Lily Iona MacKenzie's Blog for Writers & Readers

MY BLOG POSTS COMMENT ON SOME ASPECTS OF WRITING & READING.

magical realism

My novel Curva Peligrosa opens with a tornado that sweeps through the fictional town of Weed, Alberta, and drops a purple outhouse into its center. Drowsing and dreaming inside that structure is its owner, Curva Peligrosa—a curiosity and a marvel, a source of light and heat, a magnet. Adventurous, amorous, fecund, and over six feet tall, she possesses magical powers. She also has the greenest of thumbs, creating a tropical habitat in an arctic clime, and she possesses a wicked trigger finger.

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Michelle Cameron is the author of Jewish historical fiction, including Babylon: A Novel of Jewish Captivity, the award-winning Beyond the Ghetto Gates and The Fruit of Her Hands: the story of Shira of Ashkenaz. She has also published a verse novel, In the Shadow of the Globe. Napoleon’s Mirage, the sequel to Beyond the Ghetto Gates, is forthcoming in August 2024.

Michelle is a director of The Writers Circle, a NJ-based creative writing program serving children, teens, and adults. She lives in Chatham, NJ, with her husband and has two grown sons of whom she is inordinately proud.

Visit her online:

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With two new books being published by Shanti Arts, and wondering how best to market them, I’ve been thinking about book festivals I’ve participated in. I realize that, while these events are great for focusing on the many book genres available, I also have concluded that I probably won’t attend one again. A few years ago, I signed up for the Bay Area Book Festival in Berkeley, a relatively new venue at the time. Its first session was in 2015, and it claims to be an international event that draws people from all over the world: “More than 50,000 diverse people of all ages, from urban to suburban Bay Area communities and beyond.” (more…)

Join me and my editor/publisher, Christine Cote, to help celebrate the release of my hybrid memoir Dreaming Myself into Old Age: One Woman’s Search for Meaning (to be released on 9/19/23) and my newest poetry collection, California Dreaming (published on June 27). We’ll explore some of the main themes in both of my books as well as Christine’s work as publisher/editor of Shanti Arts Press. There will be lots of opportunities for Q&A.

In Dreaming Myself into Old Age, I’ve hoped that reflecting on this these later years will help me to better understand and deepen them. Perhaps, in sharing my quest, readers will make their own discoveries, as has been true for me whenever I’ve read about someone else’s journey. But I also believe that aging presents its own mysteries for us to uncover, and that is part of my search as well. Dreaming Myself into Old Age is set within my lifelong pursuit of self-discovery.

According to my editor, this exploration carries over in California Dreaming. She says, “Lily Iona MacKenzie’s unbounded zest for life sings through the poems in California Dreaming. A writer in her bones and a dreamer in her heart, she discovers the poetry in everything—travel, art, music, nature, past and present. Her words and rhythms touch the soul and leave their treasures behind. ‘Listen closely to these poems’ quiet but insistent murmur.’ (Kathleen McClung)

Grab your favorite beverage, find a cozy spot, and join us online for an hour of delving into the mysteries of dreaming and aging!

California Dreaming & Dreaming Myself into Old Age can be purchased from Shanti Arts as well as Amazon and other major outlets. ???

If you like these books, please leave a brief review.

Join Zoom Meeting: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/85890431364?pwd=aHFiMERFM3lZeXI2VzBlSFRXenN4UT09

Meeting ID: 858 9043 1364

Passcode: 613741

I look forward to seeing you at noon on September 23.

Lily Iona MacKenzie

 

With two new books coming out, I’ve been wondering about applying for book awards. Fellow Regal House author Elizabeth Winthrop Alsop came to my rescue with this piece on book awards that she first published on SUBSTACK on August 16. This is an important post for all authors, published or unpublished.

My memoir, Daughter of Spies: Wartime Secrets, Family Lies which came out in the fall of 2022, marks the first time I’ve published with a small independent press. In the three years since acceptance, I’ve learned lots about how much it costs to produce a book, how important distribution can be, and the amount of time and energy that goes into marketing and publicizing a book, no matter if it’s self-published, traditionally published or released by an independent press.

The one thing that has stopped me in my tracks is the number of “come-ons”, scams, and false promises that land in my inbox daily.  These include payment for reviews on Instagram or with “influencers,” (I admit to hating that word), hybrid publishers wishing me to submit my next book, advertising offers, emails encouraging me to submit my book for a festival and so on. Every one of these involve me spending money and, in the end, they will cost me far more than I ever expect to make in royalties. And all of them prey on a writer’s desperate desire to be lifted above others in the great cacophony of modern life where people more and more choose visuals on devices over reading the printed word.

I’ve quoted this figure before but it’s worth repeating. In the US alone, over 4 million new books were published in 2022. (These include both self-published and commercially published books in all formats.) As a comparison, ten years ago in 2013, just over 275,000 books were published in the US.  No wonder writers are desperate and prone to scams and false promises.

The one I’m focused on because I jumped on board are the hundreds of awards. I entered 15 contests, some of which were approved by the Alliance of Independent Authors and some of which were given a caution or negative rating. I was advised by experts in the field such as the knowledgeable and experienced publishing specialist, Jane Friedman, to check how long the contest has been around, to study past winners, to look for a list of judges, to evaluate how important the prize is to members of your book community, and most importantly, to look at contests that are created primarily to make money. In the beginning, I paid some attention to this advice but the lure of a possible award (how could they not pick me?) made me throw caution to the winds.

Here’s the bottom line. I’ve entered fifteen contests and I’ve spent close to $900 on contest fees. I’ve been shortlisted in a memoir magazine contest and been declared a finalist for another book award. In one case I won a Bronze Medal in the Female Memoir division, and in another, I was named a runner up in the Memoir category. None of these “honors” paid me any money. The announcement of my “win” is most often followed by a bombardment of emails encouraging me to pay more for editorial or marketing advice or for a bronze medal on a colored ribbon or to enter more contests or book festivals. I’ve won no mention at all in six contests, and five have yet to report.

However, in many cases, the list of “winners” is truly daunting. I’m convinced that most of the writers who submitted “won” something. In one contest, I counted the finalists, winners, and runners up and came up with 146 entries that garnered some mention. It cost me $50 to enter that contest. If 500 people entered just one of the possible categories (and I suspect there are many more desperate and eager authors like myself), the income off the bat is $25,000. Where does the money go? Who are the judges? Are they paid?  Starting a writing contest seems to have become a profitable business.

Of course, there are reputable contests for writers from PEN awards to the Pulitzer Prize to the excellent listings in Poets and Writers Magazine. If I have one piece of advice to offer to writers interested in submitting to contests, I’d say stick to the reputable listings including the smaller and less well known awards you can find at the Alliance of Independent Authors . Don’t fall into the trap I jumped into. Don’t waste your money on the “for profit” contests that might give you a momentary burst of gratification (see, they did pick me!) but in the end will do little to sell your book or get it to new readers.

Visit Elizabeth’s website at https://elizabethwinthrop.com.

Follow her newsletters on Substrate.

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Stephanie Cowell has been an opera singer, balladeer, founder of Strawberry Opera and other arts venues including a Renaissance festival and an outdoor arts series in NYC. She is the author of Nicholas Cooke, The Physician of London, The Players: a novel of the young Shakespeare, Marrying Mozart, and Claude & Camille: a novel of Monet.  Her work had been translated into nine languages and adapted into an opera. Stephanie is the recipient of an American Book Award.  Her website is www.StephanieCowell.com. (more…)

Writing is such a part of my day that if I don’t get to it, I’m constantly distracted, as if I have a lover I’m thinking about. It’s like a siren’s call, pulling me away. My husband Michael notices it. He comments on me seeming drifty. He’s right. I’m not fully there. The discipline of writing an hour or more a day pulls me into myself and gives me the contemplative part I need. Balance. (more…)

Thanks to  Sara Hart for interviewing me on her podcast PRIME SPARK WITH SARA HART and whose blog offers encouragement to women over 55. Here is the link to the interview: https://www.spreaker.com/user/10210191/ps-ep70-v1.    In it, I discuss my path to publication and other writing challenges with Sara.

It’s no surprise that I’ve been thinking a good deal about dreams and the role they play in our lives. Why? Shanti Arts Press released my latest poetry collection on June 27 titled California Dreaming. And it will be publishing my hybrid memoir, Dreaming Myself Into Old Age: One Woman’s Search for Meaning on September 19. Both books deal with varying aspects of dreams, from the ones that visit us at night to day dreams. (more…)

Martha Anne Toll’s debut novel, THREE MUSES, published by Regal House Publishing in September 2022, was shortlisted for the Gotham Book Prize and won the Petrichor Prize for Finely Crafted Fiction. THREE MUSES has received glowing tributes since it came out. Toll writes fiction, essays, and book reviews, and reads anything that’s not nailed down. She brings a long career in social justice to her work covering authors of color and women writers as a critic and author interviewer at NPR Books, the Washington PostPointe MagazineThe Millions, and elsewhere. She also publishes short fiction and essays in a wide variety of outlets. Toll is a member of the Board of Directors of the PEN/Faulkner Foundation. Toll’s second novel, DUET FOR ONE, will be out in early 2025. (more…)

Joe Safdie has been lurking in and around the poetry world for 50 years; his first chapbook, Wake Up the Panthers, was published in 1974, while he was still an undergraduate at UC Santa Cruz. His ninth book, published last year by Spuyten Duyvil, is The Secular Divine, a hybrid chapbook of poems and an essay. It was preceded in 2021 by The Oregon Trail (from the same press). This year two books will appear: a collection of his essays, Poetry and Heresy, will be published by MadHat Press, and a Selected Poems featuring Greek mythology, Greek to Me, is on tap at Chax Press. His talk on Charles Olson and Brooks Adams for the American Literature Association is on YouTube; other poems, essays, and reviews can be found in Jacket, Jacket2, Rain Taxi, Caesura, and Dispatches from the Poetry Wars. (more…)

My novel Fling, a wildly comic romp on mothers, daughters, art, and travel, was published in July 2015.

What happens in Fling? Feather, an aging hippie, returns to her Calgary home to help her mother, Bubbles, celebrate her 90th birthday. Bubbles has received mail from the dead letter office in Mexico City, asking her to pick up her mother’s ashes, left there seventy years earlier and only now surfacing. (more…)

When The Copyright Trolls Came for Me

By Victoria Strauss  |  June 23, 2023  | 

Header image: Troll with purple hair casting dark shadow on a purple backround

If you’re a writer who’s serious about a career, you probably have some form of online presence: a website, a blog, an Instagram account. You may make use of images and/or videos created by others–to add visual interest to your blog posts or newsletters, build out your website, and engage your readers and followers. For example, the header image I’ve placed at the top of this post.

Online image use is not without its dangers, however. It offers fertile ground for copyright trolls.

What’s a Copyright Troll?

Wikipedia defines a copyright troll thus:

copyright troll is a party (person or company) that enforces copyrights it owns for purposes of making money through strategic litigation, in a manner considered unduly aggressive or opportunistic[.]

These kinds of copyright trolls create and register copyright to content that they then make widely available online, to increase the possibility that people will re-post it without permission. Using sophisticated search tools and algorithms, they find infringers and use threats of litigation to shake them down for cash settlements.

More indirectly, some companies and law firms specialize in copyright threats on behalf of third parties, seeking out infringers (and often roping in non-infringers as well), filing or threatening to file suit, and demanding large fees (in many cases, far exceeding the actual value of the intellectual property) to close the claim.

A major pioneer of third-party copyright trolling was a company called Righthaven, which licensed rights to news articles and then used the threat of lawsuits to coerce people who posted the articles—or even snippets of them—into paying thousands of dollars in settlements. Another notorious practitioner was former lawyer Richard Liebowitz, who employed a similar M.O. on behalf of photographers.

Karma did eventually bite back: Righthaven was sued out of existence, and Liebowitz was suspended from the practice of law in New York State. But copyright trolling is alive and well, and if you post images online, you may become a target—as I did a few months ago.

My CopyTrack Adventure

Like many people favored with attention from copyright trolls, I was a bit freaked out when I received an email from CopyTrack, an “expert for the global enforcement of image rights” that’s widely enough known in trolldom that there are explainers addressing what to do if they contact you.

Infringement notification from CopyTrack, with link to the location of the supposedly infringed image and link to CopyTrack's Settlement Portal

You can see the image and how I’ve used it here. (Note that this is my personal website; I’ve used the same image on the Writer Beware blog, but copyright trolls prefer to focus on individuals, who are less likely to have the resources to defend themselves.)

Because of Writer Beware, I’m often targeted with various kinds of threats. Mostly these can be safely ignored. But though I’d never heard of CopyTrack, I had heard of copyright trolling, and the general consensus is that non-response is not a good idea.

The link in the email above leads to the CopyTrack Settlement Portal, and a form where I was asked if I had a valid license to use the image. Here’s another feature of copyright trolls: they don’t do a lot of due diligence before sending out their scary communiques. In fact, I did have a license: from Shutterstock, where I subscribe to a plan that allows me unlimited use of images downloaded from the site.

I filled out the form and uploaded a screenshot of my most recent Shutterstock invoice as well as a screenshot of the image’s ALT text on my website, where the photographer—and Shutterstock–are credited:

Screenshot of image ALT text crediting photographer and Shutterstock

To give CopyTrack credit, the process is quick. I heard back within a day with a request for more information, which I provided. The day after that, they closed the case.

Screenshot of CopyTrack's email closing the case

My shakedown experience was relatively mild. Unlike some copyright trolls, CopyTrack isn’t a law firm, so it couldn’t pre-emptively hit me with a lawsuit (though it doesn’t skip the fear factor, making clear in its initial message that it is capable of escalating cases to lawyers). Nor did it demand thousands of dollars, as some copyright trolls do—though 200+ euros for continued use or “compensation” isn’t chicken feed (per its website, CopyTrack keeps 45% of any money it recovers).

Other copyright trolls that pursue or have pursued users of images: PicRights, Higbee and Associates, KodakOne, Pixsy, and Photoclaim. That’s not an exhaustive list, either.

The Importance of Protecting Yourself

The resources I consulted in my research for this post agree that copyright trolling is on the rise—and as my experience shows, you don’t have to infringe to be a target. In that environment, it makes sense to do what you can to defend yourself.

What does that include?

  1. First and most obvious, if you use images, make sure you have the proper licenses and/or permissions, or that the images are free to download under a Creative Commons license, such as photos from sites like Pixabay and Unsplash (though do read the license terms: there may be restrictions on use, such as a requirement for attribution—and yes, trolls come after people for messing that up too). Giving credit to the image creator and/or linking back to the source is polite, but it won’t protect you from copyright claims.
  2. Keep good records. If you purchase images individually, or subscribe to a stock image website like Shutterstock or Getty Images, keep your receipts on file. If you obtain permission direct from an artist, make sure it’s in writing. If you use one of the free image sites, keep a record of the search terms you use or take a screenshot of the download page so you can show where you got the image.
  3. If you accept guest blog posts, require the guest blogger to prove that they have permission to use any images they contribute. Posting an unauthorized image may be someone else’s mistake, but if it’s on your blog or website, you will be the one getting trolled.
  4. If you outsource content (such as employing a third party to produce blog posts or other web content for you), be sure you know what your liability is. In an ideal world, the person or service will indemnify you against error, but if copyright ownership is transferred to you, then you, not they, will be on the hook for any infringement.
  5. Don’t ignore a copyright infringement notification. If you websearch CopyTrack, you’ll find comments from people who say they ignored it, and after two or three attempts it gave up. You can’t count on that happening, though–plus, as mentioned, CopyTrack is not a law firm. In many cases, the notifications do come from law firms, which can actually sue you. Blowing off notifications and deadlines can have adverse consequences.
  6. Finally: if you have a valid license, as I did, by all means go through the steps to prove it and close the case. But if you don’t, or if there’s any ambiguity or question, or the troll is demanding a lot of money…seek legal advice, preferably from a copyright attorney. Don’t try to handle it on your own; don’t try to settle on your own. There are defenses a lawyer can invoke (here’s an example), and they may be able to reduce the fee.

Oh, and the image at the top of this post? It’s a download from Flickr, under a Creative Commons license that requires attribution and a link back to the source, both of which I’ve provided.

Have you ever heard from a copyright troll, or been accused of copyright infringement? If so, how did you respond?

Victoria Strauss is the author of nine novels for adults and young adults, including the WAY OF ARATA epic fantasy duology (THE BURNING LAND and THE AWAKENED CITY) and PASSION BLUE and COLOR SONG, a pair of historical novels for teens. In addition, she’s written a handful of short stories, hundreds of book reviews, and a number of articles on writing and publishing that have appeared in Writer’s Digest, among others. In 2006, she served as a judge for the World Fantasy Awards.

She is the co-founder, with Ann Crispin, of Writer Beware, a publishing industry watchdog group that provides information and warnings about the many scams and schemes that threaten writers. She received the Service to SFWA Award in 2009 for her work with Writer Beware.

She lives in Amherst, Massachusetts.

This article first appeared in Writer Unboxed: https://writerunboxed.com/2023/06/23/when-the-copyright-trolls-came-for-me/

Many thanks to Victoria and Writer Unboxed for sharing this important information!

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Kathleen McClung is the author of four poetry collections: A Juror Must Fold in on Herself, winner of the 2020 Rattle Chapbook Prize, Temporary Kin, The Typists Play Monopoly and Almost the Rowboat. Winner of the Morton Marr, Maria W. Faust, and Rita Dove national poetry prizes, her work appears in a variety of journals and anthologies. From 2021-23 she has served as guest editor for The MacGuffin, a print literary journal based in Michigan. She also served as associate director of the Soul-Making Keats literary competition and judged the contest’s sonnet category. In 2018-2019 she was a writer-in-residence at Friends of the San Francisco Public Library. Kathleen teaches literature and writing classes at Skyline College in San Bruno and directed the Women on Writing conference there for ten years. She also teaches privately and at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute (OLLI) in San Francisco.  Visit her website at www.kathleenmcclung.com (more…)

Whenever I give a talk or reading, someone in the audience asks where my stories come from. I find the answer more complex that what it would appear to be on the surface. What are my narrative seeds? What starts me on these explorations of others’ lives?

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5d9cf373-e31c-400e-9fe0-1655625ab9b2Recently, my husband and I got into a discussion of poetry and our different approaches to it. His training is in new criticism. Mine embraces more contemporary work, though I’m eclectic and like many different styles, including John Ashbery’s method of disjointed narrative. My husband recognizes I’m onto something that Melville was alluding to in Moby Dick—the gap between language and what it tries to depict…how language organizes and creates our way of seeing. (more…)

Seeing is believing: the magic in magical realism!

In an issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, I read “The (Magical) Voice of Community in Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger” by Jordan Dotson. Since much of my fiction falls into the magical realism category, I was interested in what Dotson had to say about Twain’s final novella and how I could apply what I read to my own work, especially my novel Curva Peligrosa. (more…)

How do magical events become real in fiction?

elephant copyIn a recent issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, I read “The (Magical) Voice of Community in Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger” by Jordan Dotson. Since much of my fiction falls into the magical realism category, I was interested in what Dotson had to say about Twain’s final novella and how I could apply what I read to my own work, especially my novel Curva Peligrosa. (more…)

Why Do You Read Novels?

colorful-fireworks-4th-of-july-picjumbo-com copyAs a fiction writer, I often ask myself why people read novels and how can I convince them to read mine? That question occurred to me again recently when I finished a novel that had me questioning why read fiction. The book was engaging enough. The writer was competent and had created characters that seemed believable (though that isn’t necessarily a criterion for me). There was enough tension to keep me reading in order to discover more about these lives I had immersed myself in. But the experience felt flat, and I wondered why I had spent several precious hours on something that wasn’t more satisfying. (more…)

Venice’s Magic and its Relation to Magical Realism

venice-2647436_1920I visited Venice for the first time in 1994, and it was love at first sight. It reinforced my notion that our ego consciousness is surrounded by the waters of the unconscious, and I had found a city that demonstrated this perspective. Daily life goes on while the city’s structural foundations are rooted deep in the Venetian lagoon, just as our ego, our conscious perception of ourselves, floats on the collective unconscious, the inner sea that surrounds us. (more…)

The Magic of Community in Narratives

elephant copyIn the latest issue of The Writer’s Chronicle, I read “The (Magical) Voice of Community in Mark Twain’s The Mysterious Stranger” by Jordan Dotson. Since much of my fiction falls into the magical realism category, I was interested in what Dotson had to say about Twain’s final novella and how I could apply what I read to my own work, especially my latest novel Curva Peligrosa. (more…)

What is the REAL story?

galaxy-2481360_1280
Lily Iona MacKenzie

“The artist must be deaf to the transitory teaching and demands of his particular age. He must watch only the trend of the inner need, and harken to its words alone.”  —Kandinsky.

Several years ago I entered a Masters in Creative Writing program as a poet, but I was equally interested in writing fiction and signed up for several short story (more…)

For magical realism lovers, be sure to check out the novel Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat!

TourBanner_KasperMutzenmacherKeith R. Fentonmiller will be awarding a $50 Amazon or Barnes and Noble GC to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour. Please click here to enter to win $50 Amazon/BN GC: “http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/28e4345f2276.

You can follow the tour and comment by clicking on this URL: http://goddessfishpromotions.blogspot.com/2017/04/blurb-blitz-kasper-mutzenmachers-cursed.html. The more you comment, the better your chances are of winning.

Kasper Mützenmacher’s Cursed Hat, by Keith R. Fentonmiller

Berlin hatmakers threatened by a veil-wearing Nazi known as the “stealer of faces” must use the god Hermes’ “wishing hat” to teleport out of Germany during Kristallnacht. They won’t be safer in America, however, unless they break the curse that has trapped them in the hat business for sixteen centuries. Set in the Jazz Age, Nazi Germany, and World War II Detroit, Book One of the Life Indigo series is a family saga about the fluidity of tradition, faith, and identity. It will appeal to fans of Everything is Illuminated and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay. 

Excerpt:MediaKit_BookCover_KasperMutzenmacher

Kasper plunged his hand into the safe’s darkness and retrieved the hat. When he put it on, the warm scaly leather conformed to his skull like a blanket of heated wax. He closed his eyes and recalled his father’s instructions: First, think of the place. Then make the wish. Not the other way around. Kasper breathed deeply and then exhaled as much air as he could, a precaution to stave off the overwhelming nausea that surely would follow. Before the next inhalation, he thought, Take me there. In an instant, he was compressed to a point, drained of all material substance. The world went dark and silent. He felt only a sensation of impossible acceleration and then nothing at all.

Kasper wished himself from cabarets to booze cellars, concert halls, and boxing venues all over Europe and North America. Although hat travel made him queasy and headachy, whiskey took the edge off. Then, after a week of around-the-clock hat travel, the nausea and head pain receded, and he began to enjoy the rush of compression, expansion, and acceleration.

Well, labeling the experience “enjoyable” would’ve been a vast understatement. The nascent drug addict doesn’t merely “enjoy” a shot of heroin or a puff of opium; he relishes it, embraces it, becomes one with it. Using feels like an act of self-creation—conception, gestation, and birth wrapped into a singular, lightning-strike moment.

AUTHOR Bio and Links:

Version 2Keith is a consumer protection attorney for the Federal Trade Commission in Washington, D.C. Before graduating from the University of Michigan Law School, he toured with a professional comedy troupe, writing and performing sketch comedy at colleges in the Mid-Atlantic States. His short story, Non Compos Mentis, was recently published in The Stonecoast Review and nominated for a Pushcart Prize. His short story Exodus was just published in the Running Wild Anthology of Stories.

 

Find Keith Online:

Website | Facebook | Twitter | Goodreads

Purchase At:

Amazon US | Amazon UK | Barnes & Noble

 

 

 

 

Book Marketing 101: Part Four

Though I live in the San Francisco Bay Area, I recently did readings while spending a week at Sea Ranch, a coastal community in Mendocino about three hours from my home. The conventional wisdom is that readings are more productive in areas where we have family, friends, or acquaintances. That might be true in some instances, usually at bookstores. But there are exceptions. And that’s what this post is about.

I thought that while I was in the Sea Ranch area, I would try to book events so I could get a broader readership for my novel Fling! I first contacted the only bookstore in Gualala, a tiny town just a few miles from where we were renting a house. I was surprised at how enthusiastic the owner was about reserving a late Saturday afternoon slot during our week 20160709_160317in the area. He told me that the venue has a healthy clientele of mostly regulars but also of those visiting the coast. Since there isn’t much entertainment locally, many residents are eager to attend something out of the ordinary. The owner also recommended that I contact the Point Arena library, a half hour drive further up the coast. And he put me in touch with Peggy, the host of one of the local radio stations so she could interview me.

I followed up and was delighted when Julia at the library signed me up for the Sunday afternoon at the library series. She was also eager to offer her usual visitors an inspiring talk and/or reading. I had planned to frame my discussion of Fling! with a talk on “The Magic in Magical Realism.” Again, Point Arena is another small town whose inhabitants are hungry for enriching programs.

20160709_154446Each of these venues did a great job of advertising its event with flyers, notices on their websites, and postings in the local papers. I happened to pick up the Coastal Observer when I was there, eager to read the local news, and was amazed to find a quarter page write up about myself, something I didn’t expect.

While I was at Sea Ranch, KGUA, the public radio station, did a 25-minute interview with me that featured my upcoming readings and allowed me to give extensive info on myself and my work. I later learned there is another station in Gualala, KTDE, a commercial one, that also would have interviewed me if I’d contacted them, which I will do in the future. In addition, I discovered that authors should submit some sample questions beforehand to the station so the interviewer has material to work with.

This experience helped me to broaden my horizon for doing readings and giving talks. Intimate rural towns can be great resources. They often are hungry for the kind of events that big city residents take for granted.

What has your experience been in booking readings outside of the mainstream?

The Magic in Magic Realism

blog hop 2015 datesThe Magic in Magical Realism

So much has been said about magic realism that it’s difficult to add anything new to the conversation. However, I wondered if putting on my poet’s hat and parsing the two words might crack open another perspective.

The term magic implies some slight of hand, an ability to make things appear and disappear at will. In a magic show, magicians exercise their ability to draw viewers’ attention away from what the magicians are doing so they can convince those watching that a rabbit really does appear at random out of an empty hat, or that any number of equally fantastic events can occur. In this case, the magic isn’t really magical in the sense of a supernatural intervention because there’s a trick at its foundation based on perception and how skillful the magician is at keeping the audience distracted enough not to notice the hoax involved.

Something similar happens with writers. They capture our attention through assembling strings of words that become a compelling narrative we follow. Just as a viewer at a magic show sets aside his/her momentary doubts about what’s happening before his/her eyes, so too do readers enter the narrative dream. That enables the writer to convince readers that the setting, characters, and events taking place are actually happening in real time when, in truth, they aren’t. They only come to life in the readers’ imagination as readers let go of their immediate world to undertake this journey into the unknown. Put this way, reading can seem like a potentially dangerous endeavor, and it can be if a writer’s ideas and images shatter some preconceived notion about the world and about us.

Magic also has the ability to temporarily take people out of the constraints of everyday life and make them feel they can transcend it. Instead of being locked inside the usual routines that structure our days, we find release when something magical happens, such as when we watch a play in a theatre and suddenly our world is transformed. We’re no longer our daily selves, but we begin to identify with what’s occurring on the stage and participate in all of the characters involved, good guys and bad guys.

Woody Allen’s Purple Rose of Cairo is a good example of this dynamic. An unhappily married Depression-era waitress played by Mia Farrow tries to escape her dull marriage by visiting picture shows and becomes transfixed with the movie The Purple Rose of Cairo and its lead character, archeologist Tom Baxter. When Tom literally steps off of the screen and into her life, both realities are thrown into chaos. As happens with Mia’s character, we’re under the actors’ and director’s spell, convinced that the action unfolding in front of us is real, though it’s only make believe. It’s as if the characters can step from the screen and interact with us.

From these examples I’ve given, it’s easy to see that any writing, whether it’s a novel or a play, has a magical component to it. The primary storytelling goal is magic, achieved by mysterious means. Words themselves are transformative in that they can so easily metamorphose into other words: world contains word and old. Add or subtract a letter here or there and we’ve landed in a different meaning. Words in themselves are slippery and magical, calling forth images just by naming things: red chair, oak table, 2006 Honda Accord, green plaid coat, eucalyptus tree. Read the text and suddenly something appears in our mind’s eye. Amazing!

And then there’s the way the wind can blow open a door, filling the house with a gust of cold air, or the sun can illuminate a field and immediately transform our experience of that place. Or the timer on our living room lamp switches on silently and the room is now swathed in light, creating a totally different atmosphere. That’s one reason we talk about something magical happening, or of a place as being magical. In fact, the world is magical not only in its inherent changeability but also because of our interaction with it.

That’s where “realism” enters the discussion. Reality is both magical and “real,” if by real we mean something that isn’t imagined. I’m not a philosopher, but this computer I’m typing on has a life distinct from mine. My husband, who is sitting reading in a chair across from me, can see it and agree on its reality. But it also exists in a world where objects can become symbols for something else, so while my computer retains its identify as a writer’s tool, it also can represent a window into another universe. It can become a metaphor for many things, just as most objects can.

This, then, seems to be the foundation for what we call magic realism. Language by its very nature is magical, transforming our everyday reality in multiple ways, carrying us aloft on the wings of thought. The writer confronts reality and tries to untangle it, to discover what is mysterious in things, in life, in human acts. The principle thing is not the creation of imaginary beings or worlds but the discovery of the mysterious relationship between our circumstances and us. The magical realist does not try to copy the surrounding reality but to seize the mystery that breathes behind things.

 

This post is part of the Magic Realism Blog Hop. About twenty blogs are taking part in the hop. Over three days (29th – 31st July 2015) these blogs will be posting about magic realism. Please take the time to click on the button below to visit them and remember that links to the new posts will be added over the three days, so do come back to read more.

Dear Fellow Readers (and Writers): Why do you read fiction?

I recently finished a novel that had me questioning why I read fiction. The book was engaging enough. The writer was competent and had created characters that seemed believable (though that isn’t necessarily a criterion for me). There was enough tension to keep me reading in order to discover more about these lives I had immersed myself in. But the experience felt flat, and I wondered why I had spent several precious hours on something that wasn’t more satisfying.

So why do I read? For me, reading isn’t necessarily to escape my daily life. I read to deepen it. If a book doesn’t take me somewhere new emotionally and intellectually, I feel cheated. Why would I go on this literary journey if I remain the same person at the end?

I also want my knowledge of the world broadened and intensified. I love many naturalistic novels—ones that recreate everyday life and give me new glimpses (novel=make it new) of familiar settings and things. Often that happens through the writer’s expert use of metaphor and symbol, devices that automatically expand our perceptions. Or s/he has a masterful way with manipulating sentences and images.

But I also love works that employ magical realism, as many of my fictions do, because they point to something other, something not quite articulable. They lift the lid on ordinary experience and suggest other possibilities.

I hope I’ll hear from others on why they read. That too will expand my horizons!

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