BOOK CLUB FRIDAY--GUEST AUTHOR JENNY MILCHMAN

Award-winning author Jenny Milchman is the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day and chair of the Debut Authors Program for International Thriller Writers. She also goes out on very long book tours as you’ll discover from reading what she has to say today. Learn more about Jenny and her books at her website.

Sheer Bliss or Utter Insanity? The Story of the World’s Longest Book Tour

I’m not usually one for titles, but I believe I should be in the running for this one: She Who Goes on the Longest Book Tours.

OK, as a title it may be a little cumbersome. As a reality, though? It fits. When my debut novel came out last year, I traveled 7 months and 35,000 miles. My second novel is out now, and I’m on the road for another 4 months and 20,000 miles.

When I met mystery writer Mary Stanton at Murder on the Beach in Florida last year, she said, “I would rather eat rats than do what you’re doing.”

Did I mention that my husband and our two children are along with me? He works from the front seat, kids are “car-schooled” in the back. And just to share a few more details…we rented out our home in New Jersey to cover costs, traded in two cars for an SUV that could handle Denver in February, and gave up a place at the kids’ charter school.

Why did we do all that? Well, there are many reasons, and none include my having a taste for rat—although I will say that Mary is not alone in her thinking. There’s a look I receive that ranges from incredulous to fall-on-the-floor shock when I describe our exploits.

But when it takes you thirteen years to get published, a few things happen. The first is that the road to that “first” book—my debut was actually the eighth novel I had written—becomes something of a quest. And a dream. Another is that a great number of people become supports and supporters along the way. Once It finally happened, I wanted to get out there and thank everyone who had kept me going all those years.

I also have a deep belief that no matter how the web has widened our worlds—and it has, wonderfully—there’s nothing like the connection that takes place in real time. I have seen this occur over and over—and over and over and over some more—during our ten months of traveling. A handshake or a hug is different than a smiley face emoticon. Both enrich our lives. When the twain meet, though—that’s when the real magic happens.

There’s a robust and lively bookstore scene that doesn’t reflect the messages we get from the media. Small town America and Main Street are thriving, thanks in part to a renewed penchant for locavorism—and this is happening in cities, too. Bookstores often become a hub of this revitalization in astonishingly creative ways.

I have sat down to a ticketed three-course dinner held off-site by a bookstore—it was like a wedding with books. Square Books in Oxford, MS brings in 200 attendees to their regular author radio and music night. The Mystery Lovers Bookshop in Oakmont, PA holds a coffee & crime brunch. Yum. Macintosh Books on Sanibel Island, FL goes for lunch a little later in the day. I could go on and on, describing events that draw attendees from as far as three states away.

As much as I love them, bookstores aren’t the only sites I visit. Libraries, book clubs, schools and other even more outside-the-box locations bring people together for a lively discussion about books, culture, and our lives.

There’s a practical reason for getting out there—if not for seven months, then perhaps for seven days—and it’s about introducing a book to readers in ways that are less focused upon these days. When a bookseller who never otherwise would’ve discovered your book continues selling it a year after it’s come out because her customers tell their friends about it…that’s word of mouth in action, and WOM may be the only real way we know to sell books. Zigging while others are zagging also just makes good sense—you stand out, and that’s awfully hard to do amidst today’s clamor of voices.

But there are also what I call reasons of the heart. Is the driving hard, especially with two kids in the back? Sometimes, I guess, but if you find a school, you find a playground, and kids don’t need much more than that when they’ve got their parents with them. And there’s nothing like turning the whole country into a classroom—watching those same kids come alive over civil rights or environmental infrastructure or The Hunger Games  in that evening’s bookstore.

About those nights spent in bookstores. When you walk into an audience of one—which you will do, no matter how big you become—and that person doesn’t buy your book, you might think, “What am I doing out here?” But then say that person buys a different book, one you recommend, so the bookseller is happy. And say he tells you that he didn’t buy your book because he already owns two copies—one to read, and one to keep pristine. And then he tells you that he has to go—because he’s got a three hour drive home after coming to see you, which he did because your book meant so much to him.

That’s a reason of the heart. And believe me, it’s a lot better than eating rats.

Ruin Falls

Liz Daniels should be happy about taking a rare family vacation, leaving behind their remote home in the Adirondack Mountains for a while. Instead, she feels uneasy. Her children, eight-year-old Reid and six-year-old Ally, have only met their paternal grandparents a handful of times. But her husband, Paul, has decided that despite a strained relationship with his mother and father, they should visit the farm in western New York where he spent his childhood.

The family doesn’t make it all the way to the farm and stops at a hotel for the night. And in the morning, when Liz checks on her sleeping children, all of the small paranoias and anxieties from the day before come to life: Ally and Reid are nowhere to be found. Blind panic slides into ice cold terror as the hours tick by without discovering a trace of her kids. Soon, Paul and Liz are being interviewed by police, an Amber Alert is issued, detectives are called in. Frantic worry and helplessness threaten to overtake Liz’s mind.

But the children are safe. In a sudden, gut-wrenching realization, Liz knows that it was no stranger who slipped into the hotel room and kidnapped her children. Instead it was someone she trusted completely. And as the police abruptly wrap-up their investigation, Liz identifies the person who has betrayed her. Now she will stop at nothing to find Ally and Reid and get them back. From her guarded in-laws’ unwelcoming farmhouse to the deep woods of her hometown, Liz follows the threads of a terrible secret to uncover a hidden world created from dreams and haunted by nightmares.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY GUEST AUTHOR JENNY MILCHMAN

Jenny Milchman is a suspense novelist from New Jersey whose short stories have appeared in Ellery Queen Mystery Magazine, Adirondack Mysteries II, and in an e-published volume called Lunch Reads. Jenny is the founder of Take Your Child to a Bookstore Day, and the chair of International Thriller Writers’ Debut Authors Program. Her first novel, Cover of Snow, is published by Ballantine. Learn more about Jenny at her website and blog. -- AP

Mr. Sandman, Bring Me Your…

In a few weeks, I am going to get up in front of a roomful of people and ask them to tell me their hopes and dreams.

But let me back up a little.

In a few weeks my debut novel, Cover of Snow, is going to be published. This was a dream thirteen years in the making for me—and that’s if you count from when I first signed with an agent. If you count from when it first crossed my mind to try and get published, it’s more like fifteen years. And if you count from the time I first knew I wanted to be a writer…well, then you’d know about how old I am.

One of my release parties is taking place at a bookstore that has seen the likes of Caroline Kennedy and Jane Seymour. I can’t compete with that—Caroline Kennedy had between 700 and 800 attendees—and I probably don’t have anything as interesting to say.

But I do know something about sticking to a dream. Mine took me through a lot of low points—long, lonely drives and I’m-giving-up moments. And when I started inviting people to my launch party, I realized that they probably had some experience with dreaming, too. We all do. Writers, parents, single people seeking soul mates—all of us know what it’s like to want something very badly and not be sure when, or if, we’re going to get it.

Wouldn’t it be great if we could hear a whole collection of hopes and dreams? Mightn’t saying them out loud make them just a little bit more real? A dream shared is a dream one step closer to being realized.

I envision a stream of people coming up to the microphone at the front of the bookstore and giving voice to whatever goal or aim has been living inside them. The poet Langston Hughes asks, “What happens to a dream deferred?/Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?”

I know what helped me hang in there for thirteen+ years, and I offer these tips in case you might be trying to keep going towards something right now.

• Seek out support. Whether that comes from family, friends, church or temple or mosque communities, or online groups and forums, it’s necessary to have someone in your corner to cheer you on and offer advice when the going gets rough. (If your support person is a good cook, that’s all the better.)

• Concretize what you’re going for. Write it down, make a collage, record your own voice describing it. If your goal is to learn a craft, visit a foreign country, or go back to college, find something that represents that goal. Maybe a skein of yarn. Or a flag. A brochure. Let there be something physical you can pick up to remind yourself that one day this will be real. In my case, every book on my shelf was an image of what I wanted my manuscript to become.

• Have a method to stamp out self-doubt. Because you’re going to—doubt, that is. And you’ll encounter the haters. I remember an old friend wondering aloud how long I intended to “keep at this.” Keep at what? My dream? The answer has to be forever, but we don’t always feel entitled to say so. Practice your response—“As long as I have to,” “Until I succeed,”—and have a way to combat depression when you start to feel like It’s Never Going to Happen. Go for a drive, take a shower, or eat some chocolate. Do all three. Pick up that concrete symbol you fashioned (see above.) Most of all, just know that doubt is par for the course, part of going for a dream, and until you give up, you haven’t failed. You just haven’t succeeded YET.

Oh, and if you’d like to, please join us either physically or in spirit on January 17^th when hopes and dreams will be shared, and come that much closer to coming true.

Cover of Snow

Waking up one wintry morning in her old farmhouse nestled in the Adirondack Mountains of New York, Nora Hamilton instantly knows that something is wrong. When her fog of sleep clears, she finds her world is suddenly, irretrievably shattered: Her husband, Brendan, has committed suicide.

The first few hours following Nora’s devastating discovery pass for her in a blur of numbness and disbelief. Then, a disturbing awareness slowly settles in: Brendan left no note and gave no indication that he was contemplating taking his own life. Why would a rock-solid police officer with unwavering affection for his wife, job, and quaint hometown suddenly choose to end it all? Having spent a lifetime avoiding hard truths, Nora must now start facing them.

Unraveling her late husband’s final days, Nora searches for an explanation—but finds a bewildering resistance from Brendan’s best friend and partner, his fellow police officers, and his brittle mother. It quickly becomes clear to Nora that she is asking questions no one wants to answer. For beneath the soft cover of snow lies a powerful conspiracy that will stop at nothing to keep its presence unknown . . . and its darkest secrets hidden.

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BOOK CLUB FRIDAY - GUEST AUTHOR JENNY MILCHMAN

Today we're happy to have Jenny Milchman as our Book Club Friday guest author. Jenny is a suspense writer from New Jersey whose debut novel, Cover of Snow, will be published by Ballantine in January. Visit her at her website and blog. -- AP

Sisyphus? He’s Got Nothing on Writers

Right now, as I sit typing this piece for Lois’ terrific blog, my debut novel will be coming out in just shy of six months. OK, it will be out in five months, three weeks, and two days, but who’s counting?

I am.

Another timeframe I could share is 11 years. That’s how long it took my novel to sell.

And why I do call it a debut novel instead of a first? Because the book that’s coming out isn’t my first. Or even my second, or third. It’s my eighth.

That’s right. I have six other novels, which are probably destined to remain in a cyber-drawer. A seventh, which nearly sold before the eighth. And then the one that finally resulted in a magic combination of…something that led to a deal.

What was that something? Well, I can say for sure it isn’t only the book itself. My seventh novel had enough oomph to make it all the way to the publisher at the helm of [insert name of publishing house here]. The book that’s coming out I guess also had that oomph factor, plus happened to land in the hands of someone who could navigate the morass of editorial board and marketing and publicity departments and top brass and take it all the way across the finish line.

There were some pretty bleak moments before the fateful day came when my agent—my third agent, whom I call my forever agent—called to say, “I have some good news.”

One day I remember in particular happened when I was driving through a blizzard to see [insert name of big superstar author here]. I’d been attending readings and signings by authors I loved for years in the hopes of learning how they had done it, or just drawing inspiration from the fact that they had.

But on this particular occasion, I was lost. And late. And I had left my two children at home in the care of my husband, and my older one was sick.

What kind of mother was I, leaving her sick child to pursue this clearly futile dream? What I was doing that particular night wasn’t even tied in any tangible way to achieving the dream. But what else could I do? I was desperate. I had all the pieces in place. An agent who believed in me. A book editors wanted to buy. And still no offer. What was it going to take?

That’s what I said—no, cried—on the phone to my husband, who, in addition to the myriad other roles he played in this quest of mine, was also willing to serve as GPS to his tech-challenged wife. At least I’d asked how our daughter was first.

“She’s better,” my husband said softly, directing me through the snowy streets, tethered by an invisible series of satellite signals that lit my way.

It’d be fitting—like something out of a novel when the arc is finally nailed—if that night had turned out to be the key piece that fell into place, allowing my book to sell. But it wasn’t. In fact, if I’m recalling correctly—and I am; these events are seared into my soul, as much a part of me as a brand—there was still well over a year left before the magic happened.

I look back on my years of rejection, and frustration, and oftentimes despair, in two ways.

• First, I believe my work really wasn’t ready for most of that time. I would’ve said it was, of course. But one of the things I worry about in the compressed time scale of indie publishing is a loss of the writer’s apprenticeship. If I hadn’t been forced to write all those books and drafts, I wouldn’t have. Too hard. Waaay too hard. I wanted readers! I wanted to be an author. But if I’d been published much sooner, my work would’ve been the worse for it—and so would I as a writer.

This article elaborates on the above. (And it even quotes John Mayer, so how can you go wrong?)

As for the second point, I believe in a sort of fated meant-to-be so this might get a little wiggy.

• The editor who bought my debut novel has a brilliant, visionary view of fiction. And a mindset that uniquely fits what I hope to do as a writer. Not that there aren’t many incisive editors out there—I’ve met several others at my publishing house alone. The talent accumulated in the haloed and hallowed halls of publishing is not to be believed. But if I had wound up with any of the editors who came heartbreakingly close to buying my work, then I would not be with the editor I’m meant to be with. Someone who knows what I want to accomplish without words even being exchanged—funny, for two book people—and who can tell when I’ve gotten there.

I have met many indie writers who approach their path with the dedication and seriousness our craft deserves. Multiple rounds of readers. Critique groups. Workshops and conferences. Freelance editors. These are necessary resources before you’re likely to have a book that will truly draw in readers. And, to get a little wiggy again, before you arrive at the point on your writer’s journey when you are finally ready to be published.

I want to hold out a flag and wave it for indie writers who put together the team a good book deserves, and the others who are banging their skulls against the brick walls of traditional publishing, and tell them not to worry if it takes a little while.

Eight novels and eleven years.

You’re probably doing all right.

Jenny, you're an inspiration to every struggling writer. Best of luck with your debut novel. -- AP