My First e-book: The Christmas Kindness Advent Calendar

The idea for the Advent blog project occurred to me one November day.I didn't think about it--I just jumped in. Sometimes the best ideas work that way. My quest was to find a way around the blue feelings I tend to experience around the holidays. It has been my experience, since i am not a parent and no longer a daughter, that I'm trapped outside the usual holiday paradigms. Does that happen to you--do you ever feel like an outsider looking in on your own life as it zooms by? It's a weird concept, but from what I read I am not alone. Some people (me included sometimes) get to feeling sad because our adult holidays can never live up to the magical times we had as kids. Other people (me included sometimes) get so wrapped-up in Christmas preparations that they almost forget why we have a holiday in the first place.  I wondered--if I focused instead on the parts of the holiday that have meaning for me or the things that I simply enjoy, could I share these things with others who might need a boost? Would I have enough stories, recipes, crafts, and places to fill 25 days of Advent? Would readers want to see a photo of my Nativity scene with the German Oompah band included? My approach to the blog project, and then the ebook, was to be more inclusive than our media is. You don't have to have children, grandchildren, a freshly-cut Douglass Pine, or fancy parties to attend.

I did have enough ideas, especially since my readers gave me some great suggestions. I shared them, and my blog practically went viral for the month of December. It was exciting and joyful. I was caught up in the creativity of attempting to include photos and meaningful posts each day and appliqueing numbers for each day on fabric coasters. These appeared at the top of each post. My friends enjoyed the blog, told their friends, and my readership grew.  That wasn't my original intention for creating the Advent posts, but it remains a wonderful benefit! I look at my blog's analytics everyday to get an idea who is reading and what kinds of blogs get the most hits. I didn't bother doing that before the Advent project.

Why not, then, polish up this blog content, maybe add some depth here and there, and create an ebook? I worked on this new project steadily, and finally it is finished! It's available on Amazon as a Kindle ebook. I chose the Kindle platform because it seemed simple and required no advance cash. (I may consider adding more platforms later, depending on how this experiment works out.) Once the Microsoft Word document was finished, I went onto the Kindle publishing site and found a free video and a free accompanying ebook guide that show how to bring it online. If you are thinking of experimenting with ebooks, I recommend that you check these out while you are writing, so you can keep the various formatting tips in mind. For example, in order to make a working Table of Contents, you have to assign Heading Style #1 (on the tool bar in Word) to each chapter heading. I had to go back and do this to each day's offering. If I had known, I could have streamlined the process by fixing these as I wrote and edited and edited and edited.

This document then has to be saved as a "Web Page, Filtered." This terminology frightened me, but alas, it is one of the choices in the Save As drop-down box. Because I have many images in the text, I had to create a zip file which intimidated me. This was simple once I watched the video and looked at the guide. I also had to create some kind of cover. Amazon suggests using Microsoft Paint. I had never used that, but I managed to design something decent within the hour. That gets uploaded separately and doesn't go into the Word document (in case you were wondering). The actual uploading process took about an hour and was way simpler than I expected. The book showed up on Amazon the next morning. Here's where you can get your copy: The Christmas Kindness Advent Calendar.


What a thrill it is to have this particular project online and available to anyone. Did I mention it was a labor of love? Even better, the stories touched people and the ideas brought back memories. I couldn't be happier about this!

By the way, those numbered fabric doorsI used for each post or chapter did not go to waste. I used them in a big Advent Quilt, complete with pockets behind them and a gold Variable Star block on top. I included a description of how I put that together at the end of the ebook. Here's a peek:

That's Fred holding up the quilt in front of the neighbor's holly tree.

PNWA Conference, part three

I’m working my way through my list of books recommended at the PNWA conference. Recommending their favorite books was a common thread among the agents, editors, and presenters. I was pleased to note that I had read many of them already or at least had them on my shelf. A few are on their way to me thanks to the magic of Amazon.com 1-click ordering.

I’m currently savoring Eudora Welty’s One Writer’s Beginnings. It is a small book describing her beginnings as a person and as a writer. Her descriptions are so precise and vivid I feel like I am there in Jackson, Mississippi with Eudora and the Welty family and their big clock in the hall. I suppose in her descriptions of things that are not only visual but also have an aural presence, she is able to easily evoke two of our senses. In one of the memoir sessions I attended at the conference, the instructor pointed out a student’s technique of setting the time and place by naming the songs her father sang to her mother’s piano accompaniment. No further description was necessary if the listener was familiar with any of the songs listed. Eudora Welty does this by mentioning the clock in the hall that chimes and the Victrola that needs winding and plays opera overtures and popular music of the time.

I’m pasting here an annotated list of some of the books recommended at the conference. Due to my selective listening, though, the fiction and screenwriting titles that I wasn’t interested in are omitted. I wouldn't mind knowing what books on writing readers recommend!

Katz, Christina. Get Known Before the Book Deal: Use Your Personal Strengths to Grow an Author Platform. Writer’s Digest, 2008.
It’s all about the platform! This was a recurring theme. Before you can pitch your book to an agent, and before people will buy it, you have to prove you’re an expert on the topic and known.

King, Stephen. On Writing. Pocket, 2002.
I’m not the biggest fan of Stephen King’s scary books, but this was one of the best, most down-to-earth books on writing I’ve read. And it is funny.

Lamott, Anne. Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. Anchor, 1995.
This is a popular one, and for good reason. It completely changed the way I approach writing. It makes a lot of sense.

Lukeman, Noah. The First Five Pages: A Writer’s Guide to Staying Out of the Rejection Pile. Fireside, 2005.

Lyon, Elizabeth. A Writer’s Guide to Nonfiction. Perigee, 2003.
Lyon, Elizabeth. Nonfiction Book Proposals Anybody Can Write. Perigee, 2002.
This author was at the conference, and unfortunately I could not stay for her whole presentation because of an editor appointment. I was able to tell from her speaking that she was clear and focused, and her books seem to have the same clarity and practicality. I bought these two, but there are more.

McGee, Margaret D. Sacred Attention: A Spiritual Practice for Finding God in the Moment. Skylight Paths, 2007.
I get a little nervous about memoir-writing classes because sometimes people (and me) get a little emotional. This was a wonderful session for two reasons. First, she really did show us how to reach out to readers with the Universal Human Emotion, and second, she had a great technique for recalling important memories and writing about them. This book is linked to the church year, but not in an intimidating way for those of us who are not churchy.

Welty, Eudora. One Writer’s Beginnings. Harvard University, 1983.
Just lovely writing with great descriptions.

Zinsser, William K. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. Collins, 2006.
This book covers many kinds of nonfiction writing and covers them thoroughly and elegantly. He has other books on writing that I count among my favorites.

PNWA conference

Hello from Seattle! I'm here for the Pacific Northwest Writers' Association summer conference, and I'm busy beyond belief. I registered for this conference because my essay was chosen as a finalist in the Adult Short Topic--Essay divison and a quick look at the presentations and benefits of attending convinced me to fly to Seattle. In preparing for this event and now living it, the contest has faded to the background and I'm looking forward to meeting an editor and an agent: both seem like good matches for my work. The presentations are also very interesting--enough so that I'm not tempted to play hookie to go see more of Seattle or take a nap. (There's a three-hour time difference that I'm coping with reasonably well.)

Books are the thing here. Hardly anyone is talking about articles. Romance, Fantasy, and Thriller writers are everywhere and I haven't met any Travel Essayists yet. Just about everyone is interested in trading book ideas, and this is good practice for stating our ideas concisely. Mine, of course, changes everytime I say it, but it is basically an essay about Cape May, NJ, through the months and seasons narrated by me, one of the last baby boomers to enter middle age. Everyone who visits Cape May knows that it has a rich Victorian heritage, but most don't know about all the other historical, cultural, and natural histories that go along with the region. People I talk to who are familiar with Cape May are always surprised when I tell them that the area was first settled by whalers in the 1600s, it was a prime target during WWII because of its proximity to major ports up the Delaware River, and that it hosts the World Series of Birding. So that's my quick description and it seems to interest most people I talk to. Whether it interests the agent I meet tomorrow remains to be seen. That's the Cape May Point Lighthouse above, by the way. (I don't have any pictures of Seattle!)

The article writing doesn't stop while I'm in Seattle. I just submitted revisions to my cranberry article for Edible Jersey late last night, and my World War II at the Twin Capes and Holidays at the Twin Capes articles were submitted to Twin Capes Traveller (the ferry magazine) hours before I left New Jersey. I'm not doing much actual writing while in Seattle, but I'm gathering steam for when I return home.

It's almost 6am and I've been up for an hour already. I should take a nap since I have to be coherent and charming until 10:30 tonight. I'm dealing with the time difference reasonably well.