A Very Silly Dream Come True

My next book now has a cover! Who wants to hear the story behind it?

I’ll tell it anyway.

The stories for most of my covers are fairly similar. It starts with me thinking up a picture of how I want the cover to look. Then I use a camera to capture this picture. It never works on the first try. Or the second or the third or… I usually end up beating my head against the wall for a while until the picture in my head decides it needs to change to match something I have to work with.

Then I have to put a title on it. Me and font don’t exactly get along. It’s not that I don’t like font. I love font. There are so many varieties. But that’s the problem, too many choices that all seem equally good to me. I keep slapping different titles on the cover until one of them screams “I’ll work!” or “Use me before your eyes start watering from staring at fonts.”

The cover for Everything Old was different. I didn’t know what I wanted it to look like. Given the title and description, a picture of old things seemed like a possibility. But I didn’t want really old things, dated was a better word. I needed a picture of old but not necessarily old old things. Who knows what vague means?

I went on a bit of a treasure hunt. I searched my house for things that fit this description. The only actual treasures are a couple of antique books. Both books on the cover are more than a hundred years old. Then I found an old phone and a cassette tape. The cloth and trim in the background are from a craft kit I inherited from my mom. The kit was packaged around 1970. My collected items now represented four decades and two centuries. This seemed like a good start, but how did I want to arrange this hodgepodge into a cohesive picture?

Well, at least twenty different ways, and I didn’t like any of them. I moved things around again and again. I asked for advice, which may have been a mistake. Everyone seemed to prefer the pictures with one of the books open. I took a lot more pictures while trying to prop open a fragile 150-year-old book without damaging it. None of them were quite right. I kept thinking I needed something to tie everything together. Then I had a thought, a memory. I’m old enough to remember when cassette tapes were the preferred media for music but not so old they weren’t popular when I was a kid. What kid didn’t long to pull out all the tape? It was always so tempting. A few times I actually pulled out a few feet of tape before I wound it back up feeling guilty.

Staring at my pile of random items, I realized I could literally tie it all together with the tape from the cassette. I’m no artist. I don’t know if pulling out the tape actually improved my pictures. But I know it was fun. I didn’t need that tape for anything. We don’t have anything that would play it so I’m not sure why it was even still in the house. Tape everywhere, pictures snapped, cover created. Woohoo.

Now the sad part. When I was finished and the tape was finished. I still felt the need to wind it up again. And I did.

I Resolve to Make a Resolution

We’re more than a few days into January and I’m still wrestling with myself over a good goal for the year. I don’t really do professional resolutions. I do like to have a plan for what I hope to have accomplished by the end of the year. This year, I just can’t decide. This year, I only know I’m going to release… something.

I’m working on a new series called Love in Andauk. There will be four books in the series. In looking at my progress so far, my first thought is that I could get all four books released by the end of 2019. That sounds great. But it also sounds ambitious enough that I’m afraid to commit myself to it. I’ve been panicking a little at the idea.

Four books!? In a year? Do I really think I can pull that off?

Sure. I’ve done it before. Remember Hartford?

I remember how hard that was. Maybe I should plan on releasing two books this year and two next year.

But there are other things I want to write. How will I ever get to those projects if I spend all my time lollygagging in Andauk?

I know how much time it takes to write a book. Spending six months each is not lollygagging.

But how much time have I already spent on these books?

Okay. I can plan on getting three books out this year. If I say four and don’t do four, I’ll feel like a failure. I need a goal I know I can meet.

So I need an easy goal? Is that what I’m saying? Why don’t I just plan to be lazy all year because I’m starting to sound as though I don’t want to work at all.

That’s a bit dramatic. I didn’t say it had to be an easy goal, just reasonable. I do still have a lot of work to do to finish three books. And maybe I can say three and still try for four.

Who am I kidding here? If I’m trying for four then the goal is four. That’s what trying means. I can’t have a real goal and some sort of pretend goal. I don’t know why I’m making this so difficult.

Yes, I do. We all know why. I already admitted I’m a big scaredy-cat. For now, I will resolve to release the first book in April. Look for more information (and probably a giveaway) on Everything Old coming soon.

Christmas Fiction

This month I will post a short piece of fiction in honor of the season. It’s written in first person, but it is fiction. Mostly.

I Let the Kids Help
by Amanda Hamm

We started our Christmas season by decorating the house. I had visions of a picturesque front porch when I got out the lights, good enough to miniaturize and put inside a snow globe. I let the kids help decorate. In fact, they eagerly did most of the work. When it was dark enough to appreciate our efforts, the scene didn’t look like a scene from a snow globe so much as some sort of lopsided explosion. The kids had swapped out flashers in every string and left a clump of lights where they’d gotten tangled in the bushes. I shrugged off the gaudiness because I figured the neighbors saw how much the kids helped.

I love Christmas cookies. I use the same recipe that three generations of our family have used. I let the kids help with the cookies, too. They fought over which color to add to the frosting and ended up with an ugly shade of brown. Of course, it was barely visible under the coating of sprinkles. Those cookies were crunchier than dry Corn Flakes. My sister-in-law nearly dislocated an eyebrow when we unveiled them. I made sure she knew how much the kids helped, but the knowledge did nothing to restore her eyebrows.

Then it was time to wrap the gifts. Again, I let the kids help. When I used to do this all by myself, the gifts were like snowflakes with no two alike. Each one had a unique combination of pretty paper, curled ribbon and neat tags. Now they were still like snowflakes, the paper kind that leave a disaster of tiny scraps in their wake. There were torn corners, patched wrapping paper, tape over everything and so much ribbon. I could already imagine my dad whipping out a pocket knife to get his open.

There was a tree at church covered in gift requests from families in need. I told the kids they could help me pick out one or two tags. They’re all really good at math so I can’t explain how they were unable to count to “one or two.” They brought me eight tags. I was too embarrassed to put some back so I went shopping for eight more gifts. The kids helped. They knew exactly what everyone would want and were unconcerned with cost. Our bank account would feel a pinch.

Christmas finally arrived and we looked at the options for squeezing church into the schedule. There was a Christmas Eve mass at 7 PM, perfect for an early dinner and getting everyone to bed more or less on time. Or one late on Christmas morning with no need to rush breakfast. The kids wanted the least convenient option. They wanted midnight. My husband didn’t want to drag himself out of the house in the middle of the night any more than I did. But we couldn’t remember the last time the kids were so excited about going to church so we let them help with the schedule.

It was around 12:20 AM when I was listening to a gospel reading about the birth of Jesus with heavy eyelids. The lights in the church were dimmed and the candles shone brightly. The calm reading, the semidarkness, the arm of my husband on which I leaned… these things wanted me to close my eyes. My mind began to replay our preparations for the holiday. I saw colorful flashing lights and ugly but still delicious cookies. I saw my kids with big smiles holding presents that were not for them. I saw the stockings they’d tried to use as a behavior ranking system and the Christmas cards they insisted on signing with code names.

I realized that my daydreaming was in danger of turning into real dreaming. I would not allow myself to sleep through the very event we’d been preparing for. I sat up straighter and forced my eyes open just as the reading finished. It was followed by a moment of silence, a moment so quiet and still that I felt God’s presence more clearly than I had in years. It was a moment I would have missed at a more convenient time, a time when I wasn’t trying so hard to pay attention. The kids brought joy and enthusiasm to everything we did that season. And they brought me to that moment of peace. I’d never been happier that I let them help.