A Touch of Spring

It's such a sweet surprise when the spring flowers start popping up.

There are a few crocuses in the garden trying to bloom. It's a cloudy, windy day, so they didn't really want to open up.

This little guy is a bit more intrepid. He's at a point in the yard that gets a bit more sun.

The pansies I put in the garden in October are starting to wake up a little. It's a little early for them to be re-flowering, but I love seeing the bright colors coming out of last autumn's pile of dead leaves.

Looking Back at 2019

How did it get to be December?

Maybe it's because I'm getting to be an old fart, but time is passing way too fast. Now it's December and there are things on my list that have been there way too long.

I only managed to get one book out this year. I was going to say that I wasn't sure why that was, before I took a look at my publication schedule for the past couple of years. I started with my first mystery in 2012 and got 1 or two books out each year until last year.

In 2018, I released 4 books. The previous year I only managed one. Now I think I understand what might have happened. I pushed too hard and my brain needed a break. I'm a slow writer. But I've been slow and steady for awhile now. Last year I got on the treadmill and apparently used up my creative juices. I'd like to get a little faster, but not if it means extra downtime to recharge.

I'm still working on the rewrite for Dilemma. I hope to have that out after the holidays. And I am already brainstorming for the first book in the Children of a Changed World series. I've got a cast of characters and a loose plan of action.

There are several stories waiting to be written. I've got a lot planned. Now I just need to get it all on paper.

A New Banner

As you can see, I made a new banner for the blog with the first book in each series. It's really amazing the tools that are available for the technologically challenged!

The release date for the next book is shifting again. Life has gotten in the way and I need a little more time. I've decided to accept the fact that I can't write as fast as I'd like to. At least not this year. Maybe next year I will have a better handle on my time-management and stress.

Scattered Seeds audio is in the works. Still looking at late October, early November for that to come out. And then we'll start on Gleanings. There was a lovely review of Lethal Seasons audio book on Audible that confirmed what I already knew - they said Derek did a great job. But even though I was sure he did a wonderful job with reading my story, it was very nice to have a stranger say so.

I'm planning a promo for Lethal Season at the end of the month to drum up a little more interest. I'll post here when it goes on sale.

Fall has finally arrived in my neck of the woods. Temperatures dropped about 20 degrees overnight. I had that odd laundry basket with shorts and sweatpants, summer shirts and hoodies. The leaves are dropping but not many of them have changed. It's a strange autumn so far.

All the Loose Ends

I watched the end of a miniseries last night that left me with a lot of questions.

It was an interesting set up in that the main mystery was actually a red herring. The internal mystery was wrapped up happily, but not much else.

One character is very intriguing. Just as you get to know him, he commits a murder. Further on, he confesses to another character. This is a major revelation and goes nowhere. I couldn't help thinking of the burden he placed on his friend. The murder would never be solved. And it was committed with such aplomb that the viewer is left to wonder if it was his first. There's a whole story right there.

Several of the characters acted badly. I was left wondering what would happen in their lives now that they'd destroyed their careers. More loose ends.

Or maybe this was a good show because the characters are still with me. I want to know what happens next. I want to see them go on to the next chapter in their lives.

Maybe I will need to write it.

Winter Arrived

After a crazy warm winter, we had a dose of the arctic. Ouch.

Fruit trees have flowered a month early. Last night it went down to 16 degrees. Needless to say, we aren't getting any apricots this year. Luckily my cherry and apple trees hadn't flowered yet.

But that's just my little patch. I'm not a fruit farmer. Some of them have lost their entire crop for this year.

We get to go to the grocery store and pick out fruit that comes in from all over the world. I don't think it sinks in until you see the reports on the news about how devastating this can be. The county south of me is mostly apple orchards. The year we had the Easter freeze they lost them all. It was considered a natural disaster and they were able to apply for aid.

It's hard to understand in a time when food is readily available for most of us, how fragile farming is. Fruit trees won't rebloom. A crop wiped out by flood or tornado can't always be resown. We have become spoiled with ease of access. If one farm or orchard fails, we can get produce from another. Maybe.

By Sunday we will be back to short-sleeve weather. But the damage has already been done.

Rollercoaster Weather

Last weekend we got 5" of snow. Today I was out working in the garden in my shirt sleeves. We went from a couple of nights in the single digits to days so warm the shrubs are budding.

When the temperature plummeted I started to complain, only to remember -- it's January! It's supposed to be cold. We've had such a mild winter that I hadn't even broken out the big coat yet. When I got ready to shovel snow, I had to dig around to find a pair of mittens because I hadn't used any so far this season.

The weather man delights in showing us the diagram of how we have been either colder or warmer than average. Consistently. Which I guess eventually leads to new averages, right?

My forsythia put out a few timid blooms just before the big freeze. As if to ask, "Is it time yet?" I noticed on my walk today that many of the trees have gotten knobby with buds. That's too soon for this area. Well, normally that is.

And our Big Freeze lasted less than a week...

I expect another dose of cold weather that will last a little longer. And I expect it to hit just when everything decides it's okay to bloom.

50 Reviews!

Lethal Seasons now has 50 reviews!

As the numbers started climbing, somehow 50 became an important milestone in my head. I check the number of reviews on my books from time to time and it always amazes me to see more rolling in.

The first milestone is 10. That is the number required by some of the better promotion sites. Passing that was a great relief. Passing twenty-five was astonishing. Now I'm up to 50 and wow!

A huge thank you to everyone who left a review. Whether it was just a couple words or a couple paragraphs. It all counts toward helping me reach more readers.

THANK YOU!

And a reminder that Lethal Seasons (and 9 other novels) is available in the boxed set Apocalyptic Fears III for only 99cents. That's a lot of reading for less than a buck!

Happy New Year to you all. 

Wishing you a peaceful, healthy and prosperous 

year ahead.

Facebook Clarification

I have 2 facebook pages. One is an author page under M. Alice Sabo/Alice Sabo Books, the other is my personal page under Alice Sabo.

I wasn't completely social media literate when I started things up. So I apologize for any confusion. The Facebook link on this blog will take you to my Author Page.

My personal page is where I keep track of my relatives. It is private. If you send me a friend request for that page, I won't approve it. I appreciate my fans, but that isn't the right place to interact with me.

And it probably wouldn't be of much interest to you seeing my cousins and siblings, nieces and nephews and various extended family members at parties and events.

A new website is in the works, designed by the wonderful Alex Storer. I hope to unveil it early next year. There will be more information about the books and what is in the works. I'll clean up this blog and make it just a blog again.

So my apologies if you have tried to friend me on my personal page. I wish there was a way to add a note when you refuse a friend request, because I want people to know that I have a reason and don't mean to be rude.

Thank you to anyone who has tried to contact me. I'm flattered. I love hearing from people who have read my books. Feel free to contact me through the blog for now.

And now it's back to writing!

Happy Thanksgiving

It's time to look back on the year and make plans for the next.

It's been a good year for me.

I am so excited that the books are selling. Reviews are piling up and I am delighted to say most are very good. I've even gotten emails from people who wanted to tell me personally that they loved my books. Wow. That's a doozy.

My writing routine is pretty solid now. It's habit. I sit down at a certain time and work on the next story. I don't always hit my goal, but sometimes that's okay. If I spend an hour or two working out a map or a family tree or figuring out the aspects of a god, that's working, too.

Ideas seem to come easier. That's not always true, but for the most part, the stories are flowing.

Having a little more income has made things less stressful. I will be able to pay off the expenses sooner. Running up my credit card to produce and promote a book worries me. Now that the books are bringing in some income, I'm less in debt which makes me less stressed.

I've already made plans for next year. I'm planning to write 3 books.

I'm starting a new series. It's another world that I invented a long time ago. I had started a couple of stories in that world but never could get to the end of them. The problem is that I have at least 3 characters that are unrelated but each of them should be the main character. Now, with a little more understanding of storytelling, I can look back and see how each of them deserve their own book. The first one should be coming out early next year.

Book 2 for Transmutation will be coming out in spring 2017. I'm shooting for April, but I won't put a firm date on it until I get the first draft done. I've finished the outline and I'm working on filling that out.

Book 4 for A Changed World is slated for October. I won't put a firm date on that one either. I'm jotting down ideas and I'm close to an outline.

There will be some changes on the marketing side. I hope to get a real website up sometime in the spring. With the increase in income, I can plan ads and promotions at the better sites. And since I can now buy some services instead of taking the time to learn something new, I hope to streamline the process of producing a book.

I am extremely thankful for everything and everyone that brought me to this place. Happy Thanksgiving to you all.

It Worked! Now What?

The third in a series magic must have worked for me because...the books are selling!

(Happy Dance!)

I feel like there's a party going on in the other room, but I'm not sure if I'm invited. Although I am super excited about the number of people reading the books. I'm not sure what I should be doing. Except maybe just writing.

On one hand, I am glad to put all my attention on writing. But on the other, I have a sinking feeling there is some special task that is now required that I don't know about. It's making me antsy. I keep checking the reports and checking the various forums I follow to see if there is a clue. When I should be focusing on the next book.

I am easily distracted. I find myself paging, paging, paging through Facebook looking for...haven't the foggiest. At my core, I am a planner. Give me some graph paper and a calendar and I'm a happy camper. But I don't know the next steps.

So I am just going to keep my head down and write.

The Smell of Hot Grass

On my morning walk, I was hit with the smell of hot grass. Since I am just coming out of allergy season, smelling anything is a delight. But this scent brought a strong memory with it. It wasn't fresh-cut grass, or a lawn after rain. It was specifically a summer smell of sun-heated grass.

I had a flashback of lying on the lawn at the house where I grew up, staring at the sky through the big leaves of a horse chestnut tree. It's a wonderful feeling of freedom and safety. A hot afternoon in summer with no responsibilities or deadlines. Before puberty, before I stopped running through the yard pretending that I was a horse or exploring the darkest jungle of my neighbor's hedges.

It's just a snapshot of an instant in time. I couldn't tell you what came before or after that moment. But the smell of sun-heated grass sent me back to that lovely memory.

Smells can be a very strong trigger for memories. Sometimes the trigger is just for a feeling, not even an image. Or sometimes a person. Certain aftershaves will always remind me of specific men. The smell of french fries and ketchup can send me back to the boardwalk on a New Jersey beach.

A reader once told me that she was surprised by the many smells in my book. She didn't think she'd read another book that mentioned them. I guess I am a scent-oriented person. Maybe that's why I have allergies because my sense of smell is very acute.

And now I'm off to make sure that my current work-in-progress has enough smells.

Just Keep Writing

There's so much advice out there about a writer's platform and social media connections that you could drown in it.

None of it worked for me.

I do believe that you should have some sort of social media footprint. People need to be able to find you on the web. If you enjoy connecting to people that way, have at it! It may build you a good fan base, but don't bank on it.

Some people say to put your head down and write. That social media doesn't result in direct sales. Only a pile of books under your name will give you credibility.

I believe in that one more than others. At least I think it's a method that I can work with. But I have to add - advertise wisely. And there are as many thoughts on that as there are successful authors.

I've been going through forums and articles reading advice from all quarters. It seems like many of the successful authors are writing their pants off! They have put out 10 - 20 books and are making thousands of dollars per month. Whew.

They also spend thousands on advertising. Some monthly, some quarterly, but all of them put a lot of money into advertising to maintain a constant flow of sales.

All of them said that releasing a new book gave them a good bump in sales for the month.

I planned to write two books this year. In comparison, I look like a slow poke. Some of those successful authors put out a book every 1 - 5 months. Wow. I suppose as a full-time writer you could rack up sufficient word count to do that. As a part-time writer, I will try to push towards three books a year. Just writing those words made me anxious. Maybe I'd better make that a goal for 2017.

And now, back to writing...

Another Rung on the Ladder

When I first started writing, I was on a lot of forums for newbies. I read tons of blogs on writing and publishing. I signed up for newsletters and joined peer review sites. They were all immensely helpful.

Then I learned some things and moved up a rung on the ladder. Some of those places weren't as helpful as before. I needed to find new places to give me tips and tricks and tell me what I didn't know yet.

It's a cycle of learning and growing. I've inched up one more wrung and the air is getting a little thin. I don't need pats on the back as much as a clear view. I've gone from ardent scribbler to business woman and my needs for input have changed once again. Now I'm searching for the blogs and forums that will teach me new things at this level. They're out there, I just need to spend some time to research the right ones for me.

And about the books...

Facade is in its final days over at Kindle Scout. Please visit the site and vote for my book!

Speculations - I'm still working on the first draft.

Changing Tastes

Recently I was on a forum where people were talking about a young adult book. One person responded that he didn't read YA anymore because he was an adult now. I was ready to fire back an answer about how ridiculous that was, when I remember how much my tastes have changed over the years.

Once upon a time I bought an interesting book in a used book store. I went to the library for the sequel and discovered, to my horror, it was in the young adult section. I was embarrassed to be looking at those books and skulked away without checking one out.

Looking back, I can't imagine giving up on an interesting series because of the designated audience. I didn't have any trouble going into the children's section to get the Harry Potter books. But maybe it has to do with distance. In my 20's and 30's I didn't want to be seen reading books for teenagers. Now I don't care. I read whatever catches my fancy.

Back in my college and post-college days I read "serious" fiction, Camus, Kafka, and adored Ibsen's plays. I liked things that were dark and angsty. That doesn't appeal to me right now.

People change as they grow and so does their taste in entertainment. What I loved a decade ago doesn't always appeal to me now. But it may in another couple of years. Who knows? And genres change and grow sub-genres.

I say I like Urban Fantsy, but that's because I love Jim Butcher's Harry Dresden. That genre seems to have a lot of interpretations, some that don't appeal to me at all. On the other hand, I've said I lost my taste for Epic Fantasy, but I love Brandon Sanderson's Stormlight Archive series and Brent Weeks' Lightbringer series and those are definitely epic.

Tastes change and maybe come back around again. I just know I like a well-told story regardless of who the intended audience is.

Some Thoughts on Colony (TV - USA)

As a storyteller, I tend to analyze my TV shows in terms of how well they entertain me. When a show feels like it isn't working for me, I like to figure out why. So here are some thoughts on the new show Colony on USA.

After 2 episodes, I get the feeling this show is more about human conflict than alien invasion. That right there I find disappointing. The show starts after aliens have attacked and for some odd reason cordoned off Los Angeles. There's a monster of a wall and access is restricted. So far we haven't seen or heard about the rest of the country.

"No one has seen them." We are told early on about the alien invaders. So they are mysterious but powerful aliens. Again, kind of annoying. It raises so many questions that I can't get into the human conflict that seems to be central to the show. I'm always waiting for more information on the aliens. One persons says that they will leave when their needs are fulfilled. Too vague. This is too important to ignore. Breadcrumbs could work, but more information needs to come forward fast.

There's a human occupation of LA. Soldiers are enforcing a curfew, hunting down criminals and basically terrorizing the general population. There's an underground rebellion that is plotting in the shadows. It all feels a little too Nazis and French Resistance to me, a very old trope that always ends bloody.

If the story is to be about the rebellion and the soldiers, then explain the aliens and let them fall into the background. A solid story about what people do to each other in environments like this could be interesting. However, it isn't something that I would like to watch. I want to know about the aliens. Why did they come to Earth? What do they want? Why LA? What other damage has happened? Why are so many humans collaborating if they've never even seen an alien? What's the end game?

Leaving the viewer with questions ensures they tune in for the next episode. On the other hand, leaving the viewer confused and annoyed will ensure than they don't.

I'd love to hear other impressions from you in the comments.

Languages

As I do my genealogical research I am learning more about language. My father was born in Hungary. Their language is very complicated. I remember reading somewhere that language affects a person's world view. The Magyar language was that of nomads. I discovered when I was there that they had taken some Latin words for certain things like templom for church. It made sense to me that a nomadic people might not have words for things of permanence like buildings.

I was trying to translate some documents when I made another discovery. A lot of Hungarian names mean something. My own last name - szabo - means tailor. Almost all of the names I see in my father's village are either occupations or ethnicity. So there are Millers (Molnar), Carpenters (Acs), Cobblers (Varga), Blacksmiths (Kovacs), Germans (Nemet), Polish (Lengyel), Croatian (Horvat), and Friends (Barat). And of course the usual "son of" - Palfi, Simonfi, etc.

My grandmother's maiden name was Simonyai. I just learned recently that it meant she descended from people who came from Simonya, which is now Partizanske in Slovakia today, but was part of Hungary at one point.

When I wrote the first draft of Facade, (nearly 2 decades ago!) I threw in random names that I made up as I went. That was one of the criticisms I received - the names were too similar. For this rewrite, I took a good look at the names and made certain conventions by planet. If this one has a lot of double vowels, the next one shouldn't, and things of that sort. I already had a certain societal structure to each race so that attaching language restrictions felt right.

Now maybe I need to make some of those names mean something in their own languages. But maybe that's a rabbit hole I really shouldn't go down.

Writing Emotional Moments

I was watching Childhood's End last night and a highly emotional moment was brushed over too quickly. The character, Ricky, chooses to make a tremendous sacrifice that will impact his life terribly. There was a spurt of action and then it was over and on to another POV.

That felt all kinds of wrong to me.

First of all, no one acknowledges the sacrifice. Ricky is dying. He is young and newly married to Ellie. He is offered medicine that will cure him. That in itself was handled very blithely. He didn't seem to care much either way when the alien gives him some sort of magical cure. As they talk he puts the medicine on the work bench.

Ellie and the religious woman arrive on the scene. Neither knows about the medicine. There is a confrontation and the alien is shot, crumples and appears to die. Ricky runs over and gets the medicine to cure him. He's been told there was only enough for the one dose. So Ricky chooses to use this medicine, the only cure for his illness, to save the alien's life. But no one knows what it is, so neither woman makes any comment or move to stop him.

The alien is saved and bang we go off to another plot line.

I thought Ricky's sacrifice fell flat because no one was there to witness it or mourn for his loss. If Ellie had seen it, we could have felt the loss so much more through her eyes. She would have argued for him to keep it for himself. And we could have seen his reasons for why he thought the alien's life was more important than living out his life with his wife.

The alien doesn't acknowledge the gift. I don't know how this was originally written, but if I was writing it, I'd put it up to the innate selflessness of humanity. The alien should have reacted in some way. Even if he came back and said it didn't matter. The lack of reaction was disappointing.

Ricky and the alien seem to have become friends. The alien tries to soften some of Ricky's difficulties. He should have been surprised and grateful to Ricky for saving his life. This could have been more pivotal in their relationship.

Even to keep the sacrifice private, just between Ricky and the audience, would have worked if there had been a bit of internal dialog. Maybe a glance at the medicine and a glance to his wife. Something to indicate his understanding of what he is giving up. The scene was too fast and too short for something so important. He seemed to not care about the cure and gave it away too easily.

Emotional moments need to have enough time to sink in. A witness, or internal dialog, needs to settle them into the reader/viewer's mind. If they go by too fast, they have no lasting meaning.

The Giveaway Conundrum

The Goodreads Giveaway for Scattered Seeds isn't working out as well as I'd hoped. It's been 3 weeks since I mailed the books. Still a little early for any reviews, but I'm not expecting many. I went to check my Amazon page and discovered 6 used books for sale.

Since I've only sold 1 print book, and that's in the UK, they can only be the books I sent out. So of the 10 people that "won" my book, 6 have sold them to used book stores.

If the remaining 4 people read the books and review them, I will be delighted. But I'm not holding my breath.

I debated having a giveaway. On one hand, it's a 2nd book in a series, so that limits the audience. On the other hand, it could interest people in buying book 1 (the ebook is only .99) But this isn't the first time I've found gifted books for sale. It's disappointing, but there's nothing you can do about it.

In the future, I don't think I'll be doing a giveaway through Goodreads. Seems like there are too many people who are signing up for the wrong reasons.

Not a Review

I just finished reading The Winter King by Bernard Cornwell and I need to chew on it for awhile. It is a well loved book by most readers and I am curious about what appeals to them.

This is a well researched book with too many battles for my taste. I guess that is one of the things that will appeal to other people. The world at that time, post-Roman Britain, is brutal and Cornwall describes it in painful detail.

World building is important for a fantasy book. I will say that his is extremely well done. The people are coarse, ignorant and superstitious. The politics are conniving and cruel. All in all, a world too dark for me to enjoy reading about.

This felt like more of a historical treatise than a novel. In that, I think my father would have enjoyed this book.

The things that poked at me, aside from the casual brutality of the time, were the thin characters. Everyone had one overriding characteristic that beats a monotonous drum. Perhaps because there are so many characters in the story, none of them can really expand or grow. None of them last long, because of the constant warring. Also the simplistic depiction of their Druids, hopping on one foot, throwing pebbles and spitting to curse or bless something. I felt that the author thought them foolish and held a certain contempt for all the religions presented.

I have to admit that I skimmed through the pages and pages of warriors hacking each other to pieces, the rapes and looting. It made me wonder how there are any of us left alive. And it made me realize that we have been fighting over land since the beginning of time. Both the Franks and the Saxons, in the novel, are killing off rivals for farmland and bringing in their own people in to settle those stolen parcels of land.

I prefer a character driven story. The narrator, Derfel, is barely visible in some scenes as he describes the action. He is the right-time, right-place kind of character that gets to see and hear everything of importance. But I hardly know him, other than he's good with a spear and will fight to death for his companions.

This is supposed to be a more historically correct account which tosses in some names I know in an completely different order. That sent my brain scrambling to try to sort out who was who and how they had been portrayed in other stories. I think that confused me enough to make me a little defensive while I read. Plus, the most disappointing part of all--no magic.

I won't be reading the rest of the series. As a historical writer, he's very skilled, but this story just doesn't appeal to me.

A Drop in the Ocean - a Zen Approach to Art

Art in all its contortions--dance, poetry, painting, music, sculpture, novels--is all about sharing something. They are created for an audience. Whether they ever find that audience is an entirely different matter. However, the work must always be created with that thought in mind. And so the creator must deliver their message with utmost clarity.

Over the years, many incidents in my life have taught me about what I call the Zen Approach to art. The first one happened while I was in college. I was in a drawing class, working hard on a still life that the professor had set up. While we were all at work, the professor was chatting with someone just behind me. He came over and tore a scrap of paper off the bottom of my drawing to write a phone number. I was horrified. I was still in the precious state of mind that any drawing could be a masterpiece. So to me, my charcoal sketch on cheap paper had been violated. The professor, seeing my shock, said, "If you did it once, you can do it again."

I had no idea what he meant by that. Every time I started work on a piece of art, it was new. I was young. I didn't understand that drawing was a skill that must be developed through repetition. If I couldn't render something well, like faces, I avoided putting people in my paintings. It didn't occur to me that I could improve my skill by practice, and that much of the practice work would not be worthy of an audience.

The next big lesson came when I was working as a scenic artist. That is collaborative work. In many cases you are creating something designed by another, unless you are also the designer. Scenery can change or be cut at a moment's notice, but it always has to meet a high level of quality. Watching your hard work go into the trash is a stark lesson.

I once worked on a set for a pilot for a new TV show. It was a rush job, people working round the clock. The carpenters built an entire house and barn. The painters not only painted, but aged, decorated and weathered the new construction. Everything had to look old and worn. I worked in the barn, banging away at the beams to make them look distressed, and brushed thick paste over woodwork so they appeared to have multiple layers of paint. We were almost done when we got the word the pilot was cancelled. The whole thing went to the landfill.

Despite the possibility that the work would not be used, it had to be done to exacting detail. I remind myself of those lessons whenever I wonder about the lack of exposure for my books. Just because people aren't snapping them up doesn't mean I can let the level of quality lapse. I need to offer the best story I can write regardless of whether anyone ever reads it. If it meets my standards I can share it proudly and let that be my reward for the moment.