Can I Put Away My Summer Stuff YET?

The seasons are odd in these parts. In fact, people who have been here only a short time sometimes insist that there are no seasons at all. But it's not true... they may be subtle, compared to the explosions of color and dramatic drops in temperature one gets in temperate zones, but they are nonetheless present, to those who pay attention.
The air takes on a slightly different feel and smell. The leaves drop or change color (again, this is nowhere near as dramatic in most parts of Southern California as elsewhere, but it does occur). The hills gray, like the five o clock shadow on a man's face. When I walk in the woods, the flowers and berries have fallen, for the most part, and one sees many bare twigs, gray and dry, waiting for the winter rain that has already sporadically begun to fall.
Because of frequent bursts of heat late in the season, I usually delay putting my winter stuff out and stashing my summer stuff until November. This past week there were some quite hot days, perhaps 100 degrees, that made me glad I had waited just a little longer to put things away, but I think that this next week will be a good time to make the change, to commit to the coming season and put summer behind me, folded into a box, trunk, or plastic bag, till next May.

More Talk!

I am not bad at this marketing stuff, even though it will be a while before the book is out (spring). On Nov. 5, I will be interviewed on the Verses in Motion radio program. The show is on blogtalkradio.com, but I am not sure right now how to tell you to tune in because I don't know whether the interview will be live or pre-recorded, but I've got 20 minutes devoted to me, so I'll talk about the book, put in a word for the collection I'm still trying to find a publisher for, and generally be charming and prolix. I'm good at the latter.
Here's a link: http://www.blogtalkradio.com/getyourzradio
Here's the radio website: http://www.getyourzworld.com/
More later...

Around the Bend

It is beginning to seem as though next semester will be busier than I had anticipated. I may be teaching in two places, or may even receive offers from more than that.
In addition, I have promised to deliver an essay to Hollins Critic on Lev Grossman, for which I have ordered all of the books except the one I already own. I will reread them and begin whipping something up. That will be more money, and perhaps the start of writing articles/reviews for various publications.
So one cannot tell what will come up, especially since I have been out there selling myself in one way or another.
Now I have to think about how to market my book online. I have looked at some people's book marketing sites and have joined a group on Linked In. That may help.
If I am working, I can hire my neighbor to work up a site with me!

On the Street

Yesterday I was coming back from the farmer's market at the LH Mall, and I saw a young man about my son's age with a sign bearing only one word: "Hungry." I wanted to pull over the car and ask him where his parents were, why he wasn't in school, on unemployment, protected and cared for, as my own son is. Yet at the same time I knew the answer. Probably he had never had work eligible for unemployment, or perhaps he quit or was fired, or worse, had used up all his unemployment and couldn't afford to go to school. Maybe he had no parents or his parents were abusive and had thrown him out.
I couldn't stop, not even to hand a dollar bill out the window, since a line of cars pressed me forward, but I still think about this young man and all those like him I have seen at that spot in the past year.
We are all so vulnerable. It wouldn't take much for many of us to fall off the edge of the known world into despair and oblivion. It's a wonder more people aren't in the street protesting, really.

The Magician King, Lev Grossman

I finished reading the book yesterday. It is odd that even though I had the feeling a few times that it was not quite a "real" book (too adolescent in tone, sometimes, too much like something I would read in a graduate school workshop in tone), I lapped it up. It was very much like those childhood books I used to fall into, and really, which make up the subject matter and the background of this book.
Grossman has really hit a nerve on this one. I think that there are lots of people like me who wish they could read as they did when they were children, engrossed in fantasy series like the Narnia books, which I loved and still love, or the Fellowship of the Ring.
There is no doubt that he is very good at plotting and also that the ending of this book is stronger than the ending of The Codex. I can definitely see movies coming out of these two books, big Harry Potterish blockbusters, but perhaps it is too tongue in cheek for Hollywood to take up.
It makes me want to scrounge about for more fantasy. I would love any suggestions!

Selling Myself

I am hardly a shy person, but for some reason, I have trouble selling myself as aggressively as I might. It's not that I am under any sort illusion about myself. I know my writing is worthy of the selling, but I guess I have just considered it kind of ill-mannered or crude in some way to get down to the nitty gritty, I suppose. Some sort of snobbery about sales? Perhaps! Though when I was a child, I used to get paid by adult strangers to go away! That's how outgoing and chatty a creature I was.
However, I am shifting into sell-gear to promote my upcoming chapbook, Balance. As part of that activity, I will be going on a radio show to discuss my work. The show is called Verses in Motion. It makes me wish I had learned more from Dave about how to record my poems as files. Lots of little journals want those files when one submits poems these days.
And I've got a teaching interview coming up too, a big, long formal one, with a 15 minute presentation and other formidable sounding elements. I've got to find something nice to wear, and have my hair done! At least that's a positive outcome!

Dilemma

It is wonderful that Violet Press wants to publish my yoga poems! I am thrilled, and believe wholeheartedly that once it enters the world as a book, it will find a place for itself among yoga enthusiasts as well as poetry buffs. However, this is turning out to be an expensive proposition. I thought that if I didn't self-publish, a publisher would actually fund the printing of a certain number of the books, and that I would get get paid something, even a very tiny nominal sum, but as it turns out, I must fund the printing of the books I take with me to readings, at a lower author's price, and must pay for the cover art work.
Since I am not working right now, this is a great worry to me, particularly since I was already stressing over how I would pay for renewing my yoga studio membership for the year when that comes up in the spring. I have to make that a priority,as I cannot function very well without it.
Not to mention the necessity to contribute to the cost of paying for the house!
Things might very well work out much better than I imagine, but the uncertainty and the necessity of gambling with money I really don't have is extremely scary. And on top of it, I have already committed to paying for turning the book into an app. That is bound to be very expensive. I don't know what to do.