Yippee. 2018 is coming to a close

Hi everyone! 

I am Young Adult and Middle Grade author Barbara Binns, writer of contemporary and realistic fiction for adolescents and teens. As my tagline says, I write Stories of Real Boys Growing Into Real Men - and the people who love them.  My debut MG novel, Courage, was recently published by Harper Collins. It's a great read for this, or any season. 

Check my books out at http://babinns.com

It was the best of times; it was the worst of times. 

That line is true, not only for the French Revolution as depicted in Charles Dickens' novel, A Tale Of Two Cities, but also for me and the entire year of 2018.

Best of Times:

2018 saw the long-delayed publication of my middle grade novel, Courage - https://www.amazon.com/Courage-Barbara-Binns/dp/0062561650.  Kirkus not only gave Courage a favorable review, they also printed an interview with me - https://www.kirkusreviews.com/features/barbara-binns/.

I had numerous opportunities to share my knowledge with others.

1. At the Illinois Library Association conference in Peoria, Il, I spoke with librarians on ways they can perform outreach to various diverse populations. Afterward, the public library in Matteson, Il invited me to reprise that topic for their staff who could not attend the conference. 
2. The Sauk Valley school in Illinois invited me in to speak to parents and teachers about helping reluctant readers. And I already have an engagement for next March at the University of Illinois.
3. I gave a Webinar for KidLitNation http://kidlitnation.com/home/resources/webinars/ about my journey to publication.
4. I hosted a presentation at the Spring Fling Writer’s romance writer's conference in Schaumburg on the subject of diverse writing. Plus, I got a new agent. Thank you Spring Fling!
5. I also spoke at the Romance Slam Jam conference for readers and authors of black romance, about the art of crafting Heroes & Heroines. Being there felt a lot like coming home.
6. I helped youth, by judging at Chicago's annual Louder Than A Bomb  poetry slam in January, and at the City of Chicago Annual Science Fair in March.

I also had chances to learn from others.

While attending the Joint Conference of Librarians of Color , (JCLC) I had an opportunity to be part of a half-day seminar called Beyond the Racial Stalemate, which was facilitated by  people trained at the W. K. Kellogg Foundation - https://www.wkkf.org/.   For more information on this intense experience on communication and racial healing look at a blog post I wrote for JCLC at: http://www.jclcinc.org/conference/2018/beyond-the-racial-stalemate/ 

Last, but certainly not least, my daughter had her thirtieth birthday this year (talk about feeling old).

Worst of times:

Did I mention I got a new agent this year? She really liked the two manuscripts I sent her, saying, “Nice start.” AKA, let me see what you can really do because these need to be changed.

Fortunately, she and I talked and she gave me a good idea of where her thoughts were. She felt they were too old for a middle grade market, something I was shooting for.

I have finally re-written one of them two. I'm calling it Duets, and it's a story about some cello playing middle graders living in a south suburb of Chicago and daring to dream big. So big, that by the time I finished the rewrite I looked up to see it was almost Christmas. There's really no point in sending it to my agent until next year. I just fear that by then I will probably see more problems on the pages and want to rewrite from scratch all over again.

One of the things that made the re-write so slow was recent cataract surgery. That killed my ability to see, and to write, for awhile. Ditto for some intense pains in my knees caused by worsening arthritis. The pains grew so bad, I agreed to an experimental treatment that Medicare did NOT pay for. Even the sticker shock beat the idea of knee replacement surgery. I am now back to walking and even climbing stairs again, with no pains strong enough to keep me from writing.

JCLC marked my second time being part of a Beyond The Racial Stalemate seminars, I also attended one in 2017 at the American Library Association conference. In spite of that, and the seminar's intense focus on communication issues, I still fell into a “failure to communicate” trap with some Facebook friends on diversity initiatives. I'm still not sure that friendship can be salvaged. Facebook is a poor communication device. Not even emojis help or replace real face-to-face content, which

And, as much as I loved being part of the JCLC, my heart had a reaction to the altitude in Albuquerque. The slightest exertion (and I mean just walking across the street from the hotel to the convention center) had me completely out of breath. My cardiologist recently ordered an echo cardiogram to see what might be happening inside me.  (I'm still waiting for the results)

My session at Spring Fling went okay. EXCEPT for technology issues that made me unable to show my presentation on the screen! All that time spent on preparing visual effects, only to be undone by a machine I didn't understand.  I had wing the talk without visuals.  I still have nightmares.

2018 was the last year the Museum of Science and Industry and the Chicago Science Fair will be together.  Although the event has been hosted by the Museum of Science and Industry for almost 70 years, the museum announced it would not continue doing so after 2018.  I'm not sure of the new location, or how that will effect my ability to continue volunteering.

And now, at year's end, the stock market appears to be struggling to reduce me to poverty. Plus, I've heard several Indie Authors reporting unexpected declines in revenue.

At least it's almost the End of Times

It’s now time to sit down to my annual viewing of Die Hard, my favorite Christmas Movie of all time. The season doesn’t really start until I watch Hans Gruber plunge from the Nakatomi Building.

It also doesn’t start until I wish you all a very happy holiday season. And Great Expectations for 2019!

My Go-to Holiday Book

By Courtney Pierce

Image: Dave Clegg

One of my greatest fears of getting older is that I’ll become a fuddy-duddy―a cynic, a com-plainer, a tiresome grump. Something happens to my psyche after eleven months of negative media: talking heads blathering about doom and gloom, celebrities sending career-ending tweets, kids bullying one another on Facebook, hackers stealing our souls, and politicians clawing for their nanosecond in the spotlight. People battle for parking spaces, get road rage in traffic, and cut in line. By the end of the year, I suffer from so much toxic buildup that I even bark back at the dog next door:

“Quiet! I’m trying to write over here! Geez.”

And another thing―all the big bills come in the fall: increases in health insurance, car registration, and property taxes. The relentless begging mail flows in to guilt me with pictures of abused animals and hungry children. After Black Friday, my faith in the human spirit has hardened like the pesky arthritic knot on my knuckle.

On the first of December, at sundown, my emotional alarm sounds. 

It’s time.

After washing my hands, I step to the den and run my finger over the spines of vintage books like a stick on a picket fence. I slide out only one and gaze at its olive-green cloth cover, the same book I’ve read every December for thirty-six years: an 1866 "Cheap Edition" of Charles Dickens’s Christmas Books, a collection of five holiday classics: A Christmas Carol, The Chimes, The Cricket on the Hearth, The Battle of Life, and The Haunted Man. I crack open the spine to savor the pulpy aroma of wisdom on the foxed pages.

Only one story will be read per day. And for that solitary hour or so, the world slows its spin as the sun crawls behind the Douglas firs. Golden sparkles peek through their branches and disappear, igniting those on the newly erected Christmas tree inside. An aroma of evergreen freshness fills the air. I turn on the lamp’s switch with a soft click. A gas fire flickers and warms the living room. I recite the tiny, two-columned prose aloud, making the cat curl upside down in my lap, her whiskers twitching when my speech takes on a melodic quality. The long-lost style of sentence rhythm and vivid descriptions allow me to taste the words. I save the best one for last: A Christmas Carol.

As I read―some paragraphs twice―my cynical thoughts shed like the last hangers-on from the maple tree outside. They, too, will fall and decompose to feed my garden. As with each passing year, I stand tall against Ebenezer Scrooge’s miserly declaration, refusing to “be boiled with my own pudding” and “buried with a stake of holly through my heart” should I deign to utter the words, Merry Christmas.

After closing the book, I gaze out the window, astonished at how a simple short story can restore me to a place of inspiration and charity. My dial is reset. I’m able to take stock in the good and catch all those quiet acts of kindness that people do, acts that no one talks about on the news. 

For the next six months, I’ll be a courteous driver and let the guy with a lonely can of soup go ahead of me in line. The free turkey, a reward for having spent so much, will be donated to one who has none. In spring, tulips will pop like a Monet with the unfurling of new maple leaves. Then, the dog days of summer will be too hot to wave at the neighbors. The ban on watering my lawn will make me thirsty, and some recall of tainted food might ruin the Labor Day barbecue. By Halloween, I’ll have shut off the porch light to protect my pumpkin from vandals. Woe be to the critters who dare ring the doorbell―they’ll release the fuddy-duddies inside.

Again, it'll be time for my detox of Dickens.

And this, my last post before Christmas, I deign to wish you all a Merry Christmas and the best of every culture's benevolent holidays. Seven days from now, you'll find me reading by the fire. See you all on the other side on December 28th, newly inspired and getting ready to release my new book, Indigo Lake, into the world. 

Courtney Pierce is a fiction writer living in Oregon with her husband of thirty-six years and bossy cat. She writes for baby boomers. Her novels are filled with heart, humor, and mystery. Courtney has studied craft and storytelling at the Attic Institute and has completed the Hawthorne Fellows Program for writing and publishing. She is also a board member of the Northwest Independent Writers Association and is active with Willamette Writers, Pacific Northwest Writers Association, and Sisters in Crime.

Colorful characters come alive in Courtney's latest novel, The Executrix. When three middle-age sisters find a manuscript for a murder mystery in their mother's safe after her death, the book gives them a whole new view of their mother. Is it fiction? . . . or truth? Sibling blood becomes thicker than baggage when Mom becomes larger in death than she was in life.

The second book of The Dushane Sisters Trilogy will be released in early 2016. The cover will be an original painting. Indigo Lake continues the three sisters' middle-age orphan journey of life, love, and laughs. Protecting Mom's reputation might get them all killed―or give them the story they've been dying to live.



Visit Courtney's website at www.courtney-pierce.com. Her books can be purchased at Windtree Press, Amazon, Barnes and Noble, Kobo Books, and at several independent bookstores in the Portland area.

Ebenezer Scrooge -- Defying the Rules of Good Writing?

By Robin Weaver

Say “Ebenezer Scrooge,” and odds are most folks will immediately envision a selfish, miserly old man with no appreciation for fun or kindness. One-hundred-seventy-two years after his creation, the main character from Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol is not only instantly recognizable, but almost universally hated, evidenced by our society’s continued use of the term “Scrooge” to describe a miserable penny pincher.

Which makes me wonder why we continue to read after page one. According to the guidelines of good writing, the hero must be someone to whom we can relate, a person we can envision being. Thank goodness no one told Charles Dickens the main character had to be likeable.

Clearly we don’t like Scrooge, so why does Ebenezer work as the main character?

**Does Scrooge work because Tiny Tim is introduced early in the manuscript?  Ask anyone in advertising--babies and puppies sell. If you want a story to tug at the old heart strings, insert a spunky handicapped child. Works almost as well as a cute little Maltese (even when that child is played by Mary Lou Retton).

**Perhaps Dickens’ self-promotion contributed to the success of A Christmas Carol. Charlie was the first famous writer to read his work in public (at least, he was the first one according to my research).  And our self-promotion guru didn’t just read, he performed, creating a special version of history just for public recitation—with stage directions scribbled all over his script. Dickens dressed for the occasion as well, always wearing full evening dress, with a bright buttonhole, a purple waistcoat and a glittering watch-chain. And you thought creating a trailer was hard work. J

**Some might say A Christmas Carol works because. Ebenezer grows and changes. It’s fairly easy to identify the stages of The Hero’s Journey in Dickens’ tale. Only does Scrooge really change? Our hero only “sees the light” after some imaginary ghosts scare the Dickens out of him. Scrooge “changes” to save his own hide so is that really changing?  Sounds like a new version of selfish to me.  Furthermore, we all know how the story ends, but do we ever think of the “made-over” Scrooge? Nope, he’s the old miser who won’t say “Happy Christmas” to little Timmy Cratchit.

**Or maybe, just maybe—the main character doesn’t have to be likeable. Let’s face it, we American’s like our dirty Christmas stockings.  How else can we explain our fascination with the Sopranos, America’s Most Wanted and Keeping up with Kardashians (etc., etc.).  Let’s be honest, there’s a bit of self-righteous appeal in being morally superior—even it that superiority is graded on the curve.

Whatever the reason for the enduring popularity of A Christmas Carol, Dickens (in this blog author’s humble opinion) illustrates that of all the rules of writing, only one universally applies: If you tell a good story, you can break all the rules.

My Holiday Release....
FULL CONTACT DECORATING
Katarina Snodgrass believes she can get her life back on track. If she can regain her title as the Christmas Tree Contest champion and re-snare the man of her dreams. Too bad soap-opera star, Tripp Anthony, isn’t interested—at least he’s indifferent until Hunter Montgomery arrives and convinces Katrina she needs to make her former flame jealous.The plan succeeds, but Katrina finds herself equally attracted to Tripp and Hunter, the man she loves to hate. Her heart is torn, but can she truly choose either man while she guards a horrible secret?

Ebook available via Amazon November 30.

Print version available now at The Wild Rose Press.