Let Me Digress

2006-07-05T16:56:00.003-04:00

In fairness I have to update my rant at Amazon yesterday.
It was the fourth of July so I could not reasonably have expected them to do a great deal what with the entire country off by the barbie and drinking bear. They, like the rest of us, need to have lives even if some of us don't.
But, they were, in fact, working and first thing this morning I had a response. They did not refer me to a useless page but fixed the problem. They transferred all the requested information and updated my account themselves. They changed my password for the new account and gave me a password which could actually be remembered rather than looking like some kind of code leading to a Martian invasion. I thought about changing the password but I rather like it so I think I will keep it just for Amazon.
So, thanks, Folks. Good job.

2006-07-05T16:56:00.002-04:00

2006-07-05T16:56:00.001-04:00

2006-07-05T16:56:00.000-04:00

2006-07-04T09:50:00.000-04:00

Don't it just make you smile.

I got an email from Amazon this morning telling me I had an order. They do that frequently for one or two books but I clicked on it to find out what smashingly large order we had this time.

But what I got was a long agreement I had to agree to so they could "upgrade" our account. By now I was wondering if it really was from Amazon because it was all so bananas. But then Amazon is often bizarre. If I have a problem and contact them I may get back something which says I should go to FAQs for the answer. We all know how useful FAQs and Help are!

By now I am wondering if what this is is a pfish. So I go back and take my usual route to our Advantage account. Same problems. So I slogged on through what looked very much like a form for people setting up a first time account. But I went on and entered all the information they already had. I was wondering if they needed some additional specific information why they didn't just ask for it with a form which was labeled in an appropriate fashion.

Anyway, on I went until I get to the account number for the bank account for the electronic transfer. The box will accept no numbers no matter what I try. I'm completely blocked. But I also notice that the next box asks for the 9 digit routing number for my bank. My bank now uses a 10 digit routing number for incoming transfers so 9 digits is useless.

"Technical problem?" they ask at the bottom of this useless form I have now wasted time on. So I click on contact us and decline to go to FAQs. I went back to my address book and sent my email to them from there. I can't wait to see how long it takes to get a response and whether it is of any use. I'm glad I'm not paying someone else to deal with them or I wouldn't bother. But then I wonder why I bother period.

2006-07-02T11:52:00.000-04:00

Isn't it amazing how long it takes us to catch up with what is actually going on. It wasn't that long ago that men retired at age 65 and were, on average, dead at age 67. So, you retired and then died. Neat. Simple. But it is not like that anymore and we are struggling with terminology.

Yesterday CNN ran a feature about "Life After Work". Interesting because we do seem to have life after work although the terminology is terminally confusing. The person featured was a "retired" woman who was running a full time cookie making business complete with her own van. I don't get it. Isn't she working?

I can't come up with a useful definition for retirement. Does it mean when someone stops delivering a paycheck to you? In that case I retired over 30 years ago which was the last time I got a paycheck from anyone except myself. In all that time no one made a job for me, no one gave me health insurance. I did it all for myself. It is frequently annoying that when you are self employed, the "employed" deem you to be unemployed and therefore available to do anything they want at any time which they can't do because they are "employed".

So, when exactly did I get to be retired. Or do I get that in the future. And what will happen then. Will the paycheck I never got stop coming.

Of course, you can talk to the nice folks at Social Security and become completely confused. They understand employed, unemployed and retirement and nothing else. Self employed is a major problem. The rest of us seem to be a problem.

I hope someone will shortly let me know what I am so I can respond with something other than confusion. This does not feel like what I thought retirement was and I do not feel on death's door. Maybe for me the problem is self publishing. It seems as a self publisher that I must be unemployed more than retired. Actually, I guess what is happening is that I am having an identity crisis which has been going on for over thirty years. That's it! I'm a self publishing, retired, unemployed person who is having an identity crisis. Now maybe I can create a crisis for someone else as they try to fit that on their check sheet.

2006-06-29T09:18:00.000-04:00

At BEA it was recommended that those of us who blog should do so daily. I assume that they meant it should be done daily if you had some purpose in doing it such as publicizing your publishing endeavors and specifically your books.
But as I am doing this I am wondering about the impact of all this blogging. When asked for a show of hands most people in the room at one of the presentations indicated that they had read someone else's blog just that morning. As more and more of us blog there is more and more to be read and more and more to write. Do we, in the end, have time for anything else?
This situation is an extension of a broader phenomenon. The ipod is everywhere and it holds up to 3000 songs. I am assuming that most ipod owners select the songs they put on their instruments. It is always possible that someone is selling preloaded ipods. Let's see that is an ipod for $300 and 3000 songs at 99 cents. So, the cost comes in at just under $3300. I doubt there is a market like that out there. But who knows.
Anyway, you have to select your songs which takes time. For my part I have not purchased an ipod as much as I like to have music going. Where on earth am I to find the time to program that toy? I have no plans to invest my time in that fashion.
Back to blogging. Isn't this getting to be a rather compulsive process. We publish our thoughts and ramblings and read those of other people. We could spend all of our time engaged in the blog. Whether it is ministering to your ipod or massaging your blogging life it appears we have entered a virtual world where we have virtual lives made possible by our technology. Maybe this is the answer to war and will bring peace in our time. If we are compulsively engaged in our virtual relationship with the content of our technological wonders then we will not have time to do damage to each other. Except in the form of our virtual compulsivity.

2006-06-27T16:07:00.000-04:00

I do wonder how marketing people keep their sanity. Or is it that sane people don't go into marketing? Now that authors have to do their own marketing whether they have a big time publisher or are doing it themselves, we all have to be marketing people.

But, I find it very frustrating. I admit I have a high tolerance for ambiguity but I'm not so sure I want to live in a completely ambiguous world. Trying to sell books is nothing but ambiguous. I suppose I should be satisfied if they are selling but it would be nice to know what we are doing right.

We are busily promoting and are watching Amazon put in pitiful orders which are expensive to ship and at the same time the orders roll in from Baker & Taylor. Not that I am uphappy about that but I would like to know what it means and why. Does that mean we are somehow tapping into the library market which is supposedly a large part of their business? If that is true, how did we do that? It beats me.

I'd really rather put away my shotgun and get out my daisy air rifle to hit our sales target.

Speaking of sales, the second book in the Demontagne Saga, A Circle of Dreams, is out. Our reviews are really good and it is viewed as a stand alone book which is important. Come visit our website at www.annierogers.com and read the reviews and see our latest articles. See you there.

2006-06-25T16:51:00.000-04:00

Recently our webmistress pointed out that there were a few dozen things which needed to be updated at www.annierogers.com. ( Why does that sound so kinky? We have webmasters but that means a man. And she is a she. So it must be webmistress. Right?) Anyway, she was validly pointing out the fact that some things had changed and we really needed to update.

So, I went and took a look. That was pretty awful. Now I believe most of life is self inflicted and that is true for our website as well. It is not just your pretty picture with the cover image of the latest book up front. We have lots of stuff including our articles in the Author to Author section and out press kit. And so on. So, there was lots to do and I spent two days combing it and revising. If we had kept it simple then it wouldn't be that amount of work. But I have to face the fact that we decided not to keep it simple. We wanted to to be interesting. Which it is.

So, give Donna (our Webmistress) a few days and then run over to www.annierogers.com and roam around. Ciao y'all.

2006-06-24T07:53:00.000-04:00

They are throwing a party and we are not invited.
Early in June there was an ad in Publisher Weekly for nominations for the debut author award given at the Quill Awards. My wife passed it on to me to look at and she asked what the Quill Awards were. I had run across them but couldn't remember so I googled them.
The ad gave the basic information needed for nomination which was to be done by email but failed to note a few things which I found on the Quill website.
You only need apply for an award if you have a starred review in Publishers Weekly and are at the top of the bestseller list from PW and national booksellers. The top award went to someone by the name of Rowling. Humm. Let's see. That means you really need not apply unless the debut author is one of those published by the big six. Most of us peons will not get into PW to begin with no matter what we produce.
So, it boils down to the big six and big media throwing themselves a party and we are not invited.
I thought about nominating anyway since the ad in PW did not specify the details I uncovered but gave it a low priority and by the time I got back to it the deadline had passed.
Maybe you are thinking it was just as well that I didn't tug on superman's cape. I don't subscribe to that philosphy. What are they going to do? Ignore us? Reject our nomination? Not give us a review? They already do THAT!

2006-06-23T16:07:00.000-04:00

I simply love pretention and to view the activities of the high and mighty especially when there is silliness afoot. I do hold the New York Times in high regard and it deserves its good reputation. There are times though when they make errors which are truly amazing. Like the day that their motto on their masthead suddenly became "That's fit to print all the news" rather than "All the news that's fit to print."
And recently while looking for something on cable to help me achieve vegetable consciousness I came upon the Times Discovery Channel which often has quite good things on it. In this instance they were offering "One Hundred Years of Presidential Golf". Lord love a duck. Please save me. Can you tell I'm not into golf and find this utter triviality.

2006-06-20T10:52:00.000-04:00

The long tail again. The tail is interesting in that there is a bulge at the end where books continue to sell and there is quality out there at the end. But, again there is a very specific problem for fiction.
Our nonfiction book about short term therapy for stepfamilies is still out there selling a little bit after over ten years. It is a perfect example of the long tail. The publisher did not consult us but it is clear that they went to POD production since it seems doubtful that they have the book lying around after ten years. Or, anyway, that is my assumption.
A major issue with POD is cost. POD production is cheaper than it used to be and quality is higher but it is still costly per unit. With our stepfamily book, though, it sell for $32 and change so it is possible to absorb the POD cost. Not so with our fiction books. The cost of POD takes up way too much of the cost of the book. In fact, it makes it a money loser. It seems unlikely that the long tail will apply to fiction any time soon given these economics.

2006-06-18T11:18:00.000-04:00

The difference between the marketing for fiction and nonfiction continues to impress me. We found using PR for fiction to be much more difficult and at BEA it became clear that new marketing activities were developing but there were many more possibilities for nonfiction.

In using PR there were niches for nonfiction which could be exploited which was typically not the case for fiction. And now Amazon is entering the fray to sell parts of books. Using Amazon Update opens new possibilities but when it comes to fiction why someone would want to buy part of a novel escapes me.

But for many types of nonfiction there might be very useful pieces. At the same time I can understand the hysteria attached when agents, publishers and authors look at the possibilities. A specific part of a nonfiction book might be all someone really needs and so they could get the information they needed for a fraction of the cost of the book. And to the publisher that means for a fraction of what it cost to produce the book.

So, how much should be charged and what does one do about security if indeed security is even very good. And so it goes. There are clearly going to be a lot of missteps and disappointments as we find our way into our brave new world.

Maybe it's not so bad that fiction may not have to fight those battles in those ways.

2006-06-16T07:49:00.000-04:00

The long tail was the big buzz at BEA this year. Some of the stats were interesting and somewhat unexpected but I only heard a miniscule bit of discussion of the difference between the long tail for nonfiction and fiction.

We are experienced in seeing the long tail in nonfiction. In the mid 90s we left our clinical practice which specialized in helping stepfamilies make the adjustment to their new family status. We had a very successful model to use because we were national experts in stepfamily dynamics and had worked with the core people for almost twenty years. Unfortunately managed care was running the show and we could not practice ethically with them calling the shots.

Parenthetically, what happened with managed care is another indicator that simply turning free market forces loose as the Bush administration wants is not always the best idea. Our health system has never recovered from the depredations of the health care industry which has now largely departed from the market they ruined. Mental health in particular was devastated.

Anyway, we did not want to leave without at least documenting what we had learned and knew worked. We had the profile of the most vulnerable stepfamily and knew that it was crucial to begin work with the couple to shore up this shakey family. We knew not to put stepmothers in therapy and in most instances not the more troubled children either. It was a very successful episodic couples based model which worked very well. So, we put what we knew in a book which was published. It came out at a good time and the company which now owns the rights are keeping it in stock because POD is now a possibility. And so now for those who are smart enough to know there is a goldmine of information out there, they can still buy our book. We publicize it not at all and it continues to steadily sell a few copies here and there. It is this kind of thing which demonstrates the best of the long tail.

Then we came to fiction. I simply could not see in most instances where the long tail works very well. For fiction it seems that continuing sales depends on continuing promotions. And that costs money. Now, if you are Nora Roberts with a back list of 200 books, it is not necessary. But for the rest of us, it is necessary. I think it may be that the long tail will turn out to be really about "hard" information and the nonfiction book. We will see.

2006-06-15T08:14:00.000-04:00

At least I was able to get on to blog this morning in a reasonable amount of time. But that was after I was told my cookies were dysfunctional. They weren't, of course, and the problem was cured by starting all over. That is, after I was told the page expired. Complain.....

Anyway, one of the things I like about being able to keep a creative focus is it makes me think about the diverse forms of expression. And sometimes I get to see really neat juxtapositions. The other night I did my usual thing when I stop work which is to simply cruise the TV channels. I have this on-off switch which means I am either totally on or totally off and when I go off I want passive entertainment and I definitely don't want to think.

So, I was cruising when I came upon The Umbrellas of Cherbourg from 1958. It is a sentimental favorite of mine. I know, it is pretty sappy and very French and very 50s but it stilll holds a certain allure for me. It is a simple story, tres tragique often with pretty weak voices as operas go. If "opera" can be applied. But there is a primitive romanticism in it which it is good not to forget.

Then when it ended I cruised further and on the gay and lesbian channel I found Moulin Rouge. Dark and disturbing as always but extremely well done. How nice it is to be able to move between such extremes amidst such diversity. Both of them fulfilled me in their own way.

They again reminded me of the richness of various forms of art and the fact that as I get older I see worth in more and more forms. When I was a lot younger I think I was often attracted to word driven literary offerings but as my life has gotten richer with age I find richness in feelings and the images. But not all images. We happened on a painting exhibit at MOMA in New York which featured dark post World War II images. An interesting exercise to be able to see the link to the tragedy which had just occurred. Interesting but not attractive. Nothing I would want to live with. Tragedy can validate feelings but it is usually best taken as a new beginning or an opportunity. Not to be dwelt upon. From it can come an opening and at least the search for beauty however it chooses to manifest itself. I think in the end that is what attracts me to straightforward romantic stories. That is the central theme in A Dream Across Time. Look what you can have if you will stick by your dreams and have faith in your future.

Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

2006-06-14T15:42:00.000-04:00

I have had a terrible time recently getting up on Blogger. Everything took forever and generally I got a message saying the page could not be found. It was impossible to spend the day trying because we are so torn up around here.
The other major problem is being torn up around here. After some months living in a new place we finally figured out what we wanted to do with the house and have started renovations. Or, should I say devastations. Our offices and our bedroom is still functional but the rest of the house has been destroyed. That also means that the rooms considered stilll functional are filled with assorted furniture from somewhere else.
It all brings back memories. When we lived in our former two hundred year old house we were always renovating. One day I went to clean out a clog in the kitchen sink. The cleanout shattered and the cabinet I had to remove to get at it broke to pieces. Since the drain was under a concrete pad on the bottom floor we had to tear up the wood floor and jackhammer up the pad. While we were at it we tore everything back to the stone walls, sandblasted them and started over.
It took six months of work to clear everything out. My wife cooked on a wood stove in the livingroom sometimes and sometimes in the fireplace. When it was functioning the stove was sitting on what was left of the concrete pad. It sat on a two by four frame to keep it level. When the fridge quit we called a repairman who told us that it was not working because it was 35 degrees in the kitchen and the fridge needed 45 degrees to work. He suggested we leave the door open part of the time.
So, the other night sitting in our current devastation I said it felt like home.
Anyway, that's my excuse and will probably remain my excuse for some time to come. I had resolved to blog every day but there are simply too many things in the way. I'll do the best I can. At least it is getting on to summer and the fridge still works.
It is all fodder for a future novel. We plan to do our own Don't Stop the Carnival based on our experiences in the Caribbean. It will be very easy to convert our experiences remodeling into similar experience in the Caribbean complete with Rastas and runaway workmen. It should all bring back fun memories from all kinds of places.

2006-06-11T09:39:00.000-04:00

And another thing... In addition to being criticized for having a Caribbean setting we were also told that we could not have a married heroine. Really? Are all marriages forever? Do divorces never occur? Is there no married woman who doesn't have some thoughts about a man other than her husband? Mercy me! I must be living in someone else's universe.

Where do people get this stuff? Actually I know. One fact is that an amazing number of people are pretty myopic in their view of the world. The word "inflexible" also applies. And then, too, it seems in Harlequin romances married women are as rare as hen's teeth.

But we thought it better if Jamie, our heroine in A Dream Across Time, was married. It was a far more likely scenario if she was to go to St. Lucia. And we saw these stories all the time. The affairs, the Caribbean meltdowns and all the other ugly things that happened to some people. So, we decided to stick with reality rather than the conventional prejudices.

Oh yes. There was another thing we encountered. Some people thought it was preposterous and beyond belief that part of a family would be found after 200 years. The problem is we knew people in Martinique who introduced us to the long lost family members they had found. And since in my wife's family there was an eighteen month old boy lost in Ellis Island and never found, it seems there just might be truth in legends.

All of this boils down to writing what you know, sticking to your guns and not permitting yourself to be swayed by ever bit of stray advise which might be utterly misguided.
Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

2006-06-10T16:44:00.001-04:00

One of my very favorite sayings is - "Reality is nothing. Perception is everything." The more you think about it, the more profound the saying gets. Another saying I like is - "Don't ever argue with what someone WANTS to believe." The second saying is an indication of an excellent way you can waste your time. The first is battling a belief system or something someone wants to perceive.

We ran into that kind of belief system prejudice when we first aired our debut novel. We heard from people that "nobody" ever sets a romance novel in the Caribbean. How interesting. "Why not?" we asked. Because it isn't done we were told. Some answer! In fact, we searched the database of the Romance Writers of America and found one novel set on a cruise ship and another on a nameless island. So, of course, that meant we shouldn't use the setting we were most familiar with.

Of course, since we are not in favor in such unexamined biases, we forged ahead with our setting in the Caribbean which people are finding intriguing and it offered us a schtick for publicity. We simply couldn't imagine why the Caribbean could not be a romance setting since it is arguably one of the most romantic places on earth. But the more we looked at this bias the clearer we became about the basis of it. RWA has been so wedded to Harlequin and its various lines that if it had not been done in their books, it was considered unacceptable.

I guess we will just have to muddle through with our misguided perceptions of what will work in fiction. And maybe be able to engage in some creativity.

2006-06-10T16:44:00.000-04:00

One of my very favorite sayings is - "Reality is nothing. Perception is everything." The more you think about it, the more profound the saying gets. Another saying I like is - "Don't ever argue with what someone WANTS to believe." The second saying is an indication of an excellent way you can waste your time. The first is battling a belief system or something someone wants to perceive.

We ran into that kind of belief system prejudice when we first aired our debut novel. We heard from people that "nobody" ever sets a romance novel in the Caribbean. How interesting. "Why not?" we asked. Because it isn't done we were told. In fact, we searched the database of the Romance Writers of America and found one novel set on a cruise ship and another on a nameless island. So, of course, that meant we shouldn't use the setting we were most familiar with.

Of course, since we are not in favor in such unexamined biases, we forged ahead with our setting in the Caribbean which people are finding intriguing and it offered us a schtick for publicity. We simply couldn't imagine why the Caribbean could not be a romance setting since it is arguably one of the most romantic places on earth. But the more we looked at this bias the clearer we became about the basis of it. RWA has been so wedded to Harlequin and its various lines that if it had not been done in their books, it was considered unacceptable.

I guess we will just have to muddle through with our misguided perceptions of what will work in fiction. And maybe be able to engage in some creativity.

2006-06-08T09:30:00.000-04:00

We expect to have the second book in the Demontagne Saga, A Circle of Dreams, on hand and ready for shipment in a matter of less than a week. We hit our publish target and getting it ready was certainly easier than A Dream Across Time which was our first book. Now everything is in place.
Our tactic to get Annie Rogers' name out there was to give a lot of books away. That is what we heard over and over and so that is what we did. My suspicion is that we pretty well saturated our market with free books. The market, of course, for a new author is not large.
Now we will see what happens. We are not going to be so ready to give away the second book and we hope more people will then buy it. And, of course, we now have a back list. The next couple of months should be very interesting from a sales standpoint. We have a lot of promotions out there, advertising and we are now an award winning author.

2006-06-07T10:46:00.001-04:00

It's funny how you get caught up in a story and probably don't think about exactly what you are putting together. We knew going into the first novel that there was definitely not going to be a heroine who was a victim. But much of the rest of it just seemed to come with the story we were telling.

I was reminded of this again last night when I was watching another rerun of Sex and the City. Yes, I watch it a lot because the women capture my imagination. I am also fascinated by how the writers managed to keep the relationship between Carrie and Big going so long. I would think it would get old but it did not. Quite artful.

Anyway, they were, as usual, talking about their husband hunt which also related to Newsweek's article about women and marriage this week. I was reminded again that, for me, it is not a matter of a spouse hunt. Too often that is how it seems to come out in discussions of one kind or another. For us, though, it is a matter of partnership.

As we put together our tale in A Dream Across Time we were telling a story of a strong, independent woman. Her husband turned out to be not much of a partner and he abandoned her. Naturally we were all pulling for her to find a new partner but the issue at first was one of survival and choice. As it happened she found a new love and a new family because she was willing to take some risks but at the same time not risk her values. She wasn't going to chase Andre but when they were both available, she wasn't going to say no either.

Finding the spouse and having the wedding is what we talk about. But what is important is finding the partner and building the family.
Visit us at www.annierogers.com

2006-06-07T10:46:00.000-04:00

2006-06-05T08:31:00.000-04:00

Our webmistress (is that an okay term or does it sound kinky?) emailed me the other day to tell me that ebay was now selling books and I might want to go look. "Get out there and flog your books everywhere possible" is my motto. So, I went there and looked at, you guessed it, books. Under romance there were 1014 pages arranged enticingly by price, high to low or the other way.

I simply could not think of a less interesting way to arrange books for sale. It would never occur to me to buy my books because they are either cheap or expensive. I have something I loosely refer to as "taste" and "preference".

With an immediate impression that they did not have a system of interest to me, I decided to see if they had our first book. Lo and behold they did. It was listed by a company which had two "new" books for sale at full retail price. No problem. They could well have bought them from a wholesaler. Although I have to say that the number of "new" books out there stretches my credulity in many cases.

But what got my attention was the amount of information offered by this company about our book. It seems they had lifted all of the information we had put up on Amazon. Gives one pause about freedom of information although I must confess that we did put that information up on what must be considered the public domain.

Enter Google with their new book programs which I am trying hard to keep up with. I'm still not sure what I think although we are participating. My concern is that before I can develop a body of experience and establish an opinion that it will all change.

I'm to the point where I'm not sure I can say "stayed tuned". For what? I sit here looking at marketing for our books and have to make choices every day about what route I will take. The overload of possibilities is considerable. And I'm a person who loves to consider possibilities!
And so I am forced to set limits. We have a cell phone around her somewhere which I generally try not to carry except for specific purposes. My argument is the same one I had when car phones first arrived. I don't want you to be able to reach me at all times. I also feel no need to carry the cell phone partly because I don't want to be able to watch your video on it and I certainly don't want to try to read your book on it.
If I sound peevish, it is because that is how I am feeling. Part of me loves to see change and lots of it. But, this is beginning to make a cave look interesting. However, I will probably stay with the option of slogging and blogging on.
As disconnected as today's blog probably is, I feel better for having said it.
Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

2006-06-04T11:00:00.000-04:00

I just finished John Grisham's A Painted House. He really hooked me. I could relate to Luke and was pulling for this gutsy kid through everything. Some might think that Luke was a little too sexually interested in the older girls for a boy of seven. If it wasn't intentional, which it might have been, I thought it worked. Partly because I knew Luke was being recalled through the eyes and mind of an adult. Intended or unintended I thought it was an interesting devise and I'll keep it in mind.
I have to admit the story hooked me for personal reasons. My father was born in the late eighteen hundreds in the poorest section of Mississippi near the Alabama border. At about Luke's age I got to see the poor two room house that he lived in as a child. It made a very strong impression. I know it was a desperate struggle for survival.
As a young child my father worked leading a mule at a sawmill and saved what little he could. His pennies eventuallly bought him a cardboard suitcase and a suit of clothes. He went to work in the War Department in Washington during World War I. Eventually he scrapped his way up to being an emminent surgeon in New York. How could I not feel for Luke, his family and the Latchers in Grisham's book.
What I also liked about it was that it was not word driven. I could feel with Luke and I could visualize their lives. But, I couldn't help but think that if it had not been written by John Grisham it would never have gotten published. This wonderful book had rejection notice written all over it.

2006-06-03T07:29:00.000-04:00

Terrorism is constantly in the news and so I am often reminded of the events of 9/11.
Since we had a home on St. Lucia and frequent business in the Caribbean I often boarded a plane to go down. I was due to fly out on Air Jamaica on the morning of the 12th. of September. With all planes grounded I obviously was not going anywhere. But I started calling and finally found that Air Jamaica had one plane left in the U.S. and it happened to be at the Baltimore airport. I rebooked for the first flight that would go out on Thursday.

Was I nervous? Of course, not. I knew I was more likely to be killed by a donkey in Ireland than another terrorist attack. It was annoying to wait interminably while grim customs officials scrutinized this motley crew of travelers who were mostly Jamaicans going home.

In Montego Bay in Jamaica I learned that we would be overnighting because planes were just not where they needed to be. I wasn't surprised. Air Jamaica efficiently sent us off to the modest all inclusive they use and I went to the bar for a drink.

I was immediately spotted as an American and found I could not finish even a third of a drink before it was immediately filled again. A stiff drink at that. I finally had to leave the bar because they were being so solicitous.

At dinner I thought my waiter was going to break down. "America is like our mother," he cried.
And so it went for some time. The world was horrified at the magnitude of the crimes. The good will remaining from our efforts in World War II was enhanced by the sympathy the attacks generated.

And then along came the Bush administration. With frequent visits overseas we were able to see the effects among the world community. The arrogance and the misdeeds of our incompetent, petty and myopic government steadily eroded our standing in the world until today the world is terrfied at what we might do next to further distort and disturb the world order. The administration continues to rattle sabers at Iran even in the face of an overextended military and steadily eroding support at home. What is their plan? In the face of our military situation do they plan to send Bush's cronies into Iran swinging their golf clubs to beat the Iranians into submission?

We had so many wonderful adventures in the Caribbean. Watching the reputation of the United States forced into decline was not one of them.

What we hear from our friends overseas is that the world is looking for our end game in Iraq. The Bush administration bungled the whole thing and we as a nation are paying the price. Since we can't just walk away from our huge mistake, we would have to sit down in open and honest dialogue with the leaders of the world community and especially all people in the region to admit our mistake. eat some crow and to seek support for a commonly acceptable solution. But arrogant people would never do that. So, we wait out the rest of Bush's term and hope for better and wiser leadership in a new day.

In the meantime I think I'm going to pretty much stay home. It is safe to say that our government is hated although the world still seems to like Americans as people. But, for me, it is too painful to see what our country has become in the eyes of the world.

2006-06-02T08:11:00.000-04:00

Last night we gave a talk at a book club. We decided that we would focus on where our stories came from. I refer to our stories as being a weaving of fictionalized reality. I know that is a bit cumbersome but it is how I see it. We weave together the stories we saw and heard. While they are typically based in reality they are fictionalized to protect the innocent blah, blah, blah.

Naturally we began by talking about Jamie, our heroine in A Dream Across Time. We saw a lot of Jamie's and people like her husband, Paul, who did what we call a Caribbean Meltdown. Talking about it brought back memories. I remember houses with blinds drawn ostensibly to keep out the sun but the blinds were really drawn against what had become a painful life.

When we set out to write A Dream Across Time we knew we would not write a tragedy and that Jamie would be a survivor and not a victim. And so we did not write stories about these houses and their residents. But I was reminded of their existence.

In these houses were often a woman who had come to "Paradise" with her husband seeking a new life and a new job. Some found a bountiful future and many a painful existence as their lives fell apart in a strange land where they had no anchors. Rather than living the good life in the beautiful sun of the tropics they endured their pain.

We may live so much in fantasy, envying others whom we think live storied lives. As a psychologist I got to see what lives were like behind closed doors and in the tropics I was reminded again that fantasy is just fantasy. In the glorious tropics there are many snakes and often a lot of pain.

2006-06-01T08:52:00.000-04:00

Now that the first press release is out I'm working on my targeted list which a good friend advised me to work up. These are mostly the folks you have some connection with and who have real reason to respond. A major part of the list for us here are the bookstores on the Delmarva Pensinsula since we are now in beach season big time and our books make great beach books.
But I have a subset in my targeted list. This list includes the hopeless people whom I wish to annoy like a bug. On the list are such folks as the New York Times, Washington Post, Kirkus, Booklist and the like. You know the places. Self published people or people who don't write "literature" need not apply.
Which brings me to a story. Bear with me here. It is related.
When we built our home in St. Lucia we built it with trucked water. It was about $100 per thousand gallons. It was the only way to get the house built since there were no water mains at the time. It began to hurt though when we had happy tourists in the house. So, we applied for mains water. We were ignored but they did say that if we got mains, they would hook us up.
Enter our attorney, Tyrone Chong. He has twinkling eyes and a great smile but gravely proclaimed what came to be known as The Chong Principle. It runs, "You may have mains water but there will be no water in the mains."
True oriental wisdom but we set about getting mains anyway. We paid for them ourselves. Then we found they wouldn't hook us up. But they had made a mistake since they had sent me a letter saying they would hook us up. I was counseled to be careful. They might take umbrage and decline to do anything. My attitude was, "What are they going to do? Give us no water? They already do THAT!" So, being an American I threatened to sue them individually and severally if they did not hook us up. Panic ensued because in St. Lucia nobody ever behaved like an American. That is, sue. We were immediately hooked up and the Chong Principle was then verified. There was no water in the mains.
In later years water began to come but not to our house. It appeared that the water authority had lost their maps of the valves. Fortunately, I had happened to come upon a set and hidden them away. We adjusted the valves.
So what does this have to do with the publishing industry? I'm just going to say what I think. I'm going to be annoying and keep nudging the mighty. I have developed the Burt Corollary to the Chong Principle. We may produce good books and they may assiduously try to ignore us especially since we are self published but that shouldn't stop us from bugging them and being annoying. What are they going to do? Not give us a review? They already do THAT!

2006-05-31T08:08:00.000-04:00

Gee, now I feel like a real publisher. Or is it a publicist? I sent my first press release all on my own yesterday. The nice folks at PRNewswire sent our magnificently written missile to everyone in the world. It went "on the wire" at 3:42 P.M. Wow!
I had it ready to go on Friday but decided not to send it the Frioday before a big holiday weekend. I know what I do on the day before a big weekend. I want my desk cleared and so I pitch things I might not otherwise pitch.
I know it would have been better to get it out sooner but it wasn't ready and then there was the holiday. But this morning my Google Alert had already picked up its presence on Yahoo! Finance News.
I wonder what a car dealership does with such a press release. I say that because I assume that it may have gone to car dealerships along with organic food stores. Massage parlors? Probably not. Can't hurt.
What was nice about it was that we actually could send a press release since we had won an award. Now we were not just another novel some fool took the time to write for whatever reason. We are award winners and have something to shout about.
I can't wait to see what Google Alerts brings us today.

2006-05-30T07:54:00.000-04:00

More and more fellow authors are contacting us and asking for direction. Since we know what it is like to get rejection notices or just be turned away, we prefer to be helpful. Especially since we have learned a lot in the last couple of years. There are now a lot of resources out there if you can find them easily. Here is our answer to queries which we hope will save people a lot of time, money, and frustration.

Dear Fellow Author:
The publishing world has changed dramatically in recent years and we are getting increasing numbers of inquiries asking for help in finding agents and publishers. We would like to be helpful and offer the following information.

Finding an Agent:
Unfortunately, publishers, by and large, are not talking to authors. An agent is needed if there is to be access to traditional publishers. Conventional advice has been that the author needs to buy books such as Writers Market to get information about agents. At the 2005 Book Expo in New York we received important confirmation of what we had concluded
.
The books are generally considerably out of date and filled with agents who are established and are not looking for new clients. They have to keep their names out there but rarely get new clients in this fashion.

We wasted years pursuing agents in this fashion and one speaker at Book Expo gave valuable advice. He said that authors should go to and subscribe to their service which tracks deals recently made. It costs only $20 per month and it should be screened for several months. You are looking for the new and hungry agents who probably have split off from longer established agents. You can compare the names you find with the lists in the books such as Writers Market and identify who is new and, therefore, promising.

Getting Published:
The book world is now crowded with authors. The agents lament that they are getting more and more submissions of lower and lower quality. Before you even pursue an agent you MUST have a finished manuscript which has been worked on by an experienced editor. You need to try editors by hiring them to edit at least a portion of your manuscript. Try them out until you find someone you are comfortable working with. Ask what books they have edited that have been published. You may want to get some of those books to see what you think. Ask for references and call people the editor has worked for.

Even then you may find that you may have to take alternative means to get your work published. There are several possibilities.

The first thing you have to do is to decide what kind of work you have and what your goals are. Nonfiction is much easier to sell than fiction because it often relates to a niche which greatly affects marketing. Then you have to look at your audience. If your audience is highly focused or maybe even family and friends, then you have a whole different set of objectives. Once you have a clear focus, you have a number of options.

1. Subsidy Presses - Be very careful here. They used to be called vanity presses and they may cost you a lot of money. Most books published by subsidy presses sell on average about 80 books, mostly to the author. We do not recommend this route.

2. E-books - They have not yet come into their own but we are convinced that they will become important. One of the big barriers is the means by which they can be read. But recently Sony came out with an instrument which shows the promise of what may be coming. E-books are now being distributed by companies such as Lightning Source and show promise. One of the big attractions here is that the cost of production is low. There is no printing although a well designed “cover” is important.

3. Print on Demand – It’s not a bad place to begin. The costs have come down and they are especially useful if you do not need a lot of copies for a specialty work. You can have as few as 25 copies printed and they can look quite good. A good place to test the waters.

4. Self Publishing - Many of us are going this route. It offers the author complete control over the process although it is labor intensive. You still have to purchase professional expertise and you have to plan to spend some money on a cover, a website, editing, formatting and proof reading.

And then we come to marketing. Even if you have a traditional publisher you have to be prepared to do the marketing. It is a time consuming process and requires guidance and help. It is not possible to overemphasize the importance of the marketing piece.

Fortunately, there is a lot of information on all of the above out there. Here are some resources which you need to explore and absolutely must read in detail.

Self Publishing Organizations -
Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN) - Go to and get acquainted. They offer a lot of information no matter which direction you decide to take. Join their online Yahoo group. We went to their conference last year in Denver and there was lots of excellent marketing information. Worth attending if you think self publishing is the route you want to take.

You can do research through the site and the exchanges on the site offer invaluable information. The list moms on the site are knowledgeable professionals who volunteer their services and many of them are a resource. The kind of issues discussed vary from day to day but over time you will find threads which are very helpful.

Publishers Marketing Association (PMA) - A group which is similar to SPAN. They tend to be oriented to slightly larger publishers but they also offer a “college” at Book Expo each year which provides a lot of information.

Books-
Here is a short list of other resources which will give you detailed information on all aspects of getting published. There are many of them but here are a few which are particularly helpful. Read their books cover to cover.
Dan Poynter - Go to his website and take a look at his books. He is a great resource.
Marilyn Ross - Go to and take a look at what she has to offer. She is heavily involved in SPAN.
John Kremer - Go to and look at his offerings. He is one of the big names in the field.

We hope you are not feeling overwhelmed at this point but what we have outlined relates to today’s reality. Using the above resources will save you time, money and disappointment. We wish you success.

2006-05-29T08:40:00.000-04:00

Of course we were pleased to receive a Book of the Year Award from ForeWord Magazine for A Dream Across Time at Book Expo but a close second in terms of pleasure was that the Editor's Choice Award for Fiction was a POD! Totally cool. Along comes Fay Freimuth with A Multitude of Mercies with a touching, beautifully written story and scoops up a great award. She had shopped the book forever and couldn't get any takers. So, she did it in POD. Good for her.

We wasted years on agents and the search for a publisher. Oh yes, we got an agent at one point who did nothing discernible except sop up our time when we could have been going toward our goal of getting our first book out there. At Book Expo last year we learned what we suspected which was that most agents in the books really aren't looking for anyone. That information reinforced the rightness of our going the self publishing route.

Now everytime we see someone surface with a good book and see them recognized it feels like a thumb in the eye of the publishing industry. A deserved one. Yes, I know I should be more generous since the industry is in flux. But when you get so frustrated, you stop feeling generous. When we had a major publisher for one of our nonfiction books I learned that they were willing to admit that they didn't know what sold and they were really in the dark throwing darts. Win some lose some. There is, of course, much more to that story but I think I made the point.

As so many of us struggle with our craft and getting our books out there, the frustration, at least for me, gets focused on issues of attitude. I have an intense dislike of arrogance which is what many of us confront when we try to deal with the big six and many of their long term resource allies. You know who they are. They won't even look at you if you are self published or anything other than being from the major publishers. And all too often they don't want to have anything to do with you if you aren't "literature". I have a whole rant about "literature".

So, along comes Fay Freimuth and wins big. Take that people. Watch your backsides. We are coming.

2006-05-28T09:48:00.000-04:00

It's a holiday weekend and it is very quiet here at our house. A little further down the road in St. Michaels proper it is a beehive of tourist activity. The joggers are out and people are strolling the picturesque streets enjoying the sights of the town with its Victorian and 18th. century houses. The main street is humming with vehicles carrying late arrivals or people on their way to their boats. The waterways are busy.

But with A Circle of Dreams due out shortly the work of the self publisher never stops. We are humming along on proofing the book to get it out on Tuesday.

Not far away is Rt. 50 which is the main route to the Atlantic shore. That means really heavy traffic with people going and coming to the beaches. They are having a glorious weekend with highs in the mid 70s. That is, after they get there.

My twisted little brain is thinking we should bedevil them on Monday as they return. We could take lawn chairs and sit by the highway smiling, waving and showing a sign which says "We live here." But maybe that would not be a good idea. Maybe we don't want them to know about our oasis of peace and quiet community.

We used to live in a quiet valley in Northern Maryland. Nothing EVER happened there but also there was not anything to do. When I moved to Maryland many years ago Baltimore was that old town you passed if you were driving from New York to DC. My first wife wanted horses and we could live in the country but be downtown in 45 minutes. Gradually it all changed as Baltimore and DC grew together. The population of Baltimore proper shrank but the population of the area exploded. We came to have California traffic.

So, we decided to cross the Bay Bridge and live on the Eastern Shore. Crossing the bridge is an experience we call "the mystical passage" because we leave the intensity of the national capital area behind and enter a county of just 35,000 folks. I probably shouldn't even be writing about this because we should keep our rural yet sophisticated gentility a secret. It's only an hour and a quarter to DC which some people think is commuting distance.

We can write in peace but have access to wonderful restaurants and even great music at the Avalon Theater in Easton. I guess I'll just stay away from Route 50 this weekend and enjoy a final read of the adventures of Jamie and her family as they make their way through A Circle of Dreams. And then it is on to the third book, Joup!

People ask how I am enjoying my retirement. Is that what this is? I think we need some new words for our continually changing careers.

2006-05-27T17:05:00.000-04:00

When I left the hospital they told me to go home and pretend I was still hospitalized. That meant lying around in bed. If Iwas truly in the hospital they would have been coming in constantly and taking my "vitals" or drawing blood. Then too there would be shift changes which occur at inconvenient hours - for the patient. Just when you drop off to sleep at night they come in and wake you up at eleven at night. Ugh. So, it was hard to pretend because it's quiet around here.
And, anyway, I missed Hal my faithful computer. If I wasn't at Hal, how would anyone notice when he ate my data, randomly deleted things from my hard drive or refused commands. Probably the worst part of being in the hospital was that they do not have Wifi. There was nothing to do but look at TV, read a book and read and reread the notations on the wall about urine output and bowel movements. I was missing Hal. So, I came home and began to proof the galley for the second book in the Demontagne Saga, A Circle of Dreams, which comes out momentarily. It was not particularly stressful and it actually engaged me again.
We may never know what happened but I'm back at work and feeling fine. I think I won't waste a lot of time wondering why it happened or what it was. Not worth the trouble and I learned nothing new. Onward!

2006-05-26T18:52:00.000-04:00

I came back from BEA with the resolve to blog daily. Great idea. And then life intervened.
The night before last I woke up with chest pains. I had never had anything like it before. I thought it was temporary but I could not get back to sleep and it was not getting any better. So, I woke my wife up and she did a really good job of not panicking. After all it is always possible to be comfortable at home with your spouse one minute and come home a widow the next.
We have a friend who spent four years nursing his wife dying of lung cancer. He said the hardest thing was the day he came home after she died. It was over. Everything that had structured his life was gone. He wondered now what he would do. He went on and he has now found a new wife.
It just takes me back to the fundamentals of the stories we write. You think you have a life course and then one day you find that the course is gone. That's what happened to Jamie in A Dream Across Time. And it happened again in A Circle of Dreams. These children she had always wanted were not ordinary children and one of them had serious problems. Life happens and your plans are out the window.
For me the other night it was just another reminder that I am getting older and that life happens. They gave me every test in the book and I do not have heart problems or incipient heart problems. We will never know but it was probably a combination of some kind of infection or an esophogeal spasm related to an old automobile accident. Who knows. I'm tired from the emotional trauma but otherwise okay. Just another life lesson.
I'll get on with the brogging I promise. Unless life happens.

2006-05-24T14:39:00.000-04:00

Column 24 - Philippe Diamant Demontagne (Philippe)
Did Jamie and Andre tempt fate when they named Philippe after the child who was lost in the French Revolution? It seems they did or was it just that a crisis was inevitable because the mother of the first Philippe cannot rest.

Jamie is deeply distressed as she watches her son fall into a crisis which is unfathomable. His problems are beyond understanding. Where can she seek an answer? In modern medicine or in the understanding of people who are closer to the mysticism of the islands?

And what of Philippe? Any child must face the inevitable crises which are a part of childhood. How can he attend to the developmental work of a child when he is being drawn into things which are inexplicable? All he can know is that he may be living his own life one moment and then is drawn into what seems to be another world and another life.

As we move through A Circle of Dreams with this family we can only wonder what effects these experiences will have on him. Perhaps the effects will be more than just memories. After all, Philippe must almost surely have some of the unusual abilities to which these children are heir. Having experienced openings to the past, what will he retain?

In A Circle of Dreams we can only sight the beginning of things for Philippe. Our focus is stronger on Yvie and Lissa. His story will play out much later.
Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

2006-05-24T14:36:00.000-04:00

Column 23 - Anne-Clarisse Demontagne (Lissa)
At the end of the first chapter of A Circle of Dreams four year old Lissa says, "I think I’m too small to do it all by myself." She is talking about something she perceives about the needs of her little brother. We don’t comment on this statement but under the circumstances the reader can feel the child’s burden and distress.

And further along in her young life it is clear that she continues to be a very burdened child. Lissa knows too much, feels too much, perceives too much. She feels she is the one who must help her distressed brother and feels it is her responsibility to set it to rights. While her sister, Yvie, is troublesome, Lissa takes too much responsibility onto her young shoulders.

Yvie envys Lissa her position in the family because Lissa is so close to the mystical side of the family. But Yvie fails to perceive her sister’s burden and that her powers are not felt to be a blessing.

Lissa’s senses are acute and lead her to perceive things others cannot see. Virtually alone she must decide what to do with what she sees. It would never occur to her to use her powers in negative ways. Rather, she feels an almost instinctive selfless commitment. A carefree childhood is not something that describes her life.

If Yvie is chaos, then Lissa is order. It seems that these twins are virtually a living form of yin and yang. Each will have to find their way to different futures.

No doubt there are many people who envy children such as Lissa. She is talented academically. Adults have confidence in her intelligence, abilities and reliability. How nice for the adults. Lissa is never so sure about herself. It is difficult for Lissa to get support and understanding from other people because too often other people do not begin to understand her. Adults often wonder how such a bright, capable and seemingly self assured girl could possibly need support. Nobody except possibly Bertille can truly understand the world in which Lissa lives.

In the second article about the theories of Carl Jung we discussed the wheel of personality and how it begins with a core function which is developed and that the wheel in its entirety continues to rise and develop over time. Ideally over a lifetime a person will gain increasing command of the whole.

While Lissa exhibits a stable personality from the beginning, what is not readily apparent is the fact that she has command of the totality of personality from a young age. Her personality grows richer with time and more complex. While other girls may dimly perceive their animus, a rudimentary member of the opposite sex within themselves, Lissa has a highly developed animus. This male being is so highly developed that he can take on substance outside of Lissa and can become a confidente. At least, then, there is someone close at hand who can understand her and give her support.

It is hard not to like Lissa. She has so many positive virtues and she is not a troublesome child. Equally it is hard for us to understand how difficult her life must feel to her. And we can only guess at the pain she must feel as she attempts to make her way in the world among people who too often will fail utterly to understand her. And then as she becomes a woman, how can she share intimacy when to be intimate with her is to risk coming into contact with a frightening intensity and inner power?
Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

2006-05-24T14:32:00.000-04:00

Column 22 - Janine-Yvette Demontange (Yvie)
In A Circle of Dreams we continue the Demontagne Saga and introduce Jamie’s children. The love story continues and like most stories about families the children enrich but complicate the life of the couple.

When your children are on the way you dream of what it will be like to be a parent and what the children will be like. But when they arrive are you really prepared for who comes to live at your house? You love your children, of course, but you may be surprised at who arrives and what they are like.

Jamie wanted children and she is overjoyed with them. But, as the crisis builds in A Circle of Dreams she has to confront the fact that her children are not normal.

Let’s talk about Jamie’s children. We will begin with Yvie.

If you’ve read "The Bridge" in our website columns in the Author to Author section ( www.annierogers.com) you can identify her as the imperious four year old who pushes her twin sister to the floor and declares that her mother should send her back. We all know or have met Yvie’s in this world and we might even have one living at our house.

Maybe Yvie isn’t quite the embodiment of chaos but her mother is convinced that she comes very close. Andre often finds the child infuriating. Fortunately, Jamie rules with an even hand as do Marcus and Bertille who take Yvie for who she is and respond with love and firmness. So, Yvie can rebel safely.

Unfortunately, Yvie feels that she does not belong in this family. Her mother is so talented, being a consummate artist in designing clothes and an astute businesswoman as well. So, for Yvie her mother is almost beyond an identification figure. The child can only wonder how she can ever measure up or if she has passable talents.

The presence of her fraternal twin sister, Lissa, doesn’t help at all. If Yvie is chaos, then Lissa is order. It’s easy for Lissa to get praise and Yvie is often left feeling mutinous. She acts out her frustration when she gets into frequent trouble. At least she has her partner in crime, Marc, who is her buddy and constant companion.

When her sister is off gathering ingredients for bush medicine, Yvie is left feeling the outsider again because her sister’s talents bring Lissa close to the mystical parts of the family. Yvie feels it is impossible for her to compete and achieve a comfortable place for herself in the family constellation.

And so Yvie has a secret life in which she draws the precious things she comes in contact with in the rain forest. While she can’t readily assess her talents, it appears to the outside observer that they are considerable. Since she keeps her artwork to herself, she cannot find out that she is quite talented artistically but that it is a different talent than her mother’s.

But Yvie does not spend all her time making negative comparisons of herself with others or sulking. This child does not have a laisssez faire bone in her body. She is both volatile and sensual. Passion rules her life. Her misadventures are partly a function of rebellion, but they are also a function of her passions at work. As she enters adolescence she can’t yet channel her talent and her passion. Her job will be to achieve balance and command of what can only be described as an awesome combination of beauty, intelligence and talent.

Some day Yvie will come to know that she is a beautiful, brilliant and talented woman. She will also come to know that she is very much a part of this family. If she were just a little closer to Bertille she might know that her intense relationship with the creatures of the rain forest along with her family heritage may have worked a magic on her.
Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

2006-05-24T08:35:00.000-04:00

Granted I don't have a long history of attending BEA but it seemed to me that there were many fewer ARCs laid out at the show. If true, I find myself wondering what it means. Is it a matter of scaled back promotional spending? Are they questioning the utility of such promotions? At a purely abstract level I wondered what books are still being chosen for such promotions.
Maybe it is simply a matter of the show being more about networking than anything else. Such networking is a long and winding road and one has to wonder where it is leading as well. The noise is substantial and is very much related to the quandry about where we are going and where it will end. This observation again feeds into my perception of confusion.
On another topic, this morning I am going back to work on my new career as a publicist. Taking on new jobs seems to be very much a part of my life. When I was in graduate school I bought a very used Jaguar to work on when I couldn't stand being in the library anymore. When I found it needed a valve job and there was no one who knew how to do it in Durham, I did it myself. So, why not become my own publicist. Is grinding valves all that much different than grinding away at promotions?

2006-05-23T08:00:00.000-04:00

We got the second book in the Demontagne Saga, A Circle of Dreams, off to Sheridan Books for printing and I thought I could kick back for awhile. Then ForeWord Magazine pitches up with the Book of the Year Award. So much for my minivacation.
One of the suggestions was to put the win "out on the wire". "Wire?" inquires I. "How do you do that?" So like an idiot I ask a knowledgable friend who tells me. And a new world and a new career opens in front of me. The implications of getting a national award begin to sink in. We are not just selling a book among many other books. We are selling an award winning book. Now there is something to tell. Really tell. So, I am now embarking on my career as a PR person.
I guess I better get off my blog and go work on my press releases. See you tomorrow.

2006-05-22T07:42:00.000-04:00

Going into this post I have to admit that what I have to say may be terribly subjective because my perspective about publishing/self publishing is evolving quickly. I feel as though this last year has involved a quantum leap. Self publishing the first book was difficult and required tenacity as I found my way through resources and essential steps. By contrast the second book was a breeze.
That little preamble leads me to my reaction to this year's Book Expo in DC. So get out your salt shaker and take this with a grain of salt for what it's worth. But as a psychologist I'm also used to sifting the experiental sands. And my experience of BEA this year left me with the feeling that the climate of the publishing industry has changed yet again.
Last year I felt fear in the air as it became clearer that the changes in the industry are huge and unpredictable. For example, agents were striking out verbally at Google as they saw Google's new programs threatening their income stream. The circus atmosphere on the floor seemed undirected if not random.
This year my overwhelming impression was of confusion. If the fear has subsided somewhat then it has been replaced with quite simply not knowing what to do. In one session about blogging they franklty admitted that while the title of the session was about blogging 2.0 no one knew if there was a 2.0. Yet.
It is tempting to say that this perceived change at BEA might be predictable. Oh, sure. Easy for me to say. But maybe the fear can't be sustained when you have to go back to work even if you don't know where it is all going. But you can continue to be confused. Being confused is less draining than being fearful. So, is it a step in the right direction? Probably not. We are waiting for clarification, a light at the end of the tunnel or even Godot. In the meantime we scrap it out until the new world emerges.

2006-05-21T15:50:00.000-04:00

It's Sunday and we are recovering from Book Expo. Once again this year it was really interesting. I didn't do any entries lately because I was getting the decks cleared here so we could go to the conference in DC. It was well worth the trip especially since we learned that we were a winner of a Book of the Year Award for romance from ForeWord Magazine!
It was even nicer because it was for our debut novel A Dream Across Time. We have been getting really lovely reviews and now we have a really lovely award to go with them.
I'm going to be posting more often now. Panelists at BEA impressed upon me that I need to be posting more often. I have a lot of thoughts about self publishing and how it is going as well as reactions to what I saw and learned in DC this year. I'll be posting a lot of that. Also, shortly I will be posting the columns about the three kids we introduce in the second book of the Demontagne Saga, A Circle of Dreams.
Just when I thought I had things under control ForeWord has to come along and give us an award. Now I'm swamped with promotional things I need to do as we announce our award winning status. Life is hard! Yeah, right!

2006-04-17T10:31:00.000-04:00

Column 21 - Martinique
Our time in the Caribbean led us to another island we fell in love with. The next island up the chain from St. Lucia is Martinique. It is a departement of France which is like a province rather than being a possession. Similar in topography to St. Lucia it boasts Mount Pelee, the volcano that killed 30,000 people in the capital at the time, St. Pierre, early in the twentieth century. It is quiet now and cloaked in rain forest.

Another major attribute of Martinique is the French. And, no, they are not haughty or rude. We found them to be very warm and welcoming and the women of Martinique are arguably the most beautiful in the world. When we were traveling around the island we found that it was impossible to sit by the road examining a map without someone stopping to help us find our way. The French do have an amusing little game they play with the English speakers. If you speak no French, then they speak no English. If you begin to speak even rudimentary French, you find that they often speak excellent English.

Martinique seems to be largely invisible to Americans. The cruise ships stop in the capital, Fort de France, where they shop. Unfortunately they rarely venture out into the main part of the island, the real Martinique.

St. Lucia has a strong French heritage and there is considerable traffic between the two islands. Our regard for Martinique as well as the shared heritage led us to weave it into our stories. The Demontagne family has close ties to relatives on Martinique since Clarisse’s sister married into a Beke family. The Beke are the descendants of the original French planter families. The aristocratic families in the Caribbean had very diverse fates during the French Revolution. In Guadeloupe, another French island, the aristocrats were slaughtered, on St. Lucia, as in our story, some of them suffered the same fate and some escaped. But on Martinique these families formed an alliance with the British and remained safe from the Terror.

Unlike St. Lucia, Martinique has generous flat lands in the south where they still grow sugar cane which yields their marvelous rum. The vieux (old) rhum is especially favored.

In A Dream Across Time it was to this island that Andre brought Jamie when they were free to begin their relationship. There was family to visit and the tranquil waters and small islands off the lower eastern shore. But when they wanted to be alone and together they travelled north to the magic of the small resort we called L’Habitation. The small resort we described is real. Its name is Habitation Lagrange and it is just as wondrously romantic as described. Off season we enjoyed the tranquility of the forest and fine meals virtually alone in the dining area. Each room has access to the terraces where the gentle chatter of the birds and the opalescent light can be savored.

There is so much history on Martinique. Some of the old plantation houses remain and touring is easy. Being a part of France, the roads are excellent and the replica French villages are charming. In our tours we came upon the Caravelle. It is a small peninsula which thrusts out into the Atlantic Ocean. In the second book, A Circle of Dreams, we have the Demontange family visit this site of the ruined Dubuc plantation where it is said the family made their living from farming, slave trafficking and a form of piracy. The stories about them include the belief that they lured passing ships onto the rocks where the hapless travelers were killed and the goods looted. In that place today’s Philippe experiences the terror of the night when the first Philippe was rescued from the foundering ship but lost to his family forever.

Once again, we have woven various elements of history into our stories. Other parts of our stories came from the Beke themselves. They became our friends and welcomed us into their homes where we conversed in Franglais as we intertwined the two languages to communicate. They feel a strong kinship with Americans since some of their number went to fight in the American Revolution. Many never returned.

At the beginning of A Dream Across Time Jean Claire du Diamant takes his wife, Anne-Cecile and their twin sons, to the docks in Nantes to begin their trip to Sainte Lucie. The port of Nantes was the one used to go to the Caribbean. Usually the ships went first to Africa for slaves but, from time to time, ships would go directly to the islands in the Caribbean.

The story of the lost child was partly inspired by conversations at a dinner hosted by Beke friends. One evening we were introduced to another couple from France. Our host had been walking on their former plantation in the north when he saw a man who looked familiar. It turned out that he was from a branch of their family lost to them during the French Revolution.
We wove the lost family together with a story from Mala’s family. When her father’s family entered the United States through Ellis Island from Germany they lost an eighteen month old boy who was never seen again. Thus, the lost child theme in our book. Occasionally people thought these themes were not credible. But, again, we found our inspiration in real people and real events.

Martinique enriched our imagination and we bring it repeatedly to our stories. The third book in the Demontagne Saga takes place largely on Martinique where the mystical elements of the islands lives as it does on St. Lucia and enhances our tales.

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2006-03-27T10:08:00.000-05:00

Column 20 -Carl Jung's Concepts in the Demontagne Saga

When I was in graduate school I was taught that the development of intellectual abilities ended some time before the twentieth birthday. There was a leveling off of intellectual development at around age 18 and abilities remained reasonably stable until there were age related declines late in life. It was also assumed that the achievement of adult status meant that there was little in the way of development in general.

We now know that maturation of the brain goes on much longer with development of the executive function in the frontal cortex going on until at least the mid twenties. Overall, there has been little work on adult development. It was as if we became an adult and that was that. There were a few people who did a little work on adult stages and development but there was very little interest because it had been declared that there was nothing to study.

Of course, if there had been more interest in the work of Carl Jung, there might have been wider study of personality development during adulthood. And, we must not forget that Gail Sheehy completely stole the show from psychology and psychiatry in her amazing book, Passages. She wrote about adult stages of life. I won't go into her wonderful work. You can almost surely still find it at the library and it will probably speak a great deal to you about how life changes as you go through adulthood.

As to Jung, he did not believe that human personality development ever ceased. Or if it did, it required analytic intervention by a skilled professional because the cessation was highly problematic.

Jung believed that in our early years we develop a primary personality function which is, in a sense, our own guiding principle. We then enhance it with an auxiliary function. There is a further organizing principle seen in attitudes which are introversion or extraversion. These functions, auxiliaries and attitudes are called types because the type which a person is is much more important than how much of that type the person exhibits.

The complexity of this system is beyond what we can go into here. But Jung conceptualizes our personality as being organized like a wheel with a line through the middle which denotes the separation between the conscious and the unconscious. Our job as adults is to raise more and more of this wheel into consciousness so that we may become increasingly whole in relating to the world. The intuitive dreamer comes to appreciate ordinary reality. The rigid person who believes in thought and systems only comes to appreciate the richness of feelings. The shy introvert becomes more skilled in social settings.

As the wheel rises it brings with it other attributes such as the relatively undifferentiated woman who dwells deep in a man (his anima) and the undifferentiated man who dwells deep in a woman ( her animus).

How do we apply these to the Demontagne Saga. Remember that in A Dream Across Time Jamie tends to be spacey and gets lost in her art. Over time, in her adult life, she becomes a consummate businesswoman. Her wheel is rising and she now has control of her intuitive artistic self and her more Areality@ oriented business self becomes organized. Andre begins from a business and financial orientation and what Jamie seeks is the development of his intuitive side and his feeling commitment.

In A Circle of Dreams we come to know Jamie’s daughter, Lissa. What is striking about her is that at an early age she appears to have unusual access to all parts of her personality. Her sister, Yvie, has more difficulty precisely because she cannot seem to gain full command of her primary personality function. Each child has their own problem to solve. Lissa is burdened by too much too soon and Yvie is burdened by not enough soon enough.

Jung also brings to our attention universals he found in mythology. In both books we see the display of the archetypes of the Wise Old Man (Marcus), the Earth Mother (Bertille) and the tree of life where the children develop (Father Samaan). By the way, don=t expect us to be able to explain all the symbolism in our books. We are intuitive types and are often clueless as to what is going on. It just happens to us. But we actually get the books finished because we have auxiliary functions.

Enter Hans Friendrich in A Circle of Dreams. He is a Jungian analyst and scholar who helps to bring some order to the developing chaos. He brings his wisdom and tools including use of mandalas to enlighten Jamie, Andre and us. I will leave a fuller explanation of what he does to his column.

These comments provide a sampling of how Carl Jung’s insights into mythology illuminate the meaning of our books. How you view their presence in the books is revealing of your personality type. If you think we began with his systems and then developed the story and the characters you would reveal a strong thinking type orientation. You work from a system. In fact, as I said, we are intuitive types and so the story materializes and takes on a life of its own. Later on we figure out what components may have fed into the development of the work.

Ain't it fun? Isn't human diversity and complexity wonderful?

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2006-03-18T08:21:00.000-05:00

Column 19 - Carl Jung, Mythology and the Demontagne Saga

A Dream Across Time and A Circle of Dreams are the first two books in the Demontagne saga. The mystical elements in these books are reflections of our acquaintance with the work of Carl Jung. His world is a strange and wonderful place which he brought to us in his insightful writings and extraordinary research.

We are all creatures of our times but there are occasional people who are timeless. Jung was among the timeless and stood apart from his peers.

It is useful to contrast him with his contemporary, Sigmund Freud. Freud was brilliant and a groundbreaker although we have moved well beyond his contributions to psychiatry and psychology. He was a creature of the Victorian era and his critics in later years faulted him for being too embedded in Austrian society in that his assessment of human frailties often reflected the frailties of well to do Viennese women.

In fairness Freud helped move us away from rigid beliefs about demonic possession and into a place where we could explain our psyche in reality based terms. His expositions on id, ego and superego still have utility today. If nothing else he gave us a system by which we could begin to evaluate and research many components of human experience. While he focused on psychopathology, he opened doors of understanding to human behavior in general.
Freud was the effective father of psychiatry which is the study of psychopathology. In contrast psychology is the study of human behavior. Period. Jung was considered a psychiatrist but went beyond psychiatry into psychology in that his works relate to a broad range of normal human behavior.

His intellectual explorations led him deep into mythology. The man was truly a scholar and explored the human experience in literature and art going back into ancient times. His insights led to many works including Psychological Types. The Myers Briggs Type Indicator, often used in industry, is based in his work on psychological personality types. Rather than being a catalogue of pathology it systematizes a comprehensive system of normal personality variation. Introversion and extraversion are Jung’s concepts. The word "normal" in this context is very important.

Jung’s diverse works are endlessly fascinating. His obscure work on alchemy is interesting although seemingly impenetrable. In the work he posits that alchemy is the reflection of the changes inherent in the movement from the middle ages to the age of enlightenment. Alchemy was not about turning lead into gold. It was about humankind preparing themselves for the revolutions of art and science. In these insights he seemed to have anticipated the work of Leslie A. White, the father of culturology.

Jung anticipated White’s work when he proposed the existence of the collective unconscious. His belief in a collective human consciousness seems odd until it is examined in the context of White’s extrasomatic cultural stream or culture. Jung was actually talking about culture and cultural diffusion. What an amazing mind.

By now you must be asking yourself what this has to do with the Demontagne saga. It has everything to do with it because Jung opened the door to OUR thinking about mythology. These books incorporate the myths we sighted and experienced in the Caribbean and they have been woven together with personal myths. These books are not just stories. They are the human experience and are enhanced by a mystical element which echoes mythological themes. Jung has helped us bring these stories to light and enrich them. In the second book of the Demontagne saga , A Circle of Dreams, we meet Dr. Hans Friedrich who is a Jungian analyst. He will help Jamie and Andre understand what is happening to their family.
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2006-03-04T16:28:00.000-05:00

Column 18 - Gaia and myth in the Demontagne saga

Let’s just say that what follows is the myth underlying the Demontagne saga. Some of the people mentioned here will be introduced in the second book, A Circle of Dreams.

For those of us who went through the struggle of the sixties there was a growing concern for our mother, the earth, and the struggle for women coming into their own was especially prominent.

We spoke of Gaia, the mother earth goddess, the earth herself. It was as if we had found her again after the millenia.

It is appropriate that Gaia is viewed as a power or a force rather than a goddess. Goddesses have a specific form and function while Gaia is the basic life force that governs our planet. And is inseparable from the planet herself.

There are places where there are fundamental openings to the power of Gaia. In such places are usually found a tree of life such as Father Samaan, a wise old man such as Marcus and a mother earth figure such as Bertille.
As a power Gaia demonstrates that there is a continuity in life and death. All are manifestations of the power of Gaia. When a being dies it simply moves to another form and part of the power. It can be reincarnated in a similar or another form as the need may arise. Neither form is less or more. For example, a person may return as a beloved dog who gives joy and comfort to children and is their guardian.

There is evil in Gaia’s world but evil is not an independent being. It is a manifestation of human frailties. It must be recognized and controlled. Gaia guides people to seek to relate to a world in which there is only abraxas. Abraxas is all that there is in the universe except for evil. Seeking abraxas is very much like seeking nirvana in buddhism.

Jamie’s ancestors came to an opening to the power of Gaia but tragedy intervened and a child was lost. The fabric of the opening was rent with sorrow which endured until a descendent returned. The earth mother saw who the newcomer was. Jamie did not know it but Gaia was watching over her. Rufous represents the visits of Gaia which is why Jamie found him such a calming influence and special friend.

When Jamie had children they assumed special powers in the special place. Yvie formed a secret bond with the plants and creatures of the rain forest. The secret bond led her to become a shape shifter. She took a tete chien (boa) as a pet and it became a confidante. With her powers she was able to travel with her tete chien and experience Gaia’s world more fully. The snake is often associated with evil but in this case it is associated with the constant renewal in the death and rebirth cycle. The snake is also an important conveyor for power in rituals. In a sense Anne-Cecile was reborn in the ritual and moved from being a mourning spirit to a guardian. Bertille came to recognize that Yvie is a shape shifter because Bertille is also a shape shifter. She does it in trance and then flies with the parrots.

Lissa falls more closely into the priestess class. As such she conveys the meaning of the powers to others. She can see behind reality and is close to the moon mysteries. At her full power she can open the way to command of the physical world as symbolized by her power to move objects. As a twin to Yvie she has complimentary functions. While Yvie has strong aspects of chaos Lissa brings calm and order. Yvie can be the forest imp while Lissa commands the powers of order and perception. Lissa can come to command a great passion as well. She is also a powerful protector of great strength as seen when her brother was threatened. Lissa has great command over all of the wheel of her personality which is extremely rare. She has a highly developed animus. A male component which lies in the unconscious of a woman. One of Lissa’s greatest challenges is to keep her powers calmed and in abeyance so that she may function in the world as it is and move toward her destiny. But such a priestess is challenged by her own sexuality.

Because of his special place as a link to a past tragedy Philippe has assumed the power to perceive things from the past. It remains to be seen how this power may develop. We do not yet know if it extends to the future. In the third book his future may be better defined.

The present time has a special vulnerability for the people of Gaia. There are now very many of them. They have too often abandoned reverence for their mother earth and women have lost their proper position of power and independence. As such earth cannot be sustained.

The old religions have wasted away along with the reverence for the earth and the proper place for the just power of women. The priestess has been diminished at our risk. There is continuing violence and intolerance. Rather than viewing themselves as one people, the people of Gaia are alienated from each other.

The people of the Caribbean live in the crossroads of the world and are being threatened by dark forces in part reflected in the growing power of the drug cartels. They risk losing control of their countries, over their destiny and their futures dim. Are there some of the children of Gaia who can help them restore balance? But first these children must order their own worlds.
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2006-02-22T16:17:00.000-05:00

Column 17 - Why the Mystical Element in A Dream Across Time?

When we first went to St. Lucia in 1987 we went as tourists. Friends of ours were going to look at land and we went along for a vacation. We stayed at an all inclusive resort and were so transfixed by the island that we ended up eating only breakfasts at the hotel. We were out and about the island at all times. There was no allure to sit in a hotel and look out to sea. There was a magnificent island spread out before us.

At the time St. Lucia was still very much a banana economy and its infrastructure was in need of work to put it mildly. We referred to the roads as containing Toyota eating potholes. We joked that the entire island was lit by one forty watt bulb. But it was as if the spirit of the island took us by the arm and led us away into its adventure.

Our friends did not buy land and we all returned home. But we found ourselves researching the islands to compare St. Lucia and we began to think about maybe buying a little piece of land. We thought we could probably build a small house someday. Upon our return to the island we were again taken by the arm and led away. We purchased a hilltop piece of land and built a house which took over our lives.

Gradually as the years passed the tourist facade fell away and we looked deeper and deeper into the soul of a Caribbean culture.

While I was in graduate school there was something of a Jungian cell at Duke. Sigmund Freud was important but Carl Jung was revered. So, I read his works and became conversant with his views on mythology and human psychology. In St. Lucia I found myself looking through Jung's prism and discovering the mythology which was embedded in the island.

When you look deeply into a culture and its people it is hard to put the experience in ordinary words. We experienced things which did not seem ordinary but had a reality of their own. Some people have felt that A Dream Across Time was somewhat hokey and dealt in stereotypes about mystical native folk. Nothing could be farther from the truth. The only way we could convey the reality of our experience was to enhance it with a mystical and paranormal element. Then we found the true reality was there and we could bring it to our readers. In this spirit we continue the Demontagne saga in the second book, A Circle of Dreams, which comes out in June.

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2006-02-15T15:40:00.000-05:00

Column 16 - The Bridge

If you haven’t read the first book in the Demontagne saga, A Dream Across Time, then you need to rush right out and buy it. Otherwise this column won’t make a lot of sense to you. In A Dream Across Time we followed the adventures of Jamie Elliott as she bravely fought her way through to a new love and found her destiny with Andre Demontagne.

In what we call The Bridge we are updating the readers concerning Jamie’s new life in the period between A Dream Across Time and the next book, A Circle of Dreams, which comes out in June. You will now see how Jamie’s life has developed and will be introduced to two of her children. Pay particular attention to Yvie. You will see evidence of her character and be hearing a lot more about her.

The deep verandah, shaded from the mid-day sun, beckoned. Jamie Demontagne plopped into her favorite cushioned rocking chair and gently pushed off with her toes. The movement startled a tiny iridescent hummingbird from a nearby jasmine blossom and it swiftly zigzagged away. Jamie took a deep breath, the scent of jasmine soothed her as she sank into the deep cushions. She gazed across the garden to the old Jumeaux estate house. Her husband’s father, Auguste, had lived there until recently when he rejoined his wife, Clarisse, in Castries. A healing in her new family after years of secrets.
Now Bertille and Marcus Deroche lived in the two hundred year old family home and were part of Jamie’s daily life. The path worn in the grass was testimony to the connection between the two families.
Jamie felt blessed. Andre was the husband she was meant to be with. She couldn’t have wished for anyone more loving and supportive. At times his support had been crucial as Jamie helped Jumeaux Designs, a clothing manufacturer, grow into a major industry on the island.
Jamie often thought back to the inexperienced young woman she had been when she first arrived on St. Lucia. There had been so many changes in her life since that first day.
Her large, extended St. Lucian family was everything she had ever wished for. She loved being a wife and a mother. Tonight she would tell Andre she was pregnant again. It was something they had hoped for. The only shadow was that Andre’s business commitments took him away from his family. He was busy with the new hotel. Ecologically innovative, the unusual nature of the hotel rooms with open walls, built to accommodate the terrain, even trees on the site, meant that the hotel was frequently featured in travel magazines and operated at almost full occupancy. And when he wasn’t at the hotel, Andre was in New York or jetting off to some Caricom meeting.
Both Andre and Jamie sat on the board of directors which oversaw the operations and strategic planning for St. Lucia’s Island Heritage Center. Bertille and Marcus Deroche’s son, Jack, was the Executive Director of the Heritage Center and he and Angel and their son, Marc, lived nearby.
Jack and other anthropologists studying the cave system and the ancestor’s songs made sure that no scrap of Bertille’s and Marcus’ knowledge went unrecorded. The Heritage Center had developed a curriculum based on an accurate history of the contributions of the various peoples of the island and this curriculum was now included in all grades through secondary school, a noticeable increase in island pride the result.
Emile, Andre’s brother, was now off island more often than on island, leaving Marcus to manage the estate. Jamie often thought it a shame Emile had not married but she had not given up hope he might someday make her an aunt. Clarisse, younger than her husband by many years, was still healthy and actively pursuing her first love, preserving the island’s historic homes and furnishings when she wasn’t spoiling her grandchildren.
Jamie heard childish giggles coming toward her. She turned, but before she could stand a lithe little body was attached to each of her legs. Her housekeeper, Delia, stood in the doorway, a chagrined look on her face. The gold hoops at her ears swayed as she shook her head.
"Sorry, mistress. I tried to give you some time to relax," she said.
"It’s all right, Delia," Jamie said. "If you’ll wait a couple of minutes, I’ll send them back to you for lunch."
"My mama," pouted one dark-headed moppet who was carrying a large photograph album.
"No, my mama," retorted the other, pushing her sister away and onto the floor.
At almost four the fraternal twin girls were the same height but Yvie had auburn hair in tight ringlets while Lissa had dark straight hair like her mother’s. Their faces were very similar but Jamie thought that Yvie resembled her more, while Lissa favored her father.
"I belong to both of you," Jamie said, helping Lissa back to her feet. "Yvie, it’s not nice to push your sister."
"I don’t like her. I wish you’d give her back." Dark, curly hair quivered as Yvie stamped her foot.
"Yvie, I love you both. You both came at the same time."
"No, that’s not the story, Mama. Tell the story the right way," ordered Yvie, climbing onto her lap, the album in tow.
Jamie held up one finger to Delia. There’s room on my lap for you both. I’ll show you the pictures and tell you the story of how you came to be princesses."
"Tell the story, now!" Yvie commanded, snuggling into her mother’s side. Jamie wondered anew if the gene for Yvie’s imperious nature had been passed down from her paternal grandmother, Clarisse Demontagne. Her other daughter, quiet and empathic was more like Jamie, although Lissa, at four, had a mystical streak that reminded Jamie of Bertille Deroche, not a blood relative, but a beloved adopted grandparent.
"The King and the Queen were going to have a baby," Jamie began, opening the photograph album in the middle to a picture of their house. Built shortly after she and Andre were married, the sprawling two story house with wide verandahs was located behind and slightly above the old estate house where Marcus and Bertille Deroche now resided. It was just a short walk across the garden from the new house to the old.
"No, Mama, that’s not the way it starts," interrupted Lissa.
Jamie started again. "Once upon a time, in a land far away, there was a king and a queen who were going to have a baby. They made a nursery for the new baby and the Queen painted clouds on the ceiling." She pointed to a picture of the twin’s nursery, furnished with an old mahogany crib and an oak rocker. "The crib was the same one the king had slept in when he was a baby."
"Don’t forget the chest of drawers," ordered Yvie.
"And a chest of drawers," Jamie amended. "When it was time for the baby to be born the King and Queen were surprised when two babies came instead of just one." Jamie turned the page to show pictures of her newborn daughters. "The King and Queen were very happy and brought the princesses home. There wasn’t time to get another crib but because they were so small both princesses fit in one crib. When it was time for their naps, the Queen would put the babies in the crib to sleep. She would put one princess on one end and the other princess on the other end but every time she went to check the princesses had scrooched themselves to the middle of the crib and were sleeping right next to each other." Jamie turned more album pages and pointed at pictures while telling the story which her daughters never tired of hearing.
"We scrooch together because we, I mean the princesses, are twins," said Yvie.
"What do you think, Lissa?" Jamie asked.
"I think the princesses were lonely. Just like Yvie and me sometimes. We like to sleep in the same bed so we don’t get lonely."
Jamie continued. "The princesses grew and grew until they no longer fit in a baby bed. So the King and Queen bought a new, bigger bed for their daughters. But even in this bigger bed, the Princesses liked to sleep all curled up next to each other." Yvie pointed to a recent picture of herself and her sister sleeping intertwined in their double bed.
"And do you know the names of the King and Queen?" Jamie asked.
"Mama and Daddy," the childish voices piped.
"And the names of the princesses?"
"Anne-Clarisse and Janine-Yvette," chorused the girls, loving the ending to this, their favorite story.
"Tell more, Mama, from the beginning," demanded Yvie, turning the album pages all the way back to the beginning. "Tell about the wedding of the King and Queen."
"Mama has things to do, Yvie. Why don’t you tell the story to Lissa and Delia," Jamie motioned to her smiling housekeeper, still standing in the doorway.
"DeeDee, come and sit down, please. I’m going to tell the story," Yvie said.
"Best we go to the lounge where there’s more room," Delia said picking up the photo album and taking Yve’s hand. Jamie followed them down the hall with Lissa.
"I’ll watch them, mistress. You relax," Delia offered.
"You’re an angel, Delia. After lunch maybe you can get the girls to take an N-A-P."
"N-A-P spells nap, Mama," Lissa piped. "We’re too old for naps."
When had she learned to spell ‘nap’ Jamie wondered? "You don’t have to sleep. You can lie on your bed and rest or look at books."
"You can go now, Mama," Yvie pronounced officiously, motioned her mother to leave. As Jamie retraced her steps to the verandah she could hear her four-year-old daughter begin telling the story of the King and Queen’s wedding. She could just imagine her daughters sitting on the sofa, legs sticking straight out as they pointed out pictures. "And this is Auntie Barbara and this is Grandmother Clarisse and Grandfather Auguste. And that’s Daddy and there’s Mommy, the bride. They went to the church and Momma had a beautiful dress and beautiful flowers that Grandmother Clarisse made for her and Daddy gave her the sparkly green earrings like parrot feathers and they had a party at Jumeaux. And then they got us." Yvie culminated with what was clearly the most important part of the story.
She heard Delia leading the children off to the kitchen for lunch and knew they were in capable hands.
She was anxious for Andre to come home and smiled to herself, thinking about the news she had to share. She heard a car in the drive. It was Andre.
"What are you doing home in the middle of the day?" Jamie asked, giving her husband a hug.
"I missed you and thought I’d come home for lunch. The hotel can run without me for an hour."
"Well, the girls are having lunch and then going upstairs with Delia for a nap. Could I lure you in for a nap after I feed you?" Jamie lowered her eyelashes suggestively and laughed.
"I have an even better idea. Let’s fix a tray, take it to the bedroom and lock the door. We can share all sorts of tasty treats," Andre said, leering back.
"That, my darling husband, is the best offer I’ve had all day. Let’s wait until we hear the children go upstairs and then go see what tasty treats we can find in the kitchen." Jamie took his hand as Andre sat down in the rocker next to hers. "I have some news for you."

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2006-02-06T16:23:00.000-05:00

Column 15 - Every Woman Knows This Story

In June A Circle of Dreams comes out. It is the second book in the Demontagne saga. While it is again set in St. Lucia and Martinique and the settings are exotic, to the modern woman it will be a very familiar story in so many ways.

Jamie, our heroine, must contend with a life where on the surface she has it all. The loving husband she always wanted, a successful career and three darling children. And even aside from the threat from the past, she is beset by the demands of having it all. To me as a psychotherapist, this is a very old story.

In my practice I had recognized that women were coming to my office for therapy about the time they reached thirty. Naturally most of the symptoms were related to either depression or anxiety. But what was striking was that these women were not neurotic. A major component of their distress was the stage of their lives. Gail Sheehy had illustrated this in her book Passages. But when I looked at the popular culture I could see the other major part of the problem. There was relentless pressure coming from the media in which a woman was portrayed as being capable of having "it all". Marriage, career, family. Perfection of all kinds.

In my blog I did a review of Amy Scheibe's wonderful book What Do You Do All Day? I resonated to the book precisely because it reflected what I had found in my practice. And it was done with humor and beautifully conveyed the conflict and ambivalence felt by women as they attempt to juggle the demands of "it all".

Romance books often are satisfying because there is a happy ending. And in the movies the couple sails off into the sunset and they live happily ever after. Then reality settles in. It is called life. We are happy for Jamie at the end of A Dream Across Time as she marries Andre. It is so satisfying. But the first book turns into a saga precisely because that is how life is.

The question always is what are the problems? Not if they occur. But when and where and what do we do about them. Does Jamie abandon her career? Do the children get shortchanged? Does the marriage go under? All of these things are possible. The true art in living our complex lives today is to set the priorities and get perspective on what is essential and what is inessential. In What Do You Do All Day? the heroine reaches the conclusion I saw time and time again. Perspective, acceptance and balance.

As Jamie struggles with her own pressures she feels the distress in her marriage. Even the best marriage is vulnerable. When we are in distress we may lose the foundation of our life. A lost job, financial problems, even a sick child can end in marital disaster. The reader will see in A Circle of Dreams how our heroine struggles to maintain her compass and her foundation. And the reader will see how other women come to help her.

2006-01-16T07:47:00.000-05:00

Preserving our memory capabilities would be a huge benefit for all of us. As years slip away so does our memory. Modern science has yet to find the answer. But I have a thought.

Recently I ran across a medical report about my father when he was in his eighties. I had forgotten about it but vividly recalled my reaction at the time. Most of the report was not of great interest but it indicated that he was showing signs of cerebral atrophy. Convinced this was a devastating finding I called his physician on the verge of panic. He reassured me by telling me that cerebral atrophy is a normal part of aging. Anyway I kind of found that reassuring.

But now that cerebral atrophy seems to be a reality in my life as I watch my ability to remember things ebb away I think it is time to review the subject. I have heard several people report that they feel their brains are full. A lifetime of memory has overloaded their storage capacity. Recently I went to save something on my thumb drive and found it full. I had to dump some of what was on it to save new material. Can it be that this is the answer? Clean out our memory banks!

We can begin by dumping memories. In order to dump memories one tactic is to clearly delineate it and clarify it then state it openly. At that point an autohypnotic suggestion would be used to erase the memory. If you are not conversant with the simple matter of autohypnotic suggestion you can go to a hypnotherapist and get the short course in its use. Then you are ready to go to work.

It is not necessary to set aside time for your memory cell project. It can be done anywhere. Just so long as you clearly indicate the memory which is to be erased. This can be done by telling someone else your memory. For example, you are on an elevator and you can tell the person next to you about your aunt Helen who likes to terrorize her neighborhood on her Harley. One day she got her boa caught in the spokes. Not the feather kind. The constrictor kind. It made a terrible mess and one of her neighbors made off with the carcass and had a barbecue. He made the mistake of telling her about it. He eventually recovered from his injuries. Face it, this is not a memory you need clogging your storage capacity.

Or you can tell the person on the other side of you about Uncle Helmut who suffers encopresis and what a hit he was at last years Thanksgiving feast.

Choose your time and place. Maybe you don't have a high regard for bikers and harbor prejudices. You clearly don't need to keep associated memories concerning this prejudice of yours. So, the next time you find yourself at a stoplight with a 300 pound biker next to you let him know that you consider him a person who is clearly compensating for his inadeqauacies and that you believe he is, at heart, a pansy. You may have to ignore the view you have of him in your rearview mirror as he follows you home. He might actually help you to reduce your unwanted memories further.

When the spirit moves you you can go out on your front porch, if you have one, and do things like reciting the Gettysburg address, if you can remember it. Or, if you live in an apartment you can do it in the hallway. It would be even better if one of your neighbors observes you doing this as it will help delineate and define the vividness of the memory. Dumping it works even better then.

Be creative. Use your time on the subway to good effect. Tell the person next to you about the intractable sexually transmitted disease you acquired from a hooker last month. Just be sure in each instance that you use the autohypnotic suggestion.

I think you get the point. It is a noble experiment. If it proved successful, the world will be eternally grateful. If you choose to try this form of memory enhancement, please stay away from me and don't tell anybody I suggested it.

2006-01-15T16:47:00.000-05:00

Column 14 - Recently I had the experience of having a book walk in the door. Well, not just the book. The concept of the book complete with characters.

When we started writing A Dream Across Time we just thought we were writing a book. Vaguely we thought there might be a continuing story but not a whole saga. We built a home in St. Lucia and it took over our lives. First came the house, then came a travel business focused on the Caribbean and then a saga.

I used to believe that a person could plot their course in life. Now, after all these years I realize that life will often plot our course for us. That is exactly the case with what has developed from our first novel, A Dream Across Time. After A Dream Across Time was finished we began work on what we thought was the second book in the series. It was more of a struggle than the first book. Our lead character,Yvie, was giving us fits. She is a character who would not behave herself in the book and she wouldn't behave for her creators either.

Then one day I went out to run errands which I find really boring and so my mind drifts. At the time we lived way out in the country and so I spent a lot of time on the road. While I was out, the second book walked in the door or at least into my head. Maybe I should have expected it after reading Stephen King's On Writing. After all we were struck by the validity of his belief that writing novels is like unearthing fossils. If we viewed the saga as a fossil entity and that it is unearthed piece by piece, then it is perfectly logical that we were going to find things which were unexpected.

When I got home I laid out for my wife the plot, the characters and found myself detailing what will be the book, A Circle of Dreams. It was clear that we could not write the book we had started until we had written the second. The characters for the third book were begging to be introduced. No, actually, they were demanding to be introduced in a book which lay between the first and the one we had begun work on. What was even more appalling was that we found we had inserted plot elements and characterizations in the first book which were prerequisite to the second book.

And I thought I could lay a course and was in command of it. I really needed to get real.

2006-01-15T14:28:00.000-05:00

"Alas". Alas? When we were seeking agents and publishers this word came up in some of the rejection notices. It is a word I had not heard or seen much for a very long time. It seemed a curious word to use since the nature of the communication itself suggested rejection and did not imply real regret. Just being nice I guess even though it was often part of a note which had been hacked out of a larger sheet with a paper cutter.

But, it appeared to have a deeper meaning and caused me to go looking back at the material in the agents listing. What leapt out at me from the words they used to describe what they were seeking was the word "literary". Literature has a variety of meanings and I associate it with such things as literature racks which might contain anything from travel brochures to religious tracts but it can also refer to novels.

We understood that what we were writing lay somewhere on the literary landscape. Being grouped generally among the romances, it is possible to lie among "bodice rippers" and mainstream works. We were very clear we were not writing bodice rippers but also believed we were not writing "great" literature. What did this word mean in this context?

There came a defining moment. We were visiting my mother-in-law and my wife was reading her Christmas letters to her. They were mostly letters about people I did not know and people my mother-in-law did not know either. But it filled the time. Being bored, I picked up a book lying next to my chair. I leafed through it and read the review snippets inside. They were striking in that they used words to describe the book which would appear in the 98th. to 99th. reading level percentile of a vocabulary list. That is, the reviews were often from such places as the New York Times.

I began to read this highly regarded book. I'm a reasonably intelligent person but I ran into sentences that were dumbfounding. I had to stop and mull them over, trying hard to determine their meaning. Early on in learning our craft we were told that they were called "stoppers". Supposedly bad things. These sentences clearly stopped the flow of the manuscript and not to good effect. The lead character in this book was in distress both physically and emotionally but the author had left me caring not one whit about her or her distress. Rather than pressing forward to move the story the author lapsed into a dissertation about the cultural ramifications and origins of her distress. It was clear that the focus was on the thoughts and the choice of words. Could it be that I had found an example of literature which was word driven?

Running into that book at that moment was striking for me in that I was, at the time, reading a novel by Maeve Binchy. I love her Irish characters and get caught up in their lives and their speech as she depicts their lives. Her vocabulary is not lofty but the creation of the characters is striking and I come to care about them. In short, she captures me in something which is story driven and people driven. The story flows and I am never stopped. The differences between her writings and the book I had picked up clarified for me what we are writing. We will never be reviewed by the lofty critics of "literature". Our works are not word driven. Rather our stories are image and story driven. We wish to catch the human heart but not through thought or the turn of phase.

Perhaps I am being unfair about literature but in this experience I became clear that it is "literature" that is found in my great pile of "50 page books" I never finished. They are the ones that do not capture my imagination or my feelings. My wife was an English major and frequently mentions that it took her years to be able to begin reading again after college. I have to confess that my experience was similar.

I am a psychologist who is steeped in the world of Carl Jung. His work goes deep into mythology and thereby deep into the human experience well beyond human thought. Jung's work on personality types is particularly instructive. Certain kinds of books are written by certain personality types. Their diversity of approach and perception offers us richness in the human experience. It is the art within each type of writing that captures us in each genre and enriches us depending upon our particular personality. As such, aside from variables of talent, there is often little use to rank one against the other.

2006-01-12T15:48:00.000-05:00

Column 13 - Toward A Circle of Dreams

It's January (but you knew that) and the second edition of A Dream Across Time has been formally launched. (Maybe you didn't know that.) If you will look back over prior posts you will find numbered columns mixed in which discuss our characters, the setting of the book and our thoughts about writing. These columns help bring out other dimensions of the book.

You may not be aware that A Dream Across Time is the first book in a saga. In the columns which will now be posted we are discussing themes, characters, and background material related to the second book in the series, A Circle of Dreams, which will debut in June.

And now, Column 13, the first in the series of columns about A Circle of Dreams,the second book in the series.

Column 13 - I don't believe in ghosts.

In a former incarnation I was a clinical psychologist. As an undergraduate I took the inevitable first psychology course, Psych 101. It was at the University of Michigan which has been a bastion of experimental psychology. In the first class the lecturer took the stage and dramatically proclaimed the fateful words, "Psychology is a science!" So, clinical psychologist or not, it seems I am a scientist and, naturally, I do not believe in such silly things as ghosts. Not me. Oh no!

Except of course, I lived in a house with a ghost.

I left North Carolina with my young wife, brand new baby girl, an antique Jaguar which inevitably leaked oil and my newly minted Ph.D. from Duke and moved to Maryland. We had found a really neat three story stone farmhouse for rent right in the middle of a 300 acre farm. Worn floors, creaking stairs and several fireplaces. We absolutely loved it.

But in the evening when we had settled in we began to feel we were being watched. It was a strange sensation. Our laid back dogs would suddenly come to alert. At the top of the house was an attic room with a hasp. I fixed it shut with a peg of wood in the hasp. Next time I checked the peg was on the floor. This happened repeatedly. Finally my wife said, "It feels like we have a ghost." I felt exactly the same way. We set up a series of questions and wrote down our answers so that we did not contaminate each others responses.

We agreed it was an elderly man who came from the attic down the stairs and he went to a small "study" adjacent to the livingroom. He never came into the livingroom or the upstairs bedrooms. But he did stop at the door to the livingroom. We never actually saw him. But we certainly could feel him, hear the creaks on the stairs and the dogs clearly were taking note of something.

The funny thing was that it did not feel like he was an ominous presence. In fact, since we loved the house, we felt a sense of protection. As if he loved his house and wanted people there who loved it as well. So, we settled in to live with our "nonexistent" ghost.

Finally I summoned the courage to ask our landlady about the house and people's reactions to it. She said it was quite curious. Renters either loved the house or fled suddenly after staying only a short time. Some left in the middle of the night. As far as I was concerned that fit. If they were iffy about the house or didn't like it then they were virtually driven out. If you loved the house, you were quite welcome. Great. We loved it there.

And then we found our very own 18th. century stone house in the country to buy and set about preparing to leave. All hell broke loose.

The house was not just noisy. It was nuts. The dogs would not settle down. They were constantly patrolling and on alert. We felt a presence in the hallways much more frequently. It seemed the old gentleman was not happy about our decision to leave.

It was with some regret that we moved on to our new home which we loved but had nothing even suggesting the feel of a ghost. At least inside the house. It was another matter outside on the old road from Baltimore to York, Pennsylvania. But that's another story.

So, that's an interesting story you might say. What does that have to do with anything?

It has to do with suspending your disbelief. A true scientist is not dismissive. All of us have to consider the "what if". Go to our website www.annierogers.com and read the prologue and first chapter of A Circle of Dreams. See what you might conclude about what might happen to our little family in St. Lucia and how it might play itself out. Look for A Circle of Dreams in its entirety in June.

2006-01-05T15:43:00.000-05:00

Here's another restaurant review for those who are inclined to eat around here in Easton, MD.
Yes, I'm a busy little beaver today with three posts. Could it be there are some other things I am putting off?

When we are in New York we have a favorite Italian restaurant called Il Grifone which is at 244 E. 46th. It is absolutely outstanding but not the subject of this review.
Il Grifone comes to mind because last night we happened to go to a new Italian restaurant here in Easton (MD) with a decor which is New York sophisticated.
It is Scossa and is on Washington St. opposite the courthouse in downtown Easton. The decor is softly neutral, very elegant and sparked with well placed lighting and luscious candlelight. I felt immediately at home and very, very comfortable. Such a pleasant feeling.
Now, when I enter such a setting I am often afraid that I will be disapponted somehow. There were absolutely no disappointments. I chose a scallop and shitake mushroom starter which couldn't have been more lovely. I followed it with a light pasta dish. Roma circa 1962 was when I had a cenneloni like this. Heavenly shell with a meltaway stuffing of veal and cheese. My wife had a veal dish which was wonderful and it included perfectly prepared mash potatoes and vegetables which were neither too raw nor too done. We had chosen a carafe of the house pino grigio which proved to be the perfect compliment. We took a deep breath almost not daring to hope that dessert would be as good. The fruit tart flamed with Cointreau was beyond our hopes.
Oh yes. I forgot the service. It was not to be faulted.
If you are ever in Easton, don't miss Scossa.

2006-01-05T15:21:00.000-05:00

I can't resist posting this.
In my last post I mentioned my 100 year old aunt who died six months ago. Several days ago I at last received a final check from Social Security. It came after they requested a birth certificate (presumably to prove the person they paid benefits to for 35 years had actually existed) her death certificate ( Yep. She's dead. That's why I'm asking you to stop sending money.) and a marriage certificate (Sorry. She was never married and I have no certificate proving a negative).
Today I received the following letter: (Our government at work!)
"You will soon receive a check for $(amount deleted) because we owed money to (your aunt). Do you think we are wrong? If you disagree with this decision, you have the right to appeal." Blah, blah, blah.

2006-01-05T15:14:00.000-05:00

Self Publishing and Unemployment.

America is supposedly the land of the entrepreneur. But we have a curious attitude toward people in a number of positions in our society.

My wife and I have been self-something-or-others most of our adult lives. Mostly it has been self employed. That means we have to be self starters. If we don’t get ourselves moving, no one is going to do it for us. If we don’t make something happen for ourselves, no one will. Some of us are more comfortable than others with the fact that it can be all up to us to make our way.
In this environment there are many people who are then generally classified as being "unemployed" in one way or another. Here are some of them:
1. Self employed people
2. Housewives
3. "Retired" people
4. Publishers.

In the public mind it is clear that a person is employed if they have a job which has been made for them by someone else, where they are provided with a paycheck and benefits. If you receive none of the above then you are "unemployed".

Self Employed People
Those of us who are self employed and have created are own jobs are assumed to be available, at the discretion of others, to run errands and do other odd jobs since we are not actually "working". Even so, others assume we must have a pension plan or 401 K and will ask "What kind of a 401K plan do you have?" Answer, "None, I’m self employed." Or they are outraged that they now have to pay 15% of their health insurance premiums and ask, "How much are YOU expected to pay of your health insurance premium?" Answer, "All of it." We are truly to be pitied.

Housewives
The next class of the unemployed is the housewife. The debate about how much a housewife should be paid if she actually received a paycheck has been raging forever but it seems that employed people continue to wonder what housewives actually do all day. As if the children have been stuffed and put in a corner. Not to mention all the things that people in a marital partnership do as part of their lives together even thought only one nominally receives the compensation. It is assumed that housewives should be doing something directly remunerative and should be striving to "have it all". That means career, children, glorious fulfilment in their marriage etc.
Fortunately with the advent of the women’s movement we have gotten beyond the embarrassed woman who says shyly that she is "just a housewife". At least now she is more prone to say she is a "stay at home Mom" among other things. Still the suspicion lingers that she does not really do much and, therefore, is unemployed.

Retired People
The third class of people are "retired" people. When I was a child most men retired at age 65 and were dead, on average, at age 67. So unemployment or idleness was not much of a worry. It was all to be over soon. The old attitudes have lingered on for decades.
People assume that anyone past the age of 60 must be retired. The sad fact is that many people of all ages are bored or unhappy with their jobs. They assume an older person couldn’t actually be working or want to work. When I ask an older man what he does, I am asking about his skills, his history, his interests. I continue to be surprised by responses like, "I’m retired." Period. Total response. Does that mean retirement is a vocation and all prior history has disappeared?
I’m really struggling with the definition of retirement because I have no idea what it means anymore. We have several images of the retired person: 1. They sit at the end of a dock and fish 2. They play endless rounds of golf or 3. They ride around on their motorized scooter with grandchildren following behind on tricycles or in line skates. What a fulfilling way to spend your later years! Is it possible that some people might dare to do something gainful late in life?
My 100 year old aunt died recently and was "retired" for 35 years which means in her case that she actually did not do much of anything. Is that a model to be emulated?

Publishers/Self Publishers
Then last on my list are publishers. Nobody seems to know what publishers actually do. They don’t write. Authors write. They don’t edit because that is what editors do. They publish but no one knows what that is. Since no one can figure out what they do, they must be unemployed or at best slackers.
Isn’t it curious that in this land of the entrepreneur we have this attitude about people who are self starters, make their own way or in other ways are independent? As for me, I’m having a really good time watching people’s faces. They assume at my age that I am retired. Without really knowing about my life they ask me how I am enjoying my retirement. And then I tell them I am a publisher. That’s bad enough but then I compound it by telling them I am a self publishing publisher. Fortunately the bias against self publishing seems to be breaking down quickly. But most people still seem clueless about publishing and self publishing. I know I shouldn’t be making them uncomfortable. I’m a mean person. I also don’t like unexamined prejudices and stereotypes.

2006-01-02T18:29:00.000-05:00

Happy New Year!

Long long ago in a land far far away there was a journalist who wrote an article. Yes, children, in those days journalists actually wrote articles. They did more than clip together press releases sent by people such as myself. The time was the sixties and the place was Massachusetts. The journalist wrote about an ashram located in Western Massachusetts and indicated that the people there sought through meditation to achieve vegetable consciousness. Over time they would work themselves from broccoli and cauliflower consciousness down through the lettuces ultimately reaching carrot and radish consciousness. At that point they were said to have achieved vegetable nirvana.

You may have guessed by now that this account was apocryphal at best and certainly satirical. To the amazement of the journalist he was besieged by callers wanting contact information for the ashram. They wanted to join up!
Now I have to admit that achieving vegetable consciousness is a goal I seek at times. After a day of fighting the good fight in self publishing and dealing with my faithful computer, Hal, I have been known to seek such a level of consciousness. Such is particularly the case when Hal has been in his evil incarnation and has eaten my data, trashed my work and entered catatonic states from which he is hard to rouse.

Fortunately there are ways to get assists in achieving this state. Among others one can listen to rap music, play your favorite album of yodel music or watch certain movies on television. It was my good fortune to find that Hulk was being shown the other night after a particularly trying day.

I had seen the ads but did not understand that it was pretty mainstream as a sci fi flick. It had all the essential hallmarks. For one it was clear that a central theme in this morality play was " Don’t F— with mother nature". Well, let’s call that "mess with mother nature" since the dashes slow up my typing. One of the best known pieces demonstrating the dangers of messing with mother nature was done by Mary Shelley. She evidently went on a very boring vacation with her poet hubby and came up with her classic about Dr. Frankenstein. Anyway, Hulk’s Dad seemed to have messed with his biochemistry which had a dramatically bad effect later on.

Our hero is a scientist and has a fair damsel with whom he works. Unfortunately she seems to have back to back bad hair days. Personally I think it was the director’s fault since I think he wanted her to look geeky, her being a scientist and all. But an interesting thing happens which leads us to characteristic number two in this type of flick. Our hero begins to have major problems with his biochemistry.

I mean really bad problems. It seems he is having world class testosterone spikes. Naturally our heroine responds with a care giving set of responses which have an unexpected effect. She suddenly becomes more fetching and gets over her bad hair days. Amazing. So now we have the age old beloved story of beauty and the beast. The woman soothes the man who is having problems with his testosterone spikes. It brings a certain equality to life to see this. Hormonal spikes and shifts are not just something that women must deal with. Hulk brings this fact to life big time. So we move away from sexist viewpoints to an equality of the sexes.

Which brings us to the third hallmark of a film to help you achieve vegetable consciousness. It goes under the name of "I’m gonna get you sucka." You might assume that it involves violence and you would be correct. Violence is hardly unusual among humans. We generally seem more interested in killing each other than getting along and Hulk, with his testosterone spikes, is certainly prone to violence.

Now you have to understand that although my own cognitive functioning was sinking ever lower into my brain stem while watching this movie, it still had me involved enough that I had not taken so much as a mini-nap to which I am prone when watching televison in the evening.

All in all it became clear to me that there are wonderful ways to become relieved of the day’s tension through the seeking of vegetable consciousness. We probably need a rating system which would rank films on the three hallmarks of 1. Don’t mess with mother nature 2. Beauty and the beast and 3. I’m gonna get you sucka. With a sufficient dose it is then possible to feel refreshed, renewed and capable of returning to whatever your good fight might be.

So, actually what is the point? There are two point. The first is that this blog medium is a gas and you get to have fun with it. The second is more serious. Let’s not forget that life needs fun and that writing can be fun. It does not have to be deep. We often take ourselves too seriously particularly when it comes to writing. Popular genres can be wonderful if we can let the kid in us out to play.

The last few months have been a travail in a lot of ways as I fought my way through the publishing venture. Now that that is more under control my wife and I are getting back to what we really like which is the creative writing. I sat down yesterday and took one of our characters, Lissa, out for a spin in the third book. I took this lovely young woman to Martinique and helped her through a difficult period. And, I got to show off this young woman to the reader. It doesn’t get much better than being able to have fun either with someone else’s work whether it is grade B, better or worse, or your own work.

2005-12-15T09:34:00.000-05:00

This is not satire. The publishing shakeout and what happens to self publishing is going to be one of the most interesting things I have ever seen. It simply cannot continue as it is. I received something the other day from one of the major romance websites which was appaling. They stated that they are receiving SEVERAL HUNDRED ebooks every month. Their authors would like reviews.

How on earth can anything work when everyone with a computer is now sending out a "book"? I hear in the industry that there are more and more submissions of lower and lower quality. I have to assume that the variation in the quality of the ebooks must be huge. And even if some of them are really good there is the reality of marketing. A good review is only the beginning.

I have to confess that I am stumped. How can you possibly screen these many submissions? How do you work to get worthwhile material out there? How do you prevent it simply becoming a matter of how much money the author has to throw at the project?

And then I see that Ed Koch has a children's book out there. Of, pleeese. This morning Gloria Estefan was on CNN with her new children's book. Like they actually wrote these things. I doubt it.

All of this in the face of a declining readership, video games, manga and all the rest.

This looks more and more like a train wreck out of which something will come. But what will it be?

2005-12-13T08:45:00.000-05:00

Print on demand! It is almost time for us to do print on demand for the second book, A Circle of Dreams. But I can't help having an association between print on demand and sci fi type Pods. You know the kind. They take over human bodies and propogate aliens.

Is it possible that there is some meaning to this association given the marked changes in the publishing industry. Is it possible that the PODs will take over? Perhaps morphing into some as yet unrecognized form of publishing? Perhaps develop a life of their own which might stamp out publishing as we know it? Then, just when we thought we were sending out our writings for review we might find the material was changed into something we had not intended. Something alien. Our covers would change and we might have terrible visions appearing on them. Maybe even pictures of people like George Bush or Howard Dean.

Is this so far fetched? We are hearing daily about the threat of bird flu. A pandemic which may be perched nearby and ready to fly in among us and decimate our world. Global disaster is just around the corner. I know it's true because I heard it on Fox and CNN. Stay tuned.

Have we opened Pandora's box and loosed terrible plagues on ourselves? Bird flu decimating the world. PODs running rampant in the publishing industry. Are we to have a podemic?

I received additional confirmation yesterday that something terrible was wrong when our website designer told me that she had found something which was "populating in the form manager." She assures me that she can get it under control but I remain alarmed.

I hope I haven't alarmed you unnecessarily but in these dangerous times you can't be too vigilant. One must be especially vigilant when it comes to publishing where change is occurring too fast. Change is dangerous. Where will it all end?

Flash! Breaking news! A further indication of disorder in the world. There has been an explosion in a Purdue chicken processing plant in Salisbury, Maryland. Rumor has it that a chicken was seen entering the plant wearing a suicide vest.

For more come visit us at www.annierogers.com

2005-12-11T16:49:00.000-05:00

Column 12 - Family Life is a Saga
We are now close to the publish date of the second edition of A Dream Across Time. The launch of our publishing venture is largely complete and now I plan to return to writing the columns I promised.

The more we are writing, the more I am thinking about what we write and why. Are these merely stories and pastimes for our amusement? Is the reader to take something away other than a few pleasant hours spent on an interesting story? And, is the writer to take something away other than the satisfaction of a completed project?

My wife and I wonder how we got here? We built a home in the Caribbean and it took over our lives. The home quickly expanded from a starter cottage to a villa. Its care and feeding spawned a business selling short term villa rentals. The experiences in the islands gave birth to the formation of stories about people who might just as well be real.

And then we started writing as a joint project we would enjoy. Our lives got crowded pretty fast. Characters walked in the door. Even a whole book walked in the door. I came home one day from running errands and laid out the story for the second book which had just materialized. It’s called A Circle of Dreams.

Where was this coming from so late in our lives?

We puzzled over it. We thought about the very beginning of our relationship. Glorious and extremely difficult times. Our marriages were deteriorating. No, they were failing. We had found each other as our lives were sinking. In such desperate moments you fly away together.

Most of our friends in that time could be best described as hippies. Others were in the forefront of the reform movement of the time. Mala started making jewelry and we spent more time with craftspeople. An intensely interesting and creative period.

Then another part of reality visited itself on us. We remarried and had four children to tend. They were going through divorces also and had to reconstruct their lives. There was now no time for self indulgence. Much of who we were got put away in the interest of family. When you have children, your primary job is raising children.

Decades passed and one day we went to a place far far away in the Caribbean. We stepped out of our culture and a whole new cultural landscape stretched out before us. Many of the constraints we had felt for so long were shed. It was time for our fundamental natures to be reasserted. Looking back it was clear that we were living our own saga and our venture into the Caribbean was the latest part of our saga.

Don’t we all have our own sagas? We simply can’t see our life as a saga because we are within it. We move through the stages of our lives. Such things as falling in love, having a career and seeing your children arrive are parts of the saga. As we go through our childhood we go through all the stages of personality development only to find that our development continues in our adult lives. Getting "there" isn’t half the fun. It is the whole of life. We know where the end leaves us and that is not what we are seeking. It is the living of life. We just need to step back once in awhile and view our own saga.

We were criticized for writing a romance about a woman who was married and had a marriage in trouble. Did we perhaps recapitulate part of our own trip? Of course we did. And we are writing about life. Finding your mate and living happily ever after is lovely but it is not the end. The saga continues.

Our heroine, Jamie, comes out in triumph having been tested. She is stronger and has her beloved partner. As writers we have chosen not to move on to another similar story but to continue her story. The story of her family. The story of this family reflects the story of all of us. And, as you will see, we are bringing in a paranormal element to enrich the stories. In that fashion we can highlight the richest, mythological elements of human existence. Through mythology we can convey the reality of existence in a way that goes beyond the so-called facts.

When it is all said and done, fiction writing is a way to affirm the experience of our individual sagas. We see in the story of others our own triumphs or perhaps the healing of our own failings. But, above all, we experience our humanity.

In the next columns I’m going to begin to lay the groundwork for the second book in the saga, A Circle of Dreams, by talking about the philosophical and conceptual underpinnings of the book as well as the characters.
For more come visit us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-28T11:20:00.000-05:00

I seem to have the urge to publish today.

I just realized I have not been talking much about what we are up to with the novels. If you have been reading this blog regularly you will know that we have all our rights back to the first novel in our Caribbean saga. Now everything is under our control.

Having found our way through the maze involved in becoming publishers we now have a publish date for our enhanced second edition in January 2006. Actually the book is already printed, copies are on pallets at Book Clearing House and we are ready to roll full tilt on the marketing.

Speaking of "roll" the reviews are rolling in and we are very proud about what is being said about the first book in the series. The reviewers love A Dream Across Time.

We are still placing ads in magazines and on numerous websites. After working my way through the online sites that would review romances I ran into a wall. Once again the books about publishing were not much help. I could not conceivably find the media contacts or find the time to relentlessly pursue them. So, we hired a publicist. Publicists have exactly what authors need. They are crazed and relentless. I am expecting something of a break between Thanksgiving and Christmas since nobody works during the holidays. They are online doing their shopping at work. At least that is how it seems. But I suspect such is not the case with publicists who are no doubt plotting a strategic attack which will break out in January.

This second edition has new material in it and if you want a hint about the second book you will find the prologue and the first chapter in the second edition of A Dream Across Time. The second book is called A Circle of Dreams and will be out in the spring. It is presently getting a final run through by our editor. We should have a finalized cover shortly. Then, right after the first of the year, I want to get PODs so I can begin to gather reviews. This time the back cover of A Circle of Dreams is going to have our best reviews on the back and inside.

We have learned a lot and are ready to roll on marketing book two which is going to be much easier to do. With book 2 essentially on the shelf, we are working on book 3. Mala and I recently went over the outline again and she resumed writing the first draft which is coming along. Book 3 does not have a title yet but it is going to be fun because Jamie's amazing daughters are now young adults and are loose on the world. Look out!

One of the problems we have is that we have too many stories knocking around in our heads. We have to focus, focus, focus. Speaking of focus, I better focus on something else and stop running at the mouth. Ciao.

For Much More Come visit us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-28T11:11:00.000-05:00

Column 11 -Goal, Motivation, Conflict and Creativity
Early on we heard that it was crucial in the construction of a novel to be clear about and pay attention to goal, motivation and conflict. Without these components one could not conceivably write a workable and plausible story. Given who we are, we needed to speculate first and do some exploration before we were able to refine the story and the elements.

That meant that when Roger got to the point of working out the details for an outline it seemed time to clearly define goal, motivation and conflict so that we could stay on a stable track. But something interesting happened. The story and all creativity died when we tried to refine it along those specific lines.

Obviously something was wrong. We went back to look at the fundamental assumptions which were driving our story. Jamie was the obvious focus of this evaluation because she was so central. We determined that Jamie had a primary goal as A Dream Across Time began. She wanted a good marital relationship, a home, and children some day. Absolutely mindboggling! How unique!

What motivated her in these unique goals? The need for love, security and fulfillment. Amazing. It seems we all shared those needs. It appeared to us there was nothing of interest so far.

We turned to conflict. Aha! Paydirt! As her marriage fell apart, should Jamie as a married woman violate her values and pursue a man who was engaged to someone else? Should she take the "safe" path and turn tail and run back to the States? Those were at least two of the conflicts she faced. Surely if you have read A Dream Across Time you can name several others.

Enter Stephen King to the rescue. He’s modestly well known as a writer and shared not just his history but his thoughts about writing in his book On Writing. We highly recommend it. It’s quite a good book. We didn’t realize that he wrote all that scarey stuff while stoned on a variety of substances. He wasn’t recommending that budding writers fill themselves with all manner of substances but his story was very interesting.
What he had to share about writing was important and some of what he said jumped out at us.

For one he said, "Write the book you need to write." Sage advise in our estimate. You can’t write something that is just not in you and if you try to follow fads it probably is not going to work out so well. If the current big craze is about women with zits we would not recommend you try your hand at such a story. It may not be your story but also by the time you have it ready the craze will have moved on to something like women who date men with flat feet. Then you will again be left flat footed yourself.

But there was something else he said that we found even more fascinating. He talked about his writing being a matter of unearthing the fossil. That perception hit us right between the eyes. That is exactly what it has felt like to us. We constantly have the feeling that we know where it is all going and that we are unearthing it. We even find that as we are working on later story lines that we have "inadvertently" put in something in an earlier work which is the basis for the later one. How did we know to do that? Because it is part of the fossil that is being unearthed. There were times when it was absolutely creepy. In fact, as we work our way through the saga, it seems that the saga has chosen us, not the other way around.

It is not unusual for us to find a character walking in the door but we did not expect that the story for book two would walk in the door and that we had included key elements in the first book Again, it felt like it was always there.

What does our experience and Stephen King’s advise have to do with goal, motivation and conflict? If you are writing the book you need to write and are unearthing a fossil, then it is not going to do much good to try to develop the book as a formula. For many of us the process is intuitive and we will have all the key elements in the story as the fossil is revealed. Most elements of a good story can be found in mythology which is one part of why it feels like a fossil.

In the end the wonder of a story is in the art of telling and the elaboration. Boy meets girl is one of the most wonderful experiences of life and the story stands to be told in many ways. How it is told is what engages us and enriches our lives.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-28T11:06:00.000-05:00

Here it is folks. Small publishers (self publishers included) are big business. I have been steadily hearing and perceiving this information but someone recently sent me this short and coherent summary of BISG's conclusions. Interesting reading about the wave of the future. Enjoy.

Since 1975 the Book Industry Standard Group (BISG) has been at the forefront producing quality research about the publishing industry. Since many consider the business model of the industry to be antiquated and inadequate, this is not an easy job to accomplish. However, they have had a number of successes in moving this gnarly behemoth from the 18th and 19th centuries toward the 20th with perhaps a glimpse of the 21st in its future. In addition to studying expected subjects such as consumer book-buying habits and independent publishers, BSIG has ....In "Under the Radar," a recent BSIG study detailing books published "under the radar" via small publishing companies, often referred to as regional and "niche" publishers, is a myth-buster and should be of interest to many authors.
Conventional wisdom decreed that these regional and niche publishers had limited sales and their efforts only accounted for a small piece of the publishing pie. Not so, says BSIG. The 63,000 small press publishers who report annual revenues of less than 50 million dollars generate $14.2 billion in aggregate sales. Within those sales, a small population of 3,600 publishers account for 11.5 billion of the total reported. In contrast the "big" traditional publishers tend to report between $23.7 billion and $28.5 billion in sales--depending on sources.
Here's a couple more things from the BSIG report to mull over:- small and midsize publishers have been multiplying, and often- prospering, while the largest publishing companies have been- consolidating.- small and midsize publishers have been using routes to readers beyond- the bookstore world, and often selling more books outside trade- channels than within them, while the largest booksellers have been- claiming more of the traditional bookstore market. More specifically,- the study findings indicate that small and midsize publishers do more- than 50% of their business outside book-trade channels and inside- sales channels designed mainly to serve other industries that the- book industry has not monitored.
However you frame the size of the pie, the report makes it clear that these so-called "niche" publishers have moved into the billion-dollar arena and are clearly worth considering when an author begins to consider the many roads to publishing that exist within and without the industry.= - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - = - =
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2005-11-21T15:57:00.000-05:00

I am really into publishing now. I think I will publish another restaurant review. Just to help out.
In case you don't know the Mid Shore of Maryland's Eastern Shore it has a lot of good restaurants in the St. Michaels and Easton area. Many are quite toney.

But if you want some really good local seafood there is a place which I suspect tourists often don't find.
It is a place without pretentions. Old style maple furniture with wooden booths and great food. The staff is really friendly and seem to be on happy pills. They have one of the hardest working busboys I have ever seen.
The place is called Chesapeake Landing. After leaving Easton you go through St. Michaels and it is about three miles outside of town on the left as you go toward Tilghman Island.

Crab salad, lobster, not to forget crabs etc. Of yes, they serve outstanding cakes made by the ladies of Smith Island which none of us should probably be eating because they are so good they must be bad for you.
So, if you are passing through or willing to go out of your way a little, drop into our local place, Chesapeake Landing, for some really good seafood.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-20T10:53:00.000-05:00

Column 10 - How does this writing team work?
It begins with the fact that we love a project! And that means a project we can do together. Tearing out a wall at home, splitting firewood or writing books. They all qualify. Picking ticks off the dogs at night does not qualify as a project so Roger gets to do that.

Then, some years back we were sitting on a plane heading for St. Lucia. Roger was reading what he considered to be a not very good book and asked Mala if the author sold lots of books. Her answer was fundamentally, "gobs". We sighted a project in the making and decided we could do better.

The question became a matter of what kind of a book would we like to write. What might hold our interest and be fun. Being mental health people we thought about psychological thrillers but neither of us felt much enthusiasm for the genre. We shared our enthusiasm for marital partnership and family. The obvious choice was some form of mainstream romance. Bodice rippers were out of the question.

Roger was soon making a family oriented trip to California and went to Barnes and Noble to load up on romances to further his education on the plane trip. People in the romance section of the bookstore eyed him suspiciously as he sat on the floor browsing through books. He selected a wide variety of types of books including bodice rippers which he read on the plane although he got more strange looks. By the time he got back as far as Kansas City on the return trip he ran screaming to a store for a thriller.

Then began the process of focusing on the story line, setting, and characters. We wanted an "exotic" setting. St. Lucia was perfect since we had already "researched" it. We had some clear preferences about characters. No abusive types. No victims. Our heroine had to be gutsy and capable. And especially no poor communicators. How could a couple of mental health people bear to write about people who could not communicate? It could be done but we didn’t want to do it. And so on until we had our ideas roughed out.
Until that point there wasn’t much of an issue related to partnership. Beating your gums and speculating is not challenging especially as far as partnership is concerned. The next step was actualization and this is where our experience together really counted. Creative endeavors involve putting egos on the line and all kinds of ego related issues. It’s probably an excellent way to kill off a relationship or a marriage. So, we called on our considerable experience of working together.

Instinctively we sought out our own spheres of influence in the project. Writing is not just writing. There are many components and plenty of work to go around. We knew from the outset that there needed to be one voice in the writing and it didn’t take much to determine that the voice needed to be Mala’s. Roger tends to write what we call "Germanic prose". That means long run on sentences with the verb stuck on the end. Mala has good instincts and produces something much more interesting and readable.

But Roger is an organizer and good at pulling together the overall framework or template for the work. So, after they work up the ideas together then it is his job to begin the formulation of an outline. Neither of us believes in the creative muse who alights on your shoulder and helps you pour forth the work whole cloth. So, an outline is produced and together we refine it.

Mala can begin writing with little threat of writer’s cramp. Having an outline also keeps her from working herself into an impossible corner in a story. She knows at least generally where she is going.
Then she passes the work back to Roger who begins something of an editing process. He does some rewriting, looks at issues of continuity and consistency, evaluates the work in terms of the outline, etc.
Part way through it is usually clear that the outline is not working as well as it did at the beginning and the revision of the outline begins. Together they rework the direction of the story and the development of the characters.

In short, there is a fairly stable direction, delineation of areas of responsibility and a pretty good chance of not ending up in divorce court or being at each others throats. Key elements involve recognizing that people have different talents and strengths. There is not just one way to tell a story or one solution to a problem. Compromise helps and willingness to let go of a pet idea. But above all, we love a project and we love a project we can do together.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-20T09:55:00.000-05:00

The self publishing marketing conference run by the Small Publishers Association of North America (SPAN) in Denver was a goldmine.

We flew out on Northwest and, in spite of their recent troubles, everything went well. There was a little irritability on the part of some staff but it was understandable. We learned that many of them will be starting over at the bottom of the pay scale with much reduced benefits because of the bankruptcy changes. We wish them well. It must be difficult.

As I said in an earlier post we decided to rent a car since we were going to Aspen and definitely were not going to pay $765 round trip per person from Denver. So we drove to the Marriott South Denver early in the evening. A really nice facility with extremely helpful staff. There was always someone around with a smile and an offer to help. It was quite apparent that they had taken a great deal of trouble to train their staff very well. Very attractive facility and, while I'm usually not very enthusiastic about restaurants in hotels, their restaurant was quite good. A top notch facility.

Then, of course, there was the reason we were there. The SPAN conference. It was focused on marketing and they put us through our paces as they did theirs. The experience ranged from validation of our efforts to new important information.

Some of the presentations permitted me to do a checklist of what I had accomplished and what I had yet to do. I learned that I had done a lot right. Very validating. And then I could develop a new list of what needed to be done yet.

An example of the useful information was how to get in touch with other established authors to seek testimonials. We now have the contact information so we can get to the staff of the people we would like comments from. Want a comment from a celebrity? We have the right phone number for SAG (Screen Actors Guild). I also have a list of websites for all kinds of information I had wanted or had been wondering about.

The presenters were the important people in the self publishing field. John Kremer. Marilyn Ross etc. We were also entertained and energized by people like Rick Frishman who is really good at promotions. I also must mention SPAN's executive director, Scott Flora. He kept us organized and ON TIME. Thanks for the "on time" Scott. If we were fifteen minutes late, we missed fifteen minutes of content. Things really hummed thanks to Scott.

In our breakouts we did things like practice our "elevator speeches". That's where you have a surprise chance to give a quick spiel to someone about your book. Wow, was that hard. We found we had good elevator speeches for our prior nonfiction titles and completely fumbled a speech for our novel. Have to work on that. Boy, do we have to work on that.

It is much more difficult to get publicity for a novel than for nonfiction works. It was impressed on us that we had to have a good hook and things like tips to get media coverage. We spent time working up good copy for the media and it is already paying off. A conference like this helps the author focus on the crucial elements of marketing and promotions.

We also had the opportunity to interface with some suppliers. And, I actually now have the name and e-mail address of a rep for Amazon. There is now a real person I can contact with questions. No more canned responses from the help section which usually leaves me screaming HELP! The contact and information helps me smooth my way. It's always nice to have a face attached to a name.

I learned how active self publishing people are becoming. The publishing field is definitely changing and I am now over reservations about proclaiming that we are self publishing. WE ARE SELF PUBLISHING! Getting noticed is still difficult but that is nothing new. The important part is that the process is now under our control.

Shortly I will put together an outline of what I have learned about the changes in the field and what it means. It has been a revelation. I have said previously that it is best to take a look at self publishing and marketing before you begin writing your opus or great American novel. Unless you simply want to stack up manuscripts in your closet, you better know what you are up against. Read about the realities before you write and then decide if you are up to the total effort. There are two of us which helps a lot. Getting the second book out there is going to be much easier now that we have been through the process once.

All in all the SPAN conferences are not to be missed.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-15T16:07:00.000-05:00

I think I'm beginning to get it. If you are self publishing you are wearing so many different hats. I got two separate requests for material today from our publicist. It finally sunk in that much of what is produced for publicity is very different from writing novels. Duh! I had to get the stuff out the door pronto because of deadlines involving the people who need it. It is not possible to turn it around, do drafts and look for writing at the level of a novel. I'll just have to be clear about which hat I am wearing.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-13T18:32:00.000-05:00

Some things seem to be universal. Like fifteen year olds. We were on the metro in Rome a couple of years ago when two girls got on. The tilt of their noses and the sneers on their mouths told me they were fifteen. They spoke Italian, of course, but they could just as well have been speaking English.

But what amazes me is that fifteen year olds seem not to exist here in St. Michaels. They must be sent away or there is something in the water. The kids here are polite, do not sneer and talk to you as if you were family. Our weekend guests this weekend had the same sense of amazement.

I'll keep on checking and looking under rocks. There must be something I'm missing.

What I did miss this weekend was the Waterfowl Festival in Easton. I stayed in the office working on our self publishing empire. I thought, why would I want to hear a bunch of people calling ducks and selling carved ducks? My wife reported back. Once again the unexpected happened. Master carvers were gathered together in the old armory in Easton and evidently had produced astounding art. She reported a full range of sculptures of many Chesapeake related things some of which were decoys but of amazing detail and quality. I'll have to go next year. I did kind of want to see the dogs going through their paces as well.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-11T13:48:00.000-05:00

One of the benefits of self publishing is that you are your own boss. So, this last week my wife, Mala, and I decided to run away from home and take a nostalgic trip "down the ocean". That's what people say around here when they are going to the shore.

First, for those of you who are not familiar with Maryland, I need to give you a geography lesson. Maryland is that strangely shaped state which gave up part of its territory to form DC. Someone carved Delaware out of it and took a dull knife and tried to cut another section off but couldn't quite pull it off. That left us with the Chesapeake Bay. The ocean side of Maryland is called the Eastern Shore. We used to live on the Western Shore which we thought was Maryland. You only find out there is a Western Shore when you move to the Eastern Shore. You get to the Eastern Shore by crossing the magical Bay Bridge which takes you from the fourth largest metropolitan area in the country to the land of watermen, yachts and sunbathing at the beach.
Anyway we set off across the Eastern Shore to revisit the areas where we spent summer vacations with our kids. Since we now live on the Eastern Shore we went straight across country. Sorry folks. The roads were great but all we could think was that agribusiness must own most of that area and pays miserable wages. An awful lot of abandoned and run down houses. We looked forward to getting to the shore.

We had to make a pit stop and spotted a Burger King. But we couldn't find the road into it so we parked by a dumpster in the Comcast Cable lot and worked our way to it through the brush. Inside only the men's room was working and it was occupied by a woman. The urinal had been torn out which I guess made it unisex. We bought some fries and a drink and fled.

Next stop was Rehobeth Beach which we remembered as a toney community by the sea. Well, it used to be. Now it features the most incredible array of shopping outlet malls ringed by condos. I guess people go down the ocean now and shop. There were a few nice areas but we fled on south. Dewey Beach was really familiar. So was Bethany Beach. And Fenwick Island was still there.
But it was Ocean City where we used to hang out with the kids for a week or two. We had a favorite little funky cottage which at the time had cable TV. We didn't have cable at home. Our reception was so bad that some nights we watdh TV in black and white. At the beach we had the luxury of one whole channel of HBO. So we watched the same few movies endlessly when we weren't visiting water slides and building sand castles at low tide. And at night there were glow lights to be hurled into the air.

This was just a day trip so we planned to have a little lunch at a nice place overlooking the ocean. Nothing was open. Most of the Subways were even closed. The place was a ghost town. The weather was still warm so I thought there would be some activity. Nothing.

There was something of a time warp atmosphere. We recognized many of the hotels and there seemed to have been a little more building on bayside. But everything was very much the same. We finally bagged the idea of the charming little place by the sea for lunch and settled on a pizza and sub place in a mall. It had the advantage of being open. It was the kind of a place where all the men had tattooes and the women had no eyelashes. I got a meatball sub which was amazingly greasy. I thought my paper plate had a green design on it until I noticed the green was the table. The grease had dissolved the plate and I had eaten part of it. Not a fantasy fulfilled.

Back on the road we gave up on our history. We stopped briefly to go out on the beach. Tis the season for beach replenishment. Beep, beep, beep. Clank, clank, boom. They were pumping sand and bulldozing. We walked around for awhile and returned to the car.

Sometimes memories are best left fond and alone. It didn't change the memories of those days and it was amazing to see a beach town changed so little. You really can't go home again. That's out of our system.

So I'm back dealing with Amazon, Baker and Taylor and the rest of our future. I guess checking back on our past was a part of walking away from our former life. In the space of a year we have closed our travel business, given up our villa in St. Lucia, sold our lovely two hundred year old stone home on a picturesque creek and moved to a new world we love. All of it without a quiver. I'm increasingly thinking we are strange. So many changes in just one year and there has been no upheaval.

With our lives unencumbered we can simply focus on our writing and related activities. Who says you can't seize the opportunity to reinvent yourself and start a new life in your sixties. And with the publishing in our own hands, we are firmly in control of our destiny.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-09T14:08:00.000-05:00

Here is another review from our trip to Aspen mentioned in an earlier posting.

When eating out I'm often satsified when I get "food". I don't consider myself fussy. But from time to time I get a really good meal. Imagine my surprise when in Aspen we had two really, really good meals.

The second meal was at Takah Sushi.

I'm ordinarily not a big fan of Japanese fare probably because I had never been to a top notch Japanese restaurant. Imagine finding one in Aspen, Colorado.

The restaurant itself is charming, crisply designed and understated oriental elegance. We were at once comfortable and felt welcomed by a young but obviously experienced staff. It being a quiet fall evening they even shared their good fortune with us. One of their habituees usually brings his own wine and in this instance he left most of his bottle of $300 champagne. The staff shared it with us. Since that is beyond what we usually spend on any wine (way beyond), it was quite a treat.

I have a bias about restaurant food. It isn't always essential but I love getting lots of little dishes. Like Tapas at a spanish place in Hermosa Beach or, in this instance, Takah Sushi. My Japanese does not exist and I can't possibly remember the array of dishes we had but nothing disappointed. We tried a variety of dishes including sashami and sushi. Everything got rave reviews from our party.

We took our leisure over the meal and the evening wore on. It turns out that the owner usually goes home about 8 and leaves the staff totally in charge. Then a younger dining crowd moves in, the lights dim and the music changes. At that point the music becomes way cool and the ambience quite special.
All in all another very lovely dining experience in Aspen. Takah Sushi is not to be missed.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-09T08:54:00.000-05:00

Column 9 -
Taylor, Clarisse and Barbara
Let’s take a look at three of the minor characters and see what it is about their backgrounds that made them react as they did.

Taylor Whitcomb-
Taylor was conceived of as a woman from old Northeast money. As such she moves in a rarefied atmosphere where people are highly privileged. There are relatively few families in such circles and new blood is rare.
Andre would have been intriguing to her. A breath of fresh air. He was an exotic, handsome man who was making his mark in the world of investment banking. Suddenly there was a new face in her world. A world which could have been quite predictable and boring to her. She found him virtually irresistible and fell in love.

But then she had to confront the reality of St. Lucia and the fact that Andre was thoroughly imbued with his island origins. No matter that he could move smoothly through the upper echelons of New York. It became clear that Andre wanted his base to be a home on a breezy hill in St. Lucia, not a dramatic apartment overlooking Central Park. And for Taylor there was the issue of the children she saw in her future. She would have already picked out the proper schools for them and to have them grow up on an island and go off to boarding school someday would not have been in her plans.

And, then, of course, there was Jamie. She could see the spark between Jamie and Andre and the fact that Jamie was able to adapt to island life.

Taylor came to understand that Andre would never give up where he came from and, in the end, she could not give up where she came from. Not being prone to live on hope and fantasy, Taylor faced facts. Her head came to rule her heart. Andre could be a friend but not a husband.

Clarisse Demontagne-
Clarisse was dealt some hard blows in life. She lost her parents at an early age and it had devastating effects on her.

When children face a personal tragedy they cannot explain, it is not uncommon for them to explain the event negatively in terms of themselves. All too often they see the event as indicative of some failure on their part. In Clarisse’s eyes the death of her parents was a punishment she deserved.

Then came the tragedy of her daughter, Lilabet. Illness, institutionalization and finally death. Could this again have been an indication to her that she deserved punishment. In the face of these blows she retreated from her children and her marriage. Her depression, regret and guilt would have only intensified. All she had left was the preservation of the family heritage and assets.

That is, until beautiful Jamie came along. The lovely daughter she might have had. The events with Jamie and who she proved to be represented a last chance for Clarisse. It would have been a formidable act of will for her to rise to the occasion. But she took the opportunity fate had offered her and seized it so she could re-enter her life and the lives of her family.

Barbara Carey-
Jamie could not have been more fortunate. Right in the middle of an island filled with pitfalls she found a woman who was the salt of the earth. What are the odds of finding such a benevolent and dedicated guide on a small tropical island?

Barbara comes from Baltimore, a.k.a. Balmur, Murilun to the initiated. You couldn’t want a better grounded and loyal friend. Again and again she came to Jamie’s rescue with sound advise and support.
While Bertille was bringing guidance from the "spirit" world, Barbara was bringing guidance from the "real" world. Lucky Jamie to have two such dedicated guides coming into her life.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-11-02T09:15:00.000-05:00

Travel is such fun! Siiigh. I'm giving away my age but I remember when we used to get dressed up to go on a plane. The terminals were uncrowded, everyone was courteous and it did not feel like a cattle call. But then life moved on and now travel includes the threat of terrorism. Terror in the good old days was a bumpy plane ride and the possible threat of having to use a barf bag.

One never knows what the adventure will be. We left for the airport innocently to head out to Denver. Nearing BWI airport all traffic stopped. From the driver of the bus bringing us from the long term parking we learned there was a vehicle fire at the terminal proper. No problem. We would get out and hoof it. We knew the terminal was just over the hill.

Cresting the hill we saw fire engines blocking the road as well as state police cars but we went ahead figuring we could walk into the terminal anyway. No such luck. The police were clear that we were not coming through and shouted for us to move back. We overheard a couple of men near us saying that if they went over the hill nearby they could make it to the parking garage and into the terminal. One of them threw his luggage over a small wall and started running up the grassy hill. A cop on a bicycle zipped up and ran after him waving his arms and shouting.

Now more and more people were cresting the hill. Hope on their faces, the would be vacationers came and the determined business travelers. More and more of them were expecting to take the inititative so they did not miss their flight. But the police were adamant. They shouted, their faces red at the challenge to their authority. Travelers fled around the sides running like a herd of cats. The police were furious. We retired to a bus to wait it out. Two words came to my mind. "Police riot". The officers were angry and the only way they could stem the tide was with violence which I didn't particularly want to experience. It seemed unlikely but it was clear that the public was having none of their restraint and they were breaking through and around the police lines.

The burned out car appeared on a truck and was taken away. The police retired and a tide of vehicles and people dragging their possessions hit the terminal simultaneously to once again fill the lines at check-in.

The basic policy in Maryland appears to be that when there is a crisis they simply stop everything with no contingency plans. The public is told nothing.

In this age of terror the police obviously had no viable plan for closing off the terminal. They simply expected to be in charge which is a naive assumption in America. They could have remained in charge by simply getting information to the bus drivers that the problem would be cleared in 5 to 10 minutes. And they could have told this to the vanguard aiming to reach the terminal. We would have been satisfied and turned back. But they relied totally on brute authority which did not work. So much for the planning of our authorites years into the age of terror.

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2005-10-31T16:05:00.000-05:00

Column 8
What’s It Like Living in the Tropics II ?
Let’s take a look at what Jamie actually confronted coming to this little tropical island in 1980. It was one year after St. Lucia gained independence from Britain. The island was poor. It was not just a matter of there being some poor people. The island was poor. It also has to be emphasized that it was above all an island.
Most things have to be imported and no one is going to import goods when there is no one who can afford to buy them. And you cannot go down the road to another town and find what you want. Things are often sold out or never existed in the first place. No neat bistros. No major shopping areas. No fine restaurants and no night life. Jamie mixed her own paint and used other survival skills she found she had. You had to be adaptive to survive.
When Jamie went to Castries with Barbara there were six hardware stores in the capital. It was necessary to scour back rooms and search under shelves to find what might be available. When you needed wood screws you could not buy a box. They didn’t have a whole box. You bought each single screw you needed. When we set up our house we needed five toilets. We bought the country’s entire stock of toilets in one day.
You have to make do. It is necessary to find ways to cope and be self sufficient and it is essential to be comfortable with yourself. And you better have a plan. Remember Paul? He had no plan. Jamie came to the island with the plan to make a home for herself and Paul, build her marriage and have children. When that plan fell apart, she was adaptive and made a new plan.
On an island like St. Lucia there is always the sun, the sand, the ocean and the mountains. And if you are really lucky there is the one you love or you start a mad passionate love affair which you can hope is not too ill-conceived. Its all quite sensual if you can cope with it.
Fast forward. It’s now many years later and the tourists have come and have brought money. There are goods in the stores, some lovely bistros, shopping, fine restaurants and all those good things. Life is even better in this beautiful place as long as your plan for yourself is working out.
But there is always the need to adapt to scarcity. With more money on the island there are more things available. But scarcity remains an issue. Its possible you remember them calling out "de plane, de plane" on the TV show Fantasy Island. Its not "de plane, de plane" you watch for on a tropical island. It’s "de container, de container". Containers bring almost all the imports by ship and that’s most things.
Other than the fact that planes bring tourists and are the best way to get off and on the island, the plane is not important. It is the container that is important. On a tropical island there are what we have come to call "hatchings" from time to time. They come from the large shipping containers.
For example, there may be no plastic food storage containers on the island. They were "finished" some time ago and no one knows when they will return. Then comes a hatching. There are stacks of them in the stores. All shapes, sizes and colors. You buy lots of containers. Your other ones are largely gone. The plastic rotted. ( Its really strange but they do seem to rot.). The rats chewed them up. (Sorry. Fact of life in the tropics. Rats.) Whatever. They are gone. Oh, joy! Stacks of containers. And then they are finished again.
The next container brings what? WD-40? The hatching has brought shelves of it to the stores. You need a can. You buy six. You know it will be finished before long because everyone else is buying six.
No wonder you begin to look at containers with reverence.
Sailors say that sailing is hours and hours of sheer boredom punctuated with moments of sheer terror. One might say the same thing about life in the tropics. Where does the terror come from? The weather. The local drivers. Your lover’s husband or wife. Among other things.
But mostly the word which best characterizes island life after the initial excitement wears off is BOREDOM. Unless you have that plan for your life and are not still pursuing fantasy. And can just enjoy the sheer sensuality of it all.
Remember those luscious evenings we mentioned. They may be luscious or interminable. If you are a reader you can be in good shape. If you are a TV person and do not have cable in your area you are in trouble. The most powerful station on the island carries the Trinity Broadcasting Network and you may find yourself becoming engrossed in their hair and makeup. Then you know you are in trouble. Alternatively if you have just started a fabulous love affair you are in the right place and night is heaven.
It comes back again and again to recognizing that the fantasy has to be overcome. A tropical island can be a beautiful place if you are flexible, self sufficient and have a sense of humor. But if you plan to live a fantasy, you will find it isn’t paradise. Of course, then, if you should happen to meet your Jamie or Andre...
Tropical Factoids
Snakes
Yes, they have snakes. But, forget the movie Anaconda. There is a boa the locals call Tête Chien (dog head). Sometimes you see them draped from someone’s arm by the side of the road. He usually wants you to have your picture taken with it. For a fee, of course. But, we get amused by the thought that a tourist might buy it and show up at the airport or the cruise ship with one. But the lovely people at Air Jamaica can be very flexible. Then there is the fer de lance. Ugly and poisonous. They live deep in the rain forest valleys and we have never seen one.
Brutally Hot Summers in the Tropics
Not so. At least on the windward islands. It only varies five degrees winter to summer and stretches above 90 degrees are not common. In fact, at the height of summer it may be in the mid to upper 80s with a delicious breeze when it is a stifling 90 or over 100 in the States. And since most people assume it is hotter in the tropics they stay away and the islands are blessedly quiet.

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2005-10-30T08:38:00.000-05:00

Maryland in the fall is my favorite time of the year. The Gulf humidity slips away and leaves cool evenings that demand the first fires of the season. Except this year. The entry into fall sucked as the humidity hung on. So, when we went to Aspen I was ready for a cozy evening. We found such an evening at The Wild Fig.
The warmth of the candlelight invited us in where we were greeted by the manager, Roy Toomey. He convinced me at once that I was an old friend he was delighted to see even though I had never met him before.
The restaurant had been described as "Mediterranean". If you are looking for a posh environment which gushes elegance, the Wild Fig is not such a setting. Mediterranean or Country French is a better description. It is a place where you go with good friends or your lover. The lights are low and the music just loud enough to enhance the ambiance. Share confidences or look deep into each others eyes.
The staff exhibited the art of fine service which is unobtrusive. We lacked for nothing when we needed it and the meal flowed at just the right pace to suit my taste. In fact, at one point they noted that we were lingering over a dish and asked if we wanted them to hold the next course for a while.
Then, of course, there was the food. Oh, no, let's not forget the food. Among the appetizers were two "family style" dishes which offered a sampling of many items. We chose to order two such dishes and were abashed to see how much food was there. But it was all so tasty that it did not go to waste. Then followed a salad my wife ordered. The greens were covered with a heated mixture of such things as gorgonzola and blue cheese, a mild sausage (I think), olive oil and balsamic vinegar. The dressing warmed but did not wilt the greens. My wife graciously shared it and the rest of us ate most of it. We couldn't help ourselves! What an art to warm the salad but not wilt it. Talk about timing and great taste.
On we went through the offerings of the Wild Fig. The broth on my seafood linguini was truly tasty and the lamb dish was among the very best I have ever tasted. Then there was my wife's dish. She ordered the duck confit ravioli which is evidently their "signature" dish. To die for. It seemed there were no bad choices, no failures. In short, at The Wild Fig we had exquisite food with great service in a warm and cheery setting. What more could we have asked for. If you are in Aspen, don't miss dining at The Wild Fig!

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2005-10-29T16:49:00.000-04:00

I really have to do better about getting stuff up on this blog. My excuse is that there was a lot to get out of the way before Mala and I went to the SPAN (small publishers) conference in Denver. I'll do a separate blog entry on that later. First the trip which was pretty neat.
We flew to Denver, naturally. There being not much else to do from Maryland if you don't want to be on road eternal. It is always amazing to see Denver dumped in the high plains and the mountains beginning just at the end of the table. After the conference we went on to Aspen to visit one of our kids. We had thought about flying and monitored the possibility of deals. None emerged for the flight and it settled at $765 per person round trip from Denver to Aspen. Get real! Definitely time for a road trip.
I had forgotten how beautiful the mountains were. And every valley is different. When we first entered the mountains it kind of looked like a hollywood set for a western. It is obvious that there is mining activity and it looks dusty and quaint. No offense, folks, but it does.
This kind of travel makes me thankful for the interstate highways. There we were traveling quickly through the mountains snug and happy. All I could think of was the number of heart attacks there must have been when the pioneers first saw the Rockies. "You mean we have to go up there? Please Mr. Custer I don't want to go."
Coming from the East we are used to more intimate landscapes. Some might say you miss something when you travel at high speeds. But I would contend that in this environment which is so huge you can pretty much take it in. By the way I think the people of Colorado are quite sane. They have speed limits on the roads which are actually reasonable. The sections where we were allowed 75 worked well at 75-80. When they cut the speed limit down it was appropriate. We were able to make time without straining against artificial restraints.
It seemed that the colors in each canyon or mountain range was different. As to the vegetation, it ran to subtle earth tones which were quite soothing. And quite a range of those tones at that. My favorite canyon was Glenwood Canyon. Really remarkable rock formations up close and personal. Anyone inclined to slip some peyote could commune with a large number of spirits in there. But those days are over aren't they?
Then when the canyon ends the traveler emerges into broader valleys. At this time of year the aspen trees up high had already lost their leaves but many retained their shimmering gold leaves at lower elevations. Then there were other golden trees which had the shape of Lombardy Poplars. They looked like golden geysers grouped and dotting the landscape.
Then Aspen showed up. Interesting town. It drips money. If you have a few million in loose change lying around, they have a house for you. You can then spend the remainder in the upscale downtown shopping district. I couldn't resist going into the Baccarat boutique to look at the crystal which I think is beautiful. In contrast to the Waterford crystal which is fairly heavy, this French crystal is very delicate. Not good if you or your dinner guests have a bad case of the fumbles. Anyway, I looked but did not buy. The window shopping was great.
In our time in Aspen we sampled some restaurants. Two out of three were winners. The one that was not a winner served what I called my rubber ducky meal. I like duck but I like it crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. This duck was resistent in all regards. Oh well. Other dishes were much better. I'll just leave the restaurant unnamed. There are some following blogs for reviews of the winners.

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2005-10-11T14:43:00.000-04:00

Column 7
What’s It Like Living in the Tropics I ?
That question is best answered by asking two questions in return: "Which tropics?" And "Why are you asking?"
The tropics" is nothing other than a region near the equator. The setting for A Dream Across Time is a windward tropical island in the Caribbean which is a very different place from a village in the interior of a country such as Colombia, for example. So, in this instance "tropics" refers to a small island relatively near the equator which receives the trade winds off the Atlantic Ocean.
The Caribbean is diverse and every island has a different character depending on its weather, topography and cultural background. St. Lucia has a blend of French and English because it was passed back and forth fourteen times between the two powers. Barbados is much more solidly English with lots of old English money because it was always a British colony. Martinique has always been French and is a department of France. All three of these islands had the institution of slavery which leaves a particular stamp.
In contrast the Cayman Islands never had slavery because the islands were not worth farming. And on and on across the region. Some islands are virtual deserts and others are replete with rain forests. It is a truly remarkable region with each island standing out as a particular kind of jewel.
It was one of these "tropics" in which Jamie Elliott landed by chance. But, we’ll get back to that experience in a moment.
The second question relates to why the reader wants to know about living in the tropics. Naturally living in a place full time is very different from visiting on vacation. If you want to know simply because you are curious - well and good. If you want to know because you would like to move there, the question is of a vastly different magnitude and the most fundamental consideration is that you are going to need a plan.
Why a plan? What kind of a plan? You need to be clear about why you are relocating and what you are planning to do with yourself. Are you trying to escape something? What is your motivation? And what are you planning to do with yourself? Jamie had a husband who happened upon a job opportunity and such jobs usually pay well. She followed him. She used her time to redo their house, engage in her artistic interests and ended up with a career of her own.
What happened to their relationship is not unusual. Generally it can be said that if there is a flaw in the marriage, it will probably get worse and if there is a substance abuse problem, it will probably get worse. Having a plan for creating a new stable environment for yourself and your relationship is crucial. Having a plan and a direction is important anywhere anyone moves. The trap in the tropics is that fantasy gets in the way and people commonly overlook the plan.
Now that you have your plan, you are ready to embark and reasonably want to know what life would actually be like. Think back to what Jamie confronted and lay aside some of the problems she faced ranging from Paul to loup garous.
Come morning, about 6 A.M., the sun will go "pop" over the horizon. If you are a morning person you will want to rush outside and get something done while it is deliciously cool. By 9 it is definitely much warmer although, if your house is placed properly, you will have the breeze always. You will spend a lot of time on your covered terrace enjoying the breeze and the flow of colors and light.
You quickly become clear that you are NOT going to spend a lot of time lying on the beach in the sun. Why would you want to do that? It’s ALWAYS there.
Whether you are oriented toward the idea of a siesta or not, the Spanish definitely got it right. A long nap after lunch is ideal. That way you skip the hottest part of the day which, nonetheless, with the breeze, may not be all that hot. Late afternoon you get energized again as things cool. Then around 6P.M. the sun goes "thud" over the horizon and the tree frogs open up with their chorus. You now have a luscious evening ahead. This 6 A.M. sunrise and 6P.M. sunset goes on all year with only a little variation. No more lingering summer evenings or dark forbidding winters. The nights are lovely.
But don’t forget having that plan for yourself. More to come.

Tropical factoids:

The Green Flash
There really is a green flash at times when the sun sets. It happens just as the last of the sun goes over the horizon. But the conditions must be right. The humidity must be low. There can be no clouds on the horizon. Generally you need a clear knife edge horizon.

Little Birds
The little bird, Rufous, Jamie talks to is a Lesser Antillean Bullfinch. The male is dark gray with a red breast. The female is mostly light gray with other subtle colors mixed in. They are very social and easily tamed. It seems they are always ready to keep you company at your meals but often do not appear to be interested in food. They listen intently to the sound of the human voice. So, they make great companions.

Next Column Posting: What’s It Like Living in the Tropics II?

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2005-10-11T11:35:00.000-04:00

Now that we are deep into romance writing and self publishing I have some clear words of wisdom for people who are considering writing a book. There are a lot of things you should do before you write a word.
Buy all the major books about self publishing and marketing and read them cover to cover. That means such books as those by the Rosses and Kremer etc. Having read them and having gotten truly depressed you need to consider if you are that self destructive or into punishment. If you can truthfully say you are not self destructive and you are willing to do all that work and have the emotional and financial resources to do it, then you may want to consider beginning to write.
I am clearly getting the impression that most authors never even consider what it is going to take to get published. Sure they have heard the stories about rooms papered with rejection notices but it's not going to happen to them.
Now it may be that you like writing as a hobby and are pleased to have a book on the shelf. If you don't care if it ever gets published, then write on. But, if you want it published, that is another matter.
A major consideration is whether your book is nonfiction or fiction. Nonfiction is much easier to get published. Fiction is nearly impossible. We got two nonfiction book contracts just on the strength of proposals and they got published. Going into fiction is like going into a train wreck.
As I've written previously, publishers won't talk to you and agents mostly don't need your business. See a prior column about finding an agent if you must go ahead. Additionally, we were not often ecstatic about the services of publishers so we ended up taking it all back for us to do. Are you a control freak people ask? Maybe but things also seem to be working better.
Even after you get a book printed as a self publisher, then you go looking for a distributor. Only one title at present? They don't want you. So you get fulfillment but go looking for a publicist. They are more interested in nonfiction and many won't touch fiction. And on and on it goes.
It is sad to hear people who say they are so proud they just finished their novel and now they want to know how they get it published. The train wreck is imminent. I am in the process of clearing ours and things are looking better and better. It was clearly not what I anticipated. But being pissed off is a motivator for some strange people.
Don't spit into the wind comes to mind but I'm still going to say that writers, particularly fiction writers, need to be very clear what they are letting themselves in for.

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2005-10-04T15:46:00.000-04:00

Column 6 -
Bertille Deroche
In A Dream Across Time Bertille Deroche has many attributes. One of them is the loving caregiver for her family. Because of Clarisse’s emotional collapse Bertille had taken on the role of mothering Andre and Emile. She is one of those women who takes on the mothering role for all comers in need. Her lap is ample and all encompassing with love and security.
There is boundless physical comfort as well as security and she extends her love through the food she prepares. It is important to her that her "parrots" are well fed. For her the food preparation is not work but is a sacred fulfillment.
Bertille’s care of her family extends to her contact with the spirit world where she maintains intimacy with Mother Earth of whom she is clearly a representative. In her flights she seeks underlying understanding of current and future events so that she may better protect her brood. In her contact with the spirits she finds ways to clarify her own perceptions of her people and what is happening to them.
While Marcus is the Wise Old Man, Bertille is the Earth Mother. She represents all that we experience about love, nurturance, comfort and security with our mothers. As such she is a universal. But in the island experience she represents something else to the "civilized" world. She exists not as a symbol but in the here and now. She feels eternal and ancient. The keeper of the flame is, in fact, a priestess and, in modern life, is generally hidden. Not so much in the islands, where such women are more readily glimpsed.
And then, of course, we cannot forget that Bertille is deeply in touch with the mystery of women. While men have traditionally held what is called "power" and "ruled" there are more elemental powers and a rule of mystery which balances the rule of men. In fact, mystery is, perhaps, regardless of the age in human history, the more fundamental power. In the end it is the women who conquer the conquerors. And their mystery is implicit in everything that is important to humanity.
Whether you believe in astral projection or not, it is clear that people can project themselves. We have imagination and in our daydreams, night dreams or wandering in our imagination we project ourselves. Bertille travels with the spirits and seeks their wisdom. She is adept at these travels although there is always risk in such flights. That is why Marcus stands guard over her when she travels in the spirit world. Her travels are in the interest of love and wisdom; representatives of evil could disrupt her flight and her intentions. At the time of her travels she is fragile because she has given up much of her solidity in the physical world.
Bertille is unusual in being an adept in such processes. "Modern" peoples do somewhat the same thing when they clear their mind in yoga, meditate or enter a prayer state. She is both a fundamental human symbol and a real person in a society where the primal ways are closer to the surface. Her ability to move in both worlds makes her a truly powerful person. It is her power which overwhelms Jamie when she is in contact with her because Jamie is also a dreamer and can be pulled away into Bertille’s world. But Jamie would find herself in an unfamiliar place in which she is not in a position to be in control in the way that Bertille can be. So, she consults Bertille and does not travel with her.
We can only hope that the cusp between our primal world and our modern world does not disappear. The loss would be tremendous. We can already perceive the impact of the erosion of this connection in our hunger for meaning. And so we greet Bertille with wonder and affection. She slakes our thirst and stills our hungers. She offers truly great comfort and safety found in a living representative of Mother Earth.

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2005-10-04T15:45:00.000-04:00

Small press/self publishing experiences are very similar to many other experiences in my life. It does not leave me resigned. The experiences make me more determined.
It is hardly a secret that the publishing industry has become consolidated in a few entities. But with the internet and other advances many of us no longer need to be satisfied with what the publishers have to offer us. Or, in many instances, decline to offer us.
I've already written about some of the drek the major publishers are publishing. At BEA I got another slant on the publishing business. A bright young woman who works for a major publishing house spoke at a presentation I attended and said she had told her bosses she had not read a single one of their titles last year. She made it clear that she perceived them as out of touch. I don't know if she is still working for them after what she told them and said publicly. It was a bold and revealing comment.
Her implication that the powes that be are often out of touch fits with my experiences in life. When I was in graduate school I was assigned to read material which had been produced by the big names in psychology. It was an experience I would not forget. Much of it was narrow, trendy and considerably less than profound. I concluded that once the big names had achieved a certain elevated status they could publish their toilet paper and have it acclaimed.
My disenchantment with established and the acclaimed names has been steadily reinforced throughout my life. When we had our travel business we kept the float in a brokerage account with one of the big five in that field. Fortunately I kept a close eye on the account and one day noticed that there had been a very large ACH withdrawal from our account which we clearly had not authorized. (ACH means automated clearing house. ACH withdrawals happen when routine bills are paid but the withdrawals must be authorized by the account holder.) We had never authorized ACH activity of any kind on the account. I called and had the brokerage house reverse the transaction and set up the account on line so I could watch it. Shortly an unnumbered check was cleared withdrawing many more thousands of dollars. The raid on the account continued and I learned that this major house could not control ACH withdrawals or bogus check withdrawals. If I had not caught the problem it would have been our loss. Not theirs. They had no routine way of handling such things and seemed to find my insistence that they safeguard our funds and handle the problem to be an irritant. Finally they suggested that I get lost. I wrote a carefully reasoned letter to the president of the company and never received a response. So much for the big boys in finance.
Recently I opened a small mutual fund account and found that a large family of mutual funds had a poorly designed site. I overlooked a crucial piece of information and they would not open the account. Rather than having a site where you had to correct the oversite immediately before going to the next page, they sent me an overnight letter asking for the information. They could have used my e-mail address but, of course, it should never have gotten that far. It took me days to open the account. Once again, so much for the lions of finance.
So, back to my beginning point. There is a bias alive and well in the publishing field that only the big boys can do it right and produce a quality product. Sheer nonsense! Having been published before I must say I was often less than satisfied with the "expertise" I encountered. In fact, one of the publishing houses made it clear that they were clueless about what sold.
In graduate school I was taught that psychologists should not concern themselves with money. Since I ended up in private practice such an attitude did not serve me well and I had to correct it. But then, of couse, with psychology's bias we were expected not to go into private practice. Now in publishing it seems the proper way to proceed is to write only "literature" and to have it published by a big house. But, small presses and authors are now being offered paid review services and paid promotional services. The new services offered helps to make us competitive. If we don't take full advantage of these opportunities then we are in effect going along with anticompetitive practices. Market economies are not perfect but they are the best we have.
The skirmishing as the small presses develop should be a sight to behold.

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2005-09-26T08:01:00.000-04:00

Column 5 -
Marcus Deroche
In
A Dream Across Time
Sit quietly in the rain forest and listen with a passive ear. If you are very still and have cleared your mind, you can hear the island breath. The voices of the people from the past whisper. The island, itself, is alive in a way that bears discovery. There are only a few people who are truly in touch with it. And Marcus Deroche is one of those.
Sit quietly on a volcanic peak looking out to sea. Dim your vision and through the mist you can see the shadows of the people who have come before. Marcus Deroche knows their stories.
It may be that it is essential for most of us to leave the place of our birth to be able to see behind ordinary reality. But for some people, such as Marcus, being in touch with mystical forces and the movement of history around them is integral with their existence. He is a descendant of indigenous kings, keeper of stories, possessor of ancestral powers.
Marcus is more than a literary device - much more. He embodies what one can sense in these islands. The heritage, the swirl of human life. The melding of knowledge and power. His people moved up the island chain from South America, were brought in chains from Africa and came as conquerors of a new land. They brought wisdom and sought riches.
What Marcus manifests is real and can be seen in this world if we take the time. Only now in this modern day do we begin to bring acupuncture to medicine, seek the healing of bush medicine and send our scientists out to explore the rain forest for cures we cannot find in laboratories. Marcus is both modern, ancient and eternal.
He also represents a lesson in pride and self determination. His people were both conquerors and conquered. Marcus stands above it all. He claims for himself only what he wants. He may be "merely" an estate manager or he may be a self possessed man who holds sway over his domain. Marcus works on the estate because that is what he wants to do. It keeps him close to what he values. He chooses the reality of his life where the secrets of his background have been revealed and rewarded. In the end he is beholden only to himself.
He is a symbol and a real human being and is rich in both of these. He offers us lessons. To Marcus all people are one and he would not treat any one person differently from another simply because of where they came from or who they seem to be on the surface. It is possible for him to perceive destiny and talent. He knew who Jamie was.
As a real person Marcus is a true child of the island. As a symbol he is the classic Wise Old Man. Mythologies are redolent with these men. They move with time, not the moment and convey great wisdom if one will take the time to listen. They look us in the eye unwaveringly but stand above us. We need to pay attention to this wise teacher because there are no fads and fancies here. Only enduring wisdom and stability.

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2005-09-24T19:24:00.000-04:00

Book Expo Revelations.
After Book Expo in New York I subscribed to Publishers Marketplace. It is proving to be very intersting. I was motivated to start taking it because of what the guy who runs it had to say. First some history.
When you embark on the glorious trail of writing novels you sooner or later decide it should not just be for your own amusement. Plotting novels out and writing them is fun, or at least we think so, but you begin to look for a larger audience than yourself. Since publishers don't talk to anybody these days except agents, you are forced to try to talk to agents. We did a lot of work looking for an agent and remained undiscovered in spite of the obvious fact that our work was truly superior. Now I know why.
At BEA I learned that basically an author is probably wasting time soliciting agents if the agents have been operating for over two years or at least four years. Oh Joy! That means authors buy the wonderful books which list agents and go to work developing a list of possibles. Since the information in the books is usually years out of date, these agents mostly aren't looking for anyone which fits with the impression I got. They have new college graduates who read what comes in and they spend their time hoping another John Grisham will send in a manuscript.
The advise at BEA was that authors should spend months looking over the deals made by looking at Publishers Marketplace. Months you say? Yes, months. Most authors spend years sending stuff out. Why not be effective? Each week when Publishers Marketplace arrives I am reminded of the wisdom of this advise. By using this data authors can assemble a list of new and hungry agents who are making deals with the type of work they are doing. These revelations fit exactly with our perceptions and were really refeshing.
I really have to wonder where all this will lead. The internet is now 10 years old and the possibilities keep getting better. It leads me deeper into the world of self publishing every day.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-09-12T08:41:00.000-04:00

When we set about writing A Dream Across Time we thought we were just writing a story, a work of fiction. What we found we had done was to convey the underlying reality of the Caribbean, or at least our part of the Caribbean. We came to see that often the best way to convey reality is in fiction. In fiction one experiences a person, a life, a place etc. in ways that cannot occur in a textbook.
Recently I read another book which confirmed this perspective about fiction. When we were at BEA in New York my wife gathered up a number of ARCs. Among them was What Do You Do All Day? by Amy Scheibe. It is due out in hardback in October from St. Martin's Press. I had not planned to do book reviews on this blog. But this book deserves comment.
What Do You Do All Day? caught me immediately. It is extremely well written and grabbed my sense of humor. It is set in Manhattan and the heroine, Jennifer, is among the well to do. Perhaps she could be dismissed as a whiner who has some neurotic inability to cope with privilege. She has two great kids even if the younger, Max, can be hard to take. But her daughter, Georgia, gets invited to fantastic parties and is in a very, very exclusive school. Oh yes, she loves her husband and he loves her. And he makes really good money. To die for some might say.
To die from, or at least wither from, is more to the point. What I found in Jennifer's story is what I found in doing psychotherapy with women for thirty years. What happens to her as a person is happening to women all over the country. It doesn't matter if its Rocky Mount or Flint.
I always have to steel myself when I say this but a lot of the problem started when women got more and more opportunities. I hate it when conservatives jump on that statement to justify neanderthal positions. But it is true. But it is equally true that change for women was essential but leads to discomfort and upset. The change was long overdue and the work continues. Maybe some day we might actually get an ERA.
Years ago in my office I began to see women wrestling with issues related to things such as turning thirty. It wasn't appearance stuff, it was what to do with her life that was typically at issue. Gradually the real issue came into focus. "You can have it all" the media blared. Marshall got it wrong. The media isn't the message. The media is the monster.
I don't think I have to go into what "all" means. We all know by now. In Amy Scheibe's book Jennifer had a terrible case of this agony. Her privilege didn't matter. She shared the same set of conflicts and agonies that the mother does in Little Rock. The things she says in her head about her children and everyone else are funny precisely because it is what women say to themselves in their heads but feel they can't say out loud. Amy lets women shout them in the form of a novel. We laugh because of our conflict and normal parental ambivalence about our children and even our lives of privilege.
What Do You Do All Day? is a wonderful book, even important and I don't mean to impunge it by saying it is also a textbook. If I taught a class on marital relationships, women's roles today or even just an ordinary intro psych class this would be a chosen textbook. It conveys the reality of women's lives today better than any ordinary text could. What women "must" do and "should" do threaten to crush them. In the end Jennifer does what women do at the end of therapy. She sorts her priorities and comes to terms emotionally with the things she wants. To hell with what the media is saying are musts for her children and her. She takes out of it all what she wants and does with it what she wants.
Ladies. Get to the bookstore in October and buy this book. It is a mirror for your life. Enjoy it as a really well written story. But also see it as reality for what is happening to women no matter where they live. Then after you have shared the insights with your women friends buy it for Christmas for your husband, boyfriend, significant other. Tell him that if her ever wants to have sex again he must read this book and understand it.
Guys. Get to the bookstore in October and buy this book. Read it and understand it and then give it to the woman in your life as an indication of support for her.
Having said all that I get back to my basic point. Fiction often offers a clearer view of reality than any other form of written word.

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2005-09-11T11:50:00.000-04:00

Column 4 -
Paul and Danielle
In
A Dream Across Time
We tried.. Honestly we really tried to come up with some baddies but found we were incapable of creating truly dreadful people. Paul and Danielle were the "best" we could do. We aren’t counting Ian who was pretty awful but a really minor character.
True enough, a philandering alcoholic and a spoiled rich girl who toys with other women’s husbands don’t qualify as wonderful people. But let’s take a closer look at them.
Poor Paul. He opened the door to life just enough to admit Jamie with all of her potential and then he ran back to the frat house to drink beer. He wasn’t evil. He was immature.
We call what happened to Paul, a "Caribbean Meltdown". People like Paul arrive in "Paradise" but fail to understand that it is more like the Garden of Eden and there is definitely a snake around. If not a whole bunch of snakes. The Pauls of the Caribbean populate the local bars at night. Generally not the tourist establishments but where the ex-pats hang out. They get caught up in booze, women and drugs. The Leave Before the Fight Breaks Out Bar should probably be the universal name for them. Actually both sexes are found in these bars and the stories can be quite pathetic. For the women, they may end up being soft hookers who cadge rides on boats down at the marina.
Have you seen a good heist flick recently? They are great and they have changed over the years. Crime often DOES pay now. And, at the end, these loveable rogues are sitting on their yacht toasting each other at sunset. Fun ending. But what do they do the next day? Start it with the hair of the dog? Nurse their hangover? And the day after? There are just a few traps here. A life plan is needed.
Paul not only did not have a goal or a life plan, he was also lacking a stable sense of himself and an inner compass. Whatever you want to call it. We call it a stable center. Many people come to Paradise and completely lose their way because there is little in them to help guide them. Remove the familiar structure and they are lost. Jamie had a good, stable center. Paul did not. And he wouldn’t turn to her to help him through it. What happened to Paul is more the rule than the exception. He had choices. He might have seen warning signs in himself through his experience with his alcoholic mother. Turning to a good woman who loved him would have been an excellent choice. Maybe if he’d just stayed home, he might have been safe. In time he might have matured.
Then there is Danielle. Poor little rich girl. Too much money. Too much time. Nowhere to go. Years ago there was a study of therapy with the children of the super rich. Very interesting. When they got into trouble, the trouble was deep. Some of them had no sense of worth of anything including themselves. It is difficult to feel something is worth anything if you can have virtually anything. Astonishingly, women like Danielle can often have no feeling of self worth at all. They prop themselves up playing acquisition games with other women’s husbands. Once the acquisition is made, it has no worth and they cast it aside.
Jean-Pierre must have seen something in her that she did not see in herself. He wasn’t developed much in the story but he could have a self esteem problem himself which permitted him to accept her abuse. Or maybe he thought he might see things through to a successful conclusion someday.
So, Danielle drifts on with no future and no fulfillment. Such people are to be pitied AND kept at distance. We feel sorry for people like Paul and Danielle who cannot dream but we cheer the Jamies and the Andres who do dare to dream and then pursue their dreams.

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2005-09-04T14:12:00.000-04:00

Rabid beavers? Did someone say rabid beavers?
Well, let me get back to that. We are finally finished with moving our home and our business. While the move was time consuming, I can't say it was terrible. We had a super crew. They were careful and the black and white team as I called them was amazing. One guy was black and one guy was white and they weren't very big but they were really strong and determined. And careful. Then there was the head honcho was packed an amazing amount of stuff into one truck. Really had to hand it to him.
We gave Maryland's Easy Movers a round of applause as they closed up the truck and forced doughnuts on them (along with a good tip) as they left our new home.
But there we were loaded up and on our way when we stopped at a convenience store for car food. Yes, that's where Barbara in A Dream Across Time got the idea for car food. The latest edition of our local paper was out and the headline shouted at me. "Rabid Beaver Attacks Five on Creek". Really. What a send off. The creek in question was the creek on which we had been living. Now I understood that the nattering I had been hearing was not our attack squirrels and groundhogs gathering. Rather it was the local beavers on the prowl and ready for a rabid rampage. We had already circled our young trees with wire because the beavers were making off with them. Now I knew we had left just in time. Being attacked by rabid beavers at my own home had never occurred to me. We had managed to flee that danger.
So, here we are on the banks of the Chesapeake Bay in our new home at six feet above sea level. We are secure in the belief that the rabid beavers will not track us down. Then along comes Katrina with her 20-30 foot wall of water. What have we done!
The locals are reassuring. It seems the flooding doesn't happen often. Isabel this last year wasn't so bad. She didn't quite get to the level of our house although Tilghman Island was completely under water. And then back a ways St. Michaels was completely under water. Oh, well!
We have traded the possiblility of a rabid beaver attack for the possibility of flooding. Although we are supposedly not in the flood plain we are looking into flood insurance and have settled on an evacuation plan. Personally I'm planning not to think about these type of possibilities. There are useful diversions such as plotting and writing novels which definitely takes you away from day to day concerns. And now with the move behind us I can blog more often.

Question: Do you have to have half your brain removed to work for the beaucracy in DC? The thinking and reasoning part. This has been an amazing few days when it looked like we needed to have another country come in to get us organized. I could not believe the person from Washington who "reassured" us that they had twenty generators on the way to New Orleans. Yes twenty. Wow! That should take care of the electrical problem. Then later there was a higher up in FEMA who pointed out that their job was to respond to requests. It seems they did not have to use their own heads, plan, or take initiative. Finally we overcame our resistence to calling in the army and we get the Raggin' Cajun in to kick butt. Then things started to move. So, this is how George Bush is planning to keep us safe.

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2005-08-06T15:54:00.000-04:00

Romance Writers of America had a brouhaha.
Summers in New Jersey. I loved it when the adults would get together and do what passed for partying in those days. A special treat involved an Irish friend who worked for the New York Daily News. We knew it would be a fun evening when he would grab yet another beer and get on the old upright and do his "I see by the papers" routine. His songs came complete with commentary on the events of the day and often bawdy lyrics which, since it was summer, I was permitted to hear. I'd love to have him back to sing about the Romance Writers of America and their travails.
My wife and I joined RWA back in the days when we were just starting out. That means back in the days when we were still lookng for an agent and before we decided to self publish. We went to conventions and sat through all manner of presentations. It also seemed to be a good idea to enter contests.
At the conferences and from the contests we got all kinds of information. We moved swiftly to redraw out query letter and to utilize the cascade of information coming our way to refine our writing skills. How naive we were!
But a curious things happened with the contests. We got scores ranging from the abysmal to the stratosphere. We were either loved or hated. Finally dawn broke. Romance Writers of America should have been called Harlequin/Sillouhette (H/S) writers of America. We were writing mainstream women's fiction and we were getting advise and being critiqued as if we were writing for H/S lines. An occasional person saw us for who we were. We had revised our query letter as if we were sending queries in regard to a potboiler. Big mistake. It had nothing to do with what we were writing.
Then came the bad advise. I'll highlight a few.
"1980! Nobody sets a book in 1980" - Well folks we did. It was only mentioned once on the first page and we had our reasons. Not worth a negative comment. It was put in like what you see on a movie screen. 1980 was one year after St. Lucia got its independence. Foreigners were coming in to do development work which was why our heroine was there with her husband. It was also before tourism became so important to St. Lucia and so related to the story line in A Dream Across Time. Bad, bad us. Oh yes. It was also carefully designed. Our heroine, Jamie, has twin girls at the end of the book. That leaves us in this very time with two rather dynamic young women who have stories of their own. They are really pistols. Look for them in books near you.
"Nobody sets a romance in the Caribbean" - Golly. We didn't know that. I searched the RWA database. Sure enough nobody sets a romance in the Caribbean. There was one on a cruise ship and one on a nameless island. No mention of the Caribbean. What a pity! The Caribbean is really mysterious and romantic as all get out. Well it was too late for us to move the setting to Bel Air, Maryland which we also know well.
"Married? (Hysteria sets in here.) You can't have a married heroine" - Oops again. We seem to have put a little bit of real life in the book. People do have trouble in their marriages and they end. There is often an adventure involved. Besides, in our defense, our heroine, Jamie, is really straight arrow and all she did until her marriage was over and Andre became available, was to lust after him in her heart. Just like Jimmie Carter. But then the American people voted him out of office seemingly in part because that's all he did. Presidents often do more than that. But we won't go there.
"How can you have Jamie stay with that jerk of a husband, Paul" - Huh? Aren't people supposed to work on their marriages. We could have a 100% divorce rate if everyone walked out when things got tough or there was a crisis. Jamie wasn't a quitter but knew when to quit.
By this time I was getting testy and saying things like, "Maybe these people write romance because they have no romance in their lives." If you quit on life that fast and have no flexibility at all, life will be tough and unrewarding. Those were some of by nicer mutterings. But by now we were getting very clear about the H/S connection and that we were in the wrong place.
Not that we didn't learn anything. We learned a lot. I'm a great believer that we probably can learn the most from people who do things badly. The ones who do things well make it look easy and so we aren't watching and learn nothing. We had become quite clear who we were and what we were writing.
Back to the beginning. From what I could glean, it seems RWA is wrestling with an identity crisis. In my not so humble opinion it is about time. There should be more openness to diversity in writing but we found the organization too narrowly focused. Granted H/S is definitely the largest producer of romances. But there are some of us who write other kinds of romance and we need information and guidance too.
I wish RWA well in their crisis. They will come through it but it can only be hoped that they come through it as a broader ranging organization.

Question - I was sitting at a Mcdonalds the other day eating my bacon, egg and cheese biscuit (I know they are bad for me) when I looked up and saw a poster announcing that kids could get a "virtual prize clue" with their Happy Meal. Does that mean that they are offering a virtual clue or a virtual prize? Either way I think that is a mean thing to offer a little kid.

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2005-07-31T10:59:00.000-04:00

Romantic Mystery Hero - Col. 3 -Andre Demontagne
In
A Dream Across Time
This is the third column reflecting our perceptions of our characters and various aspects of our novels.
Roger's note - These columns work best for the person who has actually read the book. Otherwise they are fairly abstract. But they serve as archives related to this book and those to come.
Oh, Andre! You remember him. He’s that great guy who’s a little clueless about women.
What is he really all about?
One form of the cliche is that, "You can take the boy out of the island but you can’t take the island out of the boy." Andre stands with his two feet firmly planted in different worlds.
There’s more to this stance than meets the eye.
It’s not unusual for children in a family to be picked out for very different roles. His brother, Emile, went abroad for his agronomy studies and was chosen to return to tend the family holdings on St. Lucia in conjunction with his father, Auguste. Andre, in contrast, was chosen by his matriarch mother, Clarisse, to be the child who sought his fortune and the expansion of the family’s worth in the larger world.
Clarisse chose well because Andre has the brains and the personality to succeed in the world at large. So, he was sent abroad for an education where he chose finance as his career which would serve his goals in venture capital endeavors. Clarisse directed him toward a mission to develop the family’s future but Andre had his own mission as well which was to aid his island people in developing their future.
Children of the Caribbean islands are often sent abroad because opportunities are limited in these small island republics. But almost invariably they later return home because their roots are deep in the islands.
Andre’s success depended not just on his brains and talent but his personality. Andre is one of those people who sets a goal and then follows it through with a well planned system. The problem for men like Andre is that they may find success but not all parts of the plan mesh with reality. Andre saw bright, beautiful Taylor as the perfect wife with whom he could make a family and build a future on St. Lucia but Taylor saw her future differently. Fortunately for both of them, Taylor saw herself clearly and, while she loved him, she did not see herself fitting into island life. Certainly not when she was lying in a sand pit in the middle of the night.
A successful marriage is often built on having things in common. But marriage also depends upon having complementary and supplementary views and orientations. Then the whole truly becomes more than the sum of its parts. Andre needed a partner who could address the realities of his world and who would share his dream for his island country.
Partnership for Andre very much included fidelity. He sought fidelity in his love relationship and was faithful to the missions for his family and his people. He took risks and pursued his dreams, finding his way to his goals in ways he could not have suspected. How fortunate for Andre to find just the right woman to share his dreams!

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2005-07-24T11:02:00.000-04:00

Self publishing is such fun. We were rolling along this summer preparing for the publication of the second edition of A Dream Across Time in January. Of course we did have other irons in the fire such as having our house up for sale now that we had settled on another house. Just when we had things going nicely in the world of publishing some nasty soul pitched up and wanted to buy our house. We have to move! That's not fair! How can we move, develop the third novel and work on publishing all at the same time.
Being a small outfit there is no one to whom we can pitch the ball and say, "Carry on. We'll be back in about a month."
Now my "to do" list for today becomes: confirm registration for ABI with Bowker (Since you can't talk to anyone in cyberworld you never quite know if what you did worked), get a quote from a floor refinishing guy (Everybody has a cell phone where sometimes you can leave messages which they receive), evaluate the work of website designers (That is, if their sites open up same day - bad indication), reserve a truck (It would be nice if it was available in this county), consult with wife about paint colors for the new house , run PC-cillin (I think I have a virus), get terms and conditions to accountant for review (He owes me a favor), make a run to the dump.
That's today's list and does not reflect the overall status of our publishing empire or work on the latest novel.
I just started tomorrow's "to do" list after looking at my mail which sometimes doesn't arrive until after dark. Go figure!. Sometimes I think I have the mailman from the movie Funny Farm. Anyway, the list starts out with some of the items from today's list and continues with: "buy trash bags" and continues with "ask accountant if we have to register our corporate personal property in the new county and if so when". It probably takes as much time to re-register (or whatever you call it) General Motors as it does for our little publishing enterprise.
But, I've come to believe that the cruelest cuts in life are self inflicted. Such as putting your house up for sale and then someone inconveniently comes along wanting to buy it. Also on the self infliction list has to be self publishing.

Question - Looking for a new home and moving means a lot of driving. Driving leaves a lot of time for thinking or reading signs on the highway. Over the interstates in Maryland we have signs exhorting us to "report suspicious activities". They don't tell us what that means so your imagination can run wild. I think members of Congress as a group engage in suspicious activities. To whom do I report this? My next door neighbor has all the characteristics of a desperate housewife and engages in suspicious activities. Should I report her and to whom? I think this moving thing is already getting me flaked out.

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2005-07-20T09:14:00.000-04:00

Romantic mystery heroine- Col. 2 - Jamie Elliott Demontagne
This is the second column reflecting our perception of our characters and various aspects of our novels. We begin with Jamie from A Dream Across Time.
Column 2 -
In the beginning we had a general story outline for A Dream Across Time but needed a lead character who had characteristics we could admire. We wanted a woman who was gutsy, independent, committed, loving, creative, intelligent, and dedicated. Totally unacceptable was a woman who was a victim, weak willed, indecisive, and a poor communicator. How often have all of us suffered through books where, if the characters talked to each other, the story would have been over in ten pages? The woman who became Jamie had to be a modern woman with real strengths.
Our setting and the story seemed to work better if she was married but, as a person living in the real world, Jamie needed to have a less than stellar marriage. When we sent early drafts out we found a surprising number of people who thought Jamie should have immediately dumped her husband, Paul. As psychotherapists and experts on stepfamilies, we wondered if these people who were so quick to bail out had ever made a go of a marriage. One of the objects of marriage is to try to grow together and it can be uneven. Jamie is not a quitter and marriages need to be given a chance. Maybe a new start for the marriage WAS indicated.
Did she make an error with Paul in marrying him? Perhaps. We can go to pop psychology and speculate about how marriage to him was "just what she needed". That it was "perfect", etc. Baloney.
Human beings are programmed to get married and have children. As much as we may love the characters on Sex and the City, we do not aspire to their lives. We aspire to what they aspire to. It’s a fundamental goal to want marriage and family.
We can speculate about how Jamie might have been neurotically playing out deficiencies or pathology in her family of origin. Dredge up the collected works of Sigmund Freud and get out the fluffy duster. Now, let’s see. On second thought, forget it. Maybe that would be pointless. Not just because Jamie is a fictional character but also because people make honest efforts which sometimes don’t work out. Maybe Jamie married too soon after her father’s death and maybe Paul looked like a good bet. He might have grown up. Grown with her. We get married with high hopes and for half of us it ends in divorce. Move on.
Now we really get to the heart of the issue. What did Jamie do? Her husband had turned out to be a philanderer who was working hard on a case of alcoholism. When that was fully dawning on her, Jamie had a choice to make. She could go back to the States and "safety" or stay in an alien culture and take the "risk". She made a rational decision. In the States Jamie had only "safety" and a familiar environment. On St. Lucia she had found a beautiful island, lovely people, a job she might not have found in the States, and she had such a good friend in Barbara.
She also had to decide about a relationship. Her husband had turned out to be a "rat". Should she take a chance on another relationship, another man? Should she dream and go after the dream?
As you can see in the story, life was hitting Jamie hard. Jamie was determined not to turn tail and leave. She picked herself up, dusted herself off and started all over again as the song says.
We understand that sooner or later death will come knocking at our door. But what about when life is at the door? Do we pretend not to be at home?
How did Jamie come to this position of being so willing to confront life as it came? Life came to the door, she answered and she was dealt a hand full of dreams. A hand she took willingly, with commitment. Did her mother do a really good job of instilling confidence in her daughter? Let’s hear it for her mother! But then did Paul’s alcoholic mother sow the seeds of his problems? Is she responsible, in the end, for how his life turned out?
Oops! Was that "let’s blame it on Mom"? Parents get a lot of undue blame AND undue credit. We’d like to take credit for the accomplishments of our children but before we get too puffed up with their achievements or too guilty about their failures, it requires a close look at the record. Some really rotten kids come from great families and some great kids come from rotten families. Parents have an influence but kids have choices.
And this is who Jamie is. She has beauty, brains and talent. Squandering all those gifts is one option. She chose to make the most of them as she faced loss and adversity. For Jamie, the book shows some possible answers to the questions, " Where will you be if you dream? Who will you be if you dream?"
What will be true for you if you dream?

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2005-07-19T16:41:00.000-04:00

We write romantic mysteries and from time to time I get to thinking about what we chose to write about in A Dream Across Time. Both of us were mental health people before we joined the stampede away from managed care and enriched our lives by marketing villa rentals in the Caribbean. We had considered doing psychological thrillers but we couldn’t develop any enthusiasm.
In looking at various options we did what you are told to do. That is read, read, read to get an idea of possible areas of choice. Our inclination was to write romances but I wanted to research it more. I was planning a family visit to the other coast and went and sat on the floor in the romance section of a bookstore where I rooted through the offerings to find some diverse reading. My wife thought it was hysterical that her husband was hanging out in the romance section and I did get some odd looks.
On the plane I got more odd looks as I worked my way through all manner of romances. Some of it was good and some of it was just plain awful. Being a psychologist I value communications between people and many of these people could not communicate about anything. If they had just talked there would have been no book which was an appealing thought in regard to some of the offerings. By the time I got back to Kansas City I used the time between flights to rush into a bookstore and buy a thriller. The cover said it was by someone WITH Tom Clancy. Shame on him. It was not well put together and not well edited. What really rubbed me the wrong way was that there is so much bias against self published works. And then I see that kind of dreadful book coming from a major publishing house.
So it was back to romances, some of which were not bad at all. I learned not to stay with something that was turning me off from the beginning.
The experience set me to thinking about what people read and why. Men by and large don’t read romances which is a shame. Let me correct that. It may be that they don’t admit to reading romances. After all a well written romance should appeal to men because, if we are lucky, we are in love with a woman and should find a woman toughing it out and winning love an appealing story.
Of course, there are romances and there are romances. I had researched personality manifestations in paintings for my dissertation and learned it is very difficult to categorize art of any kind. The same is true of romance. It may be about a love affair, an ardent emotional attachment or even just a short term fascination. Then too the dictionary refers to the mysterious fascination which may occur. I like the "mysterious" part of it. A Dream Across Time is termed a romantic mystery and the paranormal quality adds another dimension of mystery. There is much about romance which is mysterious and that is precious. And if you are really lucky, the mystery stays long after the wedding.
And so my wife and I settled on writing romances. But our personal values could not be detached. It was unacceptable for our heroine to be a victim or weak. For us the story had to be about what we value so highly which is partnership growing out of the love affair. In short we decided to write about what has so enriched our own lives.

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2005-07-09T15:56:00.000-04:00

St. Lucia - Helen of the Antilles - Column 1
We have been told that St. Lucia as depicted in A Dream Across Time is essentially a character in the book. So, let’s begin by acquainting our readers with this wonderful place.
Just in case you didn’t know, St. Lucia is a real island country in the Windward Islands (eastern Caribbean). It is known as Helen of the Antilles because of its extraordinary beauty. Soaring volcanic peaks, lush vegetation, rain forest, turquoise and emerald waters.
It is an island rich in natural beauty and in the multiple hues of its people who come from South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. It has an equally colorful history having changed hands 14 times between the British and the French. St. Lucians use English predominantly but there is also a widely spoken French based patois which is spoken with a west African cadence.
We tried to be historically accurate. There WAS a guillotine erected in the square in Soufriere during the French revolution. And there WERE brigands who were slaves fighting for their freedom. To be fair, while there were atrocities committed by both sides, the brigands were essentially freedom fighters trying to escape bondage.
In recent history St. Lucia was a colony of Great Britain. They gained their independence in 1979, just one year before our heroine, Jamie, came to the island. At the time the island was poor and primarily dependent on its banana industry. Tourism was in its infancy. As our hero, Andre, saw so clearly, tourism was to become the primary industry and St. Lucia has undertaken to protect their beautiful island including their precious rain forest and parrots which are endangered and number little more than 20. Parrots were chosen by us as a symbol of the struggle for responsible development and of heritage.
The story of St. Lucia since independence is remarkable. The people of this country have worked hard to protect and develop their agricultural industry and develop tourism. It has not always been easy but the transformation indicates success.
When we first came to St. Lucia in 1987 the roads were terrible and the infrastructure strained almost beyond belief. The effects of colonialism were apparent. We displayed one of them in the incident where Jamie and Barbara encountered a sullen shop girl who "accidentally" broke the mirror Jamie wished to purchase. This type of behavior is technically called passive-aggression and is one of the few ways that people who live under colonialism and slavery can fight back against those who are in power. It is a tribute to the St. Lucian people that this type of behavior has all but disappeared. Now when we go into a store we are greeted almost immediately by someone who asks, "May I help".
In recent years we have seen a burgeoning middle class, a greater distribution of economic benefits and a much improved infrastructure. Also, very importantly, St. Lucia now has a transparent government. In short, in a brief period of time this society has made great strides. What they have achieved by their own efforts is a model for developing countries everywhere. You can see that the St. Lucians have inspired us and the dedication of A Dream Across Time to the people of St. Lucia was the only logical choice.
It was his country and his people that Andre wished to assist and that Jamie fell in love with. Not at all surprising.
Look for A Dream Across Time by Annie Rogers

For Much More Come See Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-07-09T15:00:00.000-04:00

We are self publishing and it has been hectic around here with a swirl of ISBN, ABI, EAN etc. which is why I haven't posted much recently. I have also had to deal with the website, annierogers.com, which we discovered was far too confusing and was not working as a sale site for the first book, A Dream Across Time. We received invaluable input from our Yahoo self publishing group. So I have been out looking for resources to put it to right technically.
One of the things we will be doing is moving our Insider Information columns over to this blog. Before setting up the website I reviewed over 100 websites by other fiction authors. I thought they weren't very interesting in that there was usually just information about a current book and past books and little other content. I couldn't find much reason to ever revisit them. We had thought that we would create an event on our website by putting up these columns but, along with other things we included, we found the event was confusion.
The columns were intended to share the adventure of the writing process. I am a recovering clinical psychologist who left the field because of the problems with managed care. My wife is a clinical social worker. We worked in a joint practice specializing in stepfamily problems. But we found that we could not practice ethically with the way managed care functioned. So, we joined the stampede of other professionals who were exiting the medical and mental health fields. Having the opportunity to develop a specialty travel business we threw ourselves into marketing short term villa rentals in the Caribbean. As we spent more and more time in the Caribbean we found ourselves with a wealth of stories. It was then that we decided to begin to write them.
I found myself on a plane to St. Lucia reading a not very good book. Mala and I felt we could do better and set out to write our first novel. It was such fun and we love joint projects.
With our mental health backgrounds we were in fat city when it came to goal, motivation and conflict. And so we wanted to share our perspective on our characters and it also gave us the opportunity to share cultural perspectives and what we found in the writing process.
Do you begin to get the drift about the choice of the title of this blog? Yes, I will be digressing. Look for commentary, perspective, missteps and our self publishing adventures. Oh yes, self publishing is an adventure. But it is also so much more satisfying although the learning curve sometimes feels asymptotic. But now we have an integrated approach. We work out the stories, we write the stories and have control of things such as pub dates and marketing.
Next up look for Column 1 which is about the magical tropical island setting for A Dream Across Time.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com

2005-06-24T13:45:00.000-04:00

A Forum for Digressions
From Roger- Since there are two of us here we will let you know who is speaking.
Why "digress"? Because my wife and I want this blog to be a forum for ideas which may be rambling and tangential at times. I could not come up with one single reason why I wanted it to be organized, well framed, and highly focused. I do enough of that in the rest of my life. I’ll also admit I do not want to always worry about my syntax and my spelling. You are a bright person and can figure it out.
The worst year of my life was eighth grade. That’s not uncommon but I went through a very good school system and they decided we needed an entire year concentrating on English grammar. I hated every minute of it. I hated diagraming sentences and I never could figure out such things as syllables or which preposition to choose. I thought there were a number of creative ways to break words into syllables and often one preposition made as much sense to me as another.
All of which is to say that the Great Spirit sent blogs just for me. It’s the thought that counts and the exchange of ideas. It’s a forum and so let’s rock on.

For Much More Come Visit Us at www.annierogers.com