The Love Books Festival, featuring…Me.
In a month, will cross the river out of Maryland and into nearby Lovettsville, Virginia, where I will set up my first ever author booth at my first ever book festival.
Called the Love Books Festival, it will feature about 40 local authors for signings, workshops, and lectures.
I myself will only be selling and signing books this time around. Paperback copies of my latest, The Rubble and the Shakespeare, as well as copies of The Beacons I See. The former for 10 dollars a copy, the latter for 5 dollars. (As it is so much shorter.)
As this approaches, I have spent more time, thought, and energy on marketing than writing. For example, this sign I had made:
I’ve also bought a few other decorative knickknacks that convey imagery from the novels to spruce up the table. I’ll share some of those in a future post.
And though in comparison to most authors I have spend modest money, it is by far the most I have ever spent on any one promotional/marketing concept in my career.
I even picked up one of those devices that lets you scan a credit card on your phone, for those who want to pay me that way. (And let’s face it, in 2024, that is probably most people now.)
More than a few times, I have mentioned here on the website that my marketing instincts are somewhere between small and non-existent. A lot of my ideas have come from looking at other author’s set ups in different places.
The best manner to sell is probably through talking to those that visit my table, and by word of mouth.
Or, in this case, mentioning to all of your that is you are local to Lovettsville and are free sometime on September 7th, stop by my table at the festival. Be a part of history by being at my first ever such event!
Let the Games Begin
Tomorrow in Paris, the Summer Olympics begin.
I have enjoyed the Olympics for as long as I remember. Probably because my mother before me watched them regularly before I came along, and continued that tradition.
Personally, I kind of miss having both the Summer and the Winters versions in the same year. A huge amount to look forward to ever four years back then.
Still a lot to look forward to, with one of the Olympics every two years, though. Lots of pageantry, and competition, and, pertinent to this page, stories.
There are many controversial aspects to the Olympics as a brand. Corruption, grift, displacement of poor people within host cities. Doping. The movement as a whole needs work.
But the event and the movement are huge. And the true focus, the athletes, are usually far removed from the controversy of the Games themselves. They are there to compete and in some cases win, (for better or worse) the most coveted of awards in all of sport.
It’s especially true of athletes from smaller countries, some of which send only one or two athletes.
The Olympics therefore is more like an epic saga, with many smaller, faster stories taken place under its massive umbrella. There is a broad, overarching theme, at least on the surface, but I tune in, (as I imagine most do) to enjoy the nature of a given sport, and the personalities partaking in same.
It’s especially fun for me when, like this year, there is live action to be had late into the night in my time zone, given the time difference.
The American network, NBC is, for the most part, terrible with its coverage, and has been for a generation. Too much talk, too many side-pieces and documentaries, too much shoehorned poetry and false drama. They are especially problematic given that they now charge people money to see the lesser sports on their Peacock streaming nightmare. Not at all in the spirit of the Games.
Yet their hegemony is all we have available in the States, so I like my fellow citizens must rely on them to bring us any aspect of the Olympics.
My point is that even then, to the discerning eye, there are stories to be had, and not always the ones NBC is pushing.
My goal as a writer is to make sure all of my narrative is as enjoyable as a specific aspect of it is. The late night shot put coverage that nobody in prime time ever talks about should be as enjoyable and worth consuming as drama as is the opening ceremony. I don’t want my reader to have to go digging for the good stuff.
But when I am the reader, I try to find the good hidden within the enormity of the piece. If the plot is weak as a whole, (The entire Olympic movement) I give myself a chance to enjoy the relationship between the individual characters. (The live coverage of sports I don’t get to see much except during the Games, like fencing.)
In sport as well as in fiction, find and enjoy your own drama, suspense, emotion. It may or may not be what the author, or the genre intended, but it will be worth it for you in the end.
Active Observing
I used to think that observation of the world around was a passive endeavor. If I am at the library looking out the window and it starts to rain, I am observing the rain.
The older I get as a writer, the more I realize that this is not observing. At least it is not automatically observing. What I’ve described is seeing, or at best, noting the rain.
Observing requires a specific choice. Our attention as people has many dimensions, and though they often overlap, observation of something, and seeing/noting it activate distinct varieties of our attention.
To see something we need only be present, with our eyes, (or what we use for eyes) activated. That kind of attention is merely reflexive.
Observational attention entails, I think, some degree of questioning. The questions may not have answers, but they partner with what we see during a time of observation. That requires a conscious flip of a “switch” to a specific type of attention.
Even if you do not ask question about what you see, to observe is acknowledge detail, envision alternatives, absorb though insight that which is intangible but nonetheless logical about the scene before us.
Earlier in may life I would have considered this more attune to studying. And in a sense this is studying, but it is not so clinical, nor so laborious as a literal study of something. Studying has a specific agenda, whereas active an open observation exists for its own sake. Certainly we may learn through mere observation. Yet the purpose, in this context of observation, is to take in, to experience the wholeness the “all-ness” of what surrounds us.
“Mindfulness” as some spiritual practices call it.
Taking this definition into account, all writers must engage in active observation. There are other common, logical pieces of advice for the writer. Some so well trenched as to appear as requirements.
Maybe they are. Things like a writer must read a lot, or a writer must put “butt-in-chair.” (I hate that phraseology, but it is what it is.) It’s possible that without those pillars of the writing life one cannot write. Certainly both make is more likely to succeed.
Yet even the dogma of those two principles leave room for a sliver of doubt in my mind.
But observation? There is no doubt. I do not care what you observe actively, but if you do not choose to observe, truly, fundamentally observe on a regular basis, you almost certainly will not be able to write. Jot down, maybe, but not write.
This is my observation of the situation.
Second Look: Lodestone Crossing
It’s a long book of poetry. Experimental poetry. An oddity to end this series of looking back on my books, but such was the chronology.
Lodestone Crossing Is a long poem broken into smaller chapters, derived from several sessions of “blackout” poetry. It’s a process wherein one takes a preexisting text, and removes (or blacks out) words, so that the remaining words form the new piece. I played around with it a few summers ago, and became fascinated by the process, so I opted to make a full length intentional book of it.
This single volume consists of my “black outs” fro from different sources. Old magazines from the 50’s, a right wing religious advice book, a book about shoes, and one or two other things.
There is a lose running theme throughout the piece, but it’s mostly a”prose poem” as they say.
I don’t think most of it would make for good “slam”poetry, but that is closest analogy I have to the result. My goal was to create not only correct sentences, but to make the inevitably awkward diction of some sections into poetry itself. As much as the words and the meanings matter, with this project I paid particular attention, sometimes all the attention, to how the sentence sounded out loud.
You learn about language when you do this, on both a broad, official scale, and one’s own personal language preferences and tendencies. A real emphasis on the particular powers of a given part of speech.
The cover is an old archival photo of a lodestone, (a naturally magnetic rock) picking up some nails. I thought this is sort of what black out poetry does. You wave your perception over something, and the “more valuable” components stick to it. Hence the title, Lodestone Crossing.
I will say that in this volume, I insisted on not only holding on to the word order, but to the punctuation of the original source. I could not end a sentence in the poem, unless I had a word in the original source that was followed by a period. Extra constrained.
I have since this experiment completed, but not yet typed a second, much longer “epic” length blackout poem. This second one is the result of a single enormous Right wing religious commentary I picked up at an old book store. In that, I did not constrain myself with punctuation–only word choice and order. I haven idea when that might be available; I mention it here only to emphasize how uncommon such a project is for me. Two, lifetime.
Look, I understand poetry as a whole is a hard sell in our society, and particularly poetry of this kind. I did this mostly for my own enjoyment, which I then wanted to share with anyone else who enjoys playing around with language without the constraints of standard English communication. (This kind of poetry is also sometimes known as “constrained writing.”) It’s for language lovers, or Ty lovers, and probably not many others.
Do I think that it can be enjoyed on its own? Yes, with an open mind one could, or else I would not have made it available for download. But because it is super niche, I realize it will likely remain an obscure piece even for me.
It’s a dollar.
*
This concludes my Second Look series. I’ve enjoyed looking back on my entire catalog, and sharing a few extras about each book with you. I hope I have convinced you to try some of them if not all of them. Selling is not an easy endeavor for folks such as myself. It’s particular difficult for my mind to condense everything good about my writing into one sentence of 30 seconds of talking. I do it because the system says I have to, but it felt good to talk for as long as I wanted about each book as I came to it. How I wish all marketing were that open and patient.
Second Look: 14 Fantastic Frederick County Writing Spots
This is my most niche of all my books. So much so I debated not including it in this series on second looks at my work. But for completeness sake, I will talk about it a little.
As the alliterative title suggests, this is a non-fiction short book about spots within my home of Frederick County, Maryland that I have found are particularly suited for a writing session. These are places generally outside of the standard coffee shop or library. Generally.
Naturally, a familiarity with the county makes the book more useful to a reader, I won’t deny that. I first came up with it thinking I could attract the attention of locals in particular, through various different groups and gatherings that (as often with me) did not quite pan out.
I did get a lovely review on this volume once from a local writer who did find it, somehow. I think they follow me on Goodreads. Because of that review I cannot call it my least read volume. But it is a close second.
Can anybody outside of Frederick County get anything from my descriptions of and reflections during my various visits to the locations described? It’s a hard sell, but yes, I believe that writers and to some extend creatives in general can find something to enjoy about the craft without the pages of this highly localized content. I assumed familiarity with the county when I wrote it, and said so in the introduction, but I nonetheless explore each location in a manner that would benefit those who have never been.
At heart it is a cozy writing book. I made every effort to connect experiences such as the rushing of Cunningham Falls or the back story of forgotten writer George Alfred Townsend among the ruins of his estate at Gathland State Park to the universal aspects of inspiration and motivation for the writer. To be there, (and of course to write) is to receive the full power of my essays in this collection, but an open mind and strong imagination will open the doors to anyone.
There are drawing in it, my only book to date with illustrations, by a friend of mine, Jamie, based on photographs I took myself.
I was partially, (not entirely) inspired to write something like this by one of my favorite writing books, A Writer’s Paris by Eric Maisel. In it, he describes living for a few months in Paris, and how to utilize the specific cultures a sights to aide one in a writing journey. I have read it more than once, and am inspired each time, despite having never been to Paris. (Or, despite Maisel’s pleas, having a great desire to ever go.) It may be an idealized Paris, I can’t say, but I can say I feel as though I am in Paris itself, scribbling into a notebook.
I won’t claim my volume is as sweeping or intimate as this one. Yet my goal is very similar: offer how the vistas and locations of my home county feel to a writer who has both been there, and to those who will likely never go.
Assuming that a reader is inspired to write because of these book, I will have achieved a great deal of my goal in writing it. On the other hand, if it only manages to convince the reader to some day visit Frederick County, that’s not so bad either.
14 Fantastic Frederick County Writing Spots is available in ebook form, for 99 cents in most ebook retailers.
Ty Unglebower 