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Tuesday, May 27, 2008

Here's a Resource for Returning Soldiers with Mental Health Problems

My sympathetic friend, Kristin Johnson (who is founder of the Warrior Poets Project) sends this link for soldiers or families of soldiers. It will help them research how to get help in for soldiers with mental health needs. You'll see that you may even find help close to home. http://www.newsvirginian.com/wnv/news/local/education/article/psychiatrists_offering_free_mental_health_service_to_troops/22456/

Thursday, May 22, 2008

Backward Editing! What a Concept!

I thought I'd share this tip with my fellow Military Writers. I offered it in a mini-column (for lack of a better word) for a listserve I belong to. The listserve is Word_Mage. You may subscribe to that by sending an e-mail to Word_Mage-subscribe@yahoogroups.com.

This is the tip:

This is Book Expo America (BEA) week and I have tons of preparation for it so I'm keeping this post short. I'm offering one of those tips some of you may know and use or one of those tips some of you may know and not use 'cause you get in a hurry! In any case, it's an important reminder.

For the most accurate self-edit possible end the process I outline in The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success with a backwards edit. Start at the back of the book and read each sentence aloud. Yes. Backwards. Doing that keeps each sentence unconnected to other sentences and to other ideas so your expectations of what should be on the page are minimalized. That way your brain won't fill in corrections when they aren't there. This works as well for query letters and media releases as it does for full manuscripts.

Read a little more on editing query letters and media release at my blog, The Frugal, Smart and Tuned-In Editor, www.thefrugaleditor.blogspot.com.

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Carolyn Howard-Johnson edits and consults on issues of publishing. Find her The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success on Amazon. Learn more about her other authors' aids at www.howtodoitfrugally.com.

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Promotion Op Plus Military-Themed Books for Your Perusal

Authors' Coalition offers their members a slide show each year in association with Red Engine Press which features many military titles and military authors. Many MWSA authors are featured on this Authors' Coalition slide show and those of you aren't in it can see some of the things AC is doing and possibly still want to post the slide show on your blogs, website, social networking sites, etc.

You will also find some valuable writing-oriented books featured on it.

This particular Authors' Coalition benefit works very best for those who speak or teach and can, therefore, run this slide show on a computer or project it on a screen at those events. It is cross-promotional meaning that when everyone on it is posting to their websites and taking it on their book signings with them, everyone benefits!

Joyce will be showing it at the huge Branson Veterans' Week in November and on her speaking engagements. I will be positing it on the Authors' Coalition site site, my www.howtodoitfrugally.com site and on several of my blogs including the www.authorscoalition.blogspot.com site and my military site, www.warpeacetolerance.blogspot.com.

So see below for the details of this program. Here is the slide show with Joyce Faulkner's explanation of how to use it.
Best,
Carolyn Howard-Johnson
www.howtodoitfrugally.com



Hi everyone,

At long last, here's the 2008 Authors' Coalition Slideshow. Your book or books appear in this slideshow if you are either a sponsor, a catalog participant, or simply a slideshow participant.

The goal of this slideshow is to give the participants as much exposure as possible. To that end, feel free to share it with your audiences, post it to your websites,blogs, My Space, Facebook, etc -- heck, give it away to friends if you want. The more that we use the slideshow, the more exposure everyone gets. As Carolyn says, cross promotion is extremely powerful and allows us to reach audiences that we might not touch otherwise. Understand that this is just one promotion in an arsenal and that it takes time to get name recognition. However, it IS a good tool and one of many ways to get your message out and your book known.


INSTRUCTIONS:

I'm including the slideshow here in a variety of ways --

• I've provided the code for 5 different sizes so that you can embed it on your websites or blogs, My Space, FaceBook, etc. (They are posted below my signature on this email) Your webmaster will know how to add it to your site. If you don't know how to do it, you can contact me and I'll walk you through the process.

• If you want to have it run on a blogger type blog (your url will have the word "blogspot.com" in it)...you will sign into your blog and go to the Layout tab. Choose Page Elements, Add a page element, Slideshow. Under Title, type in "Authors' Coalition Slideshow 2008". For Source, select "Picasa Web Albums". For Option, choose "Album." For Username, type in JoyceKFaulkner@gmail.com. For album, choose AC2008SS. Then Save and when you publish your blog, the slideshow will appear and play automatically. (NOTE: This is a pretty small version, so I don't recommend this one.)

• You can also go to Blogger and add a new post...and paste this code in the posting box. To get it, e-mail me at katieseyes@aol.com. Please put SLIDESHOW REQUEST in the subject line.

• If you just want to view the slides in a Picasa Album, you can see it at this link: http://picasaweb.google.com/JoyceKFaulkner. At that address, you can invite folks to come see the slideshow if you want to send to your mailing list.

• If you would like to download the PowerPoint Slideshow, you can go to http://www.redenginepress.com/AC2008.ppsx and save it to your hard drive. From there, you can burn to a cd that will play automatically.

• If you'd like to receive the slideshow on a cd so that you can show it at your events, you can either send me a check or I'll invoice you via Paypal for $4.50. (For those of you who have already ordered it, we'll be burning cds tomorrow and it'll be off to you on Thursday.)

Just a note, the Powerpoint slideshow is set to run slowly and has elaborate transitions. Each slide is set to show for 15 seconds. The show will loop continuously...so once you set it up, it'll go until you stop it. It will not have these fancy transitions in the website versions.

Carolyn will post the new slideshow to the main Authors' Coalition page. I'll be posting it to my websites as well...which includes the Red Engine Press site. Next week (if the moon is right LOL) I'll post a version of it to YouTube.com.

Joyce Faulkner
Director, Authors' Coalition


Sunday, May 11, 2008

How Iraq's Sand Is Like Irises: A Thank You from a Grandmother to Her Soldier Grandson




Below you will find the letter I sent to my grandson after receiving from him a bouquet of iris on Mother's Day. It seems very private but then it occurred to me that it is also very American, about generations and love and really, what our soldiers are doing over there or -- if that doesn't describe the way they're thinking about it now -- then it may be about what they thought they would be doing over there. He is serving in the tradition of his father, his grandfather, his Great Uncle Bob, and Jim, and another Great Uncle he has never met, Doug. Veterans all.
Dear Travis:

How I loved the flowers on mother's day, though the sand you mentioned from Iraq's deserts--unblooming ones I must presume--would have been adequate. It's the thought.

As it turns out, the flowers were iris. So, if it's the thought that counts, they made me think.

Your great, great grandmother Ruth Howard (the one who is a main character in This is the Place) raised iris. Raising iris is different from planting iris or just having some in your yard. She had a patch of them just beyond the side yard where that huge Mormon family sat in Adirondack chairs. There were some 40s /50s style metal lawn chairs there, too, a tad rusted. And the clothesline. I think it was made so the ropes could be taken down during family parties but those ropes were supported by poles where wasps liked to build their nests. They were cozy homes for the wasps, hollow with nice little holes for them to ease into and out of. Good hiding places. One never saw the actual nests, only the comings and goings. Once I leaned against one of their entrances (or perhaps exits). Someone didn't like it much and he (or she) stung me in the armpit. That's the first time I noticed the holes were there. Before that they had just been good places to hang from your knees.

Anyway, beyond that yard, all nice and green and shaded by an apple tree that put out the bitterest, hardest, greenest apples of all time, was the iris patch. Beyond that the chicken coop. Chicken manure made very good fertilizer for the iris so it was nice and convenient. Grandmother putzed in that patch. She crossed iris with iris to see what she would get. A little pollen from this applied with her finger to the female organs of that. She also tried for size, I think, because her iris were huge, as big as the biggest California-grown grapefruit. And the colors. Some had mismatched petals, the top ones that curved up different from the ones that made a skirt. Some glittered in sun like mica. And not just the color of Van Gogh's irises. Oh, no. Much too plain. These came in pink and gold-orange, the color of sunsets. Blues and lavenders, the colors of Utah skies in summer.

Grandma liked to give tubers (for they are tubers, really, and not bulbs) to people who came to visit for she kept them nicely divided so they didn't lose any of their energy and life. By dividing them her iris she kept them forever young. It worked that way for Grandma, too. Because she was always busy and interested in something she remained feisty and fun until she died in her 90s. The olds woman in Hollday, Utah at the time.

Getting a tuber from Grandma was a treat. It was always a surprise the following spring to see what color would come of those roots that looked like giant rat turds. Grandma produced miracles with her iris.

You did, too. (-:

Love,
Grandma Carolyn

PS: You can see that iris have been influential in my life. The cover of one of my book's of poetry (co-authored by Magdalena Ball) is covered with iris, courtesy of an artist friend, Vicki Thomas.

Wednesday, May 7, 2008

A Few Resources for Writers from Carolyn Howard-Johnson




Any of you MWSAer out there have a book in you that hasn't been published? Out of fear perhaps? You may want to listen to this MP3 that will encourage you to get started! (-: The interviewer is Lisa Osborne (www.lisa.fm). For those of you who need to promote your book, she is open to query letters. (-:

http://www.lisa.fm/audio/doitfrugally.mp3
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Posted my MWSA award-winner Carolyn Howard-Johnson
Military Resources and Blogging at www.warpeacetolerance.blogspot.com

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