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Life

The Best Thing to Gorge On This Thanksgiving? Gratitude.

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Knit figure holding a yellow heart outline illustrating gratitude

It’s the weirdest Thanksgiving ever.

In this topsy-turvy pandemic world, finding gratitude this Thanksgiving might feel more challenging than usual. Here’s the paradox: the capacity for gratitude is one of the most empowering gifts we humans possess.

Trust me, I get it. There’s no shortage of misery to go around–especially in a year when so many have lost loved ones. It’s absolutely true that nothing about your life will be the same again. Holding someone dear to you in your heart can’t compare with the joy of holding them in your arms, and the forced merriment of the holiday season can exacerbate the sense of loss. Rituals and memories that once brought comfort can now be a source of exquisite pain. We feel what’s missing everywhere we turn. And still the messaging comes at us from all angles: Be grateful for what you have.

Gratitude is a ladder

I’m certainly not the first person to suggest gratitude as an antidote to wallowing, but I’m here to tell you it’s available to you right now, no matter how awful the moment. Gratitude is a ladder bolted to the inner wall of the deepest, darkest well, and no matter where you are stuck, that ladder extends to your reach. You might be standing in sewage up to your neck, but the way out is right there within your grasp if you can but reach for the first rung. And now, the second…

I’m not suggesting the answer is ignoring your pain or pretending everything is fine or masking your true emotions with a Pollyanna smokescreen. Nope, what I’m offering is a magical reframe of attitude I’ve come to label “Aggressive Gratitude.”

Aggressive Gratitude.

If that sounds a little violent, you’re hearing it right. You may need to apply blunt force at times, but the shock of the redirect is nothing compared to the misery of stuckedness. And why is it magical? Because it’s yours for the taking at any moment with a simple flick of a switch. Turn that “What I lost” narrative 180 degrees into “Oh, but what I had.”

After losing my son three years + two months + two days ago, I received the gift of this insight from someone whose friend had been trained to reframe “My baby died at three weeks” to “My baby lived for three weeks.” Statement B is the gratitude piece. The aggressive aspect comes into play when Statement A intrudes, like, every two seconds. When it’s real bad, I have to give the unhelpful expression the bum’s rush by repeating “nope” out loud, over and over, until it goes away. I said it was simple; I never said it was easy.

To those who have lost family members and friends since last Thanksgiving, my heart breaks for you. I can’t feel your exact pain, but I feel for your experience. And I truly hope this message can find a place in your heart. It saves me still, multiple times a day.

Junk gets in the way.

It Could Always Be Worse by Margot Zemach book cover- a lesson in gratitude

Expectations are your enemy. “Supposed to” and “deserve” and “should have” and “fairness”… man, those constructs will get you into a heap of hurt. Who says 40 is middle-aged? Someone who expects to live to 80, that’s who. (Sorry for mathing on a holiday.) Apply the same logic to infertility, disease, sudden death, and so on. This way of thinking is normal, but it’s not even a little bit helpful.

You probably know the old Yiddish folk tale about the “poor, unfortunate man” whose little one-room hut feels crowded with his mother, wife, and six children. So vexed is the man that he goes to his rabbi for advice. The rabbi instructs the man to bring his chickens inside. “Bring my chickens inside the house? Vaddaya, clazy? ” the man’s thinking, but you don’t say that stuff out loud to a rabbi, so home he goes to bring his chickens inside the already crowded house. Welp, things get worse. Man returns to rabbi, is advised to bring his goat inside, etc. until pure chaos has been achieved. The man returns for his final consultation with the rabbi. “Put all the livestock outside,” says the wise rabbi. Our hero returns home and follows the rabbi’s instructions, restoring his home to its original occupants, and is – yup, you guessed it – happy.

Here’s the link to the independent bookstore nearest you if you’d like to pick up a copy of this gem for someone you love.

Feel free to reject unhelpful platitudes

Please, I’m not suggesting “It could always be worse,” as a gratitude mantra. And while we’re at it, I flat-out reject the ever-popular “Everything happens for a reason.” If that helps you, by all means, have at it. Personally, I find those phrases extremely painful. For me, what works best sounds more like this: “Yeah, but we might never have had him in the first place.” [Gratitude exercise: substitute “him” for a specific quality or moment.]

Time is not the healer of wounds. And there’s no such thing as closure. Would we even want that? Here’s what I’ve observed about how grief moves through time. In general, the sense of loss increases as time drives an ever-larger wedge between our last encounter and the present, but one gets used to living with the pain. And of course, there are moments – usually unexpected – that strike the raw nerve lying just beneath the surface and send a shockwave of pain as fresh as the first. But one gets used to those too.

Gratitude, 2020 Edition

When I conceived of this post, it was a lighter take on gratitude – no less heartfelt, but not centered on grief. Sorry about that. Sometimes stuff just comes out. (That’s what the turkey said. 🙂 ) But let me not cheat you of this listing of people, experiences, and things I’m profoundly grateful for, this year especially. And please comment below with your own.

  • Front-line workers – nurses, doctors, grocery store (shout-out to Ben S!) and restaurant workers, food banks and emergency workers who feed, shelter, and treat those who are most vulnerable.
  • Those outstanding humans whose “day job” is lifting up those ^^ folks and their work.
  • The many people working toward meaningful, systemic change to combat racial inequity, housing and food insecurity, and education injustice.
  • Everyone wearing a mask out of basic human decency and compassion for other people’s health over their own temporary comfort.
  • ZOOM! (Thank you, thank you, thank you.)
  • Toilet paper
  • Our amazing current rabbis (in the strictest and broadest sense of the term) who innovate and pivot to provide spiritual sustenance for our physically distanced sacred community.
  • My quarantine pod, especially when Lindsay comes home and shares her sparkles
  • The understanding of family members too far away to visit (shout-out to Moms!)
  • Grubhub and Uber Eats and DoorDash and Instacart drivers
  • The miracle of friendship – a phone call or text, a walk around the same three blocks, sharing a cyber-classroom, bookgroup, a Facebook chat, a watch party Shabbat service “together”
  • Nieces and nephews from ten months to thirty-plus
  • Freezers (It turns out that food can actually come out of the freezer without going straight to the garbage. Who knew?)
  • Netflix
  • Chocolate (extra love if paired with sea salt)
  • Van Gogh Double Espresso Vodka and the liquor store that delivers it straight to my door!
  • Sweatpants and slippers
  • Puzzles, paint by diamonds, and other assorted projects
  • Those generous souls who spend their valuable time and energy producing detailed how-to videos on every topic imaginable, purely out of the goodness of their hearts. My authenticated domain thanks you.
  • Slim Shady‘s granddoggy hugs and infectious zest for life
  • Everyone who read this far in my post! Listening is more important than ever. I appreciate you!

Enough about me. What are YOU grateful for?

The Real Slim Shady pup and his owner/mama Lindsay

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P.S. – Did you know you can receive blog updates straight to your inbox? Yup! Just enter your email address in the box below and cut out the middle man. This is a no-spam zone! I post to my blog roughly once a month. (Not to be confused with my NEWSLETTER, which is all the current book stuff, sneak peeks, special deals, etc. And you can sign up for my newsletter by clicking on the big open heart at the bottom of this page.)

Adventures in Publishing

Under the Cover: The Miracle of Creative Collaboration

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First Quiver paperback coming Jan 2021

The cover tells the story, too.

You really can judge a book by its cover. Much like the “back blurb” or the “elevator pitch,” the cover gives the reader loads of insight about the story you’re (hopefully) about to read. The cover has some serious lifting to do. It sets the mood: whimsical or serious, light and bright or dark and weighty, contemporary or somewhere else in time. You see this cover and already, you’re expecting something. You can probably discern this is not going to be a textbook in classical mythology. Ideally, the typography reinforces the tone. And the salient objects—be they falling arrows or drifting feathers or toga-clad figures—begin to hint at the story. Some of this hits you at a visceral level that might not even register in your conscious mind, but you’re taking it all in.

Back in 2000, when we were building our house, I commissioned a mosaic artist to create a family tree representing the five of us (four humans + one yellow Lab). I had an idea in my head and communicated it as best I could to a talented artist. She combined her creative instincts with my descriptions and produced a wonderful work of art I cherish to this day. Same goes for my book cover. I’ve lived with this story in my head and heart for ten years and have certainly harbored ideas about the mood I hoped to inspire. But I have absolutely zero talent for translating my feelings into an actual design. And that’s where it’s handy to have an uber-talented graphic designer for a creative collaborator (and even better to have her as my friend.) So, along came Betti.

The force behind the design

Betti Gefecht and her big round glasses

Betti Gefecht is one of the beautiful treasures the Twilight fandom brought into my life. By the time I entered the fandom in 2008, Betti was already a Big Deal writer (whose first language is not English, but you’d never know it to read her stories) and a highly sought-after banner artist. (A story banner is the internet version of a book cover.) Betti also happens to be a seriously talented singer-songwriter, but you’ll have to check out her YouTube channel to hear her sultry voice in your ear. I should also mention she has a thriving business translating English books into German, and you can find all about that on her Amazon page. But I digress.

Here’s how I met Betti. There’s a note in her fanfiction profile: “As a graphic designer/illustrator, I did lots and lots of banners. Want one? Hey, I’m always up for some bartering fun…” Challenge accepted, but what could I possibly barter with? Well, I wrote Betti a pretty dumb poem. And I spelled her name wrong—twice. After gently pointing that out, she quickly agreed to reward my efforts with one of her designs.

Our friendship deepened further when a mutual friend of ours in the fandom was diagnosed with terminal bone cancer and asked us to collaborate to raise money for cancer research. Together with hundreds of other writers, banner makers, and readers, we raised over $13k. Four years ago, Betti traveled from Germany to attend a fandom meetup in Boston, and I finally got to meet my dear friend in the flesh! And then this happened in a photo booth:

How Two People Share a Vision

Isotopia book cover - hunter standing in a forest looking through binocs

Truth be told, First Quiver is not the first book Betti covered for me. In 2018, she graciously created this beautiful design for my son Jeffrey’s Isotopia novel. Even though the design was fairly straightforward, we went back and forth a bunch over which forest picture to use, where and how to place the hunter in the scene, fonts, transparency, etc. As you can see, it all worked out pretty nicely.

I drove Betti just crazy enough that she knew what to expect when I first asked if she’d be game to do the Cupid series. (Yep, all four books at once.) She said yes pretty quickly. I do believe Betti loves a challenge.

Since she had already read the First Quiver manuscript, we were able to start with a common understanding of the story, which was extremely helpful. I knew I wanted the cover image to represent the opening scene of the book, when Cupid is tossed off Mount Olympus. And I also knew the letter Q needed to be a very special design element. You’ll see why when you read the book.

I set out to find some covers to represent the style I had in mind—more contemporary/upmarket fiction than your typical genre fantasy cover. I also found some classical-looking fonts to give Betti some starter ideas. Off she went.

The initial sketches

Sooner than I expected, some very pretty pictures appeared in my Facebook chat box. The experience of glimpsing the initial sketches reminded me of trying on bridal gowns. Each gown was prettier than the one before, and the possibilities seemed infinite. How would I ever choose? I’ll never forget the sage advice that first bridal saleslady gave me. You’ll know you have the right dress on when you feel like a bride. (She was right.)

I imagined this book cover design would feel the same, and I lucked out BIG time that Betti had agreed to take this/me on. Because there’s just no way any other cover artist would have welcomed—dare I say, enjoyed?—processing all the iterations and minutiae we rolled through and revisited over the next few weeks.

The first sketches were already wonderful. A cheery, bright palette gave the cover a cartoonish feel I loved. Betti had perfectly captured the chaos of falling arrows and floating feathers. The bow-and-arrow letter Q was nearly perfect. We did round it out a bit in subsequent versions to make it more obviously a Q.

But something was missing—Cupid!

“I love it, and …” I typed.

Betti typed, “Yes?” and waited. (As the process wore on, she grew to ask, “But…?” instead, but I always pictured her smiling.)

Communication

4 images showing upside down cartoon man inserted into cover

Since I’m hopeless at drawing, I needed to come up with a way to communicate my ideas graphically. At first, Betti encouraged me to create rudimentary sketches and promised not to make fun of me, a promise she didn’t keep for very long. (In fairness, my sketches were AWFUL.) I solved this dilemma using my mad photoshop skills. All that banner making finally paid off.

At the left (image #1) is a section of Betti’s initial cover layout. I googled “cartoon man in a toga” (image #2), flipped him upside down, and slapped him onto her drawing (image #3).

Next thing you know, BOOM! Betti produces my dream Cupid, flipped upside-down, sandal flying over the series banner (image #4).

From that point forward, I expressed myself using found images, mainly cartoon characters illustrating whatever facial expression I was otherwise unable to convey. I am ever grateful to the kind folk who post such esoteric things on the internet. And even more grateful for Betti’s enthusiasm while playing “Mrs. Potato Head” with me until we were both satisfied with the results.

Typography

One of the biggest challenges of a cover is finding the right font. Combining classical and whimsical can be a bit of a head-scratcher. In this, too, Betti found a solution with seeming ease. I love the font she chose—Charlemagne, “inspired by classic letterforms of the past, from early Greek inscriptions, circa 400 B.C.” I love even more that the font was designed by the first woman and only the second American to receive the prestigious Charles Peignot award for outstanding contributions to type design. Carol Twombly also designed the Caslon font Betti used for the back cover. And look how beautifully she shadowed the white lettering with a deep blue to make it pop!

Can we talk about the spine and the back cover?

As a reader, you might not think all that hard about the spine of the book. Yes, it’s the part you see when the book is shelved, so it better have the essentials. But when you’re publishing a series, you want those four books to line up and tell another kind of story, a series arc.

FIRST QUIVER book cover spine

#1, right up top. Guess what’s going to line up with that!

Author name


Title (duh)

A section of Cupid’s wing to remind you where we are in the saga.

Remember that Q we discussed? Here it is again! *wink*
And last but definitely not least, the Isotopia Publishing crown.

FIRST QUIVER full cover spread
That tiny little line right there: Cover Art & Design by Betti Gefecht. I had to twist her arm pretty hard to get her to add that.

But really, here’s why I love this cover.

This cover tells YOU a story, but this cover tells me a story, too. A story of empowerment and joy. Two qualities I had nearly lost for good in the whole process of agent querying and subsequent (repeated) rejections.

I’d promised myself to do my darnedest to secure agent representation, and I made another solid effort to find an agent after finishing book four in April. Once those last queries had died their slow, quiet death, I stepped up and honored the second half of my promise: If I still didn’t have an agent for book one when I finished writing the series, I would publish them myself. As you can imagine, the moment of reckoning wasn’t exactly festive.

But “indie publishing” offers many advantages over traditional, and I was poised and determined to make the most of those. The number one advantage, besides actually having PERMISSION to publish my book, is the ability to choose my own team. When I first messaged Betti about doing the covers, she didn’t immediately jump backflips at the idea. Believe it or not, she doesn’t design many covers, and she knew this would be a giant project. And I think somewhere in the back of her mind, she didn’t want to disappoint me. Plus, I’ll admit, I can be a pretty big pain in the butt to work with. (Betti nicknamed me “Lady Pestershire” when I was being a tad picky over how much “leg” Cupid was showing.)

But once Betti said yes, an amazing thing happened: JOY. And I think it’s fair to say it happened to both of us at once.

I look at this cover and smile over how every detail came to be. How every color and line and eyebrow was a spirited debate between two people with a great deal of respect for each other. Neither of us could or would have produced this cover without the other, and that makes it very special to me. The creative energy we kicked up in our little Facebook chat box revived me and gave me a much needed jolt of energy and empowerment.

And TITLES! Now there was a surprise! It never occurred to me the design process would drive the title selection, but it absolutely did. Of the four book titles, only the first is the original name I picked before asking Betti to design the covers! That gets us right back to the beginning of this post, how the cover tells the story. I hope, with all my heart, you’ll judge my book by its cover.

If this blog post reads like a love letter to Betti, then I’ve done it just right.

Cheers and thanks for being here. Did you know you can subscribe to the blog and get an email when I update? Enter your email into the box that says: RECEIVE BLOG UPDATES STRAIGHT TO YOUR INBOX! (dead giveaway)

And if you want all the news FIRST, you’ll want to subscribe to my email newsletter. Heck, those folks got to see the cover three days ago.

Comments, questions, concerns? Let me hear it!

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P.S. – Did you know you can receive blog updates straight to your inbox? Yup! Just enter your email address in the box below and cut out the middle man. This is a no-spam zone! I post to my blog roughly once a month. (Not to be confused with my NEWSLETTER, which is all the current book stuff, sneak peeks, special deals, etc. And you can sign up for my newsletter by clicking on the big open heart at the bottom of this page.)

Adventures in Publishing

Publishing: the next adventure

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Isotopia Publishing Logo

It’s official! Isotopia Publishing is open for business.

Definitively answering that oft-asked question — “Do you have a publisher?” The answer is YES. And at the very same moment, Isotopia Publishing gained its very first client!

What’s in a name?

The name “Isotopia Publishing” invokes the spirit of a fictional city created by my son, Jeffrey Greenberg, in his dystopian novel, Isotopia (published posthumously in 2018). The world of Isotopia centers around a thriving marketplace of artisans and merchants, hunters and healers, where the best of the best trade their products and their expertise for the benefit of their society as a whole.

That sounds an awful lot like a really good publishing company.

Many said that Isotopia seemed to re-blossom into the same jumbo plant each day. The City contained everything that any decent city in its place and time would be expected to have, yet it was also small and homey.

Jeff Greenberg, Isotopia

The Path to Publishing

The journey of a story from completed manuscript to the form we know as a “book” — whether that be hardcover, paperback, eBook, or audible — is fraught with obstacles and challenges. Traditionally, an author would need to attract the attention (then devotion) of an agent, whose goal would then be to shepherd that story into the hands of a publisher (i.e. one of the “big five”). A deal would be struck, and then the gears, both tiny and great, would start grinding away with all kinds of professionals assigned by the publishing house: editing, cover design, interior formatting, proofing, marketing, distribution, more marketing, printing, even more marketing, and RELEASE! (Was it good for you?)

What the heck is a publisher anyway? Here’s Wikipedia’s definition: “Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free.” Technically, every time I post an update to my website, I’m publishing. Every time you tweet or post on Facebook, guess what? Publishing a book gets a little more complicated…

But sometimes those magical gates don’t open for an author for a wide variety of reasons that all boil down to one thing: the agent and/or publisher simply don’t believe they can sell your story. Hence, the author ends up with a big pile of rejections — or yuckier, rejection’s ugly stepbrother, radio silence.

I totally get it. Thankfully, in this age of the internet, that doesn’t have to be the end of the story’s story. The modern, independent (“indie”) author has options, one of which is to turn herself into a publisher. You pick a fictitious name (no biggie for a fiction writer), file some paperwork, pay a small fee, and poof! You’re a publishing company.

So, how do you publish a book anyway?

Now there’s a great question! *Spoiler alert* – I haven’t entirely figured that out yet. So far, this publishing enterprise feels like a three-track process: 1) produce the actual book, whatever form that takes; 2) distribute the product to the readers, whether that’s direct sales or through a third party; and 3) let everyone know they really REALLY need to read this book. Production, Distribution, Marketing. Three simple parts right? Um, not exactly. Each of those deceptively basic categories hosts a decision tree of decision trees. A person could get good and lost in the forest.

Take production, for example. Want to publish a paperback? Where are you going to get your awesome cover by which people will judge your book? What size? What color paper? Who is going to print your book babies? Trust me, this is the tip of the iceberg. The distribution channels are dizzying, and we haven’t even talked about pricing. Marketing? I have two words for you: Author Platform. Got a headache yet?

How does one untangle the daunting gnarl of decisions?

This is where the author-publisher needs to get real with herself and ask, What is my goal here? The answer to that question drives every decision that follows. Who’s your ultimate reader, and how do you get your story into their hands? If you want to print ten copies of your family history to pass down to the grandkids, your publishing plan is going to look a whole lot different than the mystery writer trying to get into a chain of bookstores across the country.

As for me, I’ve given this question a lot of thought since I started writing the Cupid’s Fall series ten years ago. Yep, ten. Why am I bothering with this publishing nonsense at all?

Well, I want my friends and family and people I don’t even know to read my stories and enjoy the heck out of them, and I’d really love the chance to talk with them about it afterwards. When I started writing fiction, I was posting online in a community where stories were shared one chapter at a time and readers interacted with writers every step along the way. I love that, and I hope that will happen with my Cupid books. I’d love for my characters to get out there, stretch their legs, and travel the world, to speak a few languages, to make a lot of people smile and want to hear the next part of their story. Those wishes will drive my decisions.

And here I thought writing a book was the hard part!

Curious to see how this whole publishing business comes out?

Follow my “adventures in publishing” tags and join me on this wild ride! I can’t promise I’ll make all the right decisions, but I can almost guarantee it’ll be a good story.

Comments, questions, concerns?

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P.S. – Did you know you can receive blog updates straight to your inbox? Yup! Just enter your email address in the box below and cut out the middle man. This is a no-spam zone! I post to my blog roughly once a month. (Not to be confused with my NEWSLETTER, which is all the current book stuff, sneak peeks, special deals, etc. And you can sign up for my newsletter by clicking on the big open heart at the bottom of this page.)