Worth Taking Home

 Silver Boomer Books Specific  Comments Off on Worth Taking Home
Nov 232015
 

[yext-posts id=”119105″]

MilagrosMy daughter-in-law (aka daughter-in-love!) Dezi Muse Rollins took home two books that looked interesting from the collection at my home. Of course, she already had many of the others. But Dezi picked up Milagros, our novel by Tess Almendárez Lojacono at the house. The blurb she read was, GMUH-frontCover-smaller-300x228 (1)

Old ways are good ways, Mama taught her girls. They rolled their eyes. Mama’s life, and her love, were molded by the pattern of those old ways. Traditions were as hard for her to relinquish as her wringer washer and line-dried sheets. She tried her best, alongside her husband Manuel, to shape their children with the same care she shaped her home-made bread rolls…only, the girls, the boys, their lifestyles, their mates, were not of that sweeter time. Old ways tussled with new ways, in a new time, and a new country. Customs served to protect the family, to insure its health and survival. It worked in the Old Country, then. Could it work in Pennsylvania? Now?

Don’t you want to read it, too? It’s available at Amazon.com in Kindle or paperback. The other book Dezi took home is our newest, God Makes Us Holy by Jo Helen Cox.

Barbara Rollins

Nov 182015
 

You have to understand…Silver Boomer Books begins and ends with the concept we’re aging Baby Boomers. I understand hashtags are not new to any but seventy-two people younger than my 68 years, but I’ve created my first two today! So, click on the hashtag (after you create it again on your own site, blog, twitter feed, Tumblr account, Facebook page, Instagram, and anything else you have access to and see what happens! The tags are:

#InnkeepersChristmasEve  (http://eaglewingspress.com/ewp/wp/ewp-books/the-innkeepers-christmas-eve)

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and

#GodMakesUsHoly (http://eaglewingspress.com/ewp/wp/ewp-books/god-makes-us-holy)

GMUH-FullCover-smaller-300x228

 

And kudos to Jo Helen Cox and Sandy Carter, unwitting co-conspirators in this adventure!

P.S.: In case you don’t know how to create a hashtag, just copy it onto the places I mentioned and it will become a link. They are, first, #InnkeepersChristmasEve and, second, #GodMakesUsHoly.

Barbara Rollins

The Difference Between the Imprints

 Silver Boomer Books Specific  Comments Off on The Difference Between the Imprints
Mar 232015
 

We’ve failed to explain the difference in the three names. Silver Boomer Books which is the name of our company and where we publish our mainstay, memoir and nostalgia, apropos of our name which actually means, “baby boomers with silver hair.” But why do we have two imprints? Because they are not specifically memoir and nostalgia, of course.

Laughing Cactus Press describes itself:

Look at a cactus. Do you see thorns, ugliness? A source of lifesaving water? A funny-looking plant? Laughing Cactus Press provides different sets of eyes to channel the world. Our editors may be in the desert, but our authors provide eyes to see the whole spectrum — cactus to bagpipes to cautionary tales! This Poetry and Fiction imprint of Silver Boomer Books offers you a new pair of glasses to see the world.

Now, for some familiar with Twelve-Step Recovery as well as with the mission of Eagle Wings Press might believe the “new pair of glasses” attribute more fitting to the spiritual and recovery imprint. Eagle Wings Press is:

AA speaker Clint H describes a person’s mission as “located at the point where the talent we most love using meets the needs of the world around us.” We, the partners of Silver Boomer Books, love to gather, polish, and disseminate the written word. We hope to offer that service through our publishing.  We’re aware the fun and meaningful books like Silver Boomers and Freckles to Wrinkles may deal with issues less life-changing than others. For that reason – and because we do wish to provide meaningful service in essential areas – we’ve established the Eagle Wings Press imprint for recovery and spiritual books and cards. All of us have direct or indirect experience with Twelve-Step programs and recognize the powerful message of that simple program. We also come with strong individual spiritual awareness and wish to provide a forum for the dissemination of good, meaningful spiritual and recovery writing.  We stand ready to understand the will of the Spirit of the Universe whom we call God and humbly seek the power to carry that out.

Click on the cover to buy the new Kindle version of THREE THOUSAND DOORS published March 18, 2015.

A more vivid explanation of the difference of the two imprints, however, occurred to me in the last few days. I’ve been working on putting Three Thousand Doors into Kindle format, and that will be published in all probability before this blog post sees the light of day. At the same time, though, I was getting ready to be out of easy computer range for seven days next week and building up an inventory of poems to publish on the Eagle Wings Press Recovery Daily Dose blog. Needing inspiration quickly, it occurred to me to borrow titles from Karen Elaine Greene’s work. I know her well, know the titles come last to her whereas I start with the titles. And while I’ve been working with her book this week, I have been seeing it as blocks of text, some words of which need to be highlighted to be titles and others need to be italicized, but none of them are content, just strings of words. I have not read Karen’s poems since we published them in print in 2010.

The result, then, are poems with the same titles but with the emphasis of the different imprints. I thought you might enjoy the comparison and contrast.

 

The Laughing Cactus Press poem
from Three Thousand Doors by Karen Elaine Greene
The Eagle Wings Press poem
from Recovery Daily Dose blog
by Barbara B. Rollins and OAStepper

Safe Deposit Box

Perhaps I should lock happiness away
in a silver box
keep it in the basement
on a high shelf
save it for rainy days
when laughter is harder to come by.
But, no
happiness is not so easily contained.
It would bubble over
ooze around the seams
tear through the hinges
break the lock
and explode into daylight.

Safe Deposit BoxAre your valuables protected?
What’s most important to you?
Is your program there, your sobriety,
your sanity? Is it REALLY?
Do you find yourself giving lip service
to the importance of the program
but being willing to lay it aside “just once”
when you want to do something,
when you’re feeling left out,
when you’re afraid of what others will say?
Is this valuable possession something
you take with you when it’s convenient
but easily leave behind?
But really, a safe deposit box?
How can that fit with abstract things,
with ideas, behaviors, my life?
Have you ever heard of a God box?
Can that be your safety deposit box,
where you write it down on paper,
turn it over to God, and know it…
and you…are protected?
Ragged Edges

borders
distorted and untidy
unravel quickly
as thread pulled gently
from unfinished hems
no shame in the disheveled
unwrap your gifts
and share them
like stars wait patiently
to be unhooked
and thrown free

Ragged EdgesI can hold it together,
put my best face forward,
make it in this world
until I can’t.
I can convince people
I know what I’m doing,
hold the lead, be a star
until I can’t.
I can fit into society,
manage life, exercise power,
hold on to sanity
until I can’t.
But it’s okay when I can’t
which actually is more often
than the times I can…
I know that when I’m honest
with me, with you.
And I can be honest with you,
my family of choice,
because you get me, you understand,
you’ve been there and admit it.
You’ve seen all my ragged edges
and you love me for them.
Severe Storm WarningShadowy clouds drip despondently
cymbals crashing in the atmosphere
fat drops thrash against hot pavement
break open like overripe fruit
oozing rancid flesh
lying dead and blackened
against gnarled branches
left untended and forgotten
long past their prime.
Severe Storm WarningSometimes trouble comes out of the blue
but not usually, not in life, not in the sky,
not in recovery. We know what to do
when the weather broadcast tells of storms,
of cancel-it-now events to be affected.
We understand palliative care, bucket lists,
diagnoses with no option we’d choose.
We know when fears, resentments, emotions
loom before us because of the place,
the people, the expectations.
Why do we fail to prepare for the storm warnings
in recovery as we would were they delivered
on the newscast? Why do we fail to gather our resources
and prepare to weather the storm?

Do you get it? Then get the books! The poems of Recovery Daily Dose are on the Internet site only but the books by the same authors are all available in Kindle format or in print. These links will take you to the Kindle versions.

A Cloud of WitnessesClick the cover to buy  A Time for Verse – Poetic Ponderings on Ecclesiastes as an Kindle book. Normal price, $5.25 A Time for VerseClick the cover to buy  A Time for Verse – Poetic Ponderings on Ecclesiastes as an Kindle book. Normal price, $5.25 Slender Steps to Sanity Click the cover to buy Slender Steps to Sanity – Twelve-Step Notes of Hope as an Kindle book. Normal price, $5.19

Who Needs to Read WRITING TOWARD THE LIGHT?

 Memoirs, Selection Process, Silver Boomer Books Specific  Comments Off on Who Needs to Read WRITING TOWARD THE LIGHT?
Mar 152015
 

Of course my answer is, “Everybody!” But let me tell you about the book and you can see if you and yours are in the group who need to read Writing Toward the Light – A Grief Journey by Laura Flett. No, let Laura tell you in her preface:

Preface

My precious son Carlton died. He was the Light of my life, and I was plunged into darkness. I desperately needed to know what happened to him. His life force was no longer contained in an earth body. Where did he go? Who am I now? What is our relationship to be? I began an intense search for him, myself, and the life energy I call God. It was not a thirty-day course with a step-by-step process. I couldn’t put it in neat little categories. I know because I spent a lot of time trying.

I could only pick up my pen and journal. My pen drew a medium black line from point A (what I knew) to point B (something nearby that seemed similar) – a gathering of scattered bits of light, flickers of safety, connection, new life. I didn’t understand this process. When I stopped to analyze it, I only spun in frustration. All I knew to do was gather up the tiny sparks of my past life and hope it would become more illuminating with time.

This was the way I stayed on Earth and did not permanently leave to find my son. As I put one anxious word in front of the other, the pen continued to tell me that I was writing towards greater light and understanding.

I wrote for a while, looking for those flashes and building a bit of courage to venture out for groceries. I bought necessary items at the familiar neighborhood store, then hurried home to write what I had just experienced.

As the pen showed me my successes and progress, I became braver. Its ink began connecting more familiar dots as they appeared: friends, events, places, and ideas. Each connection gave me strength, reminding me who I had been and what I was doing, describing who I am and what I am doing now. I put together this new foundation based on past knowledge and present experiences as I watched, listened, and wrote of my life.

This preface was to be the last piece I wrote for this book before a self-imposed deadline to finish by November 28, 2005. It would have been my son’s

Laura Flett, author of Writing Toward the Light

Laura Flett, author of Writing Toward the Light

thirtieth birthday. I scrambled, wanting to complete the journey. But the harder I tried to finish, the more unfinished I felt. I had so much yet to learn.In August 2005 before going to Taos, New Mexico, for a writing workshop, I was diagnosed with breast cancer. I didn’t understand. It was not in my family; I was not supposed to have breast cancer. But after a biopsy on a suspicious shadow that appeared on my yearly mammogram, the surgeon called to tell me it was a “favorable cancer.” A favorable cancer? I heard that as an oxymoron. Then he offered me the choice of a lumpectomy with radiation therapy or a radical mastectomy.

“What’s the difference?” I asked.

“Not much. It’s just personal preference. One way is as effective as the other,” he told me.

I felt like I was at Baskin-Robbins, choosing between pistachio almond and chocolate mint, and selected the lumpectomy only because he assured me I could postpone radiation until I got back from Taos. I also began taking Tamoxifen. Ah, the favorable part was becoming more apparent: there would be no chemotherapy.

The workshop in Taos was everything I wanted it to be. Twenty writers burning with stories to tell and eager to find a way to do it. We left New Mexico full of enthusiasm with plans to keep in touch.

But once I was back home I began six and one-half weeks of radiation treatments and soon discovered I hadn’t dealt with the reality of this disease. Every day as I sat in a waiting room at the Cancer Treatment Center with patients in various stages of the illness, I was facing my own mortality. So much of my energy had been spent coming to terms with Carlton’s death. It was now time to look at my own.

“Wait, God,” I scribbled in my notebook, “I’m not ready. I’ve still got a lot of stuff I want to do here. Oh? You’re just checking? To see how serious I am? God, I am.”

The importance of my Taos connection became clearer. I stayed in touch with other writers as we shared weekly experiences and insights. The practice kept me focused and trusting that this was my way to greater understanding.

Then at the beginning of November, four weeks before my manuscript deadline, my mother and brother and I visited my ninety-year-old dad at the War Veterans Nursing Home in Monroe, Louisiana, a hundred miles away. He has Alzheimer’s and we are never sure how coherent he will be when we visit, so Mother showed him family pictures hoping to help him connect to his own bits of light. This only seemed to frustrate him. He had a hard time completing sentences. While we sat in the day room with other men much like him, I listened to his struggle. Then I asked him what was going on. He talked about his mother and father and trying to get home.

“But they tell me not to come the regular way,” he said. “Something’s wrong with that, isn’t it?”

“Your mother and dad are dead,” I said.

He looked a bit surprised, then told me he was afraid the doctors would think he sounded crazy.

“No, Dad,” I assured him. “You’re just watching your home movies. The collection that makes up the unique story of Deane Flett.”

He became calmer and more articulate. Before we left, I bent down to kiss him and he grabbed my hand. His pale blue eyes looked straight into my hazel ones.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

It was a powerful link. I let Dad show me where he was and I understood it. It was his life in review. The same thing I was experiencing, as I wrote my way through this grief journey. I, too, was talking with the dead and reliving my past. I, too, often worried that I sounded crazy. So now I must “finish” this book and let it go. I know that even in published form, it’s still not complete. It becomes, at best, a sharing of my experiences. This part of my journey offered as compassion for others looking for safety, or connection, or new life. I may not be in charge of anything more than that.

I poured out my heart as I worked to be as honest and thorough as I could. With much love, then, I release the book. It is much like my own son. It will go where it needs to go and connect with what it needs to connect.

I know now why I chose his birthday, the date that sometimes fell on Thanksgiving Day, as my deadline to complete this manuscript. I approached this year’s designated-day-to-be-thankful and realized with tears in my eyes that November 28 will always be Thanksgiving Day for me.

And that’s why you need to read  Writing Toward the Light. Because you, too, will have a time, or have had times already, when you are talking with the dead and reliving your past. You will worry that you sound crazy. But Laura can walk the path with you because she’s been along it before. Walk with her toward the light on your own grief journey.

Links to buy on Amazon:

Buy the paperback version from Silver Boomer Books.

 

 

Mar 062015
 

I’ve entitled the piece. Now we’ll see if I can live up to that number! The subject is the contest I described at February 2015 Book-a-Day-Giveaway.

  1. There should be a set of rules that are linked to on every page temporarily set up for the contest. The rules on this one were described as:

And how do you get your name entered? You share this post to get the book designated for that day. That’s all. You can do it from this page to any social media or from the Silver Boomer Books Facebook page. We have to have at least ten shares to have a valid day’s contest, but if we need more time we’ll extend that day’s contest until we do.

Several of the things I have to say in the lessons learned below would enhance that, but it should look like contest rules. Not everybody is as willing as I am to play by ear as you go. That last phrase that we would hold the contest open until we had ten shares was a later, an addition after several of the early days lacked ten shares.

  1. The shares should be public. When a person who is not my Facebook Friend shares a link, I’m likely not to catch that, and that gets embarrassing, necessitating “Mia Culpa” drawings when I find out. And the result when the contest coordinator misses a share should be addressed in that set of rules described at #1 above.
  2. What I should have done on each post announcing a book to be won is to post it on the SilverBoomerBooks Facebook page but do it as Barbara Rollins who was friends with most of the people named. (And that’s because when someone shared a post who was not my friend, I sent a friend request. When someone drew a name who was not my friend, I sent a friend request. When we had an anthology author for an early anthology, one for which I had not already researched all the authors I could find, I did and when I found them…I sent a friend request.) That post reached 1,163 people, got 3 likes, 17 shares. The second day was also an anthology, and the names of 33 contributors were linked on Barbara’s page. However, the post on the SBB page was different, one of the poems from the book From the Porch Swing rather than the linked authors. The SBB page got 104 page views, 58 more than the single author Writing Toward the Light the next day. On the Porch share Barbara’s post with links to the authors got 15 likes, 16 shares and 7 comments…but who knows HOW many “people reached” because that’s not available for personal pages without boosting the post.
  3. If you’re really doing a Facebook contest don’t say that sharing in “any social media” works when you doubt you know the names of all the social media. I looked at an ad on the door of the gym this morning and could not name one of the symbols. I asked the staff person nearest and she could not remember the name. A second told us it was “Foursquare.” I can’t recall ever before hearing that name.
  4. If you’re going to post some of the days’ drawings on Google+ put all of them there, not just a smattering.
  5. If your Facebook feed automatically becomes a Twitter feed, are you checking the Twitter account for shares? Are Re-tweets the same as shares? Do you need to rename what you’re asking for if you’ve considering other social media?
  6. Keep a record more easily accessible than going back through the posts. In this one I did keep the entries every day, though sometimes when I was compiling the entries I put a person on the list twice for a single share. I did like the fact I kept up with what I had recorded (supposedly) through “liking” the post as I recorded it, but then again, I didn’t reveal that was what the “like” meant, so it didn’t help the participants to call my attention to those missed until after the fact: after I listed each person who had shared that day’s page. Records kept should include the names of the people drawing the winning name.
  7. Having someone else draw for the book was a spur-of-the-moment decision but worked well. It gave me an opportunity to talk to strangers in the places I frequent, to ask if they had a Facebook account, and to befriend them there, increasing by their friends at least that one-day-report spiel’s reach.
  8. If each person commented on a post before they shared it, as some did simply saying, “sharing,” they would be easier to track.
  9. A major concern at the end was that people didn’t know what the books were about. I guess it was a concern while they shared as well, but I became aware of it when people who had been very active in the contest said they needed more information about the individual books. That is going to be addressed on this site…for potential future contests, but more importantly, to get the message out about the books. They will be described in this Repercussions blog, and we will encourage book reviews, all of which will be tagged with the book’s name and pulled up easily.
  10. As a sideline to the lessons of the contest, I finally recognized the value of categories and tags on web posts.
  11. I found it necessary to share the page to my own feed rather than the SilverBoomerBook feed because when I tried to do the latter, the names of the authors of anthology pieces and some of the single-book authors did not become links and draw the attention of as many people. So I shared all of the both places. (I hope! It did get confusing after a while.) I’ve described in #3 a better way to do it, but I would explore whether if “Barbara B. Rollins” is posting on “SilverBoomerBooks” it is as prominent on her feed as it would be if it were an original share from the web page on this site describing the day’s contest.
  12. At the beginning of the contest, I struggled to get the ten shares that sounded like a minimal number when I set it up. And by the end, ten were easy. But it took a while to develop the momentum! To be honest, there were a few that even after pushing got to eight or nine and sputtered out. I recruited people to do me a favor and share those, and I am profoundly grateful to my friends who did that for me. But it should be addressed in the rules, or something else should be done to encourage the participation up front. Those something else’s include the next two of the 27.
  13. A decision should be made ahead of time as to who is eligible. My friend Miranda O’Donnell from County Cork, Ireland, shared some of the early posts, and goodness, her help was appreciated. There was another share I didn’t note until working up the report, that one from Brazil. I had contemplated postage but not of the international variety. Those people might have been included but they would receive a Kindle version of that book or, if the book were not in Kindle format, a pdf version of the book. Or they could be excluded. Among the participants were two people who, if we were talking legal relationships, were well within the 3rd degree of consanguinity. Another was a partner in Silver Boomer Books. I decided the first were eligible but informally excluded my partner. This is NOT to say I did not GREATLY appreciate their participation, for it made getting the numbers necessary to make a day’s drawings possible in many cases. But the decision should be made before the contest began and stated in the rules (See #1) as to who could enter.
  14. If there were a rule that each person participating should give SBB their physical or email address, the sending of books won would have been greatly facilitated. The downside of that is that the requirement could easily dissuade shares.
  15. I’ve wasted an opportunity to build up a community open to receiving emails or any other attempt to market the books. I could have required each person to have “liked” the SBB Facebook page, but I well know how often those posts don’t get seen even by those who have liked the page. Besides, it’s as easy to dislike as it is to like, and if they did see it, who’s to say they would continue to? Certainly there are other and more effective ways to build the marketing database, but again, do they deter participation?
  16. The introduction of a form for the 26th day, pick your book, was kind of a last minute move. The idea was not only to find out what books they chose but to try to nab some language about the books helpful for other marketing attempts, and it did that. The other part of the form, what do you want to know about us, was quite helpful in analysis of where we were failing (besides the fact we hadn’t tried any real marketing efforts since the end of 2011.)
  17. Controverting #17, I have a good relationship with a fabulous DJ, Rudy Fearless Fernandez with KEAN-105. I had not visited with him on air in 2014 because I didn’t have noteworthy news to report, but this contest, had it been planned before the last minute, would have been helped greatly by announcing it in late January or early February on the air. All I needed to do was ask.
  18. You can put photos in iMovie by dragging them in there, you don’t have to get them into PhotoBooth or iPhoto! Well, that may not seem relevant as what I learned during the contest, but it is as to how I could have promoted it. But I’ll digress from the digression.
  19. Using surveys from Facebook is a possibility, but they have to make money from somewhere, and that’s a moneymaker for them. They had a sale right as I was looking at using their survey, but the normal minimum charge is $89 for a year. But this is a sample of what the free one would have looked like. Since I didn’t use it, I have no idea how well it works. I know embedding the link on a webpage is a premium upgrade feature. If it were not, you could try it out here.  😉
  20. I did the Test Run for Day 27 on Formsite.com and was satisfied with it, would have used it for the actual run of the survey but for the fact their site was freezing up when I wanted to design it, so I went to … but that’s the next thing I learned. At Formsite the free version is 5 forms, up to 50 items but limited to 10 results per form, and up to 50 MB of space. Since it’s limited to 10 responses, I’m glad I didn’t go with that one. And I continue to get results from that form daily as well as results from the one I partially constructed and didn’t use…and emails asking me what I think of their service. I’ve gotten 27 emails from them from February 27 to March 5.
  21. I’ve always thought of JotForm.com as a premium site, but that’s based on an organization to which I belong that believes in not taking freebies from outside enterprises. I found when I couldn’t get into Formsite that JotForm is also free, their terms for the free plan being 100 Monthly Submissions, 10 SSL Secure Submissions, 10 Receive Payments, 100 MB Available Space, 1 Sub-user Account, and Unlimited Forms, Reports and Fields per Form. Emails from them include the welcome message when I set up the account and the actual submissions from people filling out the form.
  22. The two videos I did, one integral to the contest, the second ancillary, were effective and well received, something people took the time to do and promote…even when I didn’t ask for those to be shared.
  23. People continue to share my posts much more than they did before. That’s good not only for the actual Silver Boomer Books business but for the blog I do (with OAStepper) on the Eagle Wings Press imprint site, Recovery Daily Dose. And it’s all part of one big picture, so all the shares benefit SBB.
  24. I’ve come to the conclusion setting up a Facebook page for Recovery Daily Dose would be advantageous although I’m already sharing those daily poems on the EagleWingsPress.com website and at blogspot where they began. I was hesitant to do that before because I had so many separate pages I managed on Facebook. We started out doing one for each book besides the SBB one and one for each of the two imprints. And we ignored them. So during the month I consolidated pages for specific books into the imprint page. I intend now to start bringing the limited number of pages to life, rather than their remaining barely on life-support.
  25. The folks here, those I’ve known since I was two years old and those I met during the contest, are the absolute greatest and most marvelous people in the world! Thank you.
  26. Setting the number at 27 was a wise decision because for right now I’m out of things to add.
Feb 282015
 

Not everyone who filled out the survey as an entry to win the book of their choice asked questions. But some did. These are their questions and our answers.

The original “quartet” – Barbara Rollins, Becky Haigler, Karen Greene (Kerin Riley-Bishop) and Ginny Greene, November 15, 2011

How did you all begin the process of writing these amazing stories?

The beginning was not in writing stories but a decision to collect them from other writers and to become editors of a book of nostalgia/memoirs. It all began Saturday, October 21, 2006, about noon. Dusty Richards had presented a workshop for Abilene Writers Guild in Abilene, Texas. Ginny Greene, the then-current AWG president and I, Barbara Rollins, immediate past president, were at the end of the buffet line. And we were inspired by Dusty to get busy. I’d written some things, even had five books published, my juvenile novel a month earlier. Ginny had been writing columns for small-town newspapers for a while. But we wanted to do something together and quickly decided on an anthology by and about baby boomers. We tossed around some names of people who might also solicit, select, and edit the book as well as names for the collection. We came up with two:  Silver Boomers and Freckles to Wrinkles. But the titles were equally attractive and didn’t fit well as title and subtitle.

By the time we’d asked among the other members of a poetry critique group we participated in and recruited our others partners, Becky Haigler and Karen Greene (Ginny’s daughter who edited as Kerin Riley-Bishop) we put out calls for submissions for the two books simultaneously.

By October of the next year we’d put together Silver Boomers – a collection of poetry and prose by and about baby boomers with authors from Indonesia to England, Canada and many of the United States. And I had it set up as a book. We’d chosen a publisher and gave it to him at the 2007 AWG workshop. The book was set out in the size we intended using poems to fill pages, a short poem at the end of a prose piece that ended a third of the way down a page.

But our pride and joy was the crawl line which remains a beloved characteristic of all our anthologies. The continuous block of text stretches from the front of the book to the last page like a line rolling across the bottom of the television. When we described it and showed it to the publisher, he said it couldn’t be done. My partners, in unison, said, “Barbara did it.” They, of course, knew I’d struggled mightily with it, but by that point I did have a functional way to do it. The editor disagreed. After spending a weekend on it he gave us a draft with all poems, no matter how brief, starting like the prose pieces at the top of the page. And the crawl line had been deleted.

We took the project back and soon decided to become a publishing company ourselves. It took a while, and there were a lot of mistakes, but we published Silver Boomers in March of 2008 and Freckles to Wrinkles in July of that year. Seven more have followed, besides the seventeen single-author books.

(If you want to know how a particular book came to be, feel free to ask that in the comments or on our Facebook or Twitter pages.)

How do you decide which of the three presses to use for each book?

This is the second time this week someone I would have thought understood the difference has asked this question. Obviously the real message is that we don’t communicate that well enough! So thanks for the question!

As I’ve just described, the idea of doing anthologies was to do them as memoir and nostalgia. We’ve gone from the generalized Silver Boomers, Freckles to Wrinkles and This Path to more specific topics, but they all remain memoir and nostalgia — about grandparents, early reading experiences, the military, holidays, widowhood and waiting. The two non-anthologies published as Silver Boomer Books volumes are single-author memoir and nostalgia, still like the anthologies in the form of prose pieces and poetry. Those are Song of County Roads by Ginny Greene and Crazy Lady in the Mirror by Madelyn Kamen.

Laura Flett, author of Writing Toward the Light

Laura Flett, author of Writing Toward the Light

By the time we had published Silver Boomers and Freckles to Wrinkles we had been asked to publish two other books that were not memoir/nostalgia. Instead, they were inspirational and we knew of others we were interested in publishing. To keep the company name from becoming a mishmash, we decided to add Eagle Wings Press as an imprint for 12-Step Recovery and Spiritual materials. Those two books were Slender Steps to Sanity – Twelve-Step Notes of Hope by OAStepper and Writing Toward the Light – A Grief Journey by Laura Flett.

Since that time Eagle Wings Press has published A Time for Verse – Poetic Ponderings on Ecclesiastes by Barbara B. Rollins, Survived to Love by Ed H (identified that way while he was a living member of A.A., now Edward L. Hennessy), White Elephants – a memoir by Chynna T. Laird, A Cloud of Witnesses – Two Big Books and Us by Barbara B. Rollins with OAStepper, Insights from the Jobsite by Robyn Conley, and The Innkeeper’s Christmas Eve by Barbara B. Rollins, illustrated by Sandy Carter.

When Jim Wilson asked us to publish Poetry Floats – New and selected Philosophy-lite it didn’t fit either Silver Boomer Books nor Eagle Wings Press so Laughing Cactus Press was born for fiction and poetry.

The original question, though, was how do we decide which one to use for a proposed book. Some of course are obvious. Becky identified Innkeeper as poetry fiting in Laughing Cactus Press. I thought the correct imprint was Eagle Wings Press because it’s the Christmas story, so spiritual.  The subtitle of White Elephants is “a memoir” but we felt the recovery part of it, surviving childhood with an addict mother, made it spiritual and recovery (Eagle Wings) rather than a memoir (Silver Boomer Books). Haiku Elvis – A Life in 17 Syllables (or Less) could have been memoir/nostalgia, for we would also include biography there, but they’re poems, so Laughing Cactus Press.

That’s a whole lot of words when the answer is, “We put it where we think it fits!”

Did you ever get United (Supermarket) to take the books?

Sigh. No, Suanna, I didn’t. I’d love to tell you it was not for lack of trying, and I would. But it’s not the truth. I never got up the nerve to make the pitch outside of the Toastmasters meeting where you heard it. Do you think my making it this public will get me to try it now?

When is your next writing/poetry contest?

Our next writing/poetry contest will be our first. At least with that nomenclature. Actually every call for submissions for an anthology is a writing/poetry contest, and the prize is getting published in our anthologies. If you look back at the last few blog posts here, you’ll see the exploration for the subject matter of the next anthology. However, we do have the Twelve-Step Recovery anthology open for submissions. (You can see in one of the editors’ poems in an anthology years ago that were were privately calling it the furtive recovery anthology. But it really is moving towards fruition but needs some more good work submitted.)

In response to the question of choosing imprints, we had to discuss whether a recovery anthology was Silver Boomer Books or Eagle Wings Press.

More questions? Ask and they shall be answered.

Feb 282015
 

nvnl-smallIt is the end of February, the 28th day, the day to tally all the entries, to make a ton of confetti with strips of names, and to wait for the streets to clear enough to get out and have a grand drawing. But the sidewalk was slick enough getting the newspaper, that drawing may well be Sunday instead of Saturday. Then I “only” need to get addresses for those winners I don’t have and mail off a lot of books, evaluate the adventure, and write that up for this blog. But today I thought you might be interested in the results so far of the 27th’s “Tell me what you want.”

Okay, I admit it. the last on doesn’t count. It was my test run.

 

 

Choose the book you
wish to win.

Why did you choose the title you selected?

Native Voices, Native Lands Native people and native lands intrigue me.
Bluebonnets, Boots and Buffalo Bones Sounds interesting
Crazy Lady in the Mirror Seemed like me.
Bluebonnets, Boots and Buffalo Bones I am a native Texan.  The cover drew me in and the description of the poems sealed the deal!
Native Voices, Native Lands I know the author of this book and know that he does “clean”; writing. Dixon Hearne choose one of my short stories for his book, Thanksgiving to Christmas several years ago…a beautiful read.
Native Voices, Native Lands I know the author of this book and know that he does “clean” writing. Dixon Hearne choose one of my short stories for his book, Thanksgiving to Christmas several years ago…a beautiful read.
From the Porch Swing – Memories of Our Grandparents Childhood memories
The Innkeeper’s Christmas Eve It is a Christmas book
Native Voices, Native Lands The content intrigues me.
Song of County Roads I’m a country gal who likes country stories.
Bluebonnets, Boots and Buffalo Bones I love reading anything relating to Texas and history. I just love reading!
The Harsh and The Heart – Celebrating the Military Can always find another family member who’d like to see my niece’s work in print!
Song of County Roads I like country music, so country is my choice.
From the Porch Swing – Memories of Our Grandparents I thought it might have something about my grandparents.
Slender Steps to Sanity – Twelve-Step Notes of Hope Because I see the monthly sales report for Kindle versions of the books and see most months this book is sold not only in the United States better than any other but also in the UK and I think of all the people who are benefiting from it and am honored to have had something to do with it.

While it’s still icy, you may continue to share yesterday’s offert and to have a chance to win not only the book you choose but all 26.

What This Book Is About

 Marketing, Small Press Caveats  Comments Off on What This Book Is About
Feb 192015
 

As I look for ways to revitalize Silver Boomer Books I’m reading other blogs of similar ilk. (Now, I do realize some of these other bloggers would resent my putting us into their ilk, but I can dream, can’t I?) As I find nuggets to ponder, I’ll post them here as part of a process developing plans and searching for ways to implement them. And example number one…

Even if the logic is fully absorbed and appreciated, the challenge for most publishers to change their process for creating descriptive copy is substantial. We’ve now replaced “knowledge of the book”, which has usually been routinely gained through work that takes place before the copy is needed, with “research into the audience”, a separate task that can take a couple of hours or more and requires a dedicated effort. [The Shatzkin Files, “Doing SEO right requires research into the audience, not maximum knowledge of the book” Posted by Mike Shatzkin on February 17, 2015)

He suggests eventually the editorial staff will need to learn audience research techniques as well as the marketers. I guess if we’re one and the same that actually equates to an advantage…if one or the other (editor or marketer persona) grasps it. It seems this is perhaps done by computers analyzing in one case proper nouns and in another writing style, sentiment analysis, and story construction. Hey, I’ve always been analytical. But maybe not that much.

However, a sum-it-up statement is, “publishers have a vested interest in showing up for the right searches for the right people at the right times.” (ibid) I knew that. I don’t have the actual knowledge but I do understand it’s a deficit I need to meet to move Silver Boomer Books forward. 

Feb 122015
 

I said I would use ten obliques without knowing how to choose the ten, so I decided to use every fifth one in the list. Therefore, my considerations are these:

  • What does it look like from above or below?
  • Is it bigger than a breadbox or know what a breadbox is?
  • What is the very first thing to do on it? The seventh?
  • Which season of the year suits it?
  • Who is the villain in the mystery?
  • What do I actively not want to do? Why?
  • Why do I want to do this if I’m struggling with it so?
  • What can I do in the next minute to advance this project?
  • Who do you want to work with you on this from among your family? Why?
  • What has convinced Henny Penny the sky is falling?

And the issue to be resolved using these questions? The focus of the tenth Silver Boomer Books anthology. By definition, the anthology will be a collection of memoir and nostalgia in the form of prose and poetry from a wide variety or authors all over the world. By tradition we will have four editors for the book, and some of those have been from outside for the last three anthologies. Those already published are described in the previous post.

  1. What does it look like from above or below? It’s obvious utilizing arbitrary obliques in a somewhat boxed in context can get interesting. Above? I think of Flashlight Memories where the idea is a child hiding under the covers reading after bedtime. What’s above that? Certainly The Harsh and The Heart – Celebrating the Military with the jets flying in formation on the cover. Ideas coming from those could be other childhood activities that affected adult lives and other honored professions such as teaching and first responders.
  2. Is it bigger than a breadbox or know what a breadbox is? Could the anthology be about items not in normal use in the 21st century but central to our past? Breadboxes perhaps, but record players, typewriters, Green Stamps, the Sears and Roebuck Catalogue, flashbulbs, slide rules, milk bottles on the porch…
  3. What is the first thing to do on it? The seventh?  Find a subject? Find editors? Structure a call for submissions? Actually this is the first thing, looking for a subject. The seventh? Without actually counting, I’ll say a call for submissions. This oblique seems to miss the mark on this issue. On to the next.
  4. Which season of the year suits it? We’ve done an anthology on holidays throughout the year in A Quilt of HolidaysWould one on seasons work? One on months? Weather? Weather-related activities?
  5. Who is the villain in the mystery? Hum. An anthology of real-life mysteries? The grouchiest person I ever knew? Evil people? (Do I get veto power now or must this stay chain of consciousness?) So, good people I didn’t get at first, the good in people I didn’t like?
  6. What do I actively not want to do? Why? Well, if we were to do an anthology around songs that meant a lot to us, there would be a terrible copyright issue to address, and I’d avoid that at all costs because of that cost in time and – perhaps – cash. But we could do one on quotations that touched our lives.
  7. Why do I want to do this if I’m struggling with it so? Well, Cup of Comfort bit the dust but Chicken Soup is going strong – 250+ titles. SBB author Madonna Dries Christensen has a call for submissions for a Serendipity anthology, and NYMB (Not Your Mother’s Book) with SBB author Linda O’Connell has ten titles at his point. Silver Boomer Books is in great company and has a role to play in the genre. Again, no real meat to answer the query.
  8. What can I do in the next minutes to advance this project? I could keep on writing here if I didn’t have to take the dog to the groomers in 22 minutes. Okay, I can finish this post. I can continue with the give-away of SBB books this month. But I need to – and shy away from – reach out to others who can expand the reach of this blog and therefore of Silver Boomer Books.
  9. Who do you want to work with you on this from among your family? Why?  Writing the oblique I didn’t think of calling on the dead, but the first I think of is my grandfather, Rhapherd T. Breedlove. I’ve got some of his writings posted on my genealogy pages. What could I learn from Pop? One thing would be to solicit verbal stories from some people perhaps. Pop wrote some great family history but when he sat down to write for publication, it lost the heart and soul of his just telling the story, orally or in letters or sermons. A collection of letters is a possibility. Or sermons. Nope. Don’t want to read the ones I wouldn’t want to publish. Spontaneity is what comes to mind: Pop telling the stories from the pulpit and Grandmom, from the choir loft, correcting him for what she believed to be factual errors.
  10. What convinced Henny Penny the sky was falling? I’m laughing. I wrote the question but I just now researched the stories and in the nineteenth centuries they had endings totally politically incorrect today. Maybe my answer is stated in #7: “Cup of Comfort bit the dust.” What this is telling me is that the fate of a small publishing company and it’s products in the 21st century may well be an endangered species: i.e., the sky may really be falling. But then again, it will if I quit, and I don’t intend to quit and can’t control the future, so we’ll move on to the next books to be published by Silver Boomer Books and its imprints, ignoring the possibility of annihilation.

The results of the quest: The focus of the tenth Silver Boomer Books anthology might be…

  • childhood activities having lifelong affect
  • teachers
  • first responders
  • items of nostalgia
  • seasons
  • months
  • weather
  • weather-related activities
  • real life mysteries
  • grouchy people
  • evil people
  • good people I didn’t like
  • quotations that touched our lives
  • answers yet to come from readers of this blog post and the prior one
  • oral history passed down or recorded