Book Launch in the Time of Pandemic

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With bookstores and libraries closed and book tours canceled, authors with books coming out face the challenge of connecting with potential readers.

But during these times, we also turn to books to raise our spirits and give us comfort. My new novel Mercies of the Fallen is set in another perilous time in America’s history — the Civil War. Ursula and Rowan are both fallen people, plagued with traumatic pasts but facing their troubled times with courage and heart. I hope you’ll find their story uplifting.

And I hope you'll lift a socially distanced virtual glass with me in celebration of publication!

Music Soothes Troubled Times

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This winter, a friend coaxed me to join her choir. This wasn't something I'd thought of doing since high school. During my childhood and teens, I belonged to choirs at school and church. I enjoyed them and continued to like singing alone or at occasional public events, despite my diminishing vocal quality. No longer able to hit the high notes, my range became limited to about five notes. My voice cracked and stained by end of each song. The tones fell flat, to my own ears. 

My friend got into choir for something to do after she retired. Before then, she'd had no interest in singing and, unlike me, hadn't taken piano lessons as a kid. She explained that some choirs required auditions. Others don't, including Shout Sister, her all-female choir.

She gave me printouts of lyrics to her group's current roster of songs. Leonard Cohen., Simon & Garfunkel, The Beatles; my long-time favourites. I had spare time and was looking for activities this winter, since I was away from home in Ottawa, helping a relative through medical treatment.

"I've arranged for you to try out the choir this week," my friend said. She'd also convinced the  administrator to give me a special rate if I decided to stay, since I'd only be there for part of the year.

"Okay," I said, because she'd gone to all this trouble.

Wednesday afternoon, we drove to her choir practice at a local church. About seventy women, mostly seniors like us, stood in a horseshoe shape facing the choir leader. No sheet music. The notes  rose and fell with the leader's hand, a method of music reading I found easy to follow.

The meeting brought back memories of my youthful choirs. "Don't interrupt the line of music by taking a breath." The director echoed my earlier choir leaders. "Sustain the last note." The large group sang harmonies that sounded lovely to me. I found myself able to sing all the notes. Either the organizer selected songs suited to amateurs or she arranged them for unpracticed female voices.

Best of all, for those two hours of song I forgot my worries about my family member's health challenges. The choir had me hooked.

I looked forward to the weekly sessions. After two months, a woman I talked to during the break  convinced me to participate in the next week's concert at a retirement home. Performing with the group was fun and gave a new dimension to choir practice. Our concert ended with the 1970s O'Jay's anthem, Love Train, which urges people around the world to join hands and form a train of love. At the rousing finish, we were supposed to join hands with the person beside us. Some of us did; others refrained.

The following week our choir session was cancelled due to COVID-19. It soon became clear we wouldn't be singing for weeks and months. Then the organizers set up practices on Zoom, a virtual meeting site that has taken off in this time of home isolation.

I'm not swift with technology and worried I wouldn't figure out Zoom, but with a little advice, Zoom worked easily and well. Now, I follow the leader on my computer screen, while thumbnail pictures of choir members appear along the top or side. During breaks, I switch to gallery view, with thumbnails filling the screen. The first two weeks, over fifty members signed in each time. I'll miss week three since I'll be driving from Ottawa, west across Canada to my home in Calgary .

At the virtual Zoom session, the director puts us all on mute, since the system can't co-ordinate our voices. I discovered my voice doesn't sound as good alone as I sounded to myself with the group. It still cracks and strains for those high notes.

I wouldn't want to start with choir online, but virtually continuing with familiar faces and songs was more satisfying than I'd expected. Again, for those two hours, choir brought me out my despondent mood. For the first time since this mass isolation began, I felt that most of us won't be permanently damaged and we'll return to our humankind.

Shout Sister operates in numerous Ontario locations. Ottawa has three branches, with our afternoon group the most recent sister. Here's a YouTube video of one of our older sister groups performing Ben E. King's Stand By Me, a song our newer group learned this year. 

I have several friends in Calgary who belong to choirs. A year ago, I asked one of them what he gained from being in a choir. He said, "When you sing together, you make each other so much more." I agree.

   

Words of Our Times

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Quarantine, pandemic, social distancing, shelter in place – not all new words, but phrases that have become part of our lives because of the COVID-19 and which will long be associated with 2020.

Throughout the centuries, there have always been phrases that have earmarked a generation. I say “For Pete’s sake” all the time and every time I do, my grandkids ask, “Who’s Pete?” This particular phrase comes from the expression for Christ’s sake. Some people, for religious reasons, don’t want to use the word Christ in a negative way, and, instead, use Pete as an alternative. It originated around 1900. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, "for Pete's sake" expresses frustration or annoyance and prompted similar sayings such as "for the love of Pete" in 1906.

Very often, the expressions or sayings don’t make sense literally. I can remember my aunt saying “it’s the cat’s pajamas”. That always made me laugh because of course, cats don’t wear pajamas. That phrase became popular in the U.S. in the 1920s, along with “bee’s knees” and “the cat’s whiskers.” In the 1920s, the word cat was used as a term to describe the unconventional flappers from the jazz era. This was combined with the word pajamas (a relatively new fashion in the 1920s) to form a phrase used to describe something that is the best at what it does, thus making it highly sought and desirable.

I never really thought about pajamas being a fairly modern word as versus nightgown, or nightrail. I do recall once an editor telling me that “shirtwaist” wasn’t the appropriate term for a blouse in the time period I was writing. I’m not sure every reader would catch individual words but as an author I want to be as authentic as possible.

When I was researching “An Interlude”, I wanted a few words that would have been appropriate and used during the roaring twenties. I loved finding “my main squeeze” to indicate a loved one; “hard boiled” to indicate a mean or ruthless man, and the still usable “don’t take any wooden nickels.”

Words and phrases help the reader understand the time period of the novel. For example, when writing historical, an author must be very careful to use phrases that were part of a particular century. You don’t “turn on a light” back in the Middle Ages when candles were used. Simple words also indicate time and place. Does your villain steal an SUV, jalopy, roadster, barouche or wagon? Does “Alexis” turn on the lights when you enter a room, or does your butler? (Although I suppose that is not mutually exclusive.)

All of this is just part of the fascinating research I like to do before I start writing. Having a vocabulary that creates a sense of time for my stories is just as important as knowing what color their hair and eyes are. For a chuckle and to recall some fun phrases from your childhood, visit https://www.bustle.com/articles/25318-88-hilarious-slang-terms-from-the-20th-century-to-sprinkle-through-your-writing-like-youre-putting.

I invite you to explore Books We Love and see how I and other authors use words and phrases in our stories. And in this new time of needing to maintain our personal space and boundaries, know that Books We Love is trying to help by offering a FREE download book every day of the pandemic. Check their website at http://www.bookswelove.com/. They’re also having an April contest, which actually deals with the blog, so check it out.

Barbara Baldwin

http://www.authorsden.com/barbarajbaldwin

http://www.bookswelove.com/romance-authors/baldwin-barbara/

9-1-1 by J. S. Marlo

J. S. Marlo's BWL Books

Aside from staying home and eating too much, I've been painting my bathrooms and babysitting my five-year old granddaughter whose parents need to work. Every day, my granddaughter gets virtual homework from her kindergarten teacher, which is really cool, but I've also been teaching her other things, among them how or when to call 9-1-1.

She's known for years how to unlock my phone, so I told her there was a special number to call in case of emergency. Then, I made sure she understood what an emergency was:

- Grand-maman dropping a full gallon of paint from the top of her ladder is a catastrophe, but NOT an emergency.

- Grand-maman falling from the top of her ladder and not being able to get up is an emergency.

 So, what's the first question she asked me: why did they pick THAT number, grand-maman?

Good question, I thought. I did some research and stumbled on an article written on February 16, 2017 in the Smithsonian Magazine about a 9-1-1 festival.

 "On this day in 1968, a phone rang in the police station of Haleyville, Alabama. But unlike all the days before, the caller—Alabama Speaker of the House Rankin Fite, who was not in an emergency situation—didn’t dial the local police number.

He dialed 911, a three-digit number that would go down in local and national history.

The idea for a universal emergency phone number didn’t start in Haleyville, a town of fewer than 5,000 inhabitants that was dry until 2010. It started with a 1957 recommendation from the National Association of Fire Chiefs, writes Carla Davis for the Alabama News Center.

Their recommendation was prompted by a serious problem, she writes: before 911, anyone who needed emergency help had to figure out if they needed the fire department, the police, or medical help, and then call the appropriate local number. Not easy to do when someone is bleeding, a baby is being born, or the building’s on fire.

It took more than a decade before the fire chiefs’ recommendation was put into effect, Davis writes. Haleyville came into the picture when the president of the Alabama Telephone Co., an independent telephone company, fought to have his company launch the new system.

The call was picked up at the police station on a special red phone, wrote Hoyt Harwell for the Associated Press on 911’s 25th anniversary in 1993. At the receiving end of the call was Congressman Tom Bevill, Alabama’s longest-serving congressman—who was still in office when Harwell interviewed him 25 years after that first call.

Haleyville still celebrates the event that put it on the map with an annual 911 Festival."

So, why 9-1-1? These are the major reasons why AT&T chose the number 9-1-1 in 1968:

- because it was short & simple
- because it was easy to remember
- because it was quick & easy to dial
- because of the middle 1, which indicated a special number that worked well with the phone systems in place at the time.

That being said, 9-1-1 is an emergency number used mostly in North America (Canada, USA, Mexico). In Europe, you would dial 1-1-2 in case of emergency.  And in Australia, 0-0-0.

Here are some funny and disturbing (and hopefully false) 9-1-1 calls:

Female caller: There are alligators in the river.

9-1-1 operator: Yes ma’am, this is Florida.

Female caller: But my kids play and swim in that river.

9-1-1 operator: Why do you let your kids play and swim in alligator infested waters?

Stay safe. Hugs!
JS

 

J. S. Marlo's Website

Virtual Brainstorming by Eileen O'Finlan

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Click here to visit Eileen O'Finlan's website

COVID-19 has shut down a lot of things, but our imaginations needn't be one of them. In fact, recent personal events show that they may be more active than ever.

Before this virus hit, a group of writers met at my house every Wednesday evening to work on writing projects and offer feedback. For several in the group, those Wednesday nights provided a writing lifeline. I hated having to send out the group text announcing the cancellation of our group until further notice. Even though we're not a huge group (on the rare occasion that everyone is present on the same evening, we total seven), with my 93 year old mother in the house, I couldn't take any chances.

Of course, everyone understood. Several had made the painful decision to stay away even before receiving my text. Being a resilient, resourceful, and most of all, imaginative group it took less than an hour for one member to come up with the idea of a writing round robin. One person would write one page of a story, email it to the next person who would add another page then forward it to the next and so on. After two rounds the story would be complete. It might not add up to something publishable, but it promised to be fun and keep those writing muscles toned. I had to bow out as all my writing time is, of necessity, being devoted to the completion of Erin's Children, the sequel to Kelegeen, though I do look forward to reading the finished product.

My non-involvement in the round robin did not mean complete detachment for me, however. In less than a week, I jumped onto a Zoom meeting with fellow writing group member, Jane Willan. Jane is the author of two cozy mysteries, The Shadow of Death and The Hour of Death, the first two books in her Sister Agatha and Father Selwyn Mystery Series. She's currently working on the third in the series as well as a thriller.

Jane and I are searching for both "tried and true" and "unique and new" methods of marketing our writing, so we decided to focus our Zoom session on brainstorming ideas. (For anyone unfamiliar with Zoom, it is similar to Skype). We started by naming what we're already doing: Twitter and Facebook posts, website, newsletter, blogging, in-person talks and book signings, partaking in giveaways, interviews with bloggers and local papers. Currently, I'm working with an organizer on setting up a blog tour.

Then we started thinking about what we could do that we haven't done yet. Podcasts were the first thing to come to mind. It turns out that if you google podcasts along with your genre, you'll find a plethora from which to choose. We both committed to being interviewed on podcasts.

But why stop there? Jane's husband has a vast supply of audio/visual equipment. Why not start our own podcast? Fellow BWL author, Eileen Charbonneau, and I have been discussing creating a podcast. So the three of us connected on Zoom for our first podcast planning meeting. Fortunately, through the wonders of technology it doesn't matter that Jane and I live in Massachusetts and Eileen Charbonneau lives in Vermont. We don't have to be in the same state or even in the same house to make it happen.

YouTube was another marketing option open for discussion. I have a YouTube channel, though so far I've only put up one clip of me reading an excerpt from Kelegeen. Jane and I decided we could make some more YouTube clips. They don't all have to be book excerpts. The writing life offers plenty of topics for discussion. With my sequel being set in Worcester, a video tour showing the sections of the city where much of the story takes place seems another likely possibility. Jane also has some trailers for her two mysteries. Eileen and I would like to follow her lead and make some for our book(s).

Our brainstorming session didn't end there. We talked about the 19^th century coterie of writers that formed the literati in Concord, Massachusetts – Emerson, Thoreau, Alcott, Hawthorne - to name a few. Then we widened the circle of our thoughts to include 19^th century authors throughout New England. Such an abundance! Our region still boasts literary luminaries today. Some, like Steven King, are household names.

We got to thinking about the other authors in our area that we both know personally. Published, yes. Famous, no. This led to a discussion about what it is, besides the obvious (great writing), that makes some authors successful and others whose writing may be just as good or even better, virtually unknown beyond their small circle. 

The answer – marketing! We have to do it ourselves and for most of us it is not our field of expertise. Not even close. If it was we'd be marketers, not authors. Yet in today's world we have no choice. We have to climb that steep learning curve to figure out how to let the world know we're here and we've written awesome books that deserve to be widely read.

But how? This is a question I've been struggling with since the publication of Kelegeen. I sunk a lot of money into an advertising company that has been helping me climb that learning curve for almost two years. “Learn to think like a CEO.” “You are not only an author. You are the CEO of Eileen O'Finlan.” These are mantras they've driven into my brain. They are also concepts completely alien to the way I think. A huge learning curve, indeed.

But I am not alone and that gives me great hope. Eileen Charbonneau remains an amazing mentor for me. Our joint in-person appearances may be on hold for a while, but we are excited about embarking on a new virtual adventure through podcasting. 

Jane and I have committed to working together, mastering the art of branding, learing the ins and outs of marketing, pulling each other up and over that daunting curve so that we can come out on the other side, if not as household names, at least with successful authorial careers. We fully realize it will be a marathon, not a sprint, but we are willing to give it all we've got. If it doesn't happen (but it will – think positive!) it won't be for lack of trying.

Eileen O'Finlan

Jane Willan

Eileen Charbonneau

Baroness Orczy by Rosemary Morris

To learn more about Rosemary's work please click on the cover.


Best remembered for her hero, Percy Blakeney, the elusive scarlet pimpernel, Baroness Orczy was born in Tarna Ors, Hungary, on September twenty-third, eighteen hundred and sixty-five to Countess Emma Wass and her Baron Felix Orczy. Her parents frequented the magnificent court of the Austrian Hungarian Empire where the baron was well known as a composer, conductor and friend of famous composers such as Liszt and Wagner.

Until the age of five, when a mob of peasants fired the barn, stables and fields destroying the crops, Emma Magdolna Rozália Mária Jozefa Borbála “Emmuska” Orczy, enjoyed every luxury in her father’s magnificent, ancestral chateaux, which she later described as a rambling farmhouse on the banks of the River Tarna. The baron and his family lived there in magnificent ‘medieval style’. Throughout her life; the exuberant parties, the dancing and the haunting gypsy music lived on in Emmuska’s memory.
After leaving Tarna Ors forever, the Orczys went to Budapest. Subsequently, in fear of a national uprising, the baron moved his family from Hungary to Belgium. Emmuska attended convent schools in Brussels and Paris until, in 1880, the baron settled his family in Wimpole Street, London.

At fifteen years of age, Emmuska not only learned English within six months, but also won a special prize for doing so. Later, she first attended the West London School of Art and then Heatherby’s School of Art, where she met her future husband, Montague Barstow, an illustrator.

Emmuska fell in love with England and regarded it as her spiritual birthplace, her true home. When people referred to her as a foreigner, and said there was nothing English about her, she replied her love was all English, for she loved the country.
Baron Orczy tried hard to develop his daughter’s musical talent but Emmuska chose art, and had the satisfaction of her work being exhibited at The Royal Academy. Later, she turned to writing.

In 1894 Emmuska married Montague and, in her own words, the marriage was ‘happy and joyful’.

The newlyweds enjoyed opera, art exhibitions, concerts and the theatre. Emmuska’s bridegroom was supportive of her and encouraged her to write. In 1895 her translations of Old Hungarian Fairy Tales: The Enchanted Cat, Fairyland’s Beauty and Uletka and The White Lizard, edited with Montague’s help, were published.

Inspired by thrillers she watched on stage, Emmuska wrote mystery and detective stories. The first featured The Old Man in the Corner. For the generous payment of sixty pounds the Royal Magazine published it in 1901. Her stories were an instant hit. Yet, although the public could not get enough of them, she remained dissatisfied.
In her autobiography Emmuska wrote: ‘I felt inside my heart a kind of stirring that the writing of sensational stuff for magazines would not and should not, be the end and aim of my ambition. I wanted to do something more than that. Something big.’

Montague and Emmuska spent 1900 in Paris that, in her ears, echoed with the violence of the French Revolution. Surely, she had found the setting for a magnificent hero to champion the victims of “The Terror”. Unexpectedly, after she and her husband returned to England, it was while waiting for the train that Emmuska saw her most famous hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, dressed in exquisite clothes. She noted the monocle held up in his slender hand, heard both his lazy drawl and his quaint laugh. Emmuska told her husband about the incident and within five weeks had written The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Often, although the first did not apply to Emmuska and Montague, it is as difficult to find true love as it is to get published. A dozen publishers or more rejected The Scarlet Pimpernel. The publishing houses wanted modern, true-life novels. The Scarlet Pimpernel was rejected. Undeterred Emmuska and Montague turned the novel into a play.
The critics did not care for the play, which opened at the New Theatre, London in 1904, but the audiences loved it and it ran for 2,000 performances. As a result, The Scarlet Pimpernel was published and became the blockbuster of its era making it possible for Emmuska and Montague to live in an estate in Kent, have a bustling London home and buy a luxurious villa in Monte Carlo.

A lasting tribute to the baroness is the enduring affection the public has for her brave, romantic hero, Sir Percival Blakeney, master of disguise.


Classic Historical Romances by Rosemary Morris

Early 18th Century novels: Tangled Love, Far Beyond Rubies, The Captain and The Countess

Regency Novels False Pretences.

Heroines Born on Different Days of the Week Books One to Six, Sunday’s Child, Monday’s Child, Tuesday’s Child, Wednesday’s Child, Thursday’s Child and Friday’s Child.

(The novels in the series are not dependent on each other, although events in previous novels are referred to and characters reappear.)

Mediaeval Novel Yvonne Lady of Cassio. The Lovages of Cassio Book One

www.rosemarymorris.co.uk

http://bookswelove.net/authors/morris-rosemary

Daddy Long-Legs by Katherine Pym

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Daddy long-legs cluster

My primary time frame is 17^th century London. It’s difficult to write of it and not go textbook, something I hated as a kid in school. What I’ve learned over my career is to fill a story that resonates with human interest. History does not change, only the names and circumstances, although even then, too much of the past rings the same in the present these days. 

 

But I digress. Spring has sprung and so have the spiders...

 

Take idiocy as a human interest story. Most people don’t like to admit to this, but it happens on an almost daily basis. Husband and I had one of those occasions this last week. 

 

Close Look at Cluster

We have daddy long-legs spiders. Lots of them. Hundreds of them, maybe a thousand (kidding, but not far from). They don’t build cobwebs of gossamer that spread across the house facade as if we were in a terrible fairy tale. No, they cluster in the eaves above our sliding glass door. They foul the clapboard with their poop, fall on our heads as we come and go. It’s creepy and annoying. We can’t sit on the patio because of them. People from miles around hear my screams, night and day as I take our pup out for her potty rituals.

 

Last week, Husband wearied of my constant screeches, my jumping about and shaking the bugs from my hair and down my collar. He marched outside and grabbed the garden hose. Like a soldier ready to forge into battle, he sprayed the spider clusters with steady jets of water.

 

They plopped like giant, wet shaggy balls onto our patio and lay there stunned. In an angry zest of nature, they freaked out, separated into thousands of crawly things with unnatural long legs. They ran up the wall, the sliding glass doors on both sides of the screen, stalked into a window corner and stayed there. Now, no one could come or go at all. Should we open the slider, an arachnid cluster would scurry into our house.

 

On that note, many did find their way into our house, (I know not how because it is a tightly built structure), and settled on the walls of our bedroom. Outside, the entire wall was covered with them, all vibrating up and down as if in a macabre dance.

Macabre dance all over our wall

 

As the days blurred by, they took to their clusters again, but not just one gigantic one. In their mindless fervor for revenge, several clusters evolved, from over the sliding glass door and down the underside of the eaves of our house and patio.

 

Now, we’ll have poop paths that run the full backside of our house.

 

Nightmare!

 

As a human interest story, I hope you felt what I felt, panicked when I did. That’s what I learned from years of writing. Don’t tell these things. Show them so that the reader stands with you, witnesses the horrific skin crawling insect moments that I did.

 

PS… No spiders were harmed in the telling of this tale. 

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Many thanks to Wikicommons Public domain for the pics.