A Fox in the Yard, Thanksgiving, Sailboats, 10,0000 and 66

This guy got in and couldn't get out.

I looked out the backdoor window the other day and saw this: a rather skanky looking fox. He'd jumped across the fence to get into the backyard and then lost his way out. We watched, Terry and I, full of sympathetic dread: was he sick (Rabies! Poor thing! poor us!); was he hungry (the poor neighbor's cat huddling at our door must look tempting). At one point, unaware of us, he sat down and scratched himself, dog-like, and looked around. Ten minutes later, he found his way out and was gone. The cat relaxed, we went about our business.

And my business was taking a long walk. The autumn air was crisp, the breeze filled with the perfume of falling leaves and whatever else it is that give fall it's special smells. I set out, down through the quiet streets to the harbor.

Autumn comes here later than New England: This is the middle of November

 The harbor in Onancock never fails to pluck at my heart strings.

I walked four miles with my GPS app satellite lady talking to me every five minutes describing my progress: "Time--5 minutes; distance--.027 miles; pace: 18 minutes, 27 seconds per mile"

Other important numbers for me this day: my novel Brothers of the Fire Star climbed--a temporary spike, I'm sure--to 10,000th ranking on Amazon and on Sunday I'll be 66. My wife pointed out that if you put another 6 on that, you've got me pegged but there's a little devil in all of us.

Photo Shoots, Feature Articles, and Waiting for That Review

At a photo shoot on a beach on Guam: I try hard to look casual, seaworthy, and profound at the same time.

Unless you are a pro at this--say a movie star or a model--photo shoots are a trial and a tribulation. You're extremely pleased to be there on one hand and extremely worried about what camera with its huge, invasive lens is going to find in your face on the other hand.

I'm as vain and anyone, of course, and while the photographer had his bazooka directed at me point blank, I suspected he was saying to himself, "Well, I guess I'll just have to do the best I can with this old guy."

 I worried about the wind in my hair blowing it off the places where I no longer have any hair; comb overs and topical trade winds don't mix well. I worried that I would not be able to suck things in just above my belt for as long as it was taking him to decide which pose I should assume. I worried that the senior citizen discounts I love to ask for would not include a discount on Rogaine and diet bars.

Nonetheless, I got through it, for better or for worse. 

Here is the link to the article: http://www.guampdn.com/article/20121111/LIFESTYLE/211110303/-Brothers-Fire-Star-Former-resident-s-book-tale-Guam-World-War-II?odyssey=mod|newswell|text|Frontpage|p


Or, here it is below, copied and pasted:

'Brothers of the Fire Star': Former resident's book a tale of Guam in World War II

In the dense, dark and mysterious jungle, 13-year-old Joseph hears planes and thundering bombs in the distance. Caught in the thick of World War II on Guam, the fearful boy flees into the darkness and encounters a spirit in a banyan tree, urging him to survive.
"You must not die yet," the spirit says. "You must escape to the sea."
Joseph is a young boy from Massachusetts living on Guam during the war -- born from the imagination of former Guam resident and author Douglas Arvidson.
Arvidson was in Guam just a couple of weeks ago to promote his latest book, "Brothers of the Fire Star." The fictional tale of two boys sailing for their survival is set against historical war scenes in Guam and the Pacific.
Arvidson is an avid adventurer who immersed himself in Pacific traditional seafaring navigation while living on island for 11 years.
Today, the retired Department of Defense Education Activity speech and language pathologist lives in Virginia yet still longs for home -- Guam -- where he's studied with traditional navigator Manny Sikau and has many friends.

Product of passion

The book is a product of his passion for the open ocean and traditions of ancient navigation that he learned while living on Guam.
In 2008, Arvidson retired and left Guam for the mainland. While writing his book, he had an epiphany.
"It was the emotion of nostalgia -- a longing to recapture a treasured past memory -- that made the difference," he says. "You see that in William Faulkner's writing -- a longing for the past. I missed my life and my friends on Guam, missed the great adventure of sailing, I missed the profound sense of both the sadness of the war and the magical past that exists in the islands."
In the story, Joseph is a young boy from Massachusetts. In a way, Arvidson is that boy.
"I would never pretend to be a boy from Guam -- there would be no authenticity in trying to be," he says. "How to solve this problem when developing the idea for the book? Be myself and draw upon my own experiences. As soon as I had figured this out, nostalgia for my youth on the farm in a small, rural town in the hills of New England dovetailed nicely with my nostalgia for my life on Guam and in the islands. After that, the book seemed to write itself and it became a deeply satisfying experience."
It took him nearly three years to write the historical fiction novel, which was released in October and is available in paperback on Amazon.com. Aside from the characters, including Napu, the boy Joseph befriends on his journey of survival, Arvidson tried to include as many historical references from the War in the Pacific as he could, also drawing on his trips through the Pacific on his boat.

Traditional navigation

When Arvidson and his wife moved here in the 1990s, he heard about the group Traditions About Seafaring Islands, or TASI, and became intrigued with the idea of possibly studying navigation under a master navigator. He attended meetings where he met Sikau, a seventh-generation Carolinian master navigator from Puluwat. He became deeply involved, attending classes on navigation in Hagåtña and at the University of Guam.
"I also had the opportunity to meet with Manny privately and to sail with him on the voyage back from Pagan," he says. "I asked a lot of questions, took a lot of notes, and although, of course, I could never have actually been a navigator, it gave me enough knowledge to write the novel. After I was finished with the first draft, I met with Manny and went over the manuscript with him. He and Larry Cunningham provided invaluable feedback."
It's a passion he continues to share with his book and with a lecture he gives that he calls "Secrets of the Navigators."
On Friday, he was in Massachusetts visiting his 93-year-old father and preparing for a presentation on the ancient navigators of the Pacific for the Boy Scouts.
"There are organizations dedicated to keeping the old skills alive and keeping that profound connection to the sea and the sky a part of the island culture is vitally important," he says. "Yes, GPS has largely replaced traditional navigation, but that is not the point. The point is the fundamental connection between man and nature must not be lost."
Arvidson and his wife, Terry, lived on Guam in a boat, where he wrote three other novels, two of which have already been published.
Terry Arvidson is a director of the federal education association for all of the military dependent schools in the United States, which brought the couple back to Guam last month.
"She has to go back usually once a year to talk to all of the constituents there," he says. "She goes back on business and I would go back with her. Now I'm going back on business for myself."

Urging of friends

Douglas Arvidson came at the urging of his friends Maureen Murphy and Shannon Murphy, sisters who loved the book, he says.
"They really went to bat for me," he says. "They set up things with the International Reading Association and I sold a lot of books there. I presented a lecture with (Professor) Evelyn Flores' class at the University of Guam."
Different libraries and other groups have asked him to return next year to make more presentations on writing and on "Brothers of the Fire Star."
"I have so many good friends (on Guam) and so many good memories," he says.
"We love going back and we'd want to move back here on an on-and-off basis.
"We were here for 11 years and got to know the island. We've developed very, very close relationships with the people there. It feels like home to me."

Authentic Book Promotion Continued: A Wonderful Week on Guam

With students in a creative writing class at the University of Guam: As a guest lecturer, I had a wonderful time discussing the writing process with a room full of intelligent and enthusiastic would-be writers; they bought my book and fed me, too.

It's almost over; tomorrow we fly to Tokyo and then non-stop to L.A. where we will layover to allow the "Frankenstorm," the Storm of the Century, to pass over the East Coast.

But it has been a fine week indeed for this writer: Guest lecturing, interviews, photo shoots, book signings, invitations to return and be the keynote speaker at upcoming book events and pockets stuffed with cash from spontaneous book sales wherein the book is grabbed out of one of my hands while dollars are thrust into the other. It's hard to know how to react so I'll take the easy road and not think too much about it. I'll enjoy the moment, carpe diem,  and all that.

 A successful book signing: I had just ten books left at the end of a week of lectures and interviews and sold them all in an hour and a half. Wonderful and so very, very different from previous book signings with previous books.

To see your name up like this is kind of jerks you up short. "Do they mean this Douglas Arvidson?"

And, after we left the hotel, we got to stay with good friends who have made a beautiful home from raw Guam jungle--bananas and flowers abound.

A Wonderfull Time on Guam: Authentic Book Promotion

Tumon Bay, Guam in early morning from our hotel room window.

Guam: a far outpost on this fat round world, the place where America's day begins and where jet lag sets the mood for the sky traveler. We landed last Sunday, just at sunset, arriving from Honolulu after a two-night rest after arriving there from Virginia. I was beat, sagging and foggy and grumpy and so was my traveling companion (the usually patient, tolerant, smiling, hard-core-world-traveling wife, Terry).

It's rainy season here, the full-throttled-downpour-gusher time of year when huge black clouds form from nothing, instantly, in blue skies and the deluge that follows fills gutters and storm drains and then the blue sky returns arched with multiple rainbows. The humidity is something spectacular, making the 88 degree heat sauna rich and suffocating. Turns out our car rental agency doesn't have a desk at the airport so we have to pile our luggage and drooping bodies with six other people into a van designed to hold only six.

Even the air conditioning at the Hilton seems to have not been up to the challenge of removing the sullen moisture from the air. The corridor smells of dampness, the carpeting looks downtrodden, the windows overlooking the ocean are fogged. We grump and grumble as we settle in. It's really too early to go to sleep for the night, but heads hang low and eyes burn, so we surrender.

Awake at 4:30 a.m. of course, fully slept out and once again spunky, but who gets up at 4:30 except under duress? Toss and turn. "You awake?" So we get up at 5:00. Terry, with the ridiculous self-disciple reserved for true triathletes, gets her workout clothes on and heads down the fitness room. I go down to the lobby and buy a $5 cup of coffee and eat a zone bar.

Now, though, two days later, things have cleared up--both heads and skies--and we're zooming along. Terry off to meetings, me off to promote (authentically--see previous blog entry) my book. And it's all good news. In fact, wonderful news. The very people who seemed to studiously ignore my first two books are grabbing for this one with one hand whilst throwing cash at me with the other. I have a photo-shoot/interview scheduled with a reporter from the Pacific Daily News and another one with a writer from Island Traveler, a new magazine aimed at Asian readers. There is a book signing scheduled for the Navy Exchange on Saturday and I'm a guest lecturer at the University of Guam tonight at a creative writing class. I'm going to talk to 3rd graders tomorrow about the writing process and 6th graders on Thursday.

The difference between this book and the others?  This one is about Guam; it has a home-field advantage. It's beautiful to look at and wonderful to hold. The cover invites you in, the back-cover blurb grabs you. People who have read it, love it and are spreading the word.

I've got another five days here. We'll see what happens next.

Authentic Marketing: The Art of Shame-Free Self Promotion

October 4th was Launch Day: I think everything is in place.

 

 I'm guessing that the most important thing about being a successful writer of novels is this: Have talent--lots of it--well developed talent honed through the years of slog and misery and rejection that makes the final success such a bitter-sweet experience.

 

Next--and I'm guessing here again--take your time and use that burnished talent to write something outstanding, something wonderful, something fresh, unique--something readers will want to pick up and not put down, something that will affect them deeply, something they will talk about to others. Word of mouth sells books.

 

 And the cover, yes. The cover needs to be as beautiful and unique and appealing as the story inside it. 

 

What now? Now comes the really painful part: Telling everyone how wonderful your book is. Shouting its glories from the rooftops, as it were, and this makes people like me feel just terrible. But recently I came across a wonderful term coined by Scooter Braun, Justin Bieber's  promoter, that takes the shame out of self-promotion: authentic marking.

 

 Here's the general idea of authentic marketing: Promoting a product that you know is of high quality. That is, your book is the real deal--you're not some hack selling cheesy drivel or scamming suckers into buying worthless scribbling.  You, with your burnished talent and careful craft, have created something that you know (and your editor and publisher and a hired professional reader or two agree with you) the reading public will love and benefit from. Authentic marketing is convincing as many of those readers as possible to buy the book.

 

Nowadays, of course, in this wonderful, writhing, boiling, exploding, cut-throat digital world, you need what's called a platform from which to launch your authentic marketing campaign. You--or your agent/representative--must be fluent in the dizzying world of professionally developed websites, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, and blogs and all the other ways the Internet allows us to connect with anyone on the planet who might be interested in what you have to offer.

 

So here I go, shame-free because I'm pretty sure I'm marketing something authentic: My readers tell me I'm ready, my editor says the book is burnished, my publisher says, "This is going to be a great book." Initial responses are breathtakingly enthusiastic: "Best book I've ever read," "Wonderful read," "A real page turner," "Fantastic" and "If this doesn't make you, nothing will."

 

And I've got a pretty cool website with links all over the place like Amazon.com, my blog, my Twitter page, and lots of Facebook friends. And I'm linked in to LinkedIn. I've sent out press releases, done what I an to create that critical buzz.

 

Now we shall see if being an authentic writer and writing an authentic story and marketing it authentically will result in some authentic success. 

 

 

 

The Writer Visits a Middle School: All Things Bitter and Wonderful

Middle schoolers haven't changed a bit: But the old man? Yes, indeed.

The other day I did my yearly stint as a visiting author at a middle school in Georgia. In response to questions from the students, I talked about what it is like to be a writer: How long it takes to write a book? Do I like being a writer? And of course, "Where to you get your ideas?"

But the real question of the day, a question that went unasked was, "What is it like to be a middle schooler?" My memories of that time in my life are not completely pleasant. I went to a pretty good, small, country school. I had an intact family and I was clean and well fed. But still, being eleven or twelve or thirteen years old is a peculiar misery. I had zits, I was hopelessly insecure, girls were from another planet, I hated math, I wasn't a great athlete or a great student; the usual middle school complaints.

So, the other day, when I was standing up there in front of thirty or forty kids, looking out on their presumably innocent young faces, I could sense their pain. There was girl with a bad complexion, there was a boy who parents were, I had been told, always battling; there was kid who lived in a trailer with a mixed "family" of live-in drunks and lovers and who claimed he shot deer out in his back yard every day: "I just like to kill things," he told me.

So, what do I teach them about writing--which is really all about life? Right now, as they come into their full awareness of who and what they are, they are learning all those things bitter and wonderful about what it means to be alive.  These things will follow them the rest of their lives and maybe one or two of them will become writers and remember these years and mine the memories for great literature. I suspect, though, that most of them will simply grow up and somehow learn to deal with it all as they, too, muddle through.

Of Pumpkins and Potted Plants, Boats and Books, Old Friends and New Family: What We Did on Our Summer Vacation

I don't really have much of a green thumb. Out of a great tangled jungle of stems leaves and stalks came this single pumpkin: 30.4 lbs. and just look at the beautiful color.

 

I got pre-publication copies of my new novel, due to be officially released on October 4. Forgive me, but I am apologetically excited about how great it looks.

Here is my most immediate family, gathered together in my perfect little American town on the 4th of July. The little guy in the front, that's my newest grandson, Kiernan a.k.a. "Babyface Scarborough"

And here I am with a since-childhood friend and his wife. Rick and I started playing together when we were, oh, I guess maybe three or four years old. We've kept in touch, but only seen each other two or three times in the long, intervening years and it was very nice to get together.

My son, Eli-the-Yacht-Captain and his girl/mate steamed into town on a yacht delivery and asked if I wanted to help them take the boat up the Bay to Annapolis. (See previous blog entry.)

So, I see the pumpkin as bookends to the great, long, hot-hot summer. I planted the seed in May and harvested it in September. I love the pumpkin like I love the summer, full of rare surprises.