New Ideas, New Year

So here we sit in the offices of TAG Publishing (we being my business partner Liz and myself) pondering our strategies for the new year. Of course in order to know what you want, you have to know what you don't want and there have been many things this past year on the "never again" list. I'll spare you the details, but will share confirmation that hard lessons learned are often the most valuable education you can get. This next year however, promises to be our best yet. We've had several very positive occurrences at the end of this year not the least of which has been a six fold expansion of our business. We will be coming into the new year with over 100 authors, a milestone for us for sure but something that we fully intend to be a stepping stone to our next goal of 1000 authors!

I'm sure everyone ponders their life's progress at this time of year - its hard not to, but do you think "Another one down" (and breathe a sigh of relief) or do you anxiously look forward to the fabulous things this next year will bring? Honestly this year for me its both. There were some struggles, and loss of loved ones which makes me want to leave the year 2010 far behind. But I also know that many of the issues and people we encountered through the year are leading us to a very bright future and that excites me. 

When I was younger I can remember taking a moment each December 31 and thinking back to where I was the year before. I would ponder the events of the past 12 months and measure my growth both financially and personally. Then I'd solemnly resolve to set loftier goals and push myself harder. But I'm not doing that this year - not because it is not a good practice (it always has been) but more because now I realize the importance of not taking myself so seriously! I'm thrilled to have weathered the various storms this year with my humor intact. I'm happy to be doing what I'm doing and so excited I get to keep right on doing it. I have a husband that puts up with me, kids that are self-sufficient and a dog that loves me. It really is a wonderful life and I don't need anyone else to validate that. I know I will have an excellent 2011 simply because I decided to make it so and I hope all of you do as well.

Christmas light Extravaganza!!!

For the first time in a long time, the spouse and I decided to go out and look at Christmas lights in the neighborhood. Most of the people in our part of town do it up big time so there is usually quite a bit of traffic which is why we don't usually join in, but this time - what the heck....so off we went. And you know there were several interesting sights:

Of course the fact that they give holiday hayrides through our streets is always kinda neat...until you get behind the wagon hauling people slower than my bulldog walks. It is a pretty red wagon that hauls probably 25 people and is drawn by mules - who couldn't seem less thrilled. As we rolled along at the speed of smell, I couldn't help but notice how unusual the lights were from years past. Only a few years ago, you'd drive down these streets and see perfect displays with matching lights and colors. Now it seems people are more into the real spirit which is : do what makes you happy. Every house seemed to have a mish mash of colors, flashing lights and Christmas figures. Its kind of like when you let your three year old dress herself - quirky, cute, but wouldn't win any contests. I liked it - perfection is so overrated anyway.

One of the yards was decked out completely in purple which was very unusual but there was something about the lights that made your vision blur - almost like an epileptic seizure coming on. Kind of a "Gee that's pretty, too bad you can't look at it". Down the street from there was a house with some sort of scene on the roof. At first I thought it was just mounds of snow, but it turned out it was supposed to be snowmen...the spouse thought they looked like Ninja turtle snowmen. There was a house up the street from ours that had four huge wreaths hanging in a line at the street - very cool looking.

Of course we also had to swing by Steve's house. He is one of those guys who has the full on, 100,000 light display set to his own radio station so you can watch the lights perfectly timed to the Christmas tunes. When we got close to his house, of course it was like grid lock....spouse used a term with the word 'cluster' in it. I thought it was interesting how most of the houses around him didn't even do lights and I guess I can see why....I'd just enjoy his too!

All in all, I think its proof that people don't really take appearances all that seriously anymore and that, in my mind, is a very very good thing....Merry Christmas!

Is the Christmas movie dead?

I saw a report come across the news that said studios were just not making Christmas movies anymore. It stated the reasons to include the fact that there is so much competition from non-seasonal pictures that it doesn't make sense. It also stated that there just weren't any 'new' or different stories out there. This caught my attention for a several reasons.

Of course as a connoisseur of many a Christmas film, I would agree there are lots of crappy ones out there. Invariably, when a great Christmas tale is done for film, aka A Christmas Carol, Its a Wonderful Life, or The Christmas Story, it seems that all Hollywood can do at that point is some knockoff. Of course they want a sure winner so its easy to think that doing a knockoff is safe. But then to complain that there just aren't any good stories out there is pretty much crap and we as writers know it.

Its very similar to the publishing industry professional who tells a group of writers that "humor just doesn't sell" or "no one wants to read memoirs". Yet the success of a book like Sh*t My Dad Says - now a TV series - flys in the face of those statements. It also shows writers that there is more than one way to skin a cat. The guy that wrote that book started it as twitter posts and gathered hundreds of thousands of followers. It was proof people loved it and he thus got a publishing contract.

These days writers have tremendous ways to build their audience and market for any book or style they choose to write in and the public decides what is or is not good and this allows a writer to follow their gut instead of trying to conform to what someone else tells them the 'market' likes. Of course, if you're wrong you know it immediately and that's a good thing too because a publisher can say you're crazy but there's nothing like instant public feedback to confirm it.

I think that the new digital age will user in a whole plethora of genres and books that can't even be imagined now and that includes the types of stories available as Christmas tales. Our job as writers is to stop playing it safe and push the envelope on what we dare.

One other ridiculous aspect of Hollywood and the publishing industry is that they have a memory of about four weeks. So whatever they aren't buying this month, they will start buying next month. The trick is to stop caring what they think and just start writing.

The New Look and New Book!

Well, I finally decided the personal website(www.deeburks.com) was in need of an overhaul so I worked on that this afternoon and it went really smoothly. The biggest reason being that I have a new book out! Liar's Fire has been many years in the making and I'm excited to see the feedback. I'm also organizing a blog tour so hopefully you will be seeing the book in many new places shortly. I have to say I love the cover and the feedback has been that its pretty HOT...which is in line with the content of the book.

In other news, business has been very busy. Our little company has grown tremendously in the past few months as we are absorbing a number of authors from another company in to ours. They all seem to be pretty excited and that bodes well for their books. We are also converting all their books to Kindle so that will be an additional avenue for them to reach new readers.

This month, our advertising starts for our new contest, Eternally Yours. If you haven't already guessed, this is a romance novel contest so any of you who have a romance manuscript you'd like to enter, the online enrty form will be available late next week on our company website, www.tagpublishers.com. Our other contest, The Great American Novel, closed Oct 31 and we'll be announcing the winners Dec 20th.

On the home front, the tree is up and the bulldog is eyeballing it, but so far no disasters. I'll keep you posted on how that goes.....

Bulldogs and Baby Birds

So why is that dogs seem to think that dead things make the perfect gift? One evening a few weeks ago he was out in the back patio and suddenly appears with what looks to be some sort of large dried egg shaped brown thing....until I looked closer and saw it had WHISKERS!! It was a dried up cat's head...yet Rocko was so proud of it. It was as if he'd found a gold nugget! When I tossed it over the fence he was devastated and almost didn't get over it...

Then, the other day he is again on the back patio holding something that looked kind of white and fluffy in his mouth. When I finally got him to let it go it was a fat little baby bird. Apparently it had fallen out of the big tree in our backyard and again Rocko seemed to think it was the find of the century....of course Kevin immediately pointed out that the dead bird wasn't his fault as it brought back a reminder of the now infamous 'baby bird incident' a few years ago. For those of you who are unfamiliar, I'll share it here:

It was a fine spring day and we were out on the deck enjoying our little patch of heaven and the new garden. But there was a little bird nest tucked into the corner up under the roof line....Kevin decided to get the garden hose and get rid of the nest before the birds laid their eggs...unfortunately he didn't check the nest first. So he starts his water blasting and before we know it we see a tiny little bird *splat* on the deck.....so sad!! But there was still another baby bird chirping away in the nest! There was no way the mother was coming back to the wet, destroyed nest and its hard to know what the humane thing is to do. Since they weren't going to survived without the mother, he squirted the rest of the nest out of the overhang and the second bird splatted too...but was still kickin...so he picked the little fledgling up with a dustpan and took them both out to the dumpster.

this is where it gets ridiculous....have you ever had one of those conversations with your spouse that makes you think you are both crazy? Me too. And this conversation centered around if it was more humane to put them in the dumpster and let them die eventually, or just give them to the neighborhood cat and have it over quickly. He voted dumpster, I voted cat. At the time, I was working at CoreData and so I of course shared the incident with my coworkers, one of who had been faced with the same dilemma .... a baby bird fell out of a tree in her backyard and she rescued it before her cat could pounce. But she was convinced the baby bird could be saved. In a effort to keep the bird alive, she wrapped it in a little cloth and put it in the middle of her stove which was warm (she had a gas stove). A short time later when she checked on it, the bird was dead!! She'd cooked it!

After that story I didn't feel nearly as bad about the baby birds because I think being allowed to die in a dumpster or by cat are both more humane that being roasted by a do- gooder!

The Value of Sleep

So at 4 am this morning, as I whacked my snoring husband for the thousandth time, I had to wonder, "Why is it that when I want to sleep all things seem to conspire against me?" Not that this was the only thing on my mind. I also contemplated how it could be that earplugs which see so well suited to block out high level industrial noise or even the drone of aircraft, could not seem to block the noise eminating from this man's mouth. Or how it could be possible that snoring could vibrate our whole king size bed. Its only recently that I've really understood the value of a good sleep. I've become a bit of a night owl over the last year as our call volume has picked up so substantially during the day that I work much later into the evening. Only lately I've realized that rather than helping me catch up on my work this is really hindering me.

I know, it sounds a little counterintutive (that's intellectual talk for batty) but just follow along. First of all, at night it seems to take me three times as long to do the same amount of work as it does during the morning. Then of course there's the effect on my relationships. I'm bitchy...okay, bitchier. I snipe, gripe and order people around - yes, more so than usual! Then there's the laying in bed wondering if its worth the effort to go downstairs and dig out an icepick when I could just shove a pillow down his throat.

The only cure that I can see is to bring back the afternoon nap! you know when you curl up with a pillow in a very quiet, warm place...with a margarita....oh wait!! that's a siesta....you know Mexico is such a good idea this time of year. Go nap!