Marketing, This and That . . .

This is going to be a rather muddled post. Follows my current brain pattern, I guess. (The Boss and I will be leaving for Canada on Tuesday and I have bug spray, worms, and sweatshirts muddled in along with all the following up there in my noggin.)

Marketing...that's the thread here. While I have a B.A. in Business, marketing got short shrift in my courses. Suited me fine back then - I had no idea I'd need to market myself and my skills when I hit 60 years old. But that's what I'm looking at with Swan Church Services. What to do? How do I put SCS out there? And where? Exactly whom do I target? And how do I get past that cringing little person inside me whose mother exhorted her to not impose herself on others?

I'm not the only one facing the daunting challenge of marketing in this web-oriented world. My friend, Cinnamon Moon, recently launched a Spiritual Studies website at Spirit Lodge.info in conjunction with her Spirit Lodge discussion board where I met her many moons ago. She has even more exciting marketing plans in the works for the future.

And there's my friend, Michelle Frost (who blogs over at Crow's Feet), who has put together this wonderful trailer for promotion of her very exciting debut novel, First Light.



Michelle is an excellent story-teller and a lyrical writer. I am so excited for her. First Light is a beautiful story with characters who draw you in and make you want to know more about them. Michelle hints that a sequel may be in the works. I dearly hope so!

Anyhow, Michelle has taken the leap into creating that trailer to promote her book. How exciting is that!

And then over on Writer Unboxed, I read an article by J.C. Hutchins who promoted his first novel, 7th Son, via a freebie Podcast when that was a mere fledling art. Now, along with a flourishing website that promotes the work of other authors as well as his own, Hutchins novel 7th Son: Descent, picked up by St. Martin's Press, will be in bookstores this fall!

How does one do this? This marketing thing? I am awed.

Homer's Odyssey

Homer's Odyssey by Gwen Cooper
Published by Delacorte Press
an imprint of Random House Publishing
Available in Hardcover August 25, 2009

I've lived with cats now for 38 years. Currently, I reside with two felines - Fox, my soul partner, who came to me at 5 weeks old, a petite, biege fluffball with huge blue eyes and chocolate points and who grew into a 10 pound long-haired moose, and Buster, a very vocal, tiny black/white, sleek, lovable acrobat whose favorite spot to sleep is on Bud's head.

I love cats. I love their independent and entitled spirits, their barbarism and their delicacy. They are paradoxes that slink on tiny, fastidious, lethal toes. They are capable of anything. I love that about them.

And they call us mere humans to account for ourselves. The first time my prospective daughter-in-law visited me and Fox in our then apartment, Fox did what he naturally does. He checked her out by sitting smack in front of her on the floor and stared at her with his huge, blue eyes. Just sat and stared. After a few minutes, she began to squirm and asked me if I could get my cat to quit staring at her, it made her very nervous.

I didn't blame her. It's a very predatory behavior. It makes us nervous. We humans, after all, are supposed to be at the top of the food chain, yes? A cat's predatory behavior reminds us that we are, in fact, predators ourselves. We have that in common. Predators are survivors. They take those leaps of faith that are less choice than necessity.

Homer's Odyssey is the memior of a cat that, not only is blind, but has no eyes at all. His eyes removed as a kitten due to infection, Homer never knew what it was to be a cat with eyes. Gwen Cooper rescues Homer from euthanasia after being gently cajoled by a Veterinarian friend to do so. Gwen wonders what she is getting herself into and, indeed, Homer's presence in her life and the lives of her two other cats, Scarlet and Vashti, changes them all forever.

Homer's and Gwen's story, for this is really more about Gwen than Homer, is touching and inspiring as one would expect a pet memoir to be. But it is not maudlin or mawkish, it doesn't even ask us to run out and adopt disabled cats.

Their story is more about respect. Respect for each other, human and feline, in all our marvelous diversity of peculiarities and frailties. Respect for the primal, survivor, predatory traits that we share. Respect for that which compels us to leaps of faith, that "stuff" that moves us forward when the odds may otherwise be stacked against us.

Homer is Gwen's eyeless mirror. He couldn't sit and stare, but he sure as heck made himself known in other ways.

A well-written memoir, each chapter prefaced by a quote from that other Homer's Odyssey, Gwen Cooper gives us not just another cat story, but a reflective look at what makes us uniquely human, as well as what makes a cat uniquely feline.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/mpd/permalink/m2TXM4RLV48AI5

Our Present Past...

I've been scanning and uploading old family photos to Facebook to be shared with the scattered remnants of the Lindholm-Gentleman-Navta clans. There aren't many of us. And we're getting fewer and fewer as the years go by.

That twerpy girl in the middle above is me. I'm about 8 years old there and that was my beloved bike. It was a cream and green, Huffy Convertible 20 incher. Oh, how I loved that bike! It took me to the monkey bars at Dawes school and the Tastee Freeze for hot fudge sundaes. It was freedom on two wheels.

Those two other characters are my cousins. The one sitting on the handle bars, Jack, was a year or so older than I. He passed away at the very young age of 27 - a very sad story I won't go into here. The other character (and, oh, do I mean character!) is my cousin, Bill, who is 3 years my senior.

I look at this picture and realize that Bill is really the only remaining peer of our generation who actually remembers me as this twerpy girlchild. I do have a couple 2nd cousins out there, but we were never as close. Bill and I have shared holidays, graduations, funerals, weddings, births, divorces - it's been a long haul of changes and transitions.

Now we do have a few remaining elders in our family - my Uncle Bud, Bill's father and my godfather, will be 94 this month. He is our precious link to that generation whom we greatly miss.

Perhaps it is because I didn't have siblings that this strikes me as so unique and important. Perhaps it's taken for granted if you have siblings? I don't know. But it is so affirming to have someone who can look at me now - white haired and wrinkled - and see the woman I am and know all I have lived through, but also see that twerpy girlchild.

It's a gift.

Bliss...

Well, we finally made it to Wrinkled Pages. I'm not sure why it has taken so long to get there, but I am so glad we did! Oh, my. It's a wonderful little store filled with delight. I came home with Margaret Lawrence's Roanoke, Lauren Willig's The Masque of the Black Tulip, Patrick O'Brian's Master and Commander, Alison Weir's Eleanor of Aquitaine, and Todd McCaffrey's Dragon Harper. And I barely touched the Fiction section at all, really. And there was a whole room full of Historical Romance that I just walked through with my mouth hanging open.

And I was not alone. Bud bought four books about the Vietnam War! We both walked out the door with satisfied little smirks on our faces.

Writing Prompt...

I was posting old family photos on Facebook for the younger gen of the combined clans today when I became entranced by this one of my mother, my aunt, and an unknown young woman circa early 1940s. Mom's a little bit blurry on the right, sassy Aunt Kay is in the middle. They are walking down a Chicago street, likely wartime (WWII). Notice the short skirts (particularly Aunt Kay's - Goodness, almost a mini!).

Mom worked for the 5th Army Quartermaster Depot in Chicago at this time. Don't know what Aunt Kay was about then. But don't they look the trio of young business women strutting along on a beautiful summer's day? Where are they going? Out to lunch? Shopping? What are they chatting about?

Ooooo...I so would love the story....

Passions. . . .

Yesterday, three boxes were at our doorstep when we got home from work. One was for me, two were for Bud. Mine, of course, was from Amazon - books! Oh, yes! I've already started Foxmask by Juliet Marillier, the second in her Wolfskin series. And on deck now I have another of Laura Childs' Tea Shop mysteries, The Jasmine Moon Murder; Jane Lindskold's Wolf's Blood, a Firekeeper book; and The Sparks Fly Upward, another of the Makepeace Burke books by Diana Norman (Ariana Franklin). Ooooo...I'm just itching to get at them all!

But I want to share about another passion - Bud's passion for collecting Occupied Japan figurines. That's what was in the other two boxes.

I've never been much of a collector - except for books, of course. I just can't seem to find anything I feel worth collecting. Oh, I take that back. I do have a collection of baskets. But they were collected with a purpose - filling in the space above the kitchen cabinets. Now, unless a basket reeeeally strikes me as something I just have to have, the collection is done. Complete. Finis.

But for Bud, it's really the process of collecting that is the passion, I think. Not that some the figurines aren't downright gorgeous and beautifully crafted - quite the contrary. Like the Jester here.
Bud lusted after this piece for many years. It is truly exquisite.

One of my favorites is The Recital. I love the delicacy of hands playing the instruments in this one. Lovely things. And I've gotten so that when we are out haunting the flea markets and antique shops I can hone in on what might be a piece of Occupied Japan porcelain. Bud can saunter through the aisles with an eagle eye for the stuff. Remarkable. It's like he has a specialized radar for it. Of course, he's been collecting it for some twenty-odd years now.

But I truly believe it is The Hunt for him. He spends much of his time on E-Bay now. Most of the truly good pieces can only be found there. When we are out hunting we can find smaller pieces, but we never see pieces such as these two now. E-Bay collectors have snatched them all up. It's rather sad.

But then, I wonder. Someday my passion for the feel, scent and delight in ownership of books may be passe. Kindle and its clones are fast making inroads and changing the face of publishing.

Both of our passions may become a lot more expensive in future and really....just not the same passionate feeling at all. *sigh*

Sad. Very sad.

I've been away....

Well, I've not been posting here, so I've been away from here. Actually, I've been very much at home. Too much at home. My hours were cut back at the church from full-time to part-time - 2 days a week. Yes, isn't the economy lovely?

Ah, well. I go with the flow, but one does need to support one's self. Sooo, I've been creating a little free-lance business of my own doing basically what I do at my job - desktop publishing for churches. That's bulletins, newsletters, brochures, flyers, etc. I'm a Virtual Church Assistant! I have also added editing and proofreading services, as well.

It is called Swan Church Services and you may find it HERE.