Happy Friday!
Space Tripping has been officially nominated for the 2017 Dragon Awards!
As you might remember, DragonCon is one of the largest annual pop culture conventions in the country. Thank you so much for everyone who helped get us nominated! But that was only the first half of this battle. Now, I’m going to have to ask each and every one of you to cast your vote for Space Tripping. This is huge. Here’s how you do it:
1. Go to awards.dragoncon.org
2. Click "register to vote"
3. Fill out your name and email address
4. Make sure you click the box next to "Check to verify you want to sign up for the Dragon Con Award voting process." Because that’s, you know, the whole point of this thing ;)
5. You’ll receive a ballot via email... and gee willikers, folks, it’d sure be swell of ya to cast your vote for Space Tripping.
Thank you so very much
- P
Dear Readers and Friends of "Nowhere Else I Want to Be: A Memoir":
Authors Talk About It gave me a Featured Author Interview today - here’s the article (or link to the post HERE):
**********
Carol D. Marsh
Carol D. Marsh: I’m a 62-year-old woman living in Washington, DC with my wonderful husband. When not writing, I’m marketing my book and my online school, going to the Y for a work-out, knitting, reading, baking, or (a good bit of the time) managing chronic migraine pain.
Marsh: I’ve written as long as I can remember. Small notes to my Mom, birthday poems for family members, the usual (bad) teenage poetry and essay attempts. My serious writing, meaning not for work or fund-raising, began in 2010, when I started my memoir.
Marsh: Nowhere Else I Want to Be: A Memoir was published in January 2017. It’s a work of literary nonfiction that got its big push at the Goucher College MFA program (2012-2014). And I’ve had a couple of essays published this summer, one in The Los Angeles Review, the other in Lunch Ticket.
Marsh: Its combination of creativity and intellect, and the way I feel while I’m writing and in the hour or so after I’m done. I also love the rewriting process – finding the right word or phrase, testing how the words feel in my mouth, getting to the precise point or meaning. It’s so rewarding.
Marsh: Getting past the inertia of anxiety and the feeling that I’m not actually a writer. Not, at least, in the way I assume other writers are. I have a sense I’m not good enough to express this emotion, or make that argument, or say this thing about something important. My journey as a writer has been, in part, about trusting my own voice.
Marsh: I write nonfiction and memoiristic essays, so my ideas come from my life, by way of my heart.
Marsh: My writing process is choppy because I have chronic migraine disease and am unable to establish a regular, daily practice. But I’ve learned to write when not in too much pain, and to let it go when in a lot of pain. I’ve had to ignore the common wisdom about writing for five hours a day, but I suspect most of us do. Who has the luxury of all that time? Certainly not parents, or the employed, or students, or … you get the message.
Because of that, my writing process never runs on momentum. I manage by fits and starts, and have had to learn not to let the fits keep me from starting. And then, having to start again. I’ve found if I accept my process’ choppy nature, I worry less about not having a regular practice, which gives me more energy to write when I can.
Marsh: I have to guard against the writing taking over because too often I seem to veer into the fanciful or the made-up. As though I’m writing how I want something to have been rather than how it was in reality. This is partly because writing a scene means getting to details – sound, smell, sight, etc. I end up questioning myself at the end of a writing session that has got away from me, wait, was the wind really blowing so hard that day? Or was that a different day? Did she actually say that in so many words?
At Goucher College, where I got my MFA, we were told not to make sh*t up. Honestly, that’s one thing for long-form journalism, and quite another for memoir. Not that writing memoir is an excuse to make sh*t up. It’s not. But we’re so often writing about something not researchable as fact. We rely on our memories or the memories of others. And memories are notoriously sketchy when it comes to reliability. So a memoirist needs to hone her integrity and closely monitor how she writes through inevitable memory gaps, working to not fill them in with sh*t. Plus, she takes advantage of research that can help with accuracy, such as public records, weather reports, home videos and photographs, and diaries or journals.
Marsh: Oh, dear, that’s hard to say. If I have to choose, I’d say it’s not one part, but the scenes in which we’re together as a community. (My memoir is about ten of the years I worked and lived at Miriam’s House–a residence for Washington, DC’s homeless women with AIDS–as its Founding Executive Director). I tried to recreate the sounds and language and feel of our gatherings. They were fun to write and are fun, now, to read.
Marsh: I have a couple of essays in the works, and am started on a new full-length project that I’ll be mysterious about for now.
Marsh: Two places: 1) my website, http://www.caroldmarsh.com/; and my online school,http://forumatcaroldmarsh.com/ (Forum for Growth in Service — support and challenge for people who want to serve others authentically, compassionately, and effectively).
Marsh: Thank you so much for this opportunity.
And without further ado, here is the cover for Sunshine is Forever! I promise if you ordered a paperback you will be pleasantly surprised by how great this book will feel in your hands. Inkshares did an amazing job!
Look for your copy on August 29, 2017! And don’t forget to follow my next book KARID on Inkshares so you can be the first to preorder a copy when it goes on sale.
FOLLOW KARID: https://www.inkshares.com/books/karid
Thanks again for all your support!
Kyle T. Cowan
Dear friends and readers of "Nowhere Else I Want to Be: A Memoir":
June has been a good month for the essayist in me - two published in online literary journals!
One of my own favorites of all the essay’s I’ve written is "How To Build A Bonfire", begun when my husband and I were visiting his family farm in Ontario, Canada, and the only one that practically wrote itself.
Here’s the first paragraph, with a link to its page in The Los Angeles Review if you want to read more.
HOW TO BUILD A BONFIRE
by CAROL D. MARSH
Pick a safe spot
The slight depression with its darkened earth, bits of blackened twigs and surrounding stones lies near but not too close to the maple tree, halfway between house and cow barn. He passes that bit of ground every day. Not as often as he used to, when milking cows morning and night for sixty-plus years, yet regularly, on his way to the barn out of habit or to check in with his son before he takes the tractor to tend something in one of the fields. His wife comes with him as she’s been doing for about a year, ever since she became frightened when she can’t see him. As they walk across the yard together on this late summer day, he thinks about a bonfire and begins to plan. The stump of that dead tree he had cut down this summer would do nicely. And there’s always brush to clear, as well as accumulated stuff in the barn and woodshed. He slows his pace a bit, realizing she’s behind him, anxious, unsure of her footing on the uneven ground and afraid she’ll look up and he’ll be gone.
Read the rest of the essay HERE.
In other news, I’ve officially launched the first course in my online school for support of people in service to others: FORUM FOR GROWTH IN SERVICE. During June, the course is one-third off. Check it out HERE.
And have a great day!
Carol
Hello, wonderful readers of "Nowhere Else I Want to Be: A Memoir":
Another award for the book:
2017 National Indie Excellence Awards has named "Nowhere Else I Want to Be" as the Finalist in the Memoir category.
As always, thank you for supporting "Nowhere Else I Want to Be".
Best wishes, Carol
We did it. 750 copies sold. This. Is. Amazing.
Thank you, a million times over. The past few months have been challenging, invigorating, frustrating, and inspiring. I have made several new friends and reconnected with old ones. Nothing quite like the raw experience of putting yourself and your work out there.
I am excited to embark on the production journey and to give you sneak peeks behind the scenes along the way. So, what goes into the production of a book with a full-scale publishing house, before it makes its way to a bookstore near you? Glad you asked! I made the following to break it down, and will also add it to my revamped book page for future reference:
As I make my way through these phases, I will aim to send you updates every month or so, or when something particularly exciting happens, so as to not drive all of you up the wall. Also, since I know it will be a long wait, I have decided that once the edits are complete, I will send all of you (my original backers) an electronic uncorrected proof. This means that you will have the ability to read the book months before it is released while waiting for your official copy.
Several, if not most, of you, found the book through my Twitter account @WritesAsheville - I have created a separate handle specifically for book-related news - @TWACI2090 Feel free to follow!
And last, but not least, the winner of the $250 Airbnb gift card (chosen by random number generator) is ......
Just in time for summer! Enjoy!
Cheers! -Jacqui
This is the final countdown!
Only 26 orders to go. The champagne is in the fridge beckoning me to open it. If you have not ordered yet and would like to be a backer for The Walls are Closing In, now would be a fabulous time to jump in. If you would like your name in the back of the book, this is your final chance to buy a "Super Reader" package before that ship sails.
Once The Walls are Closing In hits 750, a few exciting things will happen:
1) The book will officially switch from "Funding" to "In Production," and I’ll await word from Inkshares on when to turn in my manuscript for the first round of developmental editing.
2) I will announce the winner of the $250 Airbnb gift card. 
3) I will send out the limited edition bookmarks. Please send me your address if you would like one. Either DM through Inkshares, or to jacquicastle@gmail.com
Stay tuned! -Jacqui
