A Good Conference and Great Doughnut

Posted on by johnpbaur

Tori and I spent a great day in Houma, Louisiana, at the Jambalaya Writers Conference Saturday. Here are a few of the highlights.

Before I talk about the conference, let me say this. At the opening, when people were checking in, they had THE BEST doughnuts I have eaten in my life I’m not kidding, the very best doughnuts ever, and I’ve eaten a few doughnuts. They were by a local bakery called “Mr. Ronnie’s Famous Hot Doughnuts,” and they were so good. A little doughier than you usually get, but not too chewy, and yeasty and – well, just delicious. So there’s that. If you’re ever in Houma, do not miss the doughnuts. I had five.

Now. About writing.

“You have to confront your worst fear, and maybe your worst fear is you’re not as good as you think you are.” But you’ll never find out if you are or not if you don’t try.

That was Washington Post reporter and crime novelist Neely Tucker, who looks a LOT like Billy Bob Thorton. Not that his physical resemblance has anything to do with him as a writer or a speaker. It’s just a thing. I missed his keynote speech after lunch, had to go out to the pickup and don my pirate gear for the book fair portion of the event, which followed.

But he spoke again in an afternoon session. I’d love to have made that a full quote, but that’s all I was able to hear. His mike was dying and it was a big room and at that point in the talk I was only picking up about half of what he said. But the context was that fear that you’re not good enough is NOT a reason not to write, and what he said after the bit I couldn’t quite make out wouldn’t have made any sense if he was saying “You have to confront your fear, so don’t even think about being a writer.” I’m confident that what I’ve written there is what he was saying, if not the exact words.

And it’s good advice. As Tori and I often said when contemplating our move from Oregon tot he Caribbean, “You’ll never learn if you can fly unless you throw yourself off the cliff.” Either way it makes sense. You’re itching to tell a story, but you’re afraid you’re not good enough? Scratch the damn itch.

A Long Flight

Another presenter was a guy who has been an editor for Random House for 31 years. He was talking about “the state of the publishing industry today. (Short answer: Upset, worried, unsure, but like 31 years ago.)

But he also told the story about the longest day of his life. This happened before he had learned one of the first rules of being an editor at a major publisher – if someone asks you what you do for a living, so you’re an insurance claims adjustor, or an actuary (no one actually knows what an actuary is, so unless the person who asks actually is one, you’re safe) or a pastry chef, ANYTHING besides a book editor. Because if you tell someone what you really are, they’re going to pitch their book, and sometimes you’re trapped.

Sure enough, sometime around 30 years ago he had just gotten on a plane. The guy sitting next to him was chaperoning a church group of young people on their way to the Holy Land. And the guy asked him, “What do you do for a living?” And he said, “I’m an editor for Random House.”

Wouldn’t you know it, the guy had written a book! Who could have guessed that? And not just any book, oh no. Not even any church related book.

No. This guy had translated the Bible. The whole Bible. The holy scripture, the revealed word of the lord, so to speak.

And nothing so mundane as a rate language. He had translated the Bible into …

Wait for it …

Limericks. That’s right. The word of god as if the almighty were a bawdy Irish storyteller. Can you imagine? I’m just guessing, because the editor said, with some regret, that he no longer had the manuscript, but it might have gone something like this.

The Lord set it off with a word –
The earth, every tree every bird.
But a snake spoke to Eve
With a trick up his sleeve,
And now paradise is deferred.

OK. Not very good. But I’m not pitching it to an editor, either.

I Surprised Myself

I was at the conference because I had been asked to do a presentation on “getting the word out” on your book. Marketing. I don’t know why they asked me. I’m not sure how they even had a clue about me. I had been to the library last October for their book fair, sold a few, had a nice time. I was as surprised as anyone when I got the invitation to present. But I took the risk. Kind of goes back to what Neely Tucker said about writing. Maybe I’d be awful, and then we’d know that and could move on.

But I was pretty good. In fact, I had a room with about 30 or so people who listened, smiled, interacted ­hell, some of them even took notes! That surprised me, to look out at them and see people with their heads in their notebooks scribbling. What had I said that was worth writing down? Maybe it was my presentation.

They put me and Tori up a the Marriott across the street from the library. My presentation was in the first round of the morning so we had the rest of the day to attend others. I’ll pass on some of the stuff I picked up later this week, along with what I had to say – after I go through my script and figure out what it was I said that was interesting enough to take notes on.

Being a Pirate Is All Fun and Games

Posted on by johnpbaur
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Ol’ Chumbucket asks Zoey for her favorite letter as he reads “A L’Il Pirate’s ABSeas.”

You never know what you’re going to get when you face a roomful of kids. Monday in the westbank community of Algiers Point, we got a lot of fun.

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Captain John Swallow, Sjeka Hellbound Groves and Copper Otter.

“We” were me, my wife Mad Sally, and three buccaneers from NOLA Pyrate Week, which is going on this week. The leaders of Pyrate Week, Captain John Swallow and Quartermaster Sjeka “Hellbound” Groves, organized the event with the Algiers library and the Confetti Park Kids organization. We were also accompanied by Copper Otter the pirate. 

There were about 30 kids in all, ranging in age from, I would guess, about a year and a half to a class of about 20 kids in the first or second grade range. They all came in and sat neatly on the floor and cushions in the children’s area of the library, one of the old Carnegie Libraries, built in 1907 and a perfect match for the quaint neighborhood.

And they stared at us. They were intrigued, but they weren’t giving anything away.

 

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Kids always have their hands up – sometimes they even have questions.

So Captain Swallow introduced us, and suggested perhaps I’d do a reading. You know me, of course I said “Sure! But first, a song!” 

I don’t like to do all the work by myself, so I taught the kids their part, and they were great. I sang “Being a Pirate” – and if you’re “of the brotherhood” you know the song. “Being a pirate is all fun and games, ’til somebody loses an eye. It hurts like the blazes, it makes you make faces, but you can’t let your mates see you cry …” and on through the various body parts a pirate might lose, ear, hand, leg, “whatsis.” Each time I got to something being cut off, many of the kids would wince or gasp. But on the chorus, “It’s all part of being a part …” and they’d shout out their part – “A pirate! A pirate!” with some much gusto the room shook. “You can’t be a pirate, with all of your pa-a-arts! Oh! It’s all part of being a pirate” – and them again, “A pirate! A PIRATE!” – You can’t be a pirate, with all of your parts.”

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Mad Sally, Sjeka Grove and Copper Otter.

What fun, and when we were done the kids belonged to us. I didn’t try to read to them from “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter,” because it was much to young a crowd, although I made sure to mention to the handful of parents in the room that I had copies with me for sale and they might really enjoy it. Instead, I’d had the foresight to bring the children’s alphabet book Cap’n Slappy and I had written – “A Li’l Pirate’s ABSeas.” I didn’t read the whole thing, but I let them call out their favorite letters and read those to ’em. And I made sure to finish with the letter U, because it’s a kid’s favorite. 

“U is for UNDERWEAR, every crew wears ’em.
Each man has his own, and nobody shares ’em.
Some personal things belong just to you,
And shouldn’t be shared with the rest of the crew.
One is your boxers, but – Please! Keep ’em clean!
‘Cause if they get stinky, the crew will get mean.”

As the father of six, I know that “Underwear” is the second funniest word in the English language to that age, second only to “Butt.” Really. Go ask any five year old.

Slappy and I have always said that “A Li’l Pirate’s ABSeas” is NOT the book perfect parents buy for their perfect children. It’s a book the perfect child’s drunken uncle or wild aunt buy them so they don’t grow up to be complete prigs.

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Reading to the powder monkeys.

Anyway, we all had a blast. Captain Swallow and Hellbound talked to the kids about pirates – who they were, what they did and some of the things everybody “knows” about pirates that just ain’t so.

The kids had questions – Oh lord, the kids had questions. They always do. At that age, when a kid raises his hand, it means one of three things. The kid actually has a question that might have something to do with what you’re talking about, the kid wants to say something, that might or might not have anything to do with the subject, and – most often – the kid really wants to have a question but when you call on him or her, she or he hasn’t actually thought of one or has forgotten it.

Good times.

Anyway, it was a fun morning and I like to think everyone had a good time. And I even sold a couple of books – one of each! So that was fun too.

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Pirates meet youngsters at the library in Algiers Point. Below – Chumbucket teams up with the Terrible Pirate Zoey, and Super Pirate!

Kind Words Keep Coming

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(Well that’s embarrassing. I realized this morning I’d already posted this as a tag to an earlier post. I had saved them in a file for something else, and just forgot I’d already used them here.

Oh well, I’m still proud of them. And the couple of grafs at the end are new, so that’s something.

I’ll try to keep on top of things better, – jb)

Enthusiastic reviews continue to come in for “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter.” These were logged recently on the book’s Amazon page.

“I bought this book to bring with me on a cruise to the Caribbean, and enjoyed every minute of it. John Baur writes exceptional pirate stories, and this was no exception. His attention to historical detail, geography, and character development was great. I felt like I learned a lot about the pirate era from reading this book. I’m 43 and enjoyed this book, but my six-year-old daughter will enjoy it too when she gets a little older, maybe 8-9.”

Chris John

“I really enjoyed this book. Great storyline, full of adventure, and very entertaining. Well written without any holes, the author did a great job tying everything together. It was also nice reading a good story that is clean, thus making it suitable to young adults and adults of any age. I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to be carried away on a high seas adventure in search of a villainous pirate! I hope a sequel is in the works, arr!”

Mark Beal

All I can say about it being “clean” is – The first draft was read, chapter by chapter as I wrote them, to the fifth grade class my wife was teaching, over the course of the school year. The kids helped steer the story, and they’re all listed in the acknowledgements. Obviously, under the circumstances I couldn’t put in anything that would get me in trouble with the teacher. She can be really strict!

And yeah, Mark, I’m planning a sequel. Two, actually. As soon as I finish the two and a half other projects I’m in the middle of.

And Chris, great thinking! I can’t think of a better place to read “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter,” than in the Caribbean. After all, that’s where I wrote it! My wife’s fifth grade classroom overlooked the sea, she could have tossed a stone (or a student!) from her classroom window and hit the waves. It’s a wonder they ever got any work done there.

jb

 

 

Shaping Up to be a Busy Year

Posted on by johnpbaur

It’s shaping up to be a very good, very busy summer.

I’ll be traveling with many, many copies of my book, “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter,” and hoping to come home with a lot fewer. So far, I’m scheduled for:

– NOLA Pyrate Week, March 25 through April 3. Don’t known how many of the weeklong activities I’ll be able to take part in, it’s also spring break and there are a bunch of things I’m committed to for the family. But I’ll definitely be taking part in event at the Algiers Library 9 a.m. Monday at the Algiers Library, and will squeeze in any others I can. (And it’s safe to say I’ll have a few copies of Chrissie on hand, “just in case.”)

– April 2, I’ll be doing a presentation on marketing at the Jambalaya Writers Conference in Houma, Louisiana. I’m pretty excited about this. My presentation will also make for some good blog posts, after I try it out on a live audience.

– June 4 and 5, I’ll be at the Blackbeard Festival in Hampton, Virginia, where I’ll be doing a reading and selling books.

– Aug. 12 and 13, I’m going to be at the Beaufort Pirate Invasion in North Carolina. They’re setting up a special author and artist space.

– Sept. 19 is International Talk Like a Pirate Day. On the 17th and 18th I’ll be in Cedar Key, Florida, for their Pirate Invasion, with a reading scheduled at the local library.

All of those events are the pins in the map, so to speak. Now I have to schedule other events en route or in neighboring towns. I have a list of potential venues provided by fans and I’ll be on the phone next week trying to set things up.

And there’s still the Tybee Island Pirate Festival in October, which is supposed to be another of the good ones. I was set up to attend that one last year, but Tori started her new job the beginning of the week and really wasn’t in a position to say, “Oh yeah, I need a couple of days off at the end of my first week.” Did I mention she usually travels with me? She might not be able to make Beaufort this year, but she’s definitely up for the rest of it.

I’ll also be carrying some other books, written by me and my pirate partner Cap’n Slappy. We have found that a table with more than one title on it draws a better crowd.

So it’s starting to look like a productive time coming up, with a lot of road trips and I hope a lot of fun – and book sales.

This week’s words to focus on when I work

Posted on by johnpbaur

If you boldly risk writing a novel that might be acclaimed as great, and fail, you could succeed in writing a book that is splendid. … You get what you dare, baby, and if you want big, you dare big. – Leonard Bishop

Risk big. Risk BIG.

Two new blurbs

Just collected these off the Amazon page for “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter.”

I bought this book to bring with me on a cruise to the Caribbean, and enjoyed every minute of it. John Baur (co-founder of Talk Like a Pirate Day) writes exceptional pirate stories, and this was no exception. His attention to historical detail, geography, and character development was great. I felt like I learned a lot about the pirate era from reading this book. I’m 43 and enjoyed this book, but my 6 year old daughter will enjoy it too when she gets a little older, maybe 8-9. – Chris John

I really enjoyed this book. Great storyline, full of adventure, and very entertaining. Well written without any holes, the author did a great job tying everything together. It was also nice reading a good story that is clean, thus making it suitable to young adults and adults of any age. I highly recommend it for anyone wanting to be carried away on a high seas adventure in search of a villainous pirate! I hope a sequel is in the works, arr! – Mark Beal

 

 

 

Politics, work and odds and ends

Posted on by johnpbaur

Went to the polls Saturday and voted for Bernie Sanders in the Louisiana primary – and he lost 71 percent to 23.

It’s part of a long, proud tradition. My primary support over the years has gone to George McGovern, Fred Harris (You’ve never heard of him, right? He’s still my all-time favorite candidate.), Mo Udall, Jerry Brown, Gary Hart (pre-Monkey Business) and Howard Dean.

On presidential elections I’m even – 5 wins, 5 losses – but in the primaries, man, I’m all over the map. Just not often in the winner’s circle.

Getting ready for the road –

I need to get more organized. There’s all this stuff that I need to do, and in the morning I tend to pick whatever feels right, which means stuff that needs to get done isn’t. Look, I’m not James Patterson. I don’t have that kind of luxury.

So for the rest of the month, I’m going to try holding my own feet to the fire. 8 a.m. to 11 I work on the WIP. Break for lunch, then spend two hours setting up the schedule for the late spring, summer. I have three big events, but I have to plan as many readings and appearances as I can around them. Have leads, now it’s time to start nailing them down.

The sad truth is, even if you have an actual publisher, you still have to do most of the work of getting the word out about your book and making sales yourself. (Got some stories on that regard that perhaps I’ll share in a later post.) And when you’re self-publishing, that’s obviously doubly true. The launch of “Chrissie Warren: Pirate Hunter” went about as well as I could expect. Of course, not as well as I’d hoped. Who doesn’t hope for overnight success?

And I’ve kind of taken the winter off from all of that. Time to dive in with both feet. There’s a lot of potential, but it’ll never be any more than that until I make it happen.

Things you don’t expect to hear –

Driving your wife to the emergency room at midnight, you don’t expect to hear the complaint, “You’re driving too fast.” (That was two weeks ago. Turned out to be a bad scare but not to be any of the things we were afraid it was, and all is well. No need for worries or wishes or prayers or anything.)

For the record –

The non-partisan group Politifact, which fact checks political statements and campaign claims, notes that of the statements by Donald Trump that it has checked, a whopping 79 percent are mostly false, false or “pant’s on fire.” So what does that say about his claim to have a large dick? (Or did he say he is a big dick? It wasn’t clear to me.)

 

End of the Week Odds and Ends

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Jambalaya Writers Conference

I’ve been asked to take part as a presenter in the Jambalaya Writer’s Conference in Houma April 2. I’m pretty excited about it. I have no idea why they asked me, but I’m going to give it my best shot.

I’ve been asked to present on marketing. I know a bit about that, although not knowing about a topic has never slowed me down before. And I will educate myself all the more in the next month. It’s not a paying gig. They’ve got a hotel room for me and my wife, Tori for the Friday night, and she gets to attend for free. Mostly it’s a chance to get myself out there, and to sell some books.

Good Will

Filled a chink in my cultural armor recently. Finally saw “Good Will Hunting.” I know, the movie is almost 20 years old and it’s not like it was a big secret. But somehow I just missed it, then never got around to catching up.

What a terrific movie. I really loved it. The story, the performances, everything. It’s not just a good story. The story about it is a good story. Two young guys trying to make it in Hollywood and not getting very far, so they wrote their own movie and somehow got it made. And it was so good they ended up winning the screenplay Oscar.

It’s a movie that makes you feel like, whatever you’re doing, you can do better. And you should. It was inspiring.

(It was also the first Minnie Driver movie I’ve ever seen. Seriously. Seen her on a couple of TV things, but never seen a movie with her. Isn’t that odd? But now I have.)

Not A Sociopath, Please

On the Killzone blog, they have a regular feature where people submit the first page of their work in progress and get it critiqued, first by one of the bloggers, then by readers in the comment section. It’s always kind of interesting, but this week’s critique had a kind of horrifying fascination. Unlike most of the submittals, this one was really bad. My rule in making any comments is to find something positive to say before I suggest any areas for improvement. It was impossible with this one.

You can take a look at it here and see if you agree with me.

It suggests a rule for writing: You should make your main character someone who, if not necessarily likable, is someone the reader at least will be willing to share a couple of hundred pages with. Failing that, at least make the character believable. A character, purportedly some kind of private detective, who slaps her client in the third paragraph for “back talk” and threatens to punch his teeth out when he refers to her as “Ms.” isn’t quirky. She’s a sociopath.

Progress and A Thought

I like where my WIP is going, but I recognize there may be a problem, the kind of problem that would get ripped up in first-page critique. No, the main character isn’t a sociopath. I save the sociopath for third chapter.

No, it’s a style thing. I know why it “breaks the rules” but I also know why I want to tell the story that way.

Anyway, what I’m thinking of doing eventually is posting the first couple of pages here and getting feedback. Not right away. Not until I’m sure that the beginning of the story is solid. Then it’s always interesting to get some insight, to find out if a reader thinks the same thing that you thought when you’re writing.

I used to belong to a critique group at the local library. But they’re schedule changed, then my work schedule changed, and it became impossible for me. Too bad, I really enjoyed it.

That’ll do for now.

Getting Back to Work

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Lost time the last month because of work – covering for a co-worker I ended up working 13 of 15 nights in a row, that kind of takes it out of you in the morning – and working on the next installment of “The Islands of Bones,” the serial I’ve been writing for Mutiny magazine.

It’s tricky, writing in installments. I guess that’s how a lot of writers in the past, notably Charles Dickens, did it, and they did it without the help of a computer. Initially I had only a vague idea of the story. I had the character and starting point and a general idea of what it was about. I thought it would be a four-part story – the online magazine is quarterly. But it kept growing. I just turned in the fifth installment, and it will probably require two more to finish it out.

I also made a few mistakes – gave the ship one name in the third installment, a different name in the fourth. And as I write, things occur to me that would help, but they would involve changing things I’ve already written. Typically that’s not a problem, we all do it. That’s what rewrites are for. But in this case, the earlier parts of the story have already been published. It’s set and I just have to play the next hands with the cards I dealt.

I’m glad I’ve committed to this, and I like the story. It’s been an education. And when it’s done – assuming it’s eventually done – I’m going to clean it up, do a little rewriting, then make it available as a free download online. Because you’ve got to feed the franchise, right.

I’ve also got an almost completed story that Mark (my friend, Cap’n Slappy) and I wrote in our semi-functional, back and forth way. I’m going to clean that up, finish it, really work it into a publishable project, and get that available to readers before Sept. 19.

So that’s what’s on my plate. The WIP – “In Blackbeard’s Hand” – the serial, and the Caper story. That ought to keep me busy, especially since I’ve also got all that work to do selling “Chrissie Warren.” Then I have to get to work on the sequel to that.

Enough of this blogging! I have work to do!

A Solid Delivery from FedEx

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We all do it – don’t we? The FedEx truck heads down your street, or the brown UPS van, and you watch it drive by, maybe with your arms extended as if beseeching the driver, but he drives on by. Sometimes he acknowledges the comedy with a smile or a wave, but usually he’s in too much of a hurry and drives on by.

I’m not alone in this, right? We all do it? Or is my penchant for street theater surfacing again?

File Dec 01, 1 08 41 PMAnyway, the FedEx guy drove down the street yesterday and – he stopped at my house! And dropped off two boxes of books!

It’s the hardcover, a special, one-printing-only version, signed and numbered by yours truly, with special interior illustrations only available in this edition. And, like I said before, people were willing to pay a premium to get it. It was my alternative to trying a Kickstarter campaign. In truth, it was only semi-successful – I didn’t sell as many as I’d hoped, but did sell more than I’d feared. So I made back a little of the overhead for getting the book out.

And I’ve gotta tell you – as exciting as the first box of paperbacks was when it arrived, the hardcovers were so much more. There’s something about a hardcover that is so much more impressive. It’s solid. It’s a book.

It’s also a quick and easy Christmas present for my kids, who no doubt will be thrilled. (Well, it’s “a” gift, not all any of them are getting.)

Now I’ve gotta sit down and start signing them. They have to go out by the end of the week. I’ve bought a special pen for them (which also can go on my taxes as a business expense) and I’ve gotta get to work.