Brazen Marketing: Caught and Kept

I am an indie author.  That sounds so renegade and free spirited but in reality it means one.  Not one thing.  Just one.  Me.  All me.  Just me.  I don’t have staff.  On second thought, I do beg Syd Parker to clean up my book covers with her mad graphic skills and I plead with friends who have more grammar skills than me to cull through my manuscripts.  So I might have, at least, volunteers.  However, the task of marketing a book is down to me.  I should be fired. 

It’s funny because in my day job I can discuss with clients how to get themselves out into the world all day long.  When it comes to me, I post an announcement on Facebook and then quietly step away hoping I haven’t disturbed anyone.  When I wrote my first book, Infinity’s Song, in 2012 it took me almost seven months to publish it.  A friend finally sent me a song with the lyric, “you’ve got a voice as loud as lions so why let your voice be tamed?” and then said she was waiting to hold my book in her hands.  With tactics like that, what was a girl to do but publish her book?  But the marketing is still where I fall down.  It’s the place where being an indie is a disadvantage. 

In an effort to rectify that, at least a little, I’m going to blog about my latest book, Caught and Kept available now on Amazon and through your independent bookstores.  (I secretly hope you order through a bookstore.  What would the world be without them? But, alas, our e-readers are so convenient.)

Caught and Kept is the second in the Siren’s Song Series. The book was written at a time when I was experiencing much turmoil and loss.  My twenty two year marriage had ended, but I also had a couple of friendships that were in flux and one in particular for which I was grieving.  I didn’t really know where solid ground was in my life.  As I pondered the reality that friendships have the ability to break your heart just as much as lovers, Caught and Kept was born.

My setting is personally important in this book.  The majority of the book takes place on Whidbey Island, Washington.  I recently left the island after fifteen years.  As I wrote I felt my time there was coming to an end.  I wanted this book to reflect my love of Whidbey and the magic it holds.  I’ve often called it my own Avalon…an island set apart by the mists of Puget Sound.  However, the book is part of The Siren Song Series and the Siren is both a place and a character for me.  The Siren’s Song is an imaginary private club located in Seattle just for lesbians.  I physically based the Siren on the downtown YMCA building (the irony wasn’t lost on me, trust me).  A quiet, unassuming and yet, pretty brick building you could walk by and never realize was there, but for the sign.  The concept was simple.  I designed a space I wish existed for us.  A beautiful, safe, supportive and nurturing place for women to find community and be themselves.  After the book came out that was the number one Facebook message, “Please tell me it’s real!”  My reply remains the same: I’ll build it if I sell enough books.    

I got asked recently, “Are Kai and Dani real?”  Yes.  All my characters are real.  I draw from my life and those around me.  It’s important that when I write, the characters are people with their own lives and stories.  My closest friends will recognize pieces of themselves in all of my characters.  Recently, I was given a little plaque that said, “Be careful or you’ll end up in my novel.”  My friends all know that’s true.

Reviews and feedback tell me readers find this book a quiet, sweet romance with humor.  I was pleased to hear that.  Sometimes love comes quietly, either in romance or in friendships or in the case of Kai and Dani, both.  I hope for those of you who have already read Caught and Kept, you enjoyed it.  If you haven’t yet read it, I’d be honored if you’d put in on your list. Please, do let me know what you think.   

In the true marketing spirit, I’m offering a giveaway.  Find me on Facebook and private message me your funniest or sweetest memory of a best friend.  The first three that make me laugh out loud or tear up will receive a signed copy of Caught and Kept or Infinity’s Song. If you prefer email send them to penelope_grey@yahoo.com.  

Untethered

“You must be so excited.” 

Those words were said to me more than once yesterday as I ran around on my first day back from England.  I live on an island so, of course, people know almost as much about me as I do.  They certainly all know I’ve been gone for six weeks; that my house sale is pending inspections and escrow; that I have a new place in Portland.  A few know I am dating someone new.  Such a simple conjecture—”you must be so excited”—but really what I feel is untethered.  It’s a word that whispers itself in the back of my head.  Sometimes it feels ominously threatening and at other times it feels joyous.

As I came home from the airport the other night, it was one of those island nights that defies description.  The air was warm, the sky was beyond gorgeous, the Sound glistened, and the stars twinkled just on the edge of the dusk—the island, the Sound, the sky, and my soul all woven together.  Those are the nights that make me want to get on my hands and knees and kiss the earth.  For I live in a place that makes you earn them, let me tell you.  As the ferry sailed closer and closer to the Clinton dock, I was filled with a deep love and reverence for this place.  Coming up the hill from the boat, I immediately wanted to stop everything I had set into motion four months ago.  I wanted to text my real estate agent and say, “Just kidding.  I’m not selling.”  I wanted to call all my clients and say, “I’ll be back on Monday if you’ll take me.”  But then I heard the word untethered in the back of my head…as if carried by the wind.  The last few days have been full of those moments. Hang on or let go.  And each time that word lingers.

I came to the island seeking roots and grounding.  In the last fifteen years I’ve gotten that aplenty.  I have a community of people who have held me up and carried me through so much.  And they’ve allowed me the honor of returning that favor. I literally learned to feel the earth—in my hands as I learned to garden and grow food—and in my soul as learned I am merely a small creature on this planet. 

Now, it feels as if those around me know it’s time for me to leave this place.  For now…perhaps...but, I hope, not forever.  So I am greeted with: “you must be so excited” often these days.  It’s as if everyone can see it’s time for me to fly and they are gently letting go of the tie that binds me here by offering me anticipation.  As much as there is possibility in that, there is deep fear.  What if, like a balloon released from a grasping hand, I float so high and far there is nothing to hold me anymore?  In the quietest of moments this morning, another thought came to me.  Unless I am untethered, I will never know if there is somewhere else in the world I am meant to land and grow new roots. 

London Adventures Part Three: Re-Emergence (Originally written in March)

The number one question I get asked is, “What is it like to be away for a month?”  And by ‘away’, I assume people mean not engaged with my regular day to day life— a connotation of being exotic or mysterious.  The truth is, if I hadn’t gotten on that plane the day I left, the likelihood of me being here today is minimal.  I don’t mean that in as quite a dramatic sense as it sounds. I wasn’t terminally ill seeking a miracle or on the verge of a nervous breakdown.  But I was completely spent and depleted emotionally, mentally and physically.  In fact, upon arriving in London I spent the first four days very ill, grateful for caring friends who looked after me.  So my answer to the question most asked is, “It was fabulous.”  However, fabulous came as an evolution. 

The last year and a half has been tumultuous, yet empowering. A divorce and the act of dividing a life shared for more than twenty years, coupled with closing my business and leaping into an unknown future away from my island community, left me exhausted on every level. This trip was meant as a respite where time wasn’t dictated by others, but only by my own desires.  I didn’t set an alarm.  I only looked at the time on my phone on the days I had reservations or trains to catch.  I ate when I felt like it.  I went where I wanted.  I did nothing because I ‘was supposed to’. Day after day, I felt the layers of stress I had carried, almost unknowingly, fall away from me.  My breathing became deeper.  My mind slowed, which those who know me will tell you is rare.  Sleep, which had been elusive for years, came easily.  I slept eight hours or more, something not usually done unless I am sick or under prescribed medications.  My body, which has the standard aches and pains of any middle-aged body that is not as well tended as it should be, relaxed.  I don’t recall taking Advil once.

Aside from the physical manifestations, something else began to happen.  Something more subtle, almost imperceptible.  It started at the pub one night with new friends.  Someone said something funny, and we all laughed.  A few days later, the moment repeated itself.  I found that every day I laughed.  Loudly, deeply and freely.  Not a chuckle or a smirk or a giggle.  But the kind of laughter that brings tears, or makes your muscles ache.  Were my U.K. friends funnier than my American friends?  Not necessarily.  Over the last several years, I had forgotten to make time for laughter.  Strange how something so small can become a luxury we sacrifice in the face of stress.  With the laughter came a lightness I had forgotten about...of spirit and heart. One of my oldest friends from my school days in the U.K. said in my third week that I was more like my old self, someone he hadn’t seen in a while.  To be honest, I hadn’t even realized I had gone missing, but sometimes we don’t know that we’ve slipped away until we emerge again. 

So my time ‘away’ was fabulous to be sure.  The real trick will be to hold its lessons and bring them forward in my real life.  Already I sleep less and do more ‘shoulds’ than ‘wants’, but the laughter and my true self is something I don’t want to lose again.  Thus far, holding strong!

An Update (Written June 2014):

I’ve returned to London for another visit.  The life back home has drastically changed.  My home for the last fifteen years is for sale. I’ve packed and moved my bare essentials into a small studio flat in Portland, Oregon.  Everything else that matters is contained in about twenty five boxes in a small 8x8x5 storage pod and my business is closed.  I’m not sure what the future holds for me when I return.  

Right now, I am sipping a morning cup of tea and listening the East End of London wake up to a sunny day.  I returned, well, because I can.  I wanted to continue my explorations of London. This period of “just me” time will likely not come around again for many years in my life.  So I am embracing it.  When I stood at Customs and the agent asked about my return so soon after a month long stay, I smiled brightly and said, “Why not?  I have time off and I love London.”  She smiled and said, “Enjoy your trip.” And I am enjoying my trip.  Everything I wrote in March still holds true.  I find my true self each day I remember to laugh and to ask myself what I need today.  Re-emergence isn’t a one-time event.  It’s a process.