When you are indie published, the author hat comes off, and the marketing one goes on. Not only marketing, but the scheduling, speechwriting, and distribution hats.
One could work fulltime plus overtime to reach out to all the people, and do all the things, that the professionals recommend in the weeks following a book launch. But when you are one, and not a team, it takes time. One thing I wanted to get to on my list was contact Kay Marrero of Fishers. Her Creek Readers group is composed largely--maybe exclusively--of retired teachers from the Fishers area. Here's a funny story about networking. One would assume that Brian somehow connected me with this wonderful book club. He spent the bulk of his career as a Fishers educator. That would only make sense, right? But no! It was a New Castle friend who connected me. Mary Malone's best friend is a Creek Reader. Mary shared my first book with her pal, Rita, who shared it with her book club. Mary picked me up one night and off we went to a meeting where we discussed the book. Can I even begin to tell you the thrill involved in being asked questions about your "baby," -- your book-- by interested readers? Then they invited me in to do the same with the second novel. Since that was five or six years ago, I wondered if the club was still going strong. I couldn't seem to find Kay's contact information! Well, again, Mary saved the day. She reached out to Rita, and Friday night, my cell phone rang. It was Kay, excited about the new book and by the way, she has the pick for May and it's There's a Clydesdale in the Attic: Reflections on Keeping and Letting Go. She needed nine copies for the group. We met yesterday for the hand off. Kay also plans to share Clydesdale with another book club she's in, the Fishers United Methodist Church. The club also read my novels. What fun it was, too, to meet with them for the discussion. This is why I informally call my book journey my Tupperware party. One gathering leads to another. You never know where the ride will take you, or when it will end. You simply count your blessings and let the wind blow through your hair during the ride. My calendar is full for March and April, with some May and one big June booking in place. It's time to write, write, and write some more programs. It is an honor when someone contacts me and says, "We were wondering if you would consider ..." If you know me or have read Clydesdale, you know how ridiculous I am about a GOOD BOX. In the grocery store before meeting up with Kay to hand off the books, I spotted two empties inside some refrigerator doors. They looked perfectly sized for my books. I asked if I could have them and they didn't care. I got home and gathered the nine copies for Kay. They nestled beautifully into one of these boxes. "I can't get over how perfect those fit in there," said Brian. "I know!" I beamed. "I will be going back to snag more of these." Yes, these little book boxes are on my grocery list from now on. Thank you, Anderson Payless! We Cronks love us a GOOD box.
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Note: Henry County artist Marilyn Witt spent her career with the U.S. Postal Service, and then found a new adventure as an artist. She is on the go as she collects ideas for her art, then paints in her home studio or with other artists in New Castle. She also participates in competitions, and does all involved with her second-act career. Marilyn has created the cover art for all three of my books, including the new one, There's a Clydesdale in the Attic: Reflections on Keeping and Letting Go. Enjoy a visit with Marilyn. Q: Marilyn, what do you enjoy about being an artist? A: Knowing that I am responsible for making someone else happy is one of the most fulfilling feelings a person can experience. Having the ability to move people intellectually or emotionally through something you have made. It is a good feeling to witness my artwork making others feel or think something; watching someone respond to my artwork in a profound way is one of the best feelings for an artist. By being an artist, I get to feel the invigorating energy of creativity. You are surrounded by beauty. You get to be surrounded by a community of other artists who share in your experiences. Whether someone is learning how to become an artist or the artist has been creating for years, an artist community is filled with artists of all ranges and styles. What they have in common is a passion for the act of creating something new that adds value to your world. And last, by being able to place a monetary value on your creations, you see the worth of what you've made in a dollar amount. Knowing someone will pay money to have your artwork is a special feeling. Q. Were you artsy earlier in life before the empty nest? A. I guess in a way I was artsy. I was always doodling, even on my school papers, which wasn't always appreciated by my teachers. I thought more about being a musician or singer, though, when I was younger. I played the piano and violin and still play the piano. The only thing I considered when younger in the visual arts was being a dress designer. I still wish at times I had pursued it. I drew and cut out outfits for my paper dolls, even sewing or gluing on them bits of lace, rickrack, or tiny beads. Then when I began sewing, I made clothes for my dolls, and for my cats. I always enhanced my own clothing and my children's. I also designed and made costumes for community theater for the Guyer Opera House. I didn't begin painting until my children graduated from high school and I began taking art classes at Indiana University East. Q. What's it like being a cover artist? A. One of the purposes of a book cover is to draw the attention of curious readers. The book- cover artist needs to be sure that each book cover created is both representative of the contents and spirit of the book and also be attention-grabbing when surrounded by all the other books. It needs to capture the attention of the reader. It is interesting and fun to create and design a cover that coincides with the author's visions for their work. I enjoy the challenge of working with the artist and learning their thoughts. Besides, you get to be the first one to read the book. Q. What was the experience of designing There's a Clydesdale in the Attic: Reflections on Keeping and Letting Go like? A. This is the third book cover I have created for Donna. I enjoyed them all, but this one has been the most challenging, stressful at times, fun, and I think, the most rewarding experience for me, as an artist, of all of them. It needed to be a unique design and include all the features in the attic to express the mood of the author's writing and the essence of the story. Coming up with the items for the cover attic that were in the stories in the book was a lot of fun. Next was to design them in a way that is representative of the contents of the book and attention-grabbing when readers are skimming the bookstore shelves. I wanted a "wow" factor. I think that was the lady with her hands on her hips wondering what in the world she was going to do with all this. Donna gave me the idea and I had to make her just right. Maybe the hardest thing for me was making sure I didn't overload this one and make it too busy. After all, nearly anything can be in an attic, but this was one particular attic. Or maybe the most difficult was those rafters. The most enjoyable part was working with the author. Donna knew what she wanted and shared her vision. I was able to develop a few ideas too for how the cover should look. In the end, I think it was a great experience. I hope for both of us. Note from Donna: Yes it was, Marilyn. And I can't thank you enough. It is an honor to work with you. Marilyn is a member of numerous national and local art organizations. Her paintings are in various private and corporate collections in numerous states. Her work may be seen in the Brown County Art Gallery.
Married to Dennis, the couple farm near Straughn. Their family includes a son and a daughter along with several grandchildren and great-grandchildren. Marilyn is active in her church and community. Connect with her on her website, marilynwittart.com or via email: mjw4arts@nltc.net. Whenever I have the pleasure of traveling the back roads of Indiana, I play a private little game of "I Spy." What I'm looking for are examples of one thing: old iron dinner bells posted atop posts in people's lawns. Usually the bells are near what I suspect to be the kitchen entrance, or are decked out within a piece of landscaping or flower bed. The bells are reminiscent of a time when Grandma rang the bell to let Grandpa know dinner's on the table. Or, they rang it loud and fast to let the neighbors know something was on fire. Or, at least that is what I surmise. You tend not to see such relics on lawns with ranch houses or other modern structures. These bells are generally part and parcel of older farmhouses. There were two old iron bells on my family's property. One is hosted, I'm sure to this day, next to the kitchen porch. The other sat in a corner of the barn. When my folks' things were parceled out, I claimed the bell from the barn but then it sat in corner of two of our garages. It never made it to the front burner as far as the to-do list went. Then a few years ago, before my season of cleaning out the attic, I decided it should leave or get an upgrade. We called our friend Monty, who makes jobs Brian and I don't know how to do look easy. He put up a post, then attached the bell. I love it. Last summer I adorned the space surrounding the pole with marigolds. I'll do the same come May. You can take the girl off the farm but you can't take the farm out of the girl. What's in your attic? Yard? Barn? Basement or back of the closet? Probably more than you know. For more Friday nights growing up than I can count in elementary school, I got to ride the school bus home with Cheryl. Suppertime came early in their home, and then came riding on her tandem bike, playing around the farm, or in her little community. But come dark, it was time to get out the Barbies and play until our eyes could no longer stay open. Cheryl and her sister had such treasures as a Barbie car and I'm pretty sure, if memory serves, a Barbie Dream House. They had a Ken for the Barbies to swoon after, and lots of cool Barbie clothes, including a faux mink coat. The Barbies I'm showing are Barbie, Skipper and Midge. These girls played hard! They worked hard! Only after I was grown did little girls start owning fancy Barbies who were too pretty or special to play with. Not my girls. They are treasures of little to zero value on the market (sorry girls, but your bangs situation depleted your retail status). But to me, they are my Barbies and I'm keeping them.
Do you have your Barbies? I talk about my Barbies and so many other things in my new memoir, There's a Clydesdale in the Attic: Reflections on Keeping and Letting Go. It's on Amazon, or you can get it from me as soon as my books arrive by Feb. 12. If you'd asked me two years ago if I'd ever write another book, I'd have told you I didn't know. For two or maybe three years, I wrote weekly devotions for our church's Facebook page. Maybe I'd keep writing more, and one day go through them and create a book. I'd be asked if I planned to add a third book to the Sweetland of Liberty Bed & Breakfast series. I didn't think so. I left the first sequel, That Sweet Place: At Home in the Heartland, with more to come regarding Sam and her love interest. But I didn't know if I had another angle to tell. The books had satisfied my ache during my prolonged adjustment to the empty nest. I no longer felt passionate about a third visit to my beloved fictional inn. Not far into 2020, I still had calls about providing book or writing programs. At this time one year ago, I was busy finishing up the planning with devotional writer and friend Debbie McCray on a devotions workshop at my church, I had been asked to provide programs for four other organizations in the months to come, and I was still working at the newspaper. It was plenty on my plate, along with some other personal hobbies and studies. Then my brother, Tim, unexpectedly passed away in March, a loss I will always feel. I miss him so much. Tim was laid to rest on St. Patrick's Day. I think of that day also as the beginning of the pandemic. The realization hit me, oddly, when a masked face or two was spotted at the burial site, and there was no place to gather to visit with family and friends--the restaurants were closed to eat-in customers. The boys came back to our house and we had pizza. The next day I went to work only to learn that we were all being sent home to work. No one knew for how long. I had no idea how I'd get it all done from home without in-person interviews or photos. But we learned and the paper came out every day it is supposed to with no blank pages inside. As a feature writer, I had to find more to write about more than mask making, although I was happy for those stories. There was one about a nursing home resident who was more than 100 and who recovered from Covid. Things were scary and sad, and soon, I might not even be able to spare a square of toilet paper, but I needed to find a silver lining. I am a seeker of silver linings. So I started writing a series called Lighter Side of Isolation. Brian and I found projects around the house, or observations about being on the hunt for toilet paper, or Zoom, or changing out our lightbulbs for LED ones. We had most of the entire downstairs interior painted. We moved Ben from Indy to Carmel. Then I told Brian I had an idea for cleaning out the attic. The idea involved one tote a week. But what I found interested me so much that I looked forward to climbing those stairs once a week or even taking that hike several times a week as I got into the swing of it. I started writing about some of the finds and more than the objects, the stories about why they were elevated to the lofty status of attic storage. I found things I thought were lost. (hello, Gladys Rude's original painting!) And got rid of stuff I once thought deserved saving (goodbye prom dresses). I collected story ideas from those attic finds. If only I had time to write about them, this might be ... a book. It was published last night and just like that, the Kindle version posted. I posted on Facebook a "life event." The night-owl friends started commenting ... and finally I just had to get to bed. Earlier today the morning people chimed in ... and to my delight, some offers to host me at some meetings and banquets have presented themselves. This is what floats my boat! Soon I'll be out there visiting with people -- those in my hometowns of Brownsville and Liberty, and my career hometown of New Castle and other Henry County locations. Some new venues have also emerged, and I'm awaiting specifics. In case you're wondering, I'm fully vaccinated, to include the booster. When I finalize dates, I'll start a calendar for upcoming programs, closed or open. And I'll be spending lots of time writing programs tailored to their (and maybe your) specs. Meanwhile, here's the winter issue of the magazine I used to edit, now the charge of editor Katie Clontz. I'm grateful for the cover plug. It will be inside your Saturday New Castle Courier-Times and I'm sure they'll have extra on hand at 201 S. 14th St. The books are up on amazon, and I'll be stocking them for sale on this end too. |
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