Josie Lynn Books: Imagine the Possibilities

Tag: self-publishing

  • Bad Spellers Untie

    The first time I saw this slogan on a T-shirt in a Signals catalog (not that I’m promoting Signals…not that I’m not promoting Signals…I’m just saying), I liked it because on the spelling continuum I fall somewhere in the dead middle—not the world’s best speller, not the world’s worst speller. To put it mildly, I’m in no danger of winning any spelling bees. I’m not proud of that. Once again, I’m just saying.

    In fifth grade, I was the class champion when it came to state capitals. (I might be a little proud of that.) I was the speed locater of states on our pull-down map in the front of the classroom. But stand me up in front of people and ask me to spell out loud I’m more than likely going to choke. “I before E except after C…” Except that that’s not entirely true. So many rules, so many exceptions to the rules. Things aren’t always what they sound like. Good grief! (Or is it “greif”? Just kidding. I know!)

    Watch this hilarious clip from the Tony Awards (at least through 2:44)

    Can You Raed This?

    A long while ago, a friend sent me an e-mail that asked the question, “Can You Raed This?” and claimed that according to a “study” at “Cmabrigde Uinervtisy” it has been determined that the order of letters in a word is unimportant as long as you get the first and last letter correct. It had something to do with how we don’t look at every single letter when reading a word, but at the word as a whole.

    As an average/bad/not great speller, this notion sounded good to me. Unfortunately, it turns out that the email was spurious, untrue, an urban myth. The order of letters in a word is important after all. Too bad.

    Untie, Unite

    However, something that did give me hope was raeding, urm, reading a little book called Love and Freindship [sic], a pretty hilarious tale in which a teenage Jane Austen basically makes fun of the romantic novels that were popular in her day. The book contains misspelled words, and I find it encouraging to note that Jane wasn’t all that fastidious about the order of letters in every single little word; she was too concerned about the order of the words themselves.

    If only Jane had reminded herself that friend is spelled friend because a true friend is loyal to the end….

    The bottom line is, I love words, but I’m not a huge fan of spelling. Neither was Jane Austen. That’s what editors are for.

    Which brings me to the crux of the matter. Could it be that, as a writer, I feel that details like spelling are too nuts and bolts and get in the way of the creative flow? I hope not. Because no matter how amazing your words are, if no one can decipher them or if they have to spend too much time deciphering them, your writing is not going to bring anyone any pleasure. And while the idea of a fourteen-year-old bad speller who grew up to be Jane Austen is quaint, the idea of me sending you poorly spelled emails is not.

    Of course, as a self-published author, one must pay attention to things like spelling and such. One must grow up, just like Jane Austen went from Love and Freindship to Pride and Prejudice….

    Note: The story Love and Freindship has nothing in common with the 2016 movie Love & Friendship. That movie is based on Jane’s novel Lady Susan. In the story Love and Freindship, teenage Jane Austen writes: 

    “One fatal swoon has cost me my Life… Beware of swoons Dear Laura…. A frenzy fit is not one quarter so pernicious; it is an exercise to the Body and if not too violent, is I dare say conducive to Health in its consequences—Run mad as often as you chuse; but do not faint—”

    Wise words indeed, even if some of them are spelled rather creatively.

  • Literary Allusions…Not Illusions

    I have blogged quite a bit about Pride and Prejudice for the simple reason that I happen to love Pride and Prejudice. I love the characters. I love the story. I love the writing.

    However, lest I give the impression that my obsession with appreciation of Jane Austen’s writings begins and ends with Pride and Prejudice, I would like to take this opportunity to say a few things about Northanger Abbey.

    For the longest time, I regarded Northanger Abbey as a throwaway Jane Austen novel, the one you could skip reading and simply watch the movie, if that. Perhaps this was because I saw the 1987 BBC movie first and found it dull, dreary, and dismal, giving one the impression that one was watching it on television set that was in the process of dying a slow, painful death, whether or not this was the case.

    I couldn’t get into the story. I couldn’t get behind any of the characters. I thought the whole idea was implausible and I simply didn’t care about any of it. At all.

    However, when Masterpiece Theater was rebranded as Masterpiece all of those years ago and all of the hopelessly dated 1970s and 1980s versions of Jane Austen movies (except for Pride and Prejudice) were revamped, I watched them all and, for the first time, Northanger Abbey piqued my interest. Prompting another, this time successful, attempt to read the novel.

    The curious thing, however, is how much it reminded me of my middle-grade novel, Maxwell Parker, P.I.,1 in that:

    1. The heroines are both avid readers
    2. Both heroines have overly active imaginations
    3. Both heroines have an unnatural interest in guts, gore and gruesomeness
    4. Both heroines suspect someone of an atrocity and then take steps to investigate

    My novel Maxwell Parker, Love Doctor, the sequel to Maxwell Parker, P.I., seems to be loosely based on Emma, another Jane Austen novel I came to late in my Jane Austen reading experience. Ironically enough, I started to/attempted to read Emma when I was about ten or eleven years old. I picked it up off the shelf at the library and opened up to the first chapter and read the first line: “Emma Woodhouse, handsome, clever and rich, with a comfortable home and happy disposition seemed to unite some of the best blessings of existence and had lived nearly twenty-one years in the world with very little to distress or vex her.”

    Miss Austen, I regret to inform you that this first line did not speak to ten-year-old me. Bratty, over-privileged Emma Woodhouse did not seem like a kindred spirit and I had no desire to spend any time with her, so on the library shelf she remained, and I did not become an Austen fan until I was sixteen-years-old and met kindred spirit, Elizabeth Bennet, whose opening line I much preferred. No matter. I like the book now, although, like my heroine, Maxwell, I still find Emma to be “so annoying.”2

    Just for the record, neither of my two Maxwell Parker books were intended to be reimagined Jane Austen books. Any resemblance is entirely a happy coincidence. However, I am in the process of writing a third Maxwell Parker book, and which, if any, Jane Austen book will end up inspiring it is anybody’s guess right now. As they used to say, back in the days before streaming and on-demand programming, stay tuned.

    1. Maxwell Parker, P.I. was published in 2014, but it was written long before I watched the 2007 version of Northanger Abbey. ↩︎
    2. Maxwell Parker, Love Doctor, p. 262 ↩︎

     

  • Pigeonholed

    My Pandemic Project

    I have a question for you. How did you spend your time during the pandemic?

    If you’re like me, I’m sure you had lots of big plans that didn’t exactly come to fruition. I won’t take you down my list of failed endeavors (…the hiking that didn’t happen, the sourdough bread that didn’t rise…) but I did manage to do a whole lot of binge-watching (does watching Endeavour count as a successful endeavor?) and a lot of bird-watching.

    If you’re picturing me crouching in a park with a pair of binoculars, a field guide, and khakis, let me stop you right there. I did some of my best bird-watching from the driver’s seat of my car. Since so many people (at least at the start of the pandemic) were working from home, traffic on my usually insane commute was practically nonexistent, so I had a lot more time to reflect on different things as I drove to work. The things that tended to catch my eye more than anything else were the city’s pigeons.

    More than just catch my eye, though, they really captured my imagination. I thought back to a friend of mine who had moved to California from New York and used to contemptuously call them “rats with wings.” I always thought that was unfair and a little harsh. The more I watched them and thought about them, the more an idea began to reveal itself to me. Was it a Great Idea? You’ll have to ask Walter Pigeon. What I know for sure is that it became a book.

    Here’s how I describe it: Walter Pigeon is concerned about the bad rap he and his fellow pigeons have received and is determined to do something about it. A humorous and heartfelt satire about thinking outside the box.

    Here’s what other people are saying about it…

    “Clever and humorously imaginative, with embedded words of wisdom.”—Kirkus Reviews

    You can read the full review here.

    And if you care to check it out, it’s available on Amazon.

    As always, thanks for stopping by. I really do appreciate it.

  • Use (or Choose) Your Words (Wisely)

    Use (or Choose) Your Words (Wisely)

    “Sticks and stones will break my bones, but words will never harm me.”

    I’ll admit it. I am (on occasion) a public eavesdropper, but only because people say the most interesting things in public. For instance, I was in the parking lot of an organic market not too long ago and a family (consisting of a mother, a father, and a pre-teen son) was getting in the car next to mine. The son was not in a happy mood.

    “Why are you mad with Daddy?” the mother asked, and then instructed him, “Use your words.”

    The son proceeded to not use words, his or otherwise, but to sulk as he climbed into the backseat of the crossover with folded arms.

    I laughed inwardly, mainly because I was surprised to hear that people really used words like “use your words.”

    Another time, I was innocently eating breakfast at a hotel near a popular amusement park, when a family of four was seated at the table next to mine. The two young boys were having a dispute, and to settle it, the father parroted the adage about sticks and stones breaking bones, but words never hurting you, to which the older son replied, “But they do hurt. They always hurt.”

    Again I chuckled, this time because the little dude was merely confirming the belief I’ve always held: words can be dangerous things.

    People can make cutting remarks that go on to have long and productive lives, remarks that go so far as to find a home inside your brain, and turn up again and again like that proverbial bad penny. If someone struck you, they might leave a sore spot or a bruise, but those things heal, those things fade with time. You might at some later date wish to revisit your injury, only to discover it has completely disappeared.

    But words are different; words cut deep.

    That’s why it’s a good idea to be like Horton and only say what you mean and mean what you say. Because once the words are out, you won’t be able take them back. You can’t. You can say you’re sorry. You can say you didn’t mean it. But if those are just lame, ineffectual words compared to the mean, harmful, pointed words you’re trying to take back.

    Those words that can’t be “un-heard.”

    It reminds me of the fable about gossip, often used to illustrate how once words are spoken, they become feathers in the wind; difficult to control, impossible to collect once unleashed.

    Like that vintage shampoo commercial (and they told two friends, and so on, and so on) suggests, words have a way of getting out at an exponential rate, which is good for advertising your new restaurant, but not so good if we’re talking about your embarrassing, dirty laundry.

    Funnily enough, I have written a book that addresses this very topic. Imagine that! It’s called I’m the Greatest Star, and tells the story of a sixth-grader named Star who, among other things, finds herself face-to-face with the verbally-abusive class bully.I'm the Greatest Star 3D cover 2022

    I’m the Greatest Star is published by Stepping Stones for Kids, an Imprint of FootePrint Press and will be available for purchase next month, April 2018, as a paperback or eBook. Visit my website josielynnbooks.com for more details.

  • My Favorite Movies…about writers

    Vintage writer’s desktop with typewriter and flying sheets, creativity and inspiration concept

    So, my literary kitty, Lily, already blogged about her love of movies, just one of the many things we have in common.

    Today, I thought I’d share a list of my favorite movies about writers. There’s no shortage of movies about writers, probably because movies are written by writers and we tend to think that we are a fascinating bunch whose lives must be chronicled.

    So, without further ado…

    1. To Walk Invisible

    The remarkable story of the Brontë sisters’ path to publishing. Take courage, indie authors.

    2. Romancing the Stone

    This movie was a childhood favorite and was also on Lily’s list. Hopeful romantic, romance novelist, Joan Wilder is thrust into a scenario that may well be taken from the pages of one of her novels…it’s art imitating life imitating art…who says movies about writers must be boring?

    3. Saving Mr. Banks

    I love this movie—even though ironically, I’ve never been a Mary Poppins fan (sorry Mrs. Travers!)—because it has one of my favorite lines explaining what we as writers do. Tom Hanks, as Walt Disney says: “George Banks and all he stands for will be saved. Maybe not in life, but in imagination. Because that’s what we storytellers do. We restore order with imagination. We instill hope again and again and again.” Word!

    4. Miss Potter

    This biopic about Beatrix Potter is inspiration for writers to believe in their work. Go against the establishment, self-publish (sort of), and draw amazing pictures of impossibly cute woodland animals with adorable names like Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cotton-tail.

    5. Jane Austen Regrets

    I think this choice is fairly self-explanatory, if you’ve read any of my previous posts. If not, let’s just say, I’m fairly obsessed with Jane Austen.

    6. You’ve Got Mail

    I will be blogging about this more in the future (as in, somewhere down the road, not in the far off, dystopian sense of the word). I love this movie so much that it deserves its own post. It’s about writers, books, children’s books, and bookstores…and bookstore owners. And it has Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan who are my favorite Rom-Com duo, possibly after Doris Day and, say…anyone.

    7. Throw Momma from the Train

    I had to re-visit this movie. It’s the one that got everything started for me. And it’s the second movie on this list that has Danny DeVito in its cast.

    8. Breakfast at Tiffany’s

    I’ll admit that this movie has some glaring flaws and missteps that I am willing to forgive (for instances, the whole Mickey Rooney character). But despite its flaws, I fell in love with this movie. The writer in this one is George Peppard, who plays Holly’s ultimate love interest, Paul Varjak (“That’s V-A-R-J-A-K.”)

    9. Genius

    A fascinating movie about the creative process that gives us a peek into what that looks like for the editor. It chronicles the relationship between writer, Thomas Wolfe and editor, Maxwell Perkins, two very different men, one with a genius for writing, another with a genius for friendship.

    10. Finding Neverland

    I like this beautifully filmed movie for its dreamy quality. It’s the story of how J.M. Barrie befriends a family of young boys who inspires him to write Peter Pan, and who just so happens to be related to Daphne du Maurier, author of a little book called Rebecca, among other things.

  • Declaration of Independence

    Or Why I Became an Indie Publisher

    Once upon a time, I used to think that the only pathway to becoming a “real author” was to secure an agent who would sell my book to a “real publisher.” This would inevitably result in a call from said agent reporting the sell, which would reduce me to a sobbing mess of happy, relieved, celebratory tears. That phone call never came, because finding an agent (for me, anyway) proved to be the enormous, impossible, clichéd catch-22 that everyone says it is. I once read a quote that likened the TV business to ‘a cruel, shallow money trench, a long plastic hallway where good men die like dogs.’* The quote resonated with me; I instantly pictured my books left to die along a long plastic hallway of shattered hopes and dreams. Was I bitter? Was I hopeless? Perhaps, just a tad, but like I said in an earlier post, writing is something you can’t stop. It was just a matter of figuring out a new, different, and better approach to authorship. Or, to quote from Jurassic Park, “Life will find a way.” So I watched and I waited. Then, finally one day, seemingly out of nowhere, while I was busy poring over one of those books with lists of agents and publishers (who are currently not open to submissions or who do not accept unsolicited manuscripts or whose name and contact info is followed by any of those unfriendly, unwelcoming, disheartening phrases), there was a publishing revolution—a bloodless revolution with no visible carnage—but a revolution nonetheless—that left writers empowered to take matters into their own capable hands and stop waiting for someone on the other end of the proverbial transom to decide their fate. The time had come to remove the carcasses of dead books, dead hopes, and dead dreams from those hallowed trenches and hallways. Writers could set their books free. Writers could set themselves free. It reminds me of a commercial I once saw… [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pZDUbKNiMsU?rel=0&w=420&h=315] …Plus, indie publishers have to wear lots of hats and I’m a big fan of hats. Do you have a similar story that you would be willing to share?

    *The quote, in its entirety is: “The TV business is uglier than most things. It is normally perceived as some kind of cruel and shallow money trench through the heart of the journalism industry, a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free and good men die like dogs, for no good reason.”[…]

  • A Writer Writes…Always

    “A writer writes always” is something Larry, a character in Throw Momma From the Train, tells his creative writing students. 

    (Disclaimer: in the interest of complete transparency, now would be a good time to admit that I remember most of the lines from Throw Momma From the Train. What can I say? I like—in no particular order—1. movies about writers, 2. Billy Crystal, 3. Danny DeVito, and 4. twisted re-makes of Hitchcock films.*)

    I suppose the line resonated with me because I have always considered myself a writer, and because the line happens to be true. A writer does write…always. You can’t stop it, it just happens. Sort of like Kevin James’ dance moves in Hitch.

    [youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50YQeugOMOw?t=2m00srel=0&w=560&h=315]

    I write because when I was a little girl, my mother took me to the library on a day that a famous children’s book writer was having a meet and greet. “Go on, talk to him,” she nudged, but being shy, I was content to watch from a comfortable distance. Still, that day I learned that writers were regular people. If I hadn’t seen him, it would have taken quite a bit of effort to convince me that books were written and didn’t just exist, like facts.

    I write because in junior high, after having consumed every book in the house, my mother showed me her black binder that looked ancient to me because she’d had it since college. “It’s a book I was going to write,” she told me, and I read it. My mother wrote stories, submitted them, and was never published.  So, I decided to continue her tradition.

    When I was seventeen something extraordinarily ordinary happened to me and sparked an idea that became a novel. I typed it up and sent it to agents and editors and anyone whose address I could find.  And it came back, again and again…and again. It didn’t happen the way I would have written it, but nothing ever does.

    Finally, an agent wrote back with the words I’d dreamed of hearing: “Your novel has the potential to be a best seller.” All it needed, she assured me, was a final edit by a professional, and she knew just the guy. You can probably guess the rest of that story—it’s been written before. But the point of my version is that I was young, hopeful, and ultimately crushed.

    After that fiasco, writing didn’t hold the same allure it once had. I felt like throwing in the towel, switching to some other career that was less gut-wrenching/disappointing. So, I stopped writing. I stopped sending out my unsolicited manuscripts. I stopped reading magazines about writing. I stopped dreaming. But I couldn’t stop the stories. Eventually, I knew something better than I knew lines from Throw Momma from the Train: A writer doesn’t write for publication. A writer isn’t a writer because she is published. A writer writes, always. End of story.

    Maxwell Parker, P.I. 3D cover 2022*After watching Throw Momma From the Train (as an impressionable young girl), I had to see the original movie…Strangers on a Train. I regret to report that this led to a life-long addiction to** Hitchcock movies. A similar fascination with Hitchcock is what inspires my protagonist Maxwell Parker to suspect her new neighbor of murder in Maxwell Parker, P.I. The lesson? You never know what will happen when you introduce Hitchcock to a preteen with an over-active imagination!

    **”a life-long addiction to” may be too strong a choice of words. Maybe “an extreme liking of” would be better. Because I can quit anytime. Really…I can…

    • What about you…why do you write?

  • My Big Publishing News

    Maxwell Parker, P.I. 3D cover 2022

    It’s official. My new book, Maxwell Parker, P.I. is available…as of right now!
    For more details about the story, to find out what inspired me to write it, or to watch the book trailer, please see this previous post:

    Maxwell Parker, P.I. is also available on Amazon.com.

    For the Kindle edition, click here.

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