Tag: book promo-reviews-awards

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!

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.

Promo Begins for the New Grief Memoir

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July 9, 2024


Though I normally write at the beginning of each quarter of the year, because I wrote last month about the release of my new book,
That Day and What Came After: Finding and Losing the Love of My Life in Six Short Years
, this will be a very short newsletter, mostly let you know that, now that the editing and design phase is complete and the book is finally out, the promotion and publicity phase of being an author is starting to pick up steam.


This month, I will get a review in the largest local paper (The Greenfield Recorder) at my end of the Pioneer Valley and will participate in a local/regional author book fair in one of our beautiful local parks [Peskeompskut Park in Turners Falls on Sunday, July 14
th—book fair starts at 1 p.m., with a concert by Do It Now in the band shell at 2 p.m.]. Keep your fingers crossed we don’t get rained out!


Then, in August I’ll be featured on the Sunbury Press BlogTalk Radio program in an interview with the founder of the company and will have my first in-person event as the author of the month for the Northampton Senior Center. I’m hoping for a local library talk or two and perhaps another senior center talk in the early fall as well. Unfortunately, most of the independent bookstores in my local area are too small for holding author events.


In the early fall, I’ll be taking another virtual book tour around the US and parts of Canada (hoping for about 20 “stops” with a curated group of book bloggers). My next newsletter will share some of the highlights from that tour with you.

This image is from our trip to Ireland a couple of years before Skip’s death.

If you have read That Day, online reviews are an important part of the marketing program, so I’d really appreciate it if you would consider putting a review on Amazon or Sunbury Press (wherever you bought your copy), or perhaps on Goodreads, if you bought the print version from your local bookstore. Thanks, Nyla, for the lovely 5-star review at Sunbury!

And if you haven’t bought your copy yet, Sunbury is running a summer special to celebrate 20 years in business. Just use the code 20/20 when checking out for 20% off all the books in your cart.

I’ll report back again in the fall, and I’ll also have an update on the audiobook version, which is still in process as I write this. In the meantime, stay cool as much as possible. As for me, I’m hiding out indoors near my new mini-split, which is making a lovely difference in this, our second heat wave of the summer so far.

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.

No fireworks for me this 4th of July; just more waiting

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July 4, 2023

When I wrote last, I was eager to start the editing/book design process for my grief memoir that had been scheduled for the second quarter of 2023. I’m still waiting… Turns out that book sales slowed for Sunbury in the fourth quarter of 2022 enough that they decided to slow their new publications process for 2023 in response. This was disappointing, but after a long conference with the publisher (the Sunbury CEO) in May, I got what I felt was encouraging news. In addition to the general slowdown of the schedule, there had also been a clerical error where someone categorized my memoir as fiction, which moved it into a lower place than it belonged on the priority list (Sunbury publishes fewer fiction titles than non-fiction), so that had pushed me even farther back in the queue, but I’ve been assured the error has now been corrected. So, it seems likely that editing/book design might begin for me later this summer, which could still mean a 2023 release for That Day, And What Came After. (Image below is one of the memoir’s illustrations from a trip Skip and I took to Ireland to visit a friend who had rented a cottage near Dingle for a month.)

And speaking of being in the waiting mode, there’s been no action yet regarding our submission of Weaving Penelope to a university theatre department in Oregon for inclusion in their 2024-25 production season. However, that’s not a big surprise, since we submitted the script to a theatre professor (a friend of mine from graduate school) who was on sabbatical in the spring, and all the folks involved in the decision-making process are now on summer break. We expect some kind of movement in this situation in the fall semester. It helps that both Richard and I are former professors, so we understand the ups and downs of the academic calendar and know not to take the lack of feedback too seriously at this point. In other words, we’re still hopeful and not too worried. We hope to hear some good news in the fall.

I mentioned in my last newsletter that my 2019 book about my dad’s WWII experiences at AFHQ in Europe had been selected as a finalist for two of the Eric Hoffer Book Awards for 2023 (Legacy Non-Fiction; daVinci Award for Cover Art). In May, I learned that Keeping the Lights on for Ike was the category winner for Legacy Non-Fiction! There’s no cash prize for category winners, but I did get a fancy certificate (below) that I could frame for my office wall…if I still had an office, that is. And for folks who are self-published, there are gold stickers that winners can put on their book covers. My publisher doesn’t do anything about book awards where the author has to pay an entry fee, so any publicity about the award is up to me. I sent out a press release to my local papers, but haven’t seen that any of them ever published info about the win. Still, I feel good about it.

The Hoffer Book Award judges’ had this to say about the Keeping the Lights on for Ike: “It is not your typical book about this era in history. The author gives us an intimate look into the interesting lives of two very private people. The historical documents and photos are a marvelous addition to this book.”

The letters and photos used in the creation of Keeping the Lights on for Ike are now housed in the Library of Congress as part of the Veterans’ History Project. Information can be accessed online here, or viewed in person in the American Folklife Center’s Reading Room located in the Thomas Jefferson Building of the Library of Congress. 

This spring, I also gave two author talks about Finding Sisters, my recent book about finding my genetic family using DNA testing combined with traditional genealogy research. The first talk was an in-person event at one of the local libraries here in Montague, and it was a lovely evening: well attended and with a knowledgeable audience who asked a lots of great questions about my experiences. It was a delight to talk with people face to face for the first time in what feels like a very long time. I also gave a Zoom talk for the Tewksbury Library genealogy group. Tewksbury is a suburb of Boston, so I was glad they wanted an online presentation. If you are interested to hear that talk about the research process, with a short reading of a section from the book (about 40 minutes in length), you can do so here.

What else does an author do while she’s waiting for others to respond to her work? This author gardens!

This year was the second year for my side yard meadow project, so I was excited to see how things might be different this year than last. The first year of the planting had been dominated by annuals, added to the seed mix so there would be some visual interest while the perennials, always slower to flower from seed, got established. That first year was visually dominated by a mix of cornflower and poppies (image above), annuals that reappeared in a few places this year but not nearly in the same numbers as the first year. And there was a tough fight against mile-a-minute vine, but I think we (I had several helpers in the struggle) won that fight because there’s no evidence of the blasted plant this year.

This year, there were some other opportunistic weeds, so the challenge was to pull them out before they could get established, and for that I needed to be able to identify the plants when they were in their early stages before they flowered. Thankfully, there are phone apps I could use to help with that, so I did some spot weeding through the spring in hopes I could just let nature take its course once the desired plants matured. Recently, a couple of the perennials have really come into their own, especially this month as the cheery yellow of the lance-leaf coreopsis and black eyed Susans take over (image above), soon to be joined by another paler yellow beauty, evening primrose.

Next time I write, I really do hope to be in the end-stages of the editing/book design process and perhaps even to have a tentative release date for That Day, And What Came After. In the meantime, enjoy your summer!

Winter Revisions, Spring Transitions, and Some Exciting News

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(April 7, 2023)

Since I last wrote, Richard and I continued working on our revisions to the script for Weaving Penelope based on all the wonderful feedback we got last year from our actors and audiences involved with the workshop staged readings. We finished the revisions plus all the supplemental materials that would be included with the script (notes to directors, historical references, pronunciation guides, etc.) by the end of February.

We are really pleased with the script and the changes we’ve made, and in early March, we officially submitted it to one small liberal arts university with a terrific theatre program in hopes they will be interested in the possibility of including a full production in a future season in the next couple of years. We have also compiled a list of various other places to submit the script for possible production (other college programs, contests, theatre companies known for producing new work, etc.), so if we hear from the first university that they are unable to do the show, we will already have a backup plan in place. This means the project officially goes on the back burner for a while, and it becomes a waiting game until we hear back about that first proposal.

March was a transition month for me, and I spent it going back through the manuscript for my new memoir, That Day, And What Came After: Finding and Losing the Love of My Life in Six Short Years. I wanted to give it one last look to eliminate any awkward phrases or misspellings I might have missed, so it can be in the best possible shape when it goes to the Sunbury editorial staff. As I went through the manuscript again, I was looking for places to add photo illustrations.

I expect most peoplewouldn’t necessarily think of a grief story as the kind of thing that would have illustrations, but so much of our life together had been photographed that I decided to add some images. So, as I went back through the manuscript, I made notes about photos that could enhance each part of the story and make it more personal. I shared a few last time and wanted to do the same this month as I wait for formal editing to begin

The photos I shared before were mostly of Skip with our grandkids. This time, I’ll focus on some of our trips together. He was a wonderful travel companion, and I called him my “geezer model,” thanks to his willingness to be my photo subject whenever we were on the road.

Our first trip together was a long weekend to Quebec City in 2005. It was our first romantic getaway after becoming a couple. Fellow tourists did us the favor of taking our photo, and we took theirs, too. We were all enjoying the view of the old city with the St. Lawrence River in the distance, from an area around La Citadelle du Québec, which was just a short walk from our hotel.

A year later, while I was on an earned leave from teaching, we took a seven-week drive across Canada, down the west coast of the US (with a stop in Oregon to see friends and family), then into numerous native and national parks in the SW, and eventually headed home across the central US. Skip enjoyed getting to know my brother better when we made our stop in Oregon.

We also had one delightful European adventure in 2008 to visit friends and family abroad and do a bit of sightseeing while we were at it. We started in England where Skip had a cousin, then to France to visit two of my close childhood friends, then to Ireland to meet up with our neighbor and good friend who was renting a house in Dingle for a month. Of course, we couldn’t go to England and not stop to visit Stonehenge.

Whenever possible, Skip went along to my academic conferences and special speaking appearances. In the spring of 2009, he accompanied me to Arlington, VA, for a talk I was invited to give on women stage directors at the Shirlington Public Library. While in the area, we visited many of the monuments and memorials on the mall in Washington, DC. Skip had a high school friend who had been killed in Viet Nam, and he was able to find his name on the Veterans Memorial Wall.

Before I close this newsletter, here’s my exciting news! Last year, I decided to enter Keeping the Lights on for Ike in the “Legacy” category (published more than two years ago) for the Eric Hoffer Book Awards. Last month, I got word that my 2019 book was a finalist for their special da Vinci prize for cover design. My parents deserve recognition as well because it was Dad’s photography and Mom’s scrapbook where she kept that last letter to him during WWII that inspired the cover designer to put them together. The prize itself will be awarded later this spring, but I can officially claim finalist status and use their special seal in my publicity materials for the book from this point forward.

Next time I write, I hope to have a release date for the new grief memoir and be close to the end of the editing and book design phase for That Day, And What Came After.

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.