context.
As for my own novel, I joked that I would make March my CoronaNoWriMo (NaNoWriMo is National Novel Writing Month, and it’s in November when school is on, so I can never participate). I half believed my own joke, too. Well, I spent the month working on other people’s books because I signed contracts with them and owe it to them to put their books first, so mine kinda took a back-burner, but I have made some progress lately, and it reminded me why I love these characters and their story, so I’m feeling increased impetus to get it done. Then my girlfriend, who is currently reading Don’t Read This Book, told me she wanted more of three of the characters in the sequel. Combined with a global pandemic, that has changed the direction of this sequel and the third installment in a good way. Just today I wrote a whole chapter. I normally wouldn’t share out a teaser like this, but I think this chapter can stand alone while also giving you a flavor of the second book. So, if you want to read Don’t Read This Book first and not have anything spoiled, get that here, but if a book with a title telling you NOT to read it doesn't sound like your cup of tea, consider reading this chapter that has some not-so-hidden commentary on the era we are all living through. (Just a first draft, of course, and subject to a lot of change in the future.) [This is just for folks who have signed up for the newsletter, so membership has its privileges. Add yourself to the contact list HERE.] I think you’ll enjoy it. And if you’re fans of the McElroy Brothers who do the podcast My Brother, My Brother and Me, you’ll like it even more!
Tweet from someone you should consider following
Lately my favorite person on twitter has been Mikel Jollett. He’s the lead singer of a band I like, The Airborne Toxic Event (they formed in 2006, so the name is just an unhappy coincidence), and the author of a memoire, Hollywood Park, and his critiques of this administration have been insightful, focused, and blistering. Follow him at @Mikel_Jollett
Monthly Poem
This poem came about thanks to a workshop put on by my friend Rebecca Smolen, who is also one of the most talented poets I’ve ever met. She hosts these workshops using a special critique method, and she keeps the workshops small, but if you can get into one, I highly recommend them. Anyway, a few years ago I painted my own version of Picasso’s Don Quixote, and it’s pretty decent but not at all creative. Most folks think it’s a print of his, and that’s flattering in its own way. It’s framed on my wall. One of the prompts Rebecca gave us was “my empty body,” and both Don Quixote and Sancho Panza have empty spaces in their bodies, but they carry themselves completely differently, emptiness and all. Hence, this:
Holding the Lance
Picasso’s version
of Sancho Panza
is not the kind and lovable
Samwise Gamgee
we sometimes misremember
He’s a blobby snowman of darkness
pressed down by his social standing, sure
but maybe frowning and
certainly willing to participate
in the cruelty inflicted on his master
by a novel that takes dementia
and twists it to wring bitter laughs
dirty water
like the excretions of the old bath towels
my parents cut into rags,
and tossed in the bucket in the garage
for us to use when
washing the car.
Picasso’s painting is all
clean black and white
but feels hot and sweaty and dirty
like the novel
seen through modern eyes.
And Rocinante is all terrible angles and bones
and the windmills are so far off in the distance
under that oppressive sun
But there’s something about
the way Don Quixote
holds his lance
not the pathetic weapon itself but
the stiff wrist and fist curled in around the handle
not letting go
of his mad dream
to be something different than
an inky blob of a man
to be a sad, old empty body
and a fierce spirit
who holds on
and won’t let go
Book recommendation
I wasn’t sure what to recommend this month. (If you haven’t read any of my books, I should be recommending that you take this opportunity, but that feels too gross, so I just won’t.) Then I remembered a conversation I recently had with my girlfriend. Yeah, I have a girlfriend now. She’s a voracious reader, and we talk about books a lot! I was telling her about Dune by Frank Herbert. It’s a brilliant series of books. I could go on and on about it (and I did, and she didn’t even seem bored!), but if you get your hands on a copy and read even a few pages in, you’ll be hooked, and it will provide you with many hours of escape into a distant and wild future that will change the way you see our world just when you might like a different perspective.
Announcements/reminders
Last month I encouraged you to sign up for our Writing Against the Darkness Team. On the longest day of the year, June 20th, we’re going to participate in The Alzheimer’s Associations annual The Longest Day fundraiser by writing from dawn to dusk. Well, we might not be getting together in person this year, but this is the perfect opportunity to do some good for the world from home, and doing good is a great way to maintain your own mental health, so please consider it. Find out more and sign up HERE.