Blisscraft Life With Christina Katz

I am so looking forward to meeting Erica Bauermeister in my old stomping grounds, Bellingham, Washington, where we are both speaking at the Chuckanut Writers Conference from June 22nd – 23rd. Ooo, I can’t wait to go to Village Books and order the Colophon Café’s amazing chocolate cake with the big chocolate chips! Maybe Erica will join me there.

Who’s coming to the conference? I’d love to see you there! (PS: Early-bird registration ends on the 15th!) In the meantime, please help me welcome Erica and her lovely novel here!

About Erica Bauermeister

Erica Bauermeister is the author of two bestselling novels, The School of Essential Ingredients and Joy For Beginners. Before she turned her mind to make-believe, she was the co-author of two non-fiction books: 500 Great Books by Women: A Reader’s Guide and Let’s Hear It For the Girls: 375 Great Books for Readers 2-14. Her third novel will be published in the winter of 2013. She lives in Seattle with her family.

About Joy For Beginners

At an intimate, festive dinner party in Seattle, six women gather to celebrate their friend Kate’s recovery from cancer. Wineglass in hand, Kate strikes a bargain with them. To celebrate her new lease on life, she’ll do the one thing that’s always terrified her: white-water rafting. But if she goes, all of them will also do something they always swore they’d never do-and Kate is going to choose their adventures. Shimmering with warmth, wit, and insight, Joy for Beginners is a celebration of life: unexpected, lyrical, and deeply satisfying.

The Very Short Interview

When did you know for sure that you were a writer and that writing would be a major energy focus in your life?

I read Tillie Olsen’s short story, “I Stand Here Ironing” in college and knew that was the kind of literature I wanted to write –intimate, character-driven work that looked at the “unimportant” things in life and made them beautiful.  But I also knew I wasn’t mature enough yet to write that kind of book. It took until I was 43 for me to feel as if I had the life experience to attempt it – although I wrote and studied literature the whole time, to keep learning the craft.

Who has always been behind your writing career and who helped pull you up the ladder of success?

It really does take a village. My husband has supported me emotionally, and often financially, for thirty years. I had friends and sisters and a mother who read draft after draft and gave me the good, constructive criticism that makes you a better writer. I had the kind of human angels who show up just when you need the introduction to an agent or an editor, and go out of their way to help a stranger. I’ve had an extraordinary agent and great editors. I’ve worked hard, but I’ve had wonderful luck in the people who surround me.

What is the most frequent comment you hear about your book (or books) from readers? Tell us a little story about the response to your work.

The comment that always surprises and delights me, no matter how often I hear it is “I finished your book and then started rereading it again. I didn’t want to let it go.” I can imagine no higher compliment.

But one letter I particularly loved was from a 68 year-old woman. She wrote to say that she had read Claire’s chapter in The School of Essential Ingredients. When I wrote that story I wasn’t sure that anyone else would understand the feelings that Claire, a young mother, was experiencing, but this woman wrote to tell me about her relief that someone articulated what she had felt as a new mother, and that she had read it to her husband. “40 years later,” she wrote, “he finally understands.”

And Now, Your Turn

Now it’s your turn. You remember how this works right?

I ask you a question. You answer in the comments for your chance to win a book each day.

Please just respond once, even if you make a typo.

Answer in the comments in 50-200 words (no less and no more to qualify to win one of today’s books). Please read the complete rules at least once!

Thanks for participating in the Writer Mama Every-Day-In-May Book Giveaway! I hope to see you here every day this month. Bring your friends!

Q: So here’s how I met Erica Bauermeister…I didn’t yet! I just saw that she was going to be at the same conference as me, liked the sound of her bio, liked the sound of her book, and invited her to join the giveaway. Easy-peasy because I didn’t make it complicated.

If she had said no, oh-well. Or not responded at all, as several folks didn’t, then it would have been her loss, in my opinion. I don’t take this stuff personally…anymore. Though I used to. And it’s not like I don’t take anything personally, but mostly, after much practice, many ups and downs, many acceptances and rejections and silences, I don’t take things nearly as personally as I used to.

How about you? Rejection? Silence? No reply? Do you take it personally? Do you get offended? Do you get bent out of shape? Do you harumph around like Eloise?

How about a positive response or an acceptance, is that personal?

Is it only personal if it’s positive and not personal if it’s negative? Tell the truth, now.

What do you take personally in this crazy writing/networking business? Spill it!

And the winner of Little Chicken’s Big Day by Katie Davis, and How To Promote Your Children’s Book as a bonus book, is…

Deb of WriterUp!

She was chosen by Random Number Generator. Deb’s response was:

My proudest writing accomplishment is certainly not about my best writing. I was taking one of Christina’s classes a few years ago, and because of the encouragement from her and my classmates I worked up the nerve to submit an article to a regional magazine. There was no pay for that story, but seeing my article and byline in a nice glossy magazine was priceless. So my first is my proudest, because I stepped out of the comfort zone and tried.

Congratulations, Deb!!!

If you missed the drawing for Little Chicken’s Big Day by Katie Davis, you can read all about it here.

Important, winners: I need you to send me an e-mail with your mailing address so that I can send it on to the author and she can send you your signed book! Please include a phone number, as well.

Please send your address in an e-mail to “christina at christina katz dot com.”

Please put “Book Winner” in the subject line.

And thank you for supporting the giveaway and my work!

Thanks for participating. This is just day three of The Writer Mama Every Day In May Book Giveaway. We have 28 more days and winners to go! I hope you will spread the word.

Today, May 4th, is the fourth discussion question for the Beyond Busy Global Monthly Book Club. We just finished Anne Lamott’s Some Assembly Required, A Journal of My Son’s First Son and now we will spend seven days discussing it. Anyone who has read the book can participate by commenting.

Our next book selection is the hot-off-the-presses Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel. You can join our public BBGMBC Facebook group, if you would like to join us in reading one excellent quality book per month and then discussing it here.

Some Assembly Required, A Journal of My Son’s First Son is written by Anne Lamott with Sam Lamott and published by Riverhead in 2012.

Some authors travel and dive deeply into descriptions of place and history. Anne Lamott travels and dives into more stories of connections: family connections, friendships, mentor relationships, and even, and perhaps most bravely, reflections on and relationships with people who are dying.

Lamott writes most deeply and most fearlessly about the truth about her relationships. Not relationships hypothetically, but real, live, messy, complicated relationships.

Is the map of real life relationships a topic as compelling and engaging as travelogue? Why or why not?

[Participants, please note: Please comment on the book giveaway post that matches the day. However, you are welcome to comment late just to answer the questions, if you like.]

I met Kate Hopper the way I meet so many wonderful Literary Mamas, through Caroline Grant, who is Editor-in-Chief of Literary Mama. I also remember seeing Kate after I met her in person on Facebook and Twitter. So for all of you who are wondering if you need to be active on social media before your book comes out, the answer is yes. Thanks for setting such a great example, Kate. And thank you for helping me welcome her!

About Kate Hopper

Kate Hopper teaches writing online and at The Loft Literary Center in Minneapolis, where she lives with her husband and two daughters. Kate holds an MFA in creative writing from the University of Minnesota and has been the recipient of a Fulbright Scholarship, a Minnesota State Arts Board Grant, and a Sustainable Arts Grant. Her writing has appeared in a number of journals, including Brevity, Literary Mama, and The New York Times online. She is an editor at Literary Mama. For more information about Kate’s writing and classes, visit www.katehopper.com.

About Use Your Words

USE YOUR WORDS introduces the art of creative nonfiction to women who want to give written expression to their lives as mothers. Written by award-winning teacher and writer, Kate Hopper, this book will help women find the heart of their writing, learn to use motherhood as a lens through which to write the world, and turn their motherhood stories into art.

Each chapter of USE YOUR WORDS focuses on an element of craft and contains a lecture, a published essay, and writing exercises that will serve as jumping-off points for the readers’ own writing. Chapter topics include: the importance of using concrete details, an overview of creative nonfiction as a genre, character development, voice, humor, tense and writing the “hard stuff,” reflection and back-story, structure, revision, and publishing. The content of each lecture is aligned with the essay/poem in that chapter to help readers more easily grasp the elements of craft being discussed. Together the chapters provide a unique opportunity for mother writers to learn and grow as writers.

USE YOUR WORDS takes the approach that creative writing can be taught, and this underscores each chapter. When students learn to read like writers, to notice how a piece is put together, and to question the choices a writer makes, they begin to think like writers. When they learn to ground their writing in concrete, sensory details and begin to understand how to create believable characters and realistic dialogue, their own writing improves.

[Thought-bubble: If you don’t win Kate’s book and you didn’t win Kelly’s book, they would make great Mother’s Day gifts for yourself. And if you need to add another book for free shipping, I’ve got three that can help you with that. Just thinking out loud. Now back to our regularly scheduled giveaway.]

The Very Short Interview

When did you know for sure that you were a writer and that writing would be a major energy focus in your life?

Honestly, I didn’t call myself a “real writer” until after my daughter, Stella, was born prematurely in 2003. I had been writing for a few years and was just beginning my third year of the MFA program at the University of Minnesota when I developed severe preeclampsia and my daughter was born two months early. She spent a month in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) and the following long winter months at home with me. I withdrew from graduate school, and spent my days walking my fragile and very fussy infant around the dining room table. And for the first time in my life, I was desperate for words. I craved stories that revealed something other than the rosy versions of motherhood so often perpetuated in our society. I wanted to know that the exhaustion and despair I felt some days did not make me a bad mother. But I didn’t find much out there. So when Stella was five months old, I went to the coffee shop near our house and pulled out paper and a pen. The images of her—writhing on white blankets, beamed from the NICU into the television set in my hospital room—came spilling out, and after an hour, words covered the page. For the first time since she was born, I felt grounded, and the world felt a little bigger. After that, when I had a free hour, I wrote for an hour.

Who has always been behind your writing career and who helped pull you up the ladder of success?

My husband, Donny, has been my biggest and most dedicated supporter. He has held me after painful rejections, has created the time and space in our lives for me to write, and has believed in my books, even when I doubted that they would ever find a home. I couldn’t have finished either of them without his support. (Thanks, babe!)

What is the most frequent comment you hear about your book (or books) from readers? Tell us a little story about the response to your work.

Use Your Words isn’t technically “out” yet, but I have begun to hear from readers, which is so amazing. Writing can be so lonely, and it’s easy to question whether what you’re writing will resonate with readers or not. That it *does* resonate is incredibly gratifying. A recent commenter on my blog wrote, “I squeeze in writing around the edges of my ‘real job’ and life with four sons because I have to – I get all tied up in knots when I can’t think things out across a page and more keenly so since children have entered my life. Your blog (and now your book) is a great source of support, advice and motivation when I wonder whether the writing about me and them and us is truly worthwhile. Thank you.” That my book has helped a mother writer believe more fully in her writing is the best compliment I could receive!

And Now, Your Turn

Now it’s your turn. You remember how this works right?

I ask you a question. You answer in the comments for your chance to win a book each day.

Please just respond once, even if you make a typo.

Answer in the comments in 50-200 words (no less and no more to qualify to win one of today’s books). Please read the complete rules at least once!

Thanks for participating in the Writer Mama Every-Day-In-May Book Giveaway! I hope to see you here every day this month. Bring your friends!

Q: How do you find the time to write? When are your best writing times and is it easy or challenging for you to get words on the page each day?

Ready, set, comment!

Today, May 3rd, is the third discussion question for the Beyond Busy Global Monthly Book Club. We just finished Anne Lamott’s Some Assembly Required, A Journal of My Son’s First Son and now we will spend seven days discussing it. Anyone who has read the book can participate by commenting.

Our next book selection is the hot-off-the-presses Are You My Mother? by Alison Bechdel. You can join our public BBGMBC Facebook group, if you would like to join us in reading one excellent quality book per month and then discussing it here.

Some Assembly Required, A Journal of My Son’s First Son is written by Anne Lamott with Sam Lamott and published by Riverhead in 2012.

Grandparents do not seem to often get to take center stage in memoirs…is this true?

Prior to reading this book, this book club read Wild by Cheryl Strayed.

Some Assembly Required is also a memoir, although the form of the telling is quite different, since it is titled as “A Journal of my Son’s First Son.”

In Wild, Strayed stays in complete control of what is told, what is not told, how the story is told, and what to tell when. Nobody else’s voice is allowed in.

In Some Assembly Required, Lamott takes the risk of allowing the point of views of others into the telling of the book, although, we must assume that she acts as gatekeeper of those voices.

Compare and contrast the two ways of telling a story. Which did you prefer and why?

If you have ever tried to write memoir and have encountered the challenges therein, feel free to share your experience.

And the winner of Writer For Hire by Kelly James-Enger, and The Honesty Index as a bonus book, is…

L’Tanya!

She was chosen by Random Number Generator. L’Tanya’s response was:

Last year I started working and creating in my visual journal. It’s easy to surrender to tearing our magazine pages on anything that strikes me from gardening to canceled checks and notes about when I pay my bills in full. The magical part has been when I go back through the pages. I’ve come up with ideas for articles and products.

Congratulations, L’Tanya!!!

If you missed the drawing for Writer for Hire by Kelly James-Enger, you can read all about it here.

Important, winners: I need you to send me an e-mail with your mailing address so that I can send it on to the author and she can send you your signed book! Please include a phone number, as well.

Please send your address in an e-mail to “christina at christina katz dot com.”

Please put “Book Winner” in the subject line.

And thank you for supporting Kelly James-Enger’s new book, Writer for Hire!

Thanks for participating. This is just day one of The Writer Mama Every Day In May Book Giveaway. We have 29 more days and winners to go! I hope you will spread the word.

[Participants, please note: Please comment on the book giveaway post that matches the day. However, you are welcome to comment late just to answer the questions, if you like.]

I met Katie Davis when she was kind enough to participate in an article I was writing for Writer’s Digest magazine called, “Elements of a Successful Fiction Platform.” Cindy Hudson referred Katie to me for the article. And I’m happy to announce that Cindy will also be a part of the giveaway later this month.

So, thanks to Cindy, and I guess thanks to me too, here’s Katie. Please help me make her feel welcome.

About Katie Davis

Children’s author/illustrator Katie Davis has published ten books, nine of them for children and one for adults, an eBook, How to Promote Your Children’s Book: Tips, Tricks, and Secrets to Create a Bestseller. She appears monthly on the ABC affiliate show, Good Morning CT, recommending great books for kids. Katie produces a podcast, Brain Burps About Books; she writes a blog and monthly newsletter; and has designed and hosted webinars, all in an effort to “spread the gospel of kidlit.”

About Little Chicken’s Big Day

“I hear you cluckin’, Big Chicken!” That’s the simple refrain that Little Chicken repeats to his mama throughout a typical day. But Little Chicken can be distractable . . . and when he wanders off and gets lost, the day becomes anything but typical. With subtlety and humor, this sweet little story sweeps through a wide range emotions using the simplest of language.

The Very Short Interview

This year’s author interview theme? The story of Katie’s writing career in miniature! Here’s what I asked Katie:

When did you know for sure that you were a writer and that writing would be a major energy focus in your life?

When I was a kid and knew it was my only hope of raising my grade that math had dragged down to a disgrace. I wrote my first picture book when I was 15, in college I majored in photo-journalism and when I got out, worked at any job where I could write, not realizing that picture book writer was a career option. It took a long time to get there!

Who has always been behind your writing career and who helped pull you up the ladder of success?

My husband has been my biggest cheerleader (even though the uniform really isn’t *him*). He’s the one who encouraged me to go to the SCBWI 25th anniversary conference which started it all for me. He’s also gives a very good critique.

What is the most frequent comment you hear about your book (or books) from readers? Tell us a little story about the response to your work.

I love when I hear that my books have made a reader laugh or that a child learned to read because they loved my book. I get those a lot but never often enough!

Extra Bonus!

This book has 30 chapters, 217 pages, each with homework to help you get motivated and started on your path to promote your book, and build your career. Over 60 authors, illustrators, and librarians contributed countless (I tried but lost track) pieces of advice to promote your book and support your career. There are resources, links, and videos.

And Now, Your Turn

Now it’s your turn. You remember how this works right?

I ask you a question. You answer in the comments for your chance to win a book each day.

Please just respond once, even if you make a typo.

Answer in the comments in 50-200 words (no less and no more to qualify to win one of today’s books). Please read the complete rules at least once!

Thanks for participating in the Writer Mama Every-Day-In-May Book Giveaway! I hope to see you here every day this month. Bring your friends!

Q: What is your proudest writing accomplishment? You will need to be fairly explicit to make this 50-200 words. So tell us, why this one? Why not something else you wrote?

Ready, set, comment!

And the winner of Wallflower in Bloom by Claire Cook is…

Diane!

She was chosen by Random Number Generator after I removed comments less than 50 words (please don’t make me do that any more, it’s no fun!). Late responses were also not included in the drawing. (But I left them there. Feel free to answer the questions late, if you like, just for the sake of answering.)

Diane’s response was:

If I could become rich and famous for writing one thing only it would be a children’s book that made children and their parents, grandparents and anyone who read the book with them laugh.  It would be a story that gave readers some happy moments to remember and treasure no matter what their real lives were like.  I would want the characters to be memorable like E.B. White’s Wilbur and Charlotte.

Congratulations, Diane!!!

If you missed the drawing for Wallflower in Bloom by Claire Cook, you can read all about it here.

Important, winners: I need you to send me an e-mail with your mailing address so that I can send it on to the author and she can send you your signed book! Please include a phone number, as well.

Please send your address in an e-mail to “christina at christina katz dot com.”

Please put “Book Winner” in the subject line.

And thank you for supporting Claire Cook’s new book, Wallflower in Bloom!

Thanks for participating. This is just day one of The Writer Mama Every Day In May Book Giveaway. We have 30 more days and winners to go! I hope you will spread the word. 🙂