July 10, 2017 by M A Clarke Scott

Abandoning My Babies

Heading off on summer vacation feels strangely akin to abandoning my babies

woman embracing book

I’m referring to my books, of course.

Strange as that might seem, they’ve been with me so long, they do feel like my children. And since I’ve so recently launched them into the world, I feel a pretty constant anxiety about their welfare. Even though, like our young adults gone off to college or world travel, there’s little we can do for them.

University Tours

Ironically, the other activity that’s characterized my early summer is touring a number of universities, both close to home and across the country, with my teenage son. My real empty nest looms on the horizon.

Though a full year away, the fact that he’ll be leaving home so soon is quite daunting. And like my books, I want to do as much to smooth his path and make sure he’s safe as humanly possible. I want him to succeed!

A Well Deserved Break

Of course after a very busy winter of editing, publishing, promoting and moving house, a few weeks of travelling, visiting friends and R & R is well-deserved. I don’t really feel guilty about it.

In fact, planning the trip, designing the perfect capsule wardrobe so I can go three weeks with one small carry on bag (Incredible. I know, right? But I’m doing it) and anticipating all the museums, galleries, sidewalk cafes, gardens and monuments we’ll see is rather exciting. I’m really looking forward to spending time with friends we haven’t seen for years.

A Writer’s Research Never Ends

I’m also excited about researching new locations for future books since travel abroad has always fueled my writerly imagination. I won’t be going to Spain or Greece this year. But I’m sure London, Paris, Amsterdam and Rotterdam will supply plenty of inspiration. I have a notion I might want to set one of my future “Life is a Journey” novels in Utrecht or Amsterdam. My mind is already playing with the idea of a student of Art Restoration, and Holland seems a perfect place for such an endeavor. All those Vermeers, Rembrandts and van Gogh’s! So I’ll be on the lookout for locations, and the seed of a story. All I need now is a nice tall Dutch romantic hero to set things in motion.

It’s Hard to Let Go

Nevertheless, after birthing and nurturing my books over many years, I guess the constant worry and vigilance gets a bit addictive. I think, probably this is the source of empty nest syndrome. We’ve been preoccupied for so long we just don’t know what to do with ourselves. We don’t know who we are anymore without the child, or the project, we’ve been dedicated to for so long.

Frankly, it’ll be nice to stop worrying for a while. I have the sense that I’m already doing everything I can. Like an anxious parent, I read books and study (i.e. blogs and webinars) about how to best care for my fledgling offspring. I swear, I’m doing it all. I’ve checked the list. And, like parenting, we very often hear conflicting advice. Each new strategy or tactic is something we’re trying for the first time. We have no expertise, and no real idea if what we’re doing will work. Maybe we’re doing our babies more harm than good.

But there’s only so much you can do. Sometimes the true test of survival comes only with the passage of time.

Of course, as a modern author in the digital publishing world, that’s only partly true. Our books, our community and our careers truly do need our constant cultivation. There are just too many books out there to leave our books on there own. They’re likely to get lost forever.

In truth, the analogy to growth and maturation probably applies more to “me” the authorpreneur than to my books, per se. I need time and tons of support to “grow up.” I need to learn new tricks and practice and stretch continuously in order to take my career as a published author to the next level.

I need to continue to hone my craft, write and publish more books, continue to nurture my author platform, study, apply and even innovate book marketing strategies. And over time, just like adults, we get a little more polished, a bit more confident, and closer to achieving our goals and dreams.

And toward that end (because it’s a lifelong road) I guess it won’t hurt to take a few weeks off.

Bon Voyage!

So have a great summer. I’ll be back in August with more stories to tell. Make sure to sign up for my email list (form in top right sidebar) to get your free copies of bonus summer reading, including short stories, deleted scenes and a sneak preview of Coming About. Follow me on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter if you want to see photos and videos of my travels, because that’s where I’ll be (buttons also in sidebar.)

I’m also running a big promotion of The Art of Enchantment over the Labour Day weekend, so keep an eye out if you want to grab a copy for FREE. I’m still hopeful book two in the Having it All series will be ready to release by then.

And if you have any great ideas about my handsome Dutch hero, or some fun ideas about a story set in the Netherlands, please leave a comment or suggestion below!

April 24, 2016 by M A Clarke Scott

My Kindle Scout Campaign So Far: Worth It?

Midway Through My Kindle Scout Campaign: Some Thoughts About Its Worth

I’ve just passed the midway point through my 30 day Kindle Scout campaign for my book Reconcilable Differences and am checking in with my results and experience thus far. If you didn’t catch my last post about my path to publishing, at the end I introduced my latest venture.

To recap: Amazon runs the Kindle Scout program to which authors submit unpublished works (title, cover, longline, 50 pp sample and an author bio/blurb) and, if selected, provides a 30 day opportunity to expose your book to the public and solicit nominations through your network/social media. After this time, they either offer to publish your book… or they don’t. The implication is that the number of nominations you receive affects the deal, but I’m not entirely convinced. More on this later.

What my Kindle Scout landing page looks like:

No Harm Trying

As I was preparing Reconcilable Differences for independent publishing anyway, I figured there’d be no harm experimenting with this relatively new Amazon publishing program. Some early-adopter authors, such as self-publishing guru Martin Crosbie, and Lexi Revellian, have found success. If I were published by Amazon, it sounded to me like a very good option for a debut author with a smallish social network and a limited capacity for social media marketing. If I didn’t make the cut, well, back to Plan A.

Social Media Reach

Since I’ve been at it for quite a number of years (9-10?) I actually thought my social media reach would be reasonable. Despite being a lazy, infrequent blogger, I’m somewhat active on several platforms, including Twitter, FB, Pinterest, LinkedIn and now Instagram. What I’m discovering (not that I haven’t been told this before) is that you need a huge (as in thousands and thousands) of connections, OR a very loyal, devoted and passionate following of around a thousand. I have neither.

Definitely NOT Hot & Trending

Possibly for this reason, despite shamelessly flogging my campaign this past 18 days, my “page view” results have been very, very modest. Quiet, one might say. As of Day 18 I’ve had only 363 page views. This has qualified me for the mysterious but vaguely desirable Hot & Trending list exactly ZERO hours so far. I can’t tell you what it’s like to drop-kick your baby out into the wide world and receive such a resounding… whisper.

What Does It All Mean?

Nevertheless, there are several terrific things that have come of the experience already.

The first is that I forced myself to go out there and actually promote my own work, something many an introverted writer will tell you is akin to sticking pins in your eyes. I posted on comfy and familiar channels, such as Facebook, where presumably my “friends” are fairly indulgent and supportive, although I suspect their patience is wearing thin. I personally solicited family and friends by email. I’ve tweeted to a broader mixed audience, and I’ve even mentioned it quietly on LinkedIn, a professional networking environment seemingly more conducive to the exchange of ideas than the flogging of wares. I’ve also pinned it on Pinterest but I don’t think I’ve had any page views linked from that source, and created ‘events’ on Goodreads and had some results. Some of this data is made available to Kindle Scout authors through statistics that update every 24 hours. For me this occurs somewhere between 3 and 3:30 am. And no, I don’t get up to check. It’s just not that exciting.

It’s interesting to see where the external traffic comes from though. The range of externally linked traffic gives some idea of how effective my marketing efforts have been. Although the effect is small, this is still very useful information going forward. If I make noise, who is listening? And who is more likely to take action? During the 18 days of my campaign so far, the split between internal Kindle Scout traffic and external links has remained constant at approximately 40-60.

So what does it all mean, and what is likely to happen next?

My and Others’ Thoughts On The Program

I’ve also participated on a number of writer forums, such as KindleBoards, writer’s group’s such as RWA, WFWA, Writer Unboxed and author blogs, and got involved in a few discussions. There are a variety of opinions out there among authors about the risks and rewards of the Kindle Scout program.

It seems to me those that take a cynical approach are likely in the habit of hedging their bets, and not allowing their hope too much reign. It’s easy to get hurt in this business. Too easy to be deeply disappointed yet again. So never letting yourself expect much might seem the safest bet of all. Those of you who are writers will understand that’s it’s never easy, no matter which route you choose to publishing, or how you go about managing your business afterwards. The facts of Kindle Scout are more optimistic.

Do The Nominations Even Matter?

Popular topics of discussion among participant authors include whether being on the Hot & Trending list is important for selection, and what the most important factors for selection might actually be. Reports from the battlefield indicate that no, the Hot & Trending list doesn’t matter. There are reported cases of books that spend a full 30 days on the Hot & Trending list getting a pass, and books that never hit the Hot & Trending list getting publishing deals.

While this is especially encouraging in my case, it’s interesting to speculate why. This seems obvious to me. Everyone knows you can buy supporters and reviews, and even buyers of books. Amazon knows this too. This is one of the reasons there are so many rules around who can leave book reviews on their site, and why those rules keep changing. They’re interested in staying one step ahead of the players, hackers and scammers who think they’re clever enough to “work the system.” Even earnest, hard working authors who try simply to understand how things work in order to do better have the rug pulled out from under them on a regular basis.

What Is Amazon Looking For?

Which leads me to believe that a) you can’t really fool an organization a large and powerful as Amazon, and b) they are ultimately interested in your book succeeding on it’s own merits. Not that they won’t help you along if they want to. It’s the power of Amazon marketing that makes publishing through them so desirable.

And if that’s true, then what really makes your book competitive?

I have theorized that Amazon may be interested in evaluating potential authors’ social reach and social media marketing savvy, and use the campaign results to do so, but others disagree with me. They may also be interested in the general public appeal of the candidates as a measure of their future success. But as was pointed out to me, why would Amazon care about this? If they want to sell something, they know how. Unlike most other publishers, they don’t need our help. Point taken.

Are All Nominations Equal?

Also, so many of the book covers are amateurish or just plain awful, that I wonder if what attracts page views has more to do with which genres are popular with the demographics that are more likely to hang out at Kindle Scout or respond to social media appeals than they are with the books themselves. Do the people nominating books actually take the time to read the sample pages? It also makes me wonder if nominations are weighted by Amazon according to the online behavior, nomination history, and perhaps most important, past book-buying practices, including the relevance of genre to the candidate’s.

One other marketing experiment I tried was to create a HeadTalker campaign. HeadTalker is a crowd-sourced promotion tool, like crowd-funding, that leverages the social networks of your supporters to send out a huge blast of announcements. I managed to get 25 supporters for my campaign within the deadline, so I’ll see within the next day or two whether the 969,780 reach makes an impression on my Kindle Scout campaign. And ultimately, whether this kind of social support makes a difference to Amazon.

Bottom line, the story and the writing, as always, are most important. Every book will find its readers eventually, even a quiet one. And the measure of a reader’s satisfaction rests with the story itself. You may need a little editing, and help designing a more appealing cover, but Amazon, like other publishers, will help you with that. It’s in their interest to do so. You may get only 50% royalties, but they get the other half, so your success is theirs as well. But the books, and the authors, that will sell are the ones that people want to read, and enjoy. So after all is said and done, I think I’ll put my faith and hard work into more and better writing, and leave the mysteries of marketing to others.

Losses, Gains and Opportunities

My impressions are that writers who’ve been selected for publication have been treated well by a professional and supportive team of editors, designers and marketers at Amazon, and have no regrets about participation in the program. Whether you see it as a loss leader, a great way to launch, or a reliable and relatively pain-free way to pursue publishing for all of your projects, you won’t do worse with Amazon than on your own, with the big five or a boutique digital press, and you might actually do better.

My Kindle Scout Campaign

Reconcilable Differences cover

You can help my campaign, and perhaps help Reconcilable Differences get published. Please click the link and have a look, and if you think the book is worthy, give it your vote. Also please pass this along to friends, family and other readers who might be interested in helping out. As a bonus, those who vote for a successful candidate receive a free e-book as thanks. So we all win! If you don’t mind checking out the book, here’s the link: https://kindlescout.amazon.com/p/JXXN1LUS2SHW

December 29, 2015 by M A Clarke Scott

Fairy Tales as Real Life Lessons for Women

Forging a Better Version of Yourself Through Fairy Tales: Lessons for Women

Clarissa Pinkola Estes, in her seminal 1992 book of fairy tales, Women Who Run with the Wolves, says of stories: “In a very real way, we are imprinted with knowing just by listening to the tale.” (p.387)

Participation mystique: Just like living it

Termed “participation mystique” by Jungian psychologists, this notion has more recently been scientifically proven by brain researchers. Your brain really can’t tell the difference between experiences you live through and those you read about someone else living through, even if fictional. Here’s an article in The Atlantic about it. And another in Science.Mic.

For a person like me who makes stuff up for a living, and loves fiction more than life, this is incredibly validating.

Thus we can read stories and fairy tales to expand our experience. The lessons we learn through fiction are real and applicable to the lives we are leading. This is the very purpose of myth. To pass along the wisdom of the ages. To learn from our “elders.”

In this book, Women Who Run with the Wolves, there is a particular story – a dark fairy tale – that Estes believes “deals with most of the key journeys of a woman’s psyche.” It’s one that seems to have particular relevance to women, such as myself, who wake up one day in mid-life and wonder: What happened? How did I get here? Has this happened to you, too? Do you wonder about the choices you made, the lies you told yourself, the sacrifices and compromises that marriage and motherhood and life seem to have demanded of you? Do you look in the mirror and ask: Who am I?

Do you look in the mirror and ask: Who am I?

The story’s called, “The Handless Maiden.” By reading, and slowly absorbing, this tale, we can experience, vicariously–through “sympathetic magic”– the transformations the character experiences over her entire lifetime. That’s a lot of wisdom to help you with your own life stage challenges.

Did You Sign Away Your Self? Time to Toughen Up, Ladies

There is no way to compress all of Estes wisdom into a brief blog post, but I’ll try to highlight the key points. Likely I’m doing her careful arguments a great disservice, but this is meant as an introduction only. Hopefully if this intrigues you you will seek out and read the book, if you haven’t already. Estes suggests taking quite a long time to read the story. Maybe even months. This time is necessary because the lessons of the tale are very, very deep in a woman’s psyche, and you can’t just shake a stick at these parts of yourself and expect understanding, or change.

These deep lessons take place in a female psychic underworld, where we learn knowledge and language from the “Great Wild Mother” who wants to toughen us up to prepare us for life in the topside world of everyday. But we have to go down there to receive these lessons. Way, way down there.

Preparation for real life

In the tale, a series of tests and lessons must be mastered, each requiring a cycle of loss, sacrifice and enlightenment representing “women’s lifelong initiation into the renewal of the wild.”

Synopsis: The Handless Maiden

The tale, in brief synopsis: A man unwittingly sells his daughter to the devil in exchange for riches. She is too pure for the devil to claim, even after her hands are severed. She leaves home to become a beggar. A spirit guides her to a magical orchard, owned by a compassionate king, who falls in love and marries her. He builds her silver hands. She has a baby. The king goes away to war, and the devil interferes again, twisting messages, until the king’s mother is forced to send the queen away for safety rather than kill her. She is taken in by woods people and lives happily for seven years, and slowly her hands grow back. The king returns and seeks her out in the woods, and they live happily ever after.

The Stages:

The bargain without knowing = The end of innocence. (What poor bargain did you make?) Everywoman gives up her deep self knowledge and power for a more frail self. We trade our wild selves for the promise of riches, but the reward is hollow. We choose superficial riches and gives up dominion over some part of our passionate, creative and instinctive life. We become a sleep-walker, yet this is a necessary step on our journey. A catalyst. The father who guides us is ignorant of the connection between the inner and the outer worlds. Things are not what they appear to be.
The (symbolic) dismemberment, or separation from false life/innocence
The wandering (foraging for fruit symbolic of feminine strength)
Finding love in the underworld (she is rescued, but not yet whole)
Harrowing of the Soul (a time of healing, a shamanistic initiation during which she rediscovers her creative inner strength)
The realm of the Wild Woman (return to society as a fully empowered, adult woman bringing gifts of knowledge, maturity and fertility.)

art by Jeanie Tomanek http://www.jeanietomanek.com

For a terrifically written, thoughtful and more thorough analysis of this and other fairy tales, as well as art inspired by them, visit my new favorite link, the extremely awesome Terri Windling’s Blog, Myth & Moor.

“The trials these wounded young heroes encounter illustrate the process of transformation: from youth to adulthood, from victim to hero, from a maimed state to wholeness, from passivity to action. Fairy tales are… maps through the woods, trails of stones to mark the path, marks carved into trees to let us know that other women and men have been this way before.”

Windling concludes her analysis by saying: “Likewise, we’re not meant to remain in the circle of enchantment deep in the fairy tale forest — we’re meant to come back out again, bringing our hard-won knowledge and fortune with us…in service to the family (old or new), the realm, the community; to children and the future.”

Inspiration for Writing and Life

A better source of inspiration for writing women’s fiction I can’t imagine. One of my novels, a work-in-progress entitled “Coming About,” is a more intentional exploration of a woman’s journey through various stages of this process of metaphysical maturation and self-discovery. It’s about a woman who values her professional success as an architect over her selfhood as a woman. At the beginning, she has figuratively sold her soul to the devil by having an affair with her boss, and must lose everything she values and go on a spiritual retreat to learn how to integrate her inner and outer worlds.

This journey also serves as a metaphor for a writer’s life. What are we, as storytellers, doing, besides entertaining our readers, if not bringing our life’s journey to bear on stories that are a product of our creative imagination. For what purpose? To share them with our community, and our children. As I said earlier, this is the very purpose of myth – and of story. To pass along the wisdom of the ages.

If you’re a writer, have you applied this framework of the heroine’s journey to your writing? And whether you are or not, does this fairy tale speak to you in terms of your own life journey?

August 9, 2013 by M A Clarke Scott

Mental Illness: Coming to a Family Near You

SILVER LININGS PLAYBOOK

Last year when I took The Ring Screenwriting workshop, we were asked to view the newly released Silver Linings Playbook and come prepared to dissect and discuss it in class. I loved the movie. It was incredibly well written and directed, with a first class ensemble cast, as subsequent awards proved. But what I took away from it was something more. Something personal. And that is the way the film delves into the impact of mental illness on ordinary families in the ordinary world. I’m not talking about stalkers and serial killers (Basic Instinct, Silence of the Lambs), or eccentric heroic geniuses (Batman, Ironman anyone?). As much as we are fascinated by the extraordinary in society, I think the ordinary is just as engrossing.

MENTAL ILLNESS IS NORMAL

Mental Illness is not only normal, it’s far more widespread than we might like to admit. Think about it. Between Schizophrenia, Bi-Polar Disorder, Depression, Anxiety Disorders that include Eating Disorders, Phobias and Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, Autism, Addictions, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder – and the many nuances and variations I haven’t mentioned – that’s a pretty big chunk of society, isn’t it? And a large proportion of that is undiagnosed. Just like Pat, the protagonist in Silver Linings Playbook, he “white-knucked it” on his own most of his life, until something happened, some extraordinarily stressful event triggered a breakdown. He snapped, and all hell broke loose.

I love these two scenes for illustrating just that point. Here is Pat’s BF Ronnie talking about how the stresses of life feel to him, and how he deals with it.It makes you wonder who’s the crazy one.(WARNING: These clips contain a bit of vulgar language.)

The Pressure

It’s My Therapy

In a SAG interview with screenwriter/director David O. Russell he talks about his son, and how this story appealed to him as a way of integrating and normalizing mental illness for his son. He doesn’t give any details of his son’s condition, but I can only assume that Russell is pretty sensitive to what it’s like to try to live a normal life, and to help a loved one lead a normal life, under these challenging circumstances. He specifically refers to how the main characters’ illness affects all the people around them.

AT WHAT COST?

How many families are impacted by mental health issues? Is yours? Mine is. Do you ever wonder what it’s like to experience dealing with alcoholism, depression, OCD and Bi-Polar disorder, on top of the normal challenges and stresses of life? Or do you already know. I’ve seen what any of those things can do to the family members who’s lives are affected. The spouses, the children, the parents. It sucks a lot of energy. It can bring you down. It can derail a career or a marriage. It puts enourmous strain on relationships. It can spoil the holidays and make everyone afraid to speak, for fear of saying the wrong thing, of setting someone off, of doing harm. And so we hold it in. And it’s easy for the damage to spread. For family members to become enablers.

And when I saw the movie, this is what I thought about. Not only about the impact mental illness has on the lives of the people who suffer from one condition or another, but of the ripples of disruption that spread outward from the patient to their families, friends, coworkers and community. Pretty soon you see it’s an intricately woven blanket that spreads over us all. And often it’s not diagnosed at all, is poorly understood and not supported.

One of my favourite scenes from the movie, not the diner scene with Jennifer Lawrence that you most often see, or any of the scenes which depict the two protagonists, the two “mental health” patients interacting with each other, but instead the interaction between the two brothers, Pat and Jake.

This was one of my favourite scenes in the film, because it shows so beautifully how the family of Pat is affected by his illness. Watch to see how they are all on tenterhooks during the exchange. It’s beautifully portrayed. It’s a testament to Pat’s recovery that Jake’s anxiety and general weirdness doesn’t push any of his buttons, and he rises above it.

I Got Nothin But Love For You Brother

Leave a comment and tell me, if you’ve seen the movie, which was your favourite scene and why? Can you relate to any of the characters in Silver Linings Playbook?

M. A. CLARKE SCOTT, Author

Romantic Women's Fiction ~ Healing, Wholeness, Hope ~ Stories for Life

Patience