Apologies

Well, dear friends, I've been sadly remiss... I've clearly ignored my blog.

Truth is that I've been blogging elsewhere (shame on me!) and busily writing my two new books.

March Storm is my sequel to January Moon and the 2nd novel in my Del Carter Calendar Series. It's getting off to a good start but the research took a great deal of time -- and cost me emotionally -- because the subject matter is more than grim (animal abuse and dog fighting). As always, I do far more research than necessary and what I've learned is not always -- and could not possibly be -- all in the book. It's really only a wedge to open and sustain the story so don't think the book itself is grim. I hope it will be as entertaining and suspenseful and ultimately rewarding as January Moon. But as you know, I like to write fiction that educates as much as it entertains.

The other book I'm writing is non-fiction. It's what I call an adult history book and I like to say it will be loaded with all the history you never learned in school but need to know now... the information will hopefully help you make some sense out of our current political battles and culture wars in America. I've titled the book "Daylight & Deja vu" because it should shed new light on old topics that are still unresolved and and serious in today's world (thus the "deja vu" -- you'll "see" it as it was "before" and look at it again as it is "now"). My plan is to group my essays thematically (labor, immigration, the Great Depression, race, WWII, etc.) and roll them first as small ebooks and then reorganize them into a larger work that will be a fairly significant book-length work (in print and digital). 

As to my blogging over at the Pragmatic Progressive Forum -- well, what can I say? I admit I've lost focus here at the Windy City Author and need to ascertain why... I suspect it's because I wasn't sure what I wanted to do here to begin with and was easily derailed. As a result of my blogging at PragPro I've learned a lot about myself and realized that what I really love to do is write about history and currrent affairs.  I especially love to use my knowledge about history to help inform where we are as a people today.

I've also learned more about the art of blogging and think it's helped improve my skills as a writer. Well, so we'll see; the jury is still out on that.

I don't want to abandon "The Windy City Author." I've decided to reinvent it but am not yet certain how... still need to give it serious thought (your feedback is welcome).

In the meantime, while I work on that, I've decided to re-post here the articles that were published at Prag Pro.

Please read, share and comment and I'll get back to you.

:)

Dirty Harry's Blog

I haven't written in this blog for a few days because I've been frustrated with it; there are things I want to do here that I can't figure out how to do because I am -- simply put -- the Village Idiot when it comes to things like this... I just want to write, OK? I don't want to learn how to design a blog. I paid to have my website designed because I knew it would take me 2 years to learn how do it myself (assuming I even could!).  You have no idea how often people say "Why did you pay someone to do that? It's so easy!" and "Gee, my 3 year old grandson and I had my website up and running in an afternoon. ANYONE can do it."

Yeah, right. "Anyone" my butt. Your grandkid must be the next Mozart and you're probably qualified to become an aeronautical engineer for NASA.

It's the same with this blog. I want tabs, lots of additional pages... I want the tabs to say "About Maureen," "About Chicago," "Favorite Restaurants," "Maureen's Books," and maybe even "The Nastiest Right Wing Nutjobs in America and Why You Should Keep Your Eye on Them..." (yeah, that's a bit too long but you get the idea).

But I can't accomplish those few seemingly simple things.

I've been frustrated, even down... like lower than a snake's ass kinda' down... this reminds me of a chemistry class I once found my sorry butt laboring in... everyone was "getting it" but me. What a nightmare. I took a "D" in that class and gladly so; I deserved worse. Sister Judine, I am convinced, gave it to me out of pity and probably a big dose of fear that I might decide to repeat the class if I failed it totally. I'm not sure why she thought that (maybe I lied and told her that just to show her how much I was determined to "get it," dunno' but the truth is there was no way in hell I was ever going to put myself in that position again).

See, I'm a big believer in Clint Eastwood's iconic line in Dirty Harry: "A man's got to know his limitations."

It works for middle-aged fat women as well.

Some wisdom is absolute!

Back to the blog: I'll give it another go and then bring in some friends... I'd hate to be the only one in America who had to actually pay someone to set up a blog. I cried about my plight in Facebook today and already some friends are trying to come to the rescue. There is no one in the world who has the wonderful friends I have on Facebook. Sadly, however, I don't even understand their well worded instructions instructing me... 

I'm wondering if I could be happy with just taking a D in blogging and moving on...?

What about you?  Do you find this stuff easy or what? 

Day Two: Getting to this Point

Last year at this time I wasn't thinking about writing my first major work of fiction. Nope. Not at all.

Not only was I NOT entertaining the idea, I knew absolutely NOTHING about how to either get a work of fiction published or how to publish it myself (I was totally clueless about the amazing revolution occurring in publishing). My only experience with publishing had been as a contributor to peer-reviewed scholarly works; places, in fact, where I had been respectfully invited to submit my work. (Yes, my fellow authors in fiction, such utopias do exist elsewhere.)

Today January Moon is for sale in print and as an ebook on Amazon.com; it is sold as an ebook at Smashwords and Barnes & Noble.

And I like to think that I've become something of an expert on the subject of self-publishing and hope to continue to learn much, much more.

Can you believe that on this same day a year ago I had never read a book on an e-reader? I had never held a Kindle or Nook or iPad in my hands and, let me admit to this right up front, had no desire to start.

Today I have a Kindle and I'd give up my microwave before I'd give up my Kindle. I don't know how anyone who really loves to read books cannot want one once they've put their biases aside and actually given them a go and that's the truth.

Facebook? I'd been sucked into it once by colleagues in the business world but hated it. Those same people assured me that it was an important business application necessary for networking with customers. Frankly, the only business I saw happening was Monkey Business. For some strange reason, certainly due to the vagaries of my neurochemistry, I found it hard to believe that Farmville Apps and "what I ate for lunch" discussions weren't exactly strategic marketing plans. Throw in some pictures of a few surly looking kids and some vapid comments showing the seemingly infinite scope of your overall banality and I'm pretty sure you have a plan for a business train wreck.

One of my grandmothers often warned "familiarity breeds comment." When I was a kid I just thought that statement was "kinda' weird." Now I understand. It only took me 28 FB Friends to decide I had no interest in collecting any more. I didn't walk away, I ran away.

So, last year, at this time, I had no FB page.

Now how's this for an amazing turnaround? Today I'm very proud to say that there are over 450 of the best people in the entire world listed as my friends on FB. I'm going to share with the world how you can find supportive, caring, intelligent, proactive people too. Business? Sure, you can use FB for business purposes but I use to connect myself to the kind of people I want to know and call friends. They are to me a rich treasure trove of folks who help float my emotional boat. I love and am concerned about all of them.  

Twitter?

Well, I'm still not Tweeting. My biggest hang-up is that I can't get past the idea that very little can be said, of any relevance anyway, in a few coded and abbreviated words. I can be as equally vapid on FB and so I'm not sure why I need another place to tell folks I just had a Lean Cuisine for lunch. But I may be converted yet. Look at everything else I now embrace that I originally met with skepticism or even disdain! 

At this same time a year ago I also didn't have a website and didn't follow any blogs.

Now I have a web site and if I do say so myself it's pretty damn nice. Check it out. http://www.maureengill.net/.

And look where I'm writing today... and not just here at my own blog but I've been a contributing blogster over at Author's Lounge for about three months.

How 'bout it: The Windy City Author blog is launched!

And I follow quite a few blogs and enjoy them immensely!

Oh boy, what a year it's been!

Starting today I'm going to go back and begin to chronicle my journey to "here."  Then I'm going to continue to record it forward, at least for the next six month, maybe a year.

From time to time I'll post it here.

Maybe it will help another author, maybe not. But it's surely going to help me because I need to process all of the many extraordinary things that happened to me in 2010 but most of all I want to introduce you a few of the many amazing people I met on the journey.

Yes, above all, it's about the people I met or re-connected with at each step of the journey.

They are the real story.