Book Reviews and the White Lizard

I have a litany of topics to write about: memories vs traditions; honey used by my son Will on the parallel bars; skiing with my family and my goal to do it for 50 more years; the end of treatment for breast cancer—April!  All of these have been writing themselves for weeks or months. 

Then, there’s the more recent story spinning.  A point where my favorite poem, “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud,” mingles with an unexpected lizard bath. 

This stanza from Wordsworth’s poem…

“For oft, when on my couch I lie

In vacant or in pensive mood,

They (daffodils) flash upon that inward eye

Which is the bliss of solitude;

And then my heart with pleasure fills,

And dances with the daffodils.”

… meets at a strange point of juxtaposition: The sight of my friend’s white lizard having a gentle soak in her kitchen sink late last fall is as pleasure-filled on my inward eye as the sight of spring daffodils.  

But I’m not writing about any of the above topics today. 

(Still, this lizard is giving me a strange sense of peace, and it’s a bit perplexing as I’m not a big fan of reptilian or rodent-esque pets.  But I’ll accept this most pleasing vision and not ponder why.)

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been researching how to market my book.  I’ve decided I need to create new warm audiences.  To introduce my book to new markets—that’s the next phase of the Cornfields to Codfish journey. 

There is a rather overwhelming abundance of possibilities in how to do this.  I’ve prioritized my top three: First, I’ll be sending a copy of my book to small independent bookstores in the Midwest and in New England.  Second, the plan includes sending press releases to book reviewers at newspapers in these same markets.  Third, I’m spearheading a marketing group within my local writing community, The Room to Write, to create a bit of camaraderie with other recently published authors who may also be scratching their heads wondering, “What now?”

While those are the goals, today I’m thinking about tactics, particularly, book reviews.  In all that I’ve been reading, the marketing of books begins with reviews.  They form the base of how authors’ books gain legitimacy.  Most likely, when book store owners or book reviewers at newspapers receive word of a newly published book, they turn to the Internet and look for reviews.  And if someone recommends a book to me, guess what I do?  I check out the reviews on Goodreads and Amazon. 

Today I’d like to ask for your help in filling my Cornfields to Codfish review piggy bank.  I have one review right now—the first building block as been laid!  I rarely write reviews after reading books, but knowing now how valuable they are to authors, I’m going to start.   But how?  I found a good article that I would like to share with you: How to Write a Good Book Review.  I’ve received so many wonderful comments and notes from many of you—it would be most appreciated if you would carry these comments over to Goodreads and Amazon!

One thing I find fascinating from feedback is how people have been reading Cornfields to Codfish.  One reader said that she “reads one or two, then chews on them for a day or two” before reading more.  I think potential readers would like to hear how other readers are “consuming” the essays—all in one weekend or over several days or weeks?

If you’re up for it, I would so appreciate you leaving reviews on Goodreads and/or Amazon for potential new readers to see.  Thanks in advance for any reviews you put forth into the virtual world at your fingertips!

Whew, much newness abounds!  This week, I’m thankful for the strangely calming vision of the white lizard peacefully sitting like a king in his kitchen-sink bathtub.

:)

Linda

A Study on Word Origins: Fobben

My younger son Liam has confidently projected that I will make $100,000 on my book.  That’s led to some interesting discussions regarding gross sales and net profit—and probability.  Do I include a decade of expenses in the creation of Cornfields to Codfish? Or was writing a hobby up to the point of when I started polishing essays that would be in the book?  Do flights to Iowa that brought back memories that inspired many of the essays go against the bottom line?  What about beach entrance fees and swordfish dinners over the years?

My family celebrated Christmas in Iowa at Thanksgiving time last year.  The Thursday after Thanksgiving, I had a book signing at Laree’s, a gift shop in Independence.  Bill and my sons flew home after the Thanksgiving weekend, but I stayed in Iowa.  It’s cut and dried that the car rental expense became a writing expense after I dropped them off at the Cedar Rapids airport.  My intent was to visit book stores and gift shops in northeast Iowa to hawk my wares, er, my book.  A bad cold slowed me down, so after a quick trip to the Luther College Bookstore, I spent the rest of the week leading up to the book signing on Mom and Dad’s couch fighting the season’s first yuck.

The rental car sat motionless.  An expensive expense.  The long driveway off the road at Mom and Dad’s is gravel, and it leads to a large open area bordered by the house to the south; Mom’s green house, a small open garage, and a hay shed to the west; the barn to the north; and a corn crib/storage building to the east.  I had parked out of the way, next to the garbage barrel that sits off to the west of the drive. 

Actually, now that I think about it, I’ve criss-crossed definitions: In Massachusetts, we have garbage cans that we haul to the curb every week.  In Iowa, we have two burn barrels where Dad burns the trash from the house every morning.  The two burn barrels are 55-gallon steel drums, the kind used to transport oil.  When they get full of ash, Dad hauls them out back and buries the ash.  

When I was growing up, everything but food waste and glass went into the trash and ended up in these incinerators.  Now, Mom and Dad recycle all cans, plastic, and glass.  They gather those pieces in huge recycle bags in the basement then take them to town to turn in at a recycling center.  They get five cents each for pop cans, or soda cans, depending on where you live and what you call them.  All food waste goes in a “cat pan” that Dad takes out back to dump.  I remember when I left the farm and started cooking my own meals how confusing it was to either throw food waste in the garbage or down the garbage disposal.  A cat pan still seems more organic than either of those disposal methods.

Dad asked me to move my car one morning so he could burn trash.  I backed the car out and parked it at a safe distance away in front of the barn.  Looking around the car, I gathered up the strewn garbage, putting water bottles for recycling in my left hand and garbage in my right.  I met Dad at the back door as he was taking the garbage out.  “Wait,” I said, “I have some trash from the car.”

“Push it down in there or the wind will blow it away,” Dad replied.  So I stuffed the Goldfish packages and candy bar wrappers into the kitchen garbage can.  Then I threw the bottles in the bin next to the stove where recyclables were collected. 

Later that day, I was going to visit my nieces who live a couple miles away from Mom and Dad’s.  My heart dropped to my toes when I reached for my keys.  Whenever I walk into my parents’ house, I kick off my shoes and immediately go to the kitchen to hang up the car keys on the big key holder that hangs above the calendar.  The key holder is a flat piece of wood with ten or so hooks; I hang my key ring in the bottom row on the first or second hook from the right.  This habit is as ingrained in me as closing the door when I leave the house.

The key wasn’t on either hook.  I didn’t need to look for it.  I knew where it was.  Melting in the burn barrel.  I had my finger through the key chain when I was bringing the trash in; I had double-checked it was there as I walked across the gravel drive with my hands full.  I would need to drive an hour and a half back to the airport to get another key.

Wait, did I say “key”?  Ah, I should’ve said “fob.”  And this was the kind of fob that had a computer chip to enable the car to start with the push of a button.  And with the advent of said fob, I soon discovered that the car rental company no longer keeps a spare on hand.  Rather, the renter needs to call a locksmith to come out and make a new “key” on site.  Unfortunate events continued to unfold:  The farm is 30 miles from the nearest locksmith.  The fob costs $300 to reprogram.  The service call costs $200.  That annual fee we pay for AAA insurance doesn’t cover loss of rental car keys. 

I’ve always thought the phrase “nausea swept over me” was a bit of overwriting and melodramatic.  The unfolding of the above scene proved me wrong. 

The gross on my book sales didn’t change, but the net took a serious hit that day.  A sickening hit.  With this event, the trip became not a sales event but a promotional event.

Before this, I wasn’t a fan of key-less vehicles.  If there had been a real key, I would’ve heard it jingle as a pushed it into the trash can.  Surely, I would’ve.  As I write the word “fob,” I think what a strange word it is.  Sometimes it helps to learn more about your enemy.  I turn to Merriam Webster where fob is defined as a “small trinket . . . attached to a key ring.”  Fob originated from the Middle English word fobben.  To trick or cheat.

As I write this, yet another wave of nausea sweeps over me.

Roots and Rocks

Last week in the van when I was driving Liam to basketball practice, I asked him to check the calendar on my phone and confirm we were going to the right gym.  When he opened my calendar, April was in view.  I had spent that day with my son Will planning college visits for spring break.  Liam was shocked, “Mom, you’re living so far ahead of yourself!”

And that was only what Liam saw on the calendar, never mind all the futuring going on in my head.  Honest to Pete, that’s what it is… “futuring.”  It’s as active a word as “googling.”  Some of that brain power is spent in planning, but if I don’t have my calendar at hand, whether I’m driving or going for a walk or even in the middle of a conversation, I start futuring.  Thinking about plans without actually making them.

Last week, the unsettledness from this verb that’s filled with mental calisthenics collided with the lack of a snowy winter.  I’m a woman who thrives on the change of seasons — the routine and predictability of that change.  My seasonal calendar paints the picture of January and February covered in white.  But there is no snow on the ground.  In Massachusetts right now, I’m living a cold version of an English winter.  My surroundings are stranded in the dreariness of late November when all the grass is dead and the trees are leafless.

I tore this quote out of magazine last week; it’s from John Steinbeck’s Travels with Charley: In Search of America… “What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”  Indeed.

My snowshoes lay dormant as do my Yak trax, those spiky metal contraptions that I attach to my boots so that I can walk on frozen, icy terra.  One cloudy, 40-degree morning last week, I pulled out my backpack that holds a reservoir of water linked to a hose that clicks neatly in place on the shoulder strap. On the end of the hose is a valve/mouthpiece for hands free drinking.  I was going for a hike, not a walk, so I didn’t want a water bottle in one hand.  Hiking means having both hands free to hold on to trees or crawl over rocks. 

I knew the trail I needed: the rough one around the lower lake in Breakheart Reservation.  I walk the paved path often, but I needed something else.  I couldn’t put words to what that something was until I was on the path.  The trail follows the water’s edge.  As I started hiking, the futuring stopped.  My eyes picked a path, scouting just six feet in front of me.  My internal energies flowed to the physical movement over roots and rocks.  If I let my mind wonder too far from these obstacles, I would trip and fall.

A quarter of a mile into this three-mile journey, I had a thought: coyotes.  Hadn’t Bill just told me about a rabid coyote that had been spotted in this area?  I cussed and scanned the rocks to my right.  All was in sepia, so a still coyote would’ve blended in perfectly.  Not ten paces from this thought, I saw a thick, short stick laying a few feet up the hill from the path.  I climbed using all fours and grabbed it.  Whether shed from another hiker or just dropped naturally in the right spot, it was the walking stick/weapon that I needed.  The coyote futuring stopped as I continued on, trusting in my ability to ward of coyotes with this stick. 

Nearly half way through the hike, I heard another hiker coming toward me.  We were only ten feet apart before he finally realized I was there.  He didn’t startle but rather greeted me with a calm, “Oh, hello!”  As if we had just bumped into one another on a sidewalk.  This man had a real walking stick and based on the intensity with which he walked, I knew he often hiked this trail.  There was no evidence of futuring on his face. 

I maneuvered over streams, around downed tree limbs, and over boulders.  When the path occasionally vanished, I stopped to scan the terrain and look for a tree with a blaze marking the path.  The splotch of paint was reaffirming: I was still on the path.  Funny that I felt comforted by that splotch; after all, I was on a trail that ringed the lake.  I couldn’t get too far off track. I stuck to the path until I completed a full loop; then I took an offshoot path through the woods that dropped me back onto the paved path near the parking lot.

Purposefully clambering over roots and rocks pulled me to the earth.  Closer to where I was – not so far ahead of myself.

White Rabbit

My eyes opened to a bit of a panic this morning.  It was brighter out than normal, and my alarm hadn’t gone off yet.  After a short series of mental math problems that felt like calculus, I realized it was Saturday.  My body stole nine extra morning minutes, waking up at 6:39 rather than 6:30.  That nine minutes of light appeared distinguishable this morning.

Bill asked what time it was then closed his eyes.  In the bathroom, I continued the math lesson and landing on the day of the month, February 1st, I tiptoed to our bedroom door and whisper yelled to Bill, “White Rabbit!”  Finally, a win!   It had been a couple of months. We’ve been doing this since we first met: Whoever says “white rabbit” first on the first day of the month wins. 

white rabbit with clock.jpeg

For 31 years we’ve been doing this.  And this morning, I put fingers to the keyboard to figure out why.  For us, it’s always been a competition.  It’s an exhilarating first win of the month if you get it! 

We’ve pulled Liam into the fray. I had a bit of a losing streak in 2019.  Bill must have won 80% of the time with me.  He hears me getting out of bed and without opening his eyes, he can muster up morning math quick enough to get in the first “white rabbit.”  Liam is an early riser like me, so I get him; we form an alliance; and I send him upstairs to get Bill.  Having everyone win once feels good.  Bill would disagree with that sentiment, no matter all the years his mum tried to coax him to not be so competitive. 

The internet claims that it’s more of a superstition: saying “white rabbit” – or some version of that: “rabbit, rabbit, rabbit” or “rabbit, rabbit” – brings you good luck for the month.  A Liverpool source claims that in World War II the Royal Air Force bombers said “white rabbits” every day when they woke up to protect themselves for the day.  The same article says that in order for “white rabbit” to bring good luck, it must be spoken out loud and be the first thing said on the first of the month. 

So it would appear to be more of phrase for luck that anyone can murmur out loud on the first of the month.  That it’s not a competition but rather a superstition.  Except in the Malcolm house.