Winter Is Coming

by Shannon Baker

Here it comes again.

Winter.

It’s my last one here in Nebraska. I say this with my fingers crossed. I haven’t often said “never” in my life, but when I have, it’s come back to bite me. For instance, I remember my first drive through the Nebraska Sandhills. I said, “This is awful country. I’d never live here.”

Less than three years later I moved to the Sandhills and lived there for twenty years. It might not have been the awful country I’d imagined, but it was a challenge to love.

When I escaped from there, I moved to Boulder, Colorado. An amazingly beautiful place. From there I bounced down to Flagstaff, AZ. That’s the gateway to the Grand Canyon and in the middle of mountains and a lodegpole pine forest. I said, “I’m never going to live anywhere not beautiful again.”

A little over a year ago, I ended up in southwest Nebraska. There is probably plenty to love around here but this is a temporary gig for me and I don’t feel like setting out to find the silver lining. Bad attitude, I know, but I’ve been through menopause and older women tell me you lose your capacity to accept BS with the collagen and everything else that disappears. I’m good with that.

There are lovely homes in this town, even a luxury neighborhood on a golf course. We don’t live there. We live in the ghetto, if a town of 6,000 can have a ghetto. Our house is nearly 100 years old and has as much insulation as a canvas wall tent. (Just how the hell did Indians make it through prairie winters in a teepee, anyway?) All I have to do is survive one more winter here and we’re heading south, all the way to Tucson, where silver linings abound.

I have heat. An ancient furnace that kicks on about the time I can see my breath, blasts me into the Death Valley zone, then pops off, leaving the air to hiss against the frigid walls. It’s like a family-sized hot flash and everyone can share in the fun. I peel off layers at the height of the heat wave before I can start sweating, then quickly add them back when the temperature plummets again.  

Last winter, I trudged to the library five days a week. This worked for me on multiple levels. It got me out of the house and among living people, made me stretch my legs and breath fresh air, imposed a work environment where I couldn’t leave until I completed my quota, and, the most important, the temperature remained steady. Chilly, but constant.

Back at home, my writing outfit consisted of long underwear, jeans, t-shirt, sweatshirt, fingerless gloves, down booties, and on the coldest days, my husband’s fleece pullover on top of it all. Most days I added a fleece cap, because, 80% of heat escapes through your head. (Did anyone else’s mother tell them that?)

I did a lot of cooking and baking, especially recipes on low heat that I could simmer all day. I even found a DIY heating system online that called for terra cotta flower pots and tea lights. I nearly burned the house down and have been banned from playing with matches ever since.

I’m bracing for it, clenching my teeth and pulling out the long underwear and wool socks. Here we go again. One last time. Winter is coming, and as with any George R. R. Martin work, there’s always a large and surprising death toll.

Our Midnight Inkers are scattered all over the map. The Minnesotans (Jessie Chandler and Jess Lourey) will call me a wimp. The Floridians (Deb Sharp) and Californians (Sue Ann Jaffarian) and Arizonans (Maegan Beaumont) have no clue what I’m talking about. The Coloradans (Linda Hull and Mark Stevens) will mock me since they spend winter with crisp white snow and bright sunshine. So what about the rest of you, tell us what you love and hate about winter.

    

Never Put Off Until Tomorrow...

by Shannon Baker

I had a colonoscopy this week.

The only remarkable thing about it was how totally unremarkable it was. Sure, I got a little hungry. And I had a kind of queasy hour or so before I got into the flow, but in the grand scheme of things, it was much less painful than sitting through August in Osage County.

And yet, if you swept all the annoyance at being harassed by my health care providers, the dread of having to do it, the effort of putting it off, the bone-deep belief that the test would reveal nothing but the cutest colon, and the nagging of caring friends, you’d see a pile of negativeness far larger and lumpier than the mild inconvenience of the actual procedure.

Which brings me to marketing. As it would.

Much like my conviction that the colonoscopy would be torture, I’ve convinced myself that marketing is the Devil. It takes time. That’s time I could be writing. It’s mysterious and often times ineffective. Yet, everyone agrees you have to do something.

No one knows what magic cocktail of direct mail, personal appearances, blog tours, paid advertising, and giveaways will net that intoxicating high of sales. Unless, of course, you crack the BookBub code and then you can retire on royalties.

I’ve handled marketing in about the same dysfunctional manner as going in for the colonoscopy. I’ve denied the need to do it. I’ve avoided it at all costs. I’ve skirted around it and touched on it half-heartedly, sort of like going in for yearly checkups but not making the total commitment.

I made lists of books stores to contact or reviewers to query. And put off calling because *whine* cold calling is scary. So instead of doing, I procrastinated and worried, then I climbed on the I Suck Train for not doing what I should have done.

Well, kids, this is where I get off. A few months ago a friend, Master Marketer Julie Kazimer, convinced me I need to do it. Much like the impending retirement of my patron (husband) nudged me into getting the colonoscopy while it was still covered by insurance, I realized the time has come for me to jump into the marketing fray.

So I did. I started making lists and then forcing myself to make the calls and write the emails and follow up.  Here’s what I discovered:

Just as the unremarkableness of the colonoscopy, setting up book signings and arranging a blog tour is not that big of a deal. Sure, it takes some time. But it’s not like someone is bludgeoning me with a fence post.  There is surprisingly little physical pain involved in phone calls and emails.

 

Book signing that didn’t hurt. With William Kent Krueger and Sean Dolittle

I’ve even forced myself to teach a few workshops and do some public speaking. And there was absolutely no prescription pain medication involved. Although I might or might not have self-medicated after the fact, in a purely congratulatory fashion.

As Granddad used to say, (sure, someone else made it famous but Granddad did say it a lot so I’m going with possession being 9/10ths and all that)  “Never put off until tomorrow what you can do today.”  

It might sell a book or two and it keeps you off that Crazy Train.

Teaching An Old Dog

by Shannon Baker

I’ve reached that curmudgeon stage when I find myself grumbling, “I don’t like change.” Some of you who know me will laugh at that because I’ve moved eight times in the last eleven years. But I’m talking about technology.

I haven’t always been so sluggish. Back in the day, I actually could program my VCR. I was an early adopter with computers, using one of the first Peachtree accounting programs. I wrote features for an online newspaper when it was a brand new phenomenon, and had a bag phone before the Big Lebowski made it look cool.

Still, as technology accelerates and especially since my last daughter left home, I seem to be falling further behind. I was just getting the hang of using the remote to DVR and create my own programing when we moved to rural Nebraska last fall, where we don’t get those handy options.

Last spring, a friend of mine published an audio book and wanted me to review it. Strictly because of this need-to-know, I entered in the world of audio books. That’s so freaking awesome! I can walk and listen to books on my phone. I’m getting so much more “reading” done now. I’m even really close to figuring out Overdrive and being able to borrow audio books from the library. As soon as the books I bought are finished, I’ll need-to-know how and I’ll do it.

Now, thanks to my good friend, Mark Stevens, (Allison Coil Mystery Series), I have to learn yet another new thing. He keeps telling me about these great podcasts for writers and readers. In fact, one of his suggestions—which he wrote about in the Rocky Mountain Fiction Writers August newsletter—is called just that, Reading and Writing Podcast.

How hard can this be?

Ha. All I wanted to do was download these podcasts onto my phone so I can happily tromp around town, ear buds inserted and listen. But my phone is an Android and these are iTunes. Or something. At any rate, my silly phone refuses to download the app to make listening possible. I know there’s a way to do this and it frustrates me to no  end!

After way too much time, I finally resorted to kyping my husband’s iPod Shuffle. Then I had to figure out how to use that. Not impossible but a small learning curve was involved. All set and very happy, phone stuffed into my pocket--because who would leave the house without the ability to check email or take a call?—Shuffle clipped onto my T-shirt, earbuds firmly planted, I can wander around my small town for hours. I’m reading and being inspired and sinking deeply into the writer’s brain.

But now I have a very low-tech problem. Walking and running have always been my free-brain time. That’s when my mind wanders and weaves into my stories and characters. Whenever I have a particularly hairy story issue, I strap on my tennis shoes and off I go.

I love my new resources but I need my old untethered time, too. Guess I’ll just have to put in more miles.

How about you? How do you balance reading and learning with dreaming time?

How OCD Are You?

by Shannon Baker

In the famous words of W.C Fields, “Go away kid, you bother me.”

I’m closing in on a novel I started about a year ago. I haven’t been working on it all year, though. I wrote a couple of chapters and an outline, then turned my attention to another genre and cranked out two books. Those books are living in an undisclosed location under an assumed name.

In April I returned to this book. For a while I wrote like a sane person. I completed a draft, planned revisions, contracted an editor and we set a deadline. I can meet that deadline with certainty by working a challenging, yet rational schedule.

However, I lost my tenuous grip on reality four days ago. After a relaxing week of vacation with my guy, kayaking, hiking, cycling, camping in the Rocky Mountains, I headed down to Tucson. I have a ten-day stay planned in which I would inspect some work done on the house while we were gone, make some decisions on other house improvements and finish the revisions on my book. In the meantime, I wanted to trip up to Scottsdale to support fellow MI author, Maegan Beaumont with her release of Sacrificial Muse. All laid back and easy.

Somewhere in day two, I boarded the crazy train. Left to my own devices, with no one to expect company at meals or conversation over coffee, or to generally behave like a normal human, my engine heated up and I can’t seem to cool it down. I finished the revisions yesterday and now I’m filling holes and patching cracks. I can’t have a phone conversation because I’m distracted with my characters’ motivation and if I remembered to add that clue.

My neighbor, the sweetest woman in the world, is excited I’m here this week and has engaged me whenever I slip out front for any reason. I try to be friendly but I want to ignore her and run back to my computer. She invited me over for a cookout today and I am so irritated I have to interrupt my flow I feel like declining. But I didn’t. I even mixed up my killer Three-Bean Salad.

Then I had to stop a chapter spit and polish because my alert popped up that I have a blog post due tomorrow and as I’m writing, this happened:

I assume it was one of those desert thermals that landed on my house, because I had those pages anchored down. None-the-less, that’s the latest draft spread across the floor. And you know what? I’m not stopping to pick it up because I have two hours before the cookout and I have to finish this blog and get back to the edit.

 I should do yoga and I’ve got to pay some bills. And I have until the end of the month to finish this book and it’s very close to being done but I want to have time to read it out loud and I think I should send it to a beta reader or two and what if they think it doesn’t work and I wonder if I ought to change the part where the killer laughs and her motivation isn’t clear in the second part and, oh my god, I forgot she smashed her nose on the steering wheel in chapter 27 so people need to react to all that blood on her face in chapter 28….

This is why I shouldn’t do a private writer’s retreat. I need someone to speak slowly and maintain eye contact and tell me to step away from the manuscript.  

Tell me I’m not alone in this wacked-out behavior. Just how OCD are you?

Trusting the Process

by Shannon Baker

There are as many ways to write as there are writers. More, in fact, because what works for one writer for one book might not work for the next book. For now, I’ve discovered a method that seems to work for me.

I charge through the first draft without pausing to look back. I set a challenging daily word count and begin at page one and write through until the last chapter. I start off with a fairly clear idea of the plot. I try to use the four part method and have reversals and twists at the appropriate spots. But even with all the planning, the whole boat inevitably sails off the edge of the world. It takes longer to set up scenes than I anticipated or I get a better idea along the way. Sometimes, my initial plot only has a place marker that says something like, she must be betrayed by him and end up at the ranch.

I used to get bent when I didn’t know all the details at the outset. Or if I had a better idea, I’d feel as if I needed to fix the previous pages before I moved on. But I’m teaching myself to trust the process and to forge ahead without any more editing than making notes about what needs to be included or changed. I know that those changes might change again and again before the end of the book so working on them now only slows the process.

What this means is that I can gallop very quickly through a first draft. But when it’s done, I’ve got a terrible mess. It’s the kind of disaster that pops me wide awake at 2 A.M. wondering how it will ever come together. But I soothe myself with the knowledge that it usually does gel at some point and nothing is done that can’t be undone.

Yesterday I finished my draft and today I’m staring at a pile of pages that I know are mostly crap. To be honest, I can’t remember some of the scenes or the clues I placed. I’m terrified to read the drivel I slapped down. Many of those words were grudgingly written with one eye to the word count, bargaining with myself that as soon as I finished the daily goal I could ride my bike or have a cookie. I am not above bribery. Also, I’m not entirely adult.

Hopefully I’ll find something salvageable in the dross. I know the pacing is off because I didn’t hit my stride until about half way through. So I will need to move chunks of exposition from the beginning, punching up the pace, adding clues.

But this first draft is the frame. What I’ll begin with on this second go is adding the rooms and giving it the structure. From there, I’ll put up the drywall by making sure it flows in a cohesive whole. Finally, there will be painting and bringing in the furniture and artwork that will finish it off.

I’ve got a long way to go before this puppy is housebroken. (How many metaphors can I come up with for one manuscript?) But I’ve got one stage down and am feeling hopeful.

What is your process and have you learned to trust it?

Emphatically Embracing

 by Shannon Baker

Oh, that Gwyneth Paltrow. Bless  her heart. She’s been credited with some interesting quotes. Things like:

"Well, you know, beauty fades! I just turned 29, so I probably don't have that many good years left in me. So there will be a down side eventually."

And this:

"I'd rather smoke crack than eat cheese from a tin.”

And:

"I would rather die than let my kid eat Cup-a-Soup."

One of my favorites:

"I am who I am. I can't pretend to be somebody who makes $25,000 a year."

If I wanted to be fair (and really, what fun is fair?) I’d have to say that if someone followed me around they’d catch some pretty self-absorbed and silly quotes. I think at aged 29, I probably thought my best years were behind me, too. And though I don’t eat squeezy cheese, it was always a staple in the finals week care packages I sent to my daughter. According to Gwyneth, that probably means I ought to kill myself and smoke crack.

However, she did come up with a phrase that resonates with me.

Consciously uncoupling.

Granted, she used this phrase to describe the end of her marriage and I didn’t so much consciously uncouple as I divorced my first husband. I have no intention of uncoupling from my guy now, consciously or subliminally. But there are a few things I’d do well to uncouple from.

I need to uncouple from Facebook. Maybe not entirely, but it would be good to back off from seeing which celebrities have twins or finding out what element I am. (Air, by the way.) I live in relative isolation so, as a writer, it’s good to hang out on FB from time to time to study contemporary culture and to catch up with friends. But I need to uncouple from spending too much time there at the detriment of getting my own words down.

I need to uncouple from comparing myself to others. For those of us who know what the term “flower child” means, you might remember the Desiderata being a very popular poem. I would do well to keep this gem in my head:

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter;
for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

I’m not a NY Times Bestseller and I’m not the person who will write her novel as soon as she has the time. It does me no good to stress or gloat about where I am in comparison to others. Maybe this is what Gwyneth meant when she said she couldn’t pretend to be someone who makes $25K a year.

I need to uncouple from my negativity. Again, from the Desiderata (I like these quotes better than Gwyneth’s words of wisdom.)

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Instead of wasting my time worrying about the next book or the next series and what will happen if I never score another book contract or sell another copy, I need to feel good about what I’ve done. And get excited about what I’m writing now.

Even though consciously uncoupling is meant to be a positive thing, it’s couched in negative verbiage. So, with due respect to Gwyneth, I’m going to turn it around. Instead of consciously uncoupling, I’m going to Emphatically Embrace.

I’ll embrace focused writing time, embrace my own journey, embrace the feeling of accomplishment and working toward the next goal.

How about you? What do you Emphatically Embrace?

In Which Nora and Shannon Return Home

by Shannon Baker

One question writers often get is: How much of you is in your main character?

With me and Nora, I can answer, not much. Nora is an avid environmentalist. While I’m concerned about the environment and I recycle, watch my water usage, take care to save energy and drive a fuel efficient car, I’m hardly an activist. Inspiration for Nora came while I lived in Flagstaff and worked at an environmental non-profit, The Grand Canyon Trust.

One way Nora and I are very much alike is in our love for Boulder, Colorado. My first experience with Boulder was in 1971, when my family moved there. I was in sixth grade and fell in love with the Flatirons. Downtown Boulder was the hippy epicenter and though I was too young to participate in that scene, something about Boulder resonated with my soul. We only lived there a year and we moved on.

When I got to restart my life, I chose Boulder in 2003. This time around, I spent as much time as possible hiking and biking in the mountains and the foothills before life took me away. I landed in Flagstaff, AZ. Not a bad place and the inspiration for the Nora Abbott Mystery Series. At the end of Tainted Mountain, the first in the series, Nora feels like she needs a place to start over. And where else would she choose but my favorite place, Boulder.

I was thrilled to steep myself in setting, picture the quirky inhabitants, bask in the shadow of the Flatirons, revel in the majesty of the Rockies. And then, wonder of wonders, I got a call from a former colleague recruiting me to join a startup. Me, Nora, Flagstaff, Boulder. Art imitating life imitating art.

For a few months I didn’t have to imagine Nora’s surroundings. I biked the same roads, hiked the same trails, drank beer in the same outdoor cafes. Wait, I don’t have a scene where Nora drinks beer on the Pearl Street Mall. I probably should have.

Alas, my stay in Boulder ended too soon. As one friend put it, I’m an itinerate writer. But Nora’s Boulder story is just beginning. She’s due to hit the shelves March 8^th. If you’ve ever wanted to hang out in the People’s Republic of Boulder for a bit, get your heart rate amped by murder and weapons of mass destruction, and find out how a non-profit really works, consider picking up Broken Trust.

As for me, I’m currently writing from the windswept prairie of southwestern Nebraska. I don’t envision Nora winding up here anytime soon. 

Going Green

by Shannon Baker

*in anticipation of the March 8th release of the second in the Nora Abbott Mystery Series, Broken Trust, I'm reprising a blog I posted for last year's Tainted Mountain release. (and also because I've been traveling and time slipped away from me and it suddenly dawned on me I'm up on Inkspot today!)

“I’m not an environmentalist.” Eyebrows shot up when I announced that at a staff retreat. A shocked silence followed. But not too long of a pause since I was only an accountant and not very important to their real work of saving the planet.

In fact, I was only included in the retreat as a courtesy, and, I’m sure, in hope that I’d spend most of my time behind the scenes in the kitchen preparing meals and breaks. Not me. I sat in on every session, eager to learn about the Grand Canyon Trust, my new employer.

I’m a bone-deep, Atlas Shrugged, return on investment kind of gal. My father was a retailer and financial statements were his bible. I learned terms like margin, overhead, and breakeven before I started kindergarten.

So what was a profit worshipper, like me, doing at a non-profit environmental trust?

Accounting for their cattle operation. About now you’re scratching your head and wondering why a group of largely vegetarians and/or vegans would be running cattle.

It’s totally logical. There is a cattle ranch on the north rim of the Grand Canyon that controls nearly one million acres of high desert, forest, and the most questionable grazing land this Nebraska native has ever seen. It came up for sale and to keep it out of the hands of evil ranchers destroying the land by running too many cows, the Trust snatched it up. But of those million acres, much of it is public lands and there is a requirement to run a minimum of cattle. Thus, the environmentalists are in the cattle business and they needed someone to do the ranch accounting.

I’d moved to Flagstaff after completing my MBA, just off a run at a medical device start-up that had sold for millions. It never occurred to me I wouldn’t jump right into a job at one of the county’s most prestige medical device companies that just happens to be in Flagstaff. Alas, they didn’t want me. I have various theories about why, most of them centering around the wrinkles on my face. But I’ve been a writer for a while so rejection is nothing new to me.

There I was, unemployed in a wreck of a national economy in a town notorious for low wages and a tight job market. The Trust advertised, I interviewed and badda bing, I’m a de facto environmentalist.

To be honest, I’d been living in Boulder, CO just before moving to Flagstaff, so saying I’m not a tree-hugging, granola-cruncher is relative.

Like any good book, my time at the Trust was full of conflict. I never got used to the ebb and flow of finances at a non-profit. However, the perks of working with inspired, passionate, creative people in those amazing landscapes is an experience I treasure.

At lunchtime, while I reheated my leftover beef stew, and they’d quaff some kind of green, lumpy juice they’d made from CFS shares, I got to share laughs and learn about botany, biology, hydrology and Native American culture. They introduced me to quinoa for which I am forever grateful.

They taught me about composting and cold frame gardening. My world view expanded as they shared their travel experiences and knowledge of strange and beautiful places. One woman spent weekends in the southern Arizona desert assisting illegal immigrants. Another woman took me cycling up Snowbowl Road and through Page Springs outside of Sedona. I reached new heights of happy hour accomplishment with another. The ranch manager took me to places on the North Rim that few people ever get to see. Those field trips live in my heart.

Now I’m back up in Boulder living the capitalist dream with all the angst, challenges, rewards and struggles of another start up. I understand my spreadsheets and financial statements. I embrace the word profit. And yet.

I miss the people I worked with daily at the Trust. They believe in something bigger than themselves and are willing to work every day to make the world a better place. I miss the new perspectives they rained down on me daily, the laughter, the friendships. And not least, I miss their soyrizzo burritos!

They taught me a lot at the Trust. Maybe I’m still not a real environmentalist.

But Nora Abbott is.

(Just an update: the start-up, well, it didn't. So now I'm a stay-at-home writer living in the wildes of Nebraska.)

Location, Location, Location

by Shannon Baker

The writer’s dream is to quit the day job and write full time. In my case, my day job quit me. Sometimes risks pay off big time and sometimes… In the windshield/bug battle, this time, I was the bug.

Last June, I moved from Flagstaff to Boulder to join a medical device start-up. It didn’t exactly start up so in April, I found myself out of a job. Although I spent the summer doing all the great things I love to do in Boulder, riding my bike, hiking, spending time on Boulder Creek and enjoying all the wonderful high altitude sun. I spent a lot of time looking for jobs, applying, interviewing and then washing and repeating.

                                                Backpack trip in the Rockies this summer.

It’s hard to admit this in public because it makes me sound like a big, fat loser. I’d like to think I’m smart enough and that I don’t smell bad or have an unusually annoying personality. (A little annoying is natural. It is.) The truth is, I’m a woman of a certain age. I read the statistics and have listened to enough NPR to know finding that senior level job is tough.

So, instead of being the person sitting in the FEMA trailer five years after the hurricane saying, “Why won’t someone help me?” Or the tearful woman on NPR saying she’s run through all her savings, I’m taking drastic measures.

We penciled it out, plotted our course and have gone past the point of no return. If we sell out in Boulder and move to Nebraska, the difference in our income versus expenses will make it possible for me to not go after a day job. The guy with the steady job retires in 623 days (less by the time this blog is published) and we’ve got a house in Tucson waiting. In the meantime, I’ve got a plan to supplement our income that involves a pen name and epubbing, and I have a new mystery series I’m super excited about.

                                                         Long, lonely road in Nebraska

I’m not sure I believe in the universe having a plan for individuals but here’s what happened: I listed our house on Monday. On Wednesday we signed a contract with the buyers for cash to close in 3 weeks. On Friday I drove to Nebraska to look at houses. On Saturday we signed a contract to close in two weeks.

 Now I’ve got to make a dash to Tucson to haul half our belongings down because the new place is very small. It’s really a micro house no one is allowed to visit. Load up a hot tub we have in Flagstaff because if we’re going to move to Nebraska we need some perks. And be back up here to hit all the closings and finish the move.

When this post hits, all of these things should be done and we’ll be in the British Virgin Islands on a 47 foot catamaran. It’s a trip we’ve planned for months and we leave the day after we sign off on the Boulder house.

Come November 1 I’ll be a stay at home writer. I have to leave my favorite place on earth to do it but a little sacrifice is good for the character. 

And… Full Time Writer!