Tag: author activities

Spring is now officially sprung!

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April 2, 2025

Spring is sprung, the grass is riz.
I wonder where the birdies is.
Anonymous author


Though no one really knows for sure who or where this verse came from, many of us have heard it before, perhaps even know it by heart, though I’ve gotta say, my grass is definitely not looking like it’s gonna “riz” any time soon, though the birdies are definitely here. In fact many of them stick around for the winter, but the birds who went south are slowly coming back to the area, though my favorites, the hummingbirds, probably won’t be back until later this month or early in May. This year, we had a true winter with some serious snow for the first time in several years, and we are now heading into the roller coaster that is spring in New England. March, April, and even sometimes May, can be completely unreliable, weather wise, so there’s no telling what lies ahead of us. But the snow is gone (for now), and the sun seems to have returned every now and then, even if the wind can still be rather bitter.


I’m including a photo of the snow-covered back yard from this past February (it’s thankfully now clear of the white stuff), but I’m also including a hopeful picture of my flowering cherry tree from last April below this, which allows me to dream about how soon the blossoms and leaves might be returning to those currently nearly bare skeletons. There are buds a-plenty but nothing is unfurling just yet. Hopefully soon. Another poet once said “hope springs eternal” (Alexander Pope, 1734), and this rings true for me, especially in the spring months. Though current politics can often feel like hope has gone into hiding, there’s nothing like new leaves and flowers to raise my spirits.

When last I wrote, there were lots of things in process, so here’s the latest report on my author activities. Last week, I finally finished all the audio files for the re-recording of the Finding Sisters audiobook. It’s now being reviewed and (keeping fingers crossed for no unexpected technical glitches) will hopefully be released later this spring. I had several successful in person events about the newest book (That Day And What Came After): talking about my writing process and reading segments from the book at a local senior center, a library, and as a selected author for my regional group, Straw Dog Writers Guild. I also participated last weekend on an author’s panel about our experiences with publishing, also sponsored by Straw Dog.

In February, I was finally able to record the podcast for my latest book, which ironically went live on Valentine’s Day. I guess it was a good thing that I used the phrase “the love of my life” in the subtitle. Here is the link to the recording, for anyone who might be interested. It’s about half an hour long, and you don’t need to open an account to listen. And as long as I’m talking about the love of my life and the coming of spring, below is one of the illustrations of Skip from the book you can enjoy while you listen. He’s mixing fertilizer in our greenhouse for his copious spring veggie plantings.


The book was recently selected as one of the March 2025 winners of the International Impact Book Awards in the Grief category. There appear to have been six winners out of 60 entrants in this category, and monthly winners get to boast with a digital sticker and certificate and compete with other monthly winners for a year-end grand prize. It’s not an important award, but it’s nice to be recognized, even in small ways, now and then.

Recently, I hired a web designer to update my author website for easier navigation. I’m also in the process of having her add photo galleries for all three books and, most importantly, we’re starting to create a system of indexing my past blog entries, so my thoughts can be tracked by themes throughout the years. I hope to have the entire website re-vamp completed this spring.

In terms of theatrical adventures, Richard, my co-playwright, and I continue to pursue possible full productions for Weaving Penelope, one at a university in Georgia, where a group of faculty members is currently reviewing the script with their students in mind, and another, lower tech version in Oregon, with Richard at the helm as director. Continue to keep your fingers crossed for us.

Though there’s no definitive new book project on my publishing horizon, I continue to write, mostly short essays about my life experiences, a project I have referred to before as my Mosaic Memoir, though it will likely not be in book form. If I were a famous writer, publishers might be interested in a collated volume of my random life experiences, but I’m not. Mostly, I’m just having a great time focusing on these memories and trying to get them in shape as essays, which seems to be the non-fiction equivalent of the fiction writer’s short stories.


And, of course, I’m eagerly awaiting the return of my meadow. Who knows what this spring will bring to my little corner of western Massachusetts. Last year, foliage was between mid-shin and knee level by mid-May, with only a few flowers to speak of until later in the season. I expect it to be a bit slower this year because we had a much deeper winter than we’d been having for the few years before that. But who knows? That’s what makes meadow-watching so much fun!

The Turning of the Year; Welcoming 2025

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January 7, 2025


When last I wrote, my virtual tour was halfway complete and the holidays were looming. Now, the tour is over, the holiday season is in the rearview mirror, winter is headed our way in earnest, and spring will be arriving before you know it. When I was young, time seemed to pass ever so slowly. Now, it has a tendency to fly by!

Here’s the quick update on my “author business:”

  • The virtual tour finished in mid-October with 10 out of 10 excellent reviews for That Day And What Came After.
  • Unfortunately, the podcast recording of me talking with my publisher about the new book has been postponed yet again—this time until early February.
  • I have booked a couple of solo in-person reading events early this year in my local community (Greenfield Senior Center in January, Greenfield Public Library in March), and I’m one of twelve featured writers for the Straw Dog Writers Guild annual group presentation honoring Pioneer Valley authors whose books came out in 2024.
  • I finished the audio files for the Finding Sisters audiobook since last I wrote. However, once the files were complete, we discovered that my microphone had caused some random drop out in a number of the files, so everything will have to be re-recorded. That was a frustrating discovery, but it will give me something to work in the coming weeks, in addition to more essays for my mosaic memoir project, and will hopefully be done and released before I write again in the spring.

As far as theatre events are concerned, I served as dramaturg for my friend and fellow playwright’s new play, How to Fold a Fitted Sheet & Other Pandemic Pastimes. In December, we held three public readings and got lots of great positive feedback on the script plus some good ideas for the next revision, coming in the new year.

Unfortunately, for a variety of reasons, the hoped-for production of Weaving Penelope out in Oregon next year will not be happening after all, though we now have a solid chance for a university production in Atlanta, GA, in late 2025. Please continue to keep your fingers crossed for us. We are really proud of the script and hope to see a full production before too much longer.


On a personal note: the meadow continued to be beautiful this fall, even as it and the season waned. It was trimmed, mulched (the trimmings serve as a self-mulch for the winter months), and put to bed for the season by the end of October. For the first time in several years, we did have a white Christmas in western Massachusetts, but somehow, a couple of inches of snow isn’t quite the romantic thing one envisions in one’s dreams and wasn’t even photo-worthy, though I did have a lovely holiday celebration overall.

The election came and went, and lots will be changing on the national scene in the coming year. Though I don’t write much about politics, and I live in one of the bluest of the blue states, I will say this one thing: the arts are more important now than ever before. Keep creating, and keep the faith!

Best of luck to all in 2025 and beyond!

Audiobook Adventures, Virtual Book Tour, and Production Planning, Oh My!

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October 1, 2024

As I previewed for you in the early summer, I had my first in-person event as the featured Author of the Month at the Northampton Senior Center in August. The event was small and the audience engaged and supportive. In fact, three of the audience members were women from my women writers group, and the others were clearly widows (one fairly recently). After my talk and reading two short excerpts, we had a good conversation about grief journeys and strategies for dealing with the “new normal” that comes after the loss of a loved one. And I sold three books!

My virtual book tour is currently at the halfway mark, and all the reviews have been five stars! Here are a few highlights of the things the reviewers (most of them book bloggers) have had to say about That Day And What Came After:

“Something about Rebecca Daniels’ writing is so transporting, you can be halfway through the book before you even realize it. ‘That Day and What Came After,’ is not just a memoir, but a treatise about grief, love and finding contentment again after everything has been taken from you. “

“I recommend it for readers who have unfortunately found themselves in the widowed club. It is definitely worth reading and I believe they will feel like someone actually understands them.”

“Rebecca Daniels has created a memoir here that I think will be an invaluable resource for those that are suffering, or have suffered with grieving the loss of a loved one.”

“The fog of grief is so well represented in this book that I found myself grieving along with Daniels, despite having never known Skip.”

“A stunning memoir from the author of some of the best books I’ve read in the last decade, ‘That Day And What Came After,’ is an intimate look at grief, pain and moving on in the wake of a tragedy.”

“In ‘That Day And What Came After,’ Daniels paints an unflinching portrait of grief, loss and heartbreak in a way that few other authors are willing to do.”


See the entire tour schedule, with links to the full reviews, and an opportunity to sign up for a book giveaway here.


Most grief narratives have abstract covers, but I didn’t
want random shapes. I wanted there to be something real under the abstraction. So, I gave my cover designer three photos (below) that I had taken of Skip’s grave as well as the tree memorial I had created in my back yard. I thought they might be manipulated into a somewhat more abstract image for the cover. Obviously, the designer agreed.


I’ve started to book more readings and author talks locally for early 2025, and there’s still the second half of my virtual tour to come, but this is a small market (a picturesque valley full of many small rural towns), so online reviews are incredibly helpful to get the word out to a broader readership. I’ve said this before, but if you have read and enjoyed the book, I hope you will consider putting a review on Amazon or Sunbury Press (wherever you bought your copy), or perhaps on Goodreads, if you are active there or bought the print version from your local bookstore. In addition to the promotional work, I’m going to send the book in for consideration for a few book awards, both regional and national before the end of 2024. Keep your fingers crossed for me!

Unfortunately, the Sunbury Press BlogTalk Radio program interview with the founder of the company, originally scheduled for August, had to be postponed again, twice, and probably won’t happen until November. This latest book is not exactly holiday gift material for a general audience, but if someone you know is struggling through their own grief journey, it does make a good gift, though it can be helpful if the giver has read it first.

The audiobook for That Day is now available through Audible on Amazon, with yours truly doing the narration. That was a tough challenge, but I’m glad I decided to do it. I’m also working on narrating Finding Sisters, which came out during the second year of the pandemic, so it has languished until now. But I hope to have that finished before we get too deep into the holiday season.

The other project that is taking my time this fall is the play I co-wrote with my good friend and collaborator of many years, Richard Carp. We are deep into production planning for a premiere full production of Weaving Penelope next fall at the Chehalem Cultural Center’s brand new LaJoie theatre in Newberg, Oregon, located in Yamhill County wine country just outside Portland. Richard will direct and I will assist electronically from a distance, flying out west for final auditions/casting and then again for the last rehearsals before opening night. We’re just getting started with assembling a production team, and it’s finally starting to feel real, very real! The images below are from the workshop staged reading in the fall of 2022 at Keizer Homegrown Theatre near Salem, OR. One is our wonderful dramaturg (Zachary Dorsey, who continues to advise us from afar) waiting for rehearsal to get started; the other is a scene from that same rehearsal.


It feels too early to be saying this out loud, but it seems the holidays are nearly upon us. In fact, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas (or whatever other winter holiday you celebrate), and New Year’s will have passed before I write again, since I only write once every quarter. So, Happy Holidays to you, however and whichever you choose to celebrate.

My Grief Memoir Is Now Available for Purchase!

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June 4, 2024


What if you came home one day and found your husband dead in his favorite chair? This grief memoir explores the author’s experience of the unexpected death of her husband from sudden cardiac arrest a mere three months after his doctors had pronounced him hale and healthy. The author shares her experiences in the immediate aftermath of the abrupt shock of discovery, reminisces about the details of the couple’s late-in-life courtship and marriage, and imparts other experiences she has had along the grieving road in the years since becoming a widow.

This is the promotional introduction to my newest book, a grief memoir called That Day and What Came After: Finding and Losing the Love of My Life in Six Short Years. This book has been a long time coming. When Skip died, I could not write cogently about that event for a very long time. Then, once I did decide to write about it (more than personal journaling, that is), it took time for the story to find a shape, an overarching structure. Finally, thanks to the encouragement of friends and the wonderful and useful critiques from my amazing women writers group, I had a manuscript I was ready to submit to my publisher. Long time readers of this newsletter will remember that the book was originally scheduled to be released last year, but changes at my publisher (things specific to them combined with industry-wide trends) caused yet more delay.

As I wrote last time, the editing was complete by early March of this year. The cover design (featured below), based on a photo I had taken a few years ago, was finalized in early May, and the terrific book designer (I’ve worked with her on all three of my Sunbury books…she’s the best!) finished her work before the Memorial Day holiday weekend. So, now it’s finally ready to be out in the world! Today is the official release date. You can order your copy directly from the publisher here. The print and Kindle editions should be available on Amazon later this month (usually takes one or two weeks after the publisher’s release date).

One of the things many authors do prior to publication, yours truly included, is to submit what are called beta copies of the manuscript in process to advance readers in hopes of having those readers write “blurbs” (short promotional pieces often added to the book jacket or other publicity materials and, in this case, to be included in the opening pages of the book itself). I was privileged to have four wonderful folks—a fellow widow, now a certified grief counselor; an old friend who is also a pastor; a licensed mental health counselor; and a fellow Sunbury author—read the manuscript in draft and provide generous and thoughtful blurbs to be included in the opening pages of the book. A few selected excerpts from their generous praises and longer reviews are below for you to peruse, which will hopefully stimulate your interest in the book itself.

Back when my world collapsed and I felt completely alone and terrified, I needed the soothing and validating words that Daniels provides as she gently and lovingly walks us through what it’s like to be suddenly widowed. I needed to know, by reading this book, that I would get through this, and that I was normal in feeling changed forever by the experience.

—Kelley Lynn, author/speaker, widow, and certified grief counselor.

Rebecca Daniels invites us into her story of falling in love later in life, her husband’s sudden death, and ten years of evolving grief. Daniels’ memoir is a helpful companion for people who are grieving, especially for women who have lost their husbands suddenly. While each person’s love and loss is different, this memoir serves as a reminder that they are not alone.

–Theresa Mason, retired pastor/chaplain

This memoir, rich with details and imagery from her marriage with Skip, comes together to craft a work of genuine love that delights in their relationship and extends that joy to its readers. As a culture we tend to discuss death so infrequently that Rebecca Daniels’ unflinching and brave decision to wade headlong into that subject is like a balm for those of us looking for catharsis and to make sense of the unimaginable.

–Jay Sefton, licensed mental health counselor

In this memoir, Rebecca contemplates deeper questions and chronicles navigating the minutiae of day-to-day life after losing her beloved partner. Heartbreak and loneliness are tempered by found family and precious memories. By turns sorrowful, hopeful, and reflective.

–Natalie Pinter, author


Now that the editing and design process are complete for the print edition, I will begin a series of in-person author talks in my local and regional area this summer. And I’m beginning the process of working with a terrific organizer who will arrange a virtual book tour for me in the early fall. I will also be starting work on the audio book version next, so if you want me to read my latest book to you, you will have to wait for that second release, which should be coming soon, possibly in the fall or early winter.

This image, taken just months before it happened, is the one I posted on Facebook to announce Skip’s death. It also became the image on his funeral card. To finish today’s news update, I’m also including the book’s dedication.

To

SKIP STOUGHTON

(7 November 1947 – 9 October 2010),

my beloved and my friend,

whose unconditional love while we were together

gave me the courage and strength to write about

his loss when the unimaginable happened

and his big heart stopped unexpectedly.

His memory sustains me always.

Still Waiting…And Still Writing, Among Other Things

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October 4, 2023

When last I wrote in early summer, I had hoped to be deep in the editing process for the new book by this time, but things have moved more slowly than I might have liked. Unfortunately, that pace is entirely out of my control due to some staffing changes at the publisher. However, I am continuing to creep up the queue toward being assigned an editor (was #6 in early August and #3 by mid-September), so I hope to start the process by the end of this month or early in November. This means that the release of That Day, And What Came After will undoubtedly be in early spring of 2024 instead of fall/winter of 2023. Ironically, we are about to enter what I’ve called “my dark season,” which encompasses a series of sad anniversaries between Skip’s death next week…10/9/2010, hard to believe it’s been 13 years!…and the start of the winter holiday season. In addition to Skip’s death, these anniversaries include Mom’s death on 10/27/2006, and both their birthdays, 11/4 and 11/18—yes, they were both Scorpios. All this in the six weeks before Thanksgiving every year! Seems fitting that I will be revisiting this grief memoir during this period of both literal and metaphoric darkness this year. (The image below is of the crabapple tree I planted in Skip’s memory and the stone underneath it, I thought it might make a nice cover image for the book, but I’ll have to wait to see what the cover designer thinks about that idea.)

Just because I have a dark season each year doesn’t mean that life stops. In fact, as I write this Weaving Penelope, the play Richard and I worked on together for many years, and which I wrote about last year when we had a modified staged reading at Keizer Homegrown Theatre, is under active consideration for a full production at Linfield University in Oregon for their 2024-25 season. Send good vibes that our script will rise to the top as they work their way through multiple possibilities available for their active theatre program.

I didn’t do any author talks over the summer about Finding Sisters; the last events happened last spring, one in person and one on Zoom (there’s a link to that talk at the Events drop-down on this website for anyone who might be interested). I wonder if bookstore or library events are perhaps similar to theatres in the summer months, when business can be very slow at times, especially if the weather is beautiful and the event is indoors. But it might also be a reflection of my personal situation, living in a mostly rural area as I do. I suspect that if I lived in an urban area, there might be more opportunities to tell people about my books in person. One bright note on that horizon: there’s a new bookstore opening in my area soon, and I definitely intend to contact them about carrying all of my books and about me doing an event of some kind there in the near future, perhaps to do with the release of the new memoir. And I will definitely book another virtual author tour as soon as the new book is given a release date.

While only one of the women in the cover image below is my genetic sister, they are all female family members I found in my genetic genealogy search. Upper left is my birth mother’s high school photo (about a year before she had me), right is my paternal grandmother, and lower left is a deceased maternal half sister that I never got to meet.

As I wait for an editor to be assigned and creative work on the book design for That Day, And What Came After to begin, I continue to write regularly and share that writing with my wild women writers group, though I have no specific book project in mind at the moment. I’ve been playing around with a few “mosaic memoir” essays about experiences I had in the 1980s and early 1990s, which are challenging my memory for details, but I have no overarching theme or sense of structure to put these essays together in a coherent whole. Not yet. But they sure are fun to write.

So, what do I do when not writing? I read, I take zoom yoga classes and do online strength and mobility workouts with a terrific trainer, and I garden. My meadow had a very different look this year because the perennials started coming into their own, though the evening primrose did dominate quite a bit later in the season and had to be “weeded” out because it was so much taller that it masked everything else for a while. Yes, it’s possible to weed a meadow! (The image below is the meadow in early July dominated by lots and lots of black-eyed susans before the evening primrose–the taller, spikier plants at the left edge and back in this photo–took over.)

And this year, for the first time since 2019, I traveled purely for pleasure, visiting old friends who have moved to Traverse City, MI, for their retirement years. I even got a new cat, an adult male that was needing a new home, which has led to some fun photos and regular posts on Facebook. I call these updates the Feline Follies, and as the two cats get adjusted to each other, things are never boring and often quite funny. (The image below is of Katniss and Smokey, the fluffy new guy, who are enthralled by the bird action in the front yard on “Kitty TV.”)

Life is good!

Finding Sisters has been on a virtual tour in January-February; a Goodreads Giveaway happens in March 2022

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(March 1, 2022)

It’s been five months since I last wrote, and a lot has happened in that time. Here’s the quick rundown. Finding Sisters was released by Sunbury Press on September 14, 2021. I participated in an in-person multiple local author event at the Greenfield YMCA on October 2nd to promote the new book (even though I didn’t actually have any copies on hand yet) and gave a radio interview to North Country Public Radio in Canton, NY (where the journey started) on October 27th. Then the holidays rolled in, and the holidays rolled out again while not much else happened on the book front. Just two days before Christmas, while taking out my paper recycling, I took a dramatic fall on icy stairs which resulted in bruises, muscle pulls, and 18 stitches in my leg. Blessedly, there were no broken bones, but it did create a big slowdown where my plans for late December and early January were concerned. I’m much better now.

Shortly after the start of 2022, I began a virtual tour (20 “stops” with various book bloggers featuring my new book between January 3 and February 25), experienced my first Facebook Live interview on January 16th with a book blogger in India, and had my first masked in-person author talk/reading/book sale on January 26th at the Greenfield Senior Center.

Anyone who is not one of my Facebook friends and has not already seen each stop on the virtual tour as they unfolded over time can binge the tour stops here.

The page starts by sharing my interview with the tour host and other details about me and the book. Scroll to the bottom of the page for the tour schedule with related links. There is one link (January 20th) that didn’t feature me or my book because of an unexpected medical crisis for the blogger (not COVID); otherwise each stop on the tour has a link to that blogger’s review of Finding Sisters (all of them excellent) and sometimes additional info requested by the hosts (guest posts, interviews, excerpts from the book).

I’ve also taken time to update my website, so if you’re not interested in bingeing the tour stop by stop, you can get most of the same information about the new book on my website, especially at the links for “Reviews” and “Interviews about Finding Sisters.”

If you haven’t already purchased a copy of Finding Sisters, you can enter a giveaway that will be running on Goodreads during the month of March. I’ll be giving away eight inscribed copies of the book to eight lucky winners, and it all starts today, March 1, 2022! To enter, you must have a Goodreads account, but they are free and easy to set up. The easiest way to enter the giveaway is to go to the Finding Sisters page on Goodreads and use the “Enter Giveaway” button.

This is a screenshot, not a live link. On the Finding Sisters page on Goodreads, you need to scroll down a bit to find this image about the giveaway

Be sure to scroll down the page a bit for the giveaway link. You must give your address if your entry is for a print book (mine is), so the author or publisher can send you the book if you are one of the winners. Then you agree to their terms (no purchase necessary) and say you’re not a robot. You will be notified by email if you are one of the winning entries (most authors usually give away multiple copies; I’m giving away eight signed copies)). If you are interested in other Goodreads Giveaways, go to the Goodreads homepage and click on the “Browse” dropdown. From there, click on “Giveaways” and “Recent” to scroll through all current giveaways.

If you want to guarantee getting an inscribed copy of the print book, you will need to order that from me directly (or contact me about how to mail me the copy you have already received from Sunbury, Amazon, or your local bookstore, which I will inscribe with a personal message, sign, and send back to you). And if you’ve already read the book and enjoyed it, I’d love to get a few more reviews on Goodreads and/or Amazon.

The last early spring update to share with you is that the letters Dad wrote home during WWII, letters and images that became the core of Keeping the Lights on for Ike, have now started the process of becoming part of the archives of the Veteran’s History Project of the American Folklife Center at the Library of Congress. The archivist who received them last week said, “it’s just as rich a correspondence collection as I’d hoped.” This means that others who want to know more about veterans’ experiences during WWII will have access to the primary documents, and the archive will also steer researchers perusing the letters to my book, if they are interested.

Now Let’s Sell Some Books!

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(June 9, 2020)

When Keeping the Lights on for Ike came out in early 2019, I knew that my publisher would help me to create various pitches for my book to help promote it. They would set the book up for distribution on Amazon.com as well as more traditional distribution through the Ingram catalog for libraries and bookstores, and they would do a few publicity pitches via Cision, a large e-commerce public relations platform, mostly in conjunction with WWII anniversaries and for military or history-focused users. But I knew that this was just the beginning. I was also going to have to take an active role in promoting my book.

The first thing I did was to start contacting local libraries about giving author talks for their patrons. I started with the local library where I volunteered each week, and though they hadn’t had any similar events in quite a while, they decided to take a chance on me. At the same time, I started visiting independent bookstores in my local region (the Pioneer Valley in Western Massachusetts). I learned two important things during this process.

First, even when you offer to give talks for free, sometimes other priorities can prevent this from happening. I did manage to get two local talks scheduled early on, one in my own town and another in the next town over, but another nearby library was in the middle of a controversy about whether or not to fund a new building, so all general programming queries went unanswered more or less indefinitely. Further, only one of these three libraries actually purchased the book to put on their shelves, which was disappointing, to say the least.

On the new book shelf at Carnegie Library in Turners Falls, MA

Second, I discovered that independent bookstores were reluctant to order books from a national distributor like Ingram, even those of local authors, because of the financial penalty they would be required to pay if the books didn’t sell and had to be returned to the distributor. This reality brought me into the world of consignment book selling: I buy the books from the publisher at the author price (50% off in my case, though it might vary somewhat by publisher); the books go on the shelves at the local bookstores at the regular cover price, the stores take care of the sales tax, and any sales are split between me and the bookstore (usually 60/40).

I knew that reviews of the book would help spread the word about its existence, so I started actively seeking reviewers. My publisher was willing to provide media copies for major papers, but in the semi-rural area where I live, circulation is low for all the print media, though I was able to make the case for at least one review copy to be sent out to one of the larger papers in the area. I sent out the others from my own stash of book copies. I also knew several friends who had purchased the book when it first came out, so I asked them if they might be willing to post reviews of the book on Amazon or Goodreads, trusting that the reviews would mostly be positive ones. A few of them agreed to do so, and my reviews started to accumulate, little by little. I have recently started approaching more people for reviews, including people that I don’t know personally but who review books on these platforms often, because those reviews really are the key to successful book sales numbers.

I also spent some time developing an author website (with help from a wonderful friend who is a professional web designer and who gave me a “friends and family” discount for her services). I also created an author page for myself on Amazon and Goodreads, though I’ve only begun to explore the possibilities of those platforms.

Screenshot of my author website

This past winter, with the help of some friends and a couple of former students, I was able to arrange my first-ever author tour where I would give readings and talks at libraries and senior centers in several communities in southern Connecticut and southeastern Massachusetts. I ordered a box of author copies to sign and sell at these events, and everything was in place for this exciting new step. Then a pandemic put an end to all those plans…at least until this fall (or perhaps even later in the year, depending on what happens this summer as communities reopen).

Some of you may recall that I sent a newsletter out on April 1, 2020, announcing the cancellation of my in-person author tour. That message prompted an old friend to suggest I should consider a virtual tour, which was something entirely unknown to me at the time. He was right, though, and the online tour was exactly the thing to do in the middle of a pandemic! On June 12, 2020, my virtual tour for Keeping the Lights on for Ike will kick off, and I will have text-based “tour stops” with 20 different book bloggers/reviewers all over the country between then and July 31, 2020. For full tour details, see the tour announcement here.

Next month, I’ll update you on how the virtual tour is doing and share some information about my latest book, Finding Sisters, the story of how, as an adopted person, I used a combination of DNA testing and traditional genealogical research to find my genetic parents and other close family members over a four-year span of time. That book will be published by Sunbury Press, probably in early 2021.

New writer identity, new audience, new challenges

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(March 1, 2020)

When you’re an academic author, the marketing mechanisms are built into your job: you attend regular professional conferences where you talk to colleagues from all over about your work; library journals automatically do reviews which can create book sales to many college libraries; other colleagues will review your books for our professional journals; and you can sometimes use your own books in your classroom to boost sales. But when you’re a commercial author (or should I say, non-academic author, since commercial implies sales, which don’t always come easily), things are very different. My first book (Women Stage Directors Speak: Exploring the Influence of Gender on their Work, McFarland, 1996) practically sold itself, and because no similar studies have been carried out in the nearly 25 years since its initial publication, the book remains in print. During my teaching years, I was often making presentations at national or even international conferences about issues facing women directors in live theatre, and people who had seen my conference presentations often approached me to ask me to write or speak more on the same topic, which fed the book’s sales numbers.

Because marketing the first book had been so effortless on my part, I was very naïve about marketing my second book (Keeping the Lights on for Ike: Daily Life of a Utilities Engineer at AFHQ in Europe During WWII; or, What to Say in Letters Home When You’re Not Allowed to Write about the War, Sunbury Press, 2019). I had been an administrator in the latter years of my academic career, which left me with little time for my own work, and a book so far out of my disciplinary specialty had to wait until my retirement for its completion and publication. This second book had absolutely nothing to do with my professional discipline and everything to do with my family history. But then came the great awakening: the new book wouldn’t get read automatically like my first one had, not without lots of effort on my part in getting the word out. Further, for the first eight months after the book was published, I was up to my eyeballs with volunteer work, most of it at a small professional theatre in my local area, so it wasn’t until I stepped away from that situation and turned my full attention to my own concerns that I became aware of just what a big task marketing a new book was going to be. And marketing is very important because what good is a book if no one is reading it?

My publisher (Sunbury Press, Boiling Springs, PA) is a small company with big ambitions, but they don’t have a huge marketing operation like some of the major publishers do. They send out announcements about their offerings from time to time, and they use targeted marking lists for these announcements to make them effective, but they also rely on their authors to help sell their own books, which is the least we can do, given how well they support us in the final editing and production process of getting the book to print. But it’s all quite new to me. My new book is in the publisher’s and their distributor’s catalog of new works, but there’s no automatic market for the book like there had been the first time around, even though it’s possible this book will eventually appeal to a larger market than the more specialized work did. Further, I discovered when I approached some of the local bookshops in my community asking them to carry my book, that small booksellers were happy to order books if people asked for them by name. However, if I wanted my books on the shelves of these stores, where folks who were simply browsing could come across them serendipitously, I had to provide them myself. This was because there was a significant re-stocking penalty the stores had to pay if the books they ordered didn’t sell and had to be returned to the distributor, so it was hard for independent booksellers to take chances on unproven authors and new titles. Thus began my relationship with consignment bookselling, which required that I purchase copies of my own book (at a discounted author price) and make agreements with each bookstore in turn regarding the financial arrangements when and if the books were sold. Though I had some publicity cards for the book, most small bookstores didn’t have display room for them, even if they were willing to put a couple of copies of my book on their shelves. I was also on my own to arrange author events at various locations in my local area.

I’m a theatre person by training, and as a teacher for many years, public speaking comes easily for me (most of the time), so appearing at the events themselves is not the hardest part of book promotion. The interesting new challenges have been these: 1) making an author’s website (needed lots of help with this one); 2) creating a “fan list” (who knew one would be needed?) for occasional email newsletters; 3) getting organized to book the gigs that will allow me to talk about and get people interested in my book because I can no longer rely on professional conferences for those opportunities; and 4) creating this blog for those same purposes. At the heart of these new challenges is the fact that, as my identity as a writer is changing, so is my audience. I’m going from a specialized audience, one that I knew well, to a much more general audience, one that I’m still getting acquainted with. This blog, and the conversations it generates, will be one piece of that process of getting acquainted.

Next time I post, I’ll start sharing the story of how Keeping the Lights on for Ike came to life over a period of more than a decade since the source materials (letters, slides, scrapbooks, stories, and other memorabilia) came into my possession in the fall of 2006. Look for it in mid-March.