I was one of that third group- I was reading Merwin in 94/95, voraciously, and was so lucky to get on the good side of a public school ibrarian who steered me in the “right” direction. Come to think of it though, I also read the YA of the day (something about a Pearl in the Soul of the World or whatnot). But the operative word is “ALSO.” I simply read EVERYTHING.

I have you on my Blackberry for 2015 when my eldest is in 8th grade- I want to send her to this camp!

You’ve been such a great sport about stepping out of your comfort zone to engage my readers. Thanks so much for stopping by!

I just received your book in the mail today and I’m looking forward to curling up with it tonight!

Best wishes for a wildly successful blog tour!

In high school and college, I wrote campus lifestyle columns that were the source of my comparison to E.B. I read her syndicated column all the time, so I was quite flattered. The part I liked best was watching students turn to my page first when they received the latest edition of the school paper. The part I liked second best was ruffling enough feathers to have both students and teachers writing letters to the editor about my columns. Of course, I was also co-editor of the paper…

Ah…the nostalgia of the days as a big fish in a little pond. LOL

Now, I’m just waiting for someone to throw me a life preserver in this rough publishing sea!

I just finished a book by Erma Bombeck, and if someone compared my writing to hers I would be ecstatic!

If I were independently wealthy, I might not need to don the hats of the pr person, online marketer, et al. But on a shoestring budget—there aren’t any other options. Sad reality. Especially with the agents and publishing houses expecting an author to show up with an established platform. It sounds like you spent 20 years building yours the old-school way.

The trends and technology may change in publishing, but I guess we all have dues to pay. That being said—I’d still rather be writing.

I just wish I could find a way to do it all… Not out of desire, out of necessity.

BTW, laughed at your Jung at heart humor. I often like to ask myself—W.W.J.D.—What Would Jung Do?

Pencil me in for an appointment, soon, please. Demons, demons, and demons abound. But I’m Jung at heart, yuk yuk yuk.

For that last question, gee whiz, I think it’s way too time consuming having to promote one’s own work. Publicists publicize. Marketers market. Writers do the writing. I fully understand, kind of, that this is a different day and age. But this blogging daily thing has me so braindead I barely want to write fiction.

Let’s say you’re a great boxer. You train all the time. You run in the morning, lift weights, whatever it is that a good boxer must do. You spar in the afternoons. Then you fight against your opponent and win.

What would it be like if you had to write the next day’s column about the fight for the newspapers, and spend the next six months telling everyone about your last fight, and trying to plan your next fight, get the arena, sell tickets, and so on? It would be tough.

I’m killing this analogy, I know. Sorry. But it seems to me more important about staying in shape, and working your way up winning matches, and then you will only become a better boxer and sooner or later someone will come along to do your PR, marketing, news coverage, and so on.

So I guess I’m saying that–just for me, I’m only speaking for me–it’s better to spend more time writing.

Then again, it took me eight years of writing three bad novels before I started writing short stories, then a dozen years of selling or placing stories before someone asked to publish a collection. 1980 to 2000 were mostly bleak years. Then all hell broke loose. For me–again, only speaking for myself–I doubt that I’d do it differently.

Whew…

Yeah, I should mention that I wrote all that, per usual, as a gigantic generalization. These are high school kids–not college–who get into the program, et cetera. I’d say that all of the ones who read contemporary writers have read the canon additionally, of course. And I would’ve probably detested Flannery O’Connor at age 16. Hell, I thought it was a man the first time I heard her name.

Thinking back–I’ve been involved with the SC Governor’s School for the Arts for something like 15 years–I can’t think of any prospective student who had only read, say, Shakespeare, or King, or Rice (and nothing else) geting into the program. There have always been too many prospective students, from all over this poor poor state, who’ve read and read and read. Now, we have a kind of minor league, summer program, wherein 8th graders have read mostly YA stuff. And then we kind of groom them with more complex, advanced fiction, and then in a couple years they apply to the residential program. They win all those Scholastic Writing Awards–one year we had two portfolio winners, and only five are given out nationwide. Then they go to Brown, Harvard, Princeton, Duke, Chapel Hill, Kenyon, Smith, Bard, Vassar, Swarthmore, Sarah Lawrence, and so on. One’s at the U of SoCal film school.

Wait: I’M NOT SAYING THAT YA FICTION IS NOT COMPLEX OR ADVANCED. Believe me, I’m not. Some of my best friends are YA writers, as they say. Brad Barkley, for example.

I’m just calling them like I see them, Cathy.