Shtick This! My Self-Publishing Journey . . . So Far

 I left teaching after thirty years to focus solely on writing. Since school let out in May, I've written a number of feature articles for a newspaper, written and submitted more columns, written blog posts, scribbled down a bunch of ideas for future stories or books, typed more of the rough draft for what will be book number six most likely, and, as of yesterday, I finally got my third book published after spending the bulk of these past two months editing it. The following are screen shots from the email notifying me that the book is now live, so the quality isn't the best.

I've always wanted to be a writer, but I never imagined I'd go down the self-publishing path. Even now, it's not really the path I want to be on, but there are definite advantages to doing it this way. Let me tell you how and why I first did it.

As you may know, I write a column that comes out twice a month for the Norfolk Daily News out of Norfolk, Nebraska. I've been writing it for a number of years now, but about five years ago I asked the editor if he'd be open to serializing a novel I'd written years before that and which was basically languishing on my hard drive. I had tried a few times to get agents interested, but I hadn't had any luck, and the main publishers are closed to you without an agent. Since I was a full-time teacher, coach, and mom, it was always hard to find the time needed to really research and consistently send things out to agents, contests, small publishers, etc. I really believed that the book was darn good for a first novel, and I so wanted to have people read it to see if I was right.

The editor was a little skeptical, but the assistant editor agreed to read a few chapters, and then they'd decide from there. He read them and liked them, so they agreed to run a chapter a week on the online edition and see how things went. It took an entire year for The Clearwater House to be fully published for readers of the newspaper to see it, but over that year, many people read it and liked it and reached out to me asking where they could get a copy.

After the year was up, I went ahead and put it on the Kindle platform because that's a simple process to upload a book there. It doesn't take any special formatting for the most part. I only had to design a cover. A few people did buy the eBook edition of it, but others really wanted an actual physical book. I totally understand that because I seldom do any eBook reading myself; I much prefer to hold a book and turn the pages. So, I sat down at the computer one night and spent a long time figuring things out, but I finally managed to format The Clearwater House to run as a paperback, and I made a different cover that I liked better than the one I'd quickly created for the eBook. 

There are things I'd do differently with it if I could go back, and maybe some day I'll reformat it and resubmit it, but overall I've been very pleased with how it turned out and the reception it has received. Most people who have read it have enjoyed it. That's all I want -- for people to read my books and enjoy them.

Three years ago in September, my best friend since college, Amy Vojtech Beran, passed away from cancer. She was only 50 years old and the sweetest person I've ever known. She was a huge champion of my writing, and she'd personally bought and given as gifts numerous copies of The Clearwater House. During the year and a half that she was battling and losing her fight to cancer, I sent her daily pick-me-up notes to provide whatever cheer I could to her from afar (she was living in Dallas). When I knew the end was near, I made her a promise in one of my final notes to her -- that my next book would be dedicated to her. A couple months after her death, my promise was weighing heavily upon me because I had no idea when I'd ever have another novel done -- I had many in the works and even complete, including Ticker Tape, but since I was also bogged down with teaching responsibilities, I knew it would be a long time before I could get the editing done or finish writing the others I'd begun.

So, I decided instead to take a novella, a lengthy short story, and two short stories that had won writing prizes and compile them into a collection in her honor. Those pieces were done and just sitting around waiting for me to do something with them. They are all feel-good pieces, and I realized that the best way for me to honor my friend who always made me feel good was to dedicated four feel-good stories to her. Thus, State of Georgia . . . and Other Writings was born. I also included four of my poems (yep, I write poetry, too) to sort of introduce the theme of each story. The state of Georgia is not the physical southern state, but rather it is the emotional and mental state in which the protagonist, Georgia, finds herself after her husband's sudden and unexpected death. 

Speaking of unexpected deaths, the cover photo on this story collection was taken by my dear uncle, Paul Filsinger, who graciously gave it to me to use after I asked him if he had any sunset or sky photo with shades of blues and pinks in it because those were Amy's favorite colors (hence the color scheme of the cover). Paul died last October from covid-19. This book cover is very special to me.

I also used one of Paul's photos inside Ticker Tape. It's at the very end of the book, and it's of a United States' flag. I put it there to accompany a poem that I also included. It's a patriotic poem that I have dedicated to the memory of (my boyfriend) Kim's son, Trever Erickson, who died by suicide two years ago. 

I plan to use another of Paul's photos for the cover of my next novel, called Twinges. That one is about a teacher who can sense things about her students. She doubts their veracity, but one day she learns that her power is real. She is very concerned because her most recent "twinge" told her that her student was going to grow up to be a serial killer. I will be editing that book next. Look for it to come out by Christmas, I hope. Maybe sooner. Who knows?

I also have two other novels that are about three-fourths complete, a story collection set in a comedy club that is perhaps half done, a smart-ass yet serious advice book for first-year teachers that is about half done, too, and many, many ideas floating around in various notebooks. I'm determined to be the writer I always wanted to be.

Let's get back to the self-publishing topic a bit, though. While I would still prefer to get a major book deal and get published my a big-name publisher, there are things about the self-publishing route that I really like.

One -- I get a bigger piece of the pie, financially. I don't have to split earnings with an agent, an editor, the publisher, etc. Yes, Amazon is getting richer (although only quite nominally so far) from my book sales, and I don't really like that, but it doesn't cost me a dime to publish through them, and since I'm now technically unemployed, I love that I can publish there for free. Also, since so many people do shop on Amazon, there is a better chance of me making some sales. I need those sales right now.

Two -- I enjoy the editing part of the process and having control of all the content. While I realize that a professional editor would probably polish my work better than I do, I also know that I've caught many typos and grammar mistakes in books that are professionally edited and published. After teaching a variety of English and Spanish classes for 30 years, I think I have a pretty solid grasp on language and how to use it correctly. Also, I like knowing that the story is 100 percent mine, that no agent or editor made a gazillion recommendations for changes that I had to do before it could be printed. I want the story to be completely in my voice. I am the author, after all.

Three -- I get to create the cover and make it both personally meaningful and also relevant to the story. 

Four-- I am totally my own boss. Right now, I am sooooo loving that. I set my deadlines. I decide when and if I'm going to release a book. I'm not bound to a contract. I have complete freedom and make all the decisions.

Naturally, there are downsides to self-publishing. One of the big ones is that I am in this alone (even though that's also a positive). My book won't be found on the shelves of chain bookstores like B&N, but independent bookstores can stock it, so if you happen to be a proponent of indie bookstores (as I am), please go to your favorite one and order my books through them. Give them the business. I will get a very tiny royalty from that sale, but I will be thrilled to know that you are helping an independent bookstore thrive. Another major downside is that I don't have a marketing team behind me, so I will never sell the number of books I could through a traditional publisher, but I can (and will) continue to promote all my books, not just the newest, every time I make an author appearance at a library or every time I post on my author website or social media sites. 

So, for now, I am very content to self-publish. After I publish Twinges, I will probably start reaching out to prospective agents in the hopes of landing a more financially lucrative deal for one of the books after that, but we'll see. 

If you are interested in my books or other writings and want to follow my journey online, I have a Facebook page @TammyMarshallAuthor, and I have an author site on Instagram, too, #tammymarshallauthor. Here is the link for my website: https://tammymarshallauthor.wordpress.com

From there, you can find links to my Amazon page, you can read some of my columns, there are links to my two blogs, and you can even contact me.

 Thank you for reading this. I certainly hope you will consider reading my books, too.

Shtick this! Regretting my regret.

Regretfully, I must admit that regretting is my biggest regret. Sometimes, regret consumes me, and I feel extremely depressed. I get mad at myself for wasting my time, my energy, and my thoughts on useless regret, but Regret just laughs at my anger and takes another spin through my mind.

So, in an attempt to reprogram my brain and to expel Regret from my life, I'm going to put a different spin on my regrets and turn them into warm fuzzies (I'm a child of the 80s when that term came into vogue).

The biggest regret I have and that I can't quite seem to rid my psyche of is that I stayed married as long as I did. I think about all those years that could have been spent without him. I'd have far less debt burdening my life, that's for sure, and I could really use less debt right about now. Long ago I stopped regretting marrying him outright because then I wouldn't have my two kids, but I can't seem to stop regretting staying with him as long as I did. Making this giant regret into a warm fuzzy of some sort continues to elude me, but I'll give it a try. 

Hmmm , , , , , , , , , , , , without those agonizing twelve years, I wouldn't truly appreciate every day of freedom since our split? This is true. Not sure if it makes me feel all warm, though. Let's try another approach. In the nine years since he moved out, I no longer live under a soul-crushing sense of dread, I am free of his extreme narcissism, and my world has expanded in ways I could never have imagined or experienced with him. I've traveled more, I got a motorcycle, I met Kim, I've seen my kids work toward their dreams, I have time for new hobbies like painting, etc. That's much better, and I sense Regret wincing a bit at my new outlook. 

When Regret visits me, I find myself first getting so despondent at the feelings he brings. The main one is total disappointment in myself for wasting those years. I dwell on where I could be now if I hadn't stayed in a horrible marriage so long. That disappointment almost crushes me at times. Even when I look around at all I have and all I've accomplished, I get caught up on the wasted time, and then I get even more mad at myself for wasting more time fixating on the time I wasted. Aargh, it's a vicious cycle. When I'm not disappointed in myself, I'm angry at myself and at him. Naturally, I'm angry at myself for staying so long, but I'm angry at him for becoming someone so different from the person I married, or at least the person I thought I'd married. Then I get mad at myself again for wasting time being mad about it all. Aargh! Vicious cycle strikes again.

The second biggest regret I have is that I didn't leave teaching sooner to focus on writing. I don't regret teaching, but I do regret the last four years of it. Financially, I couldn't leave sooner. Financially, I still shouldn't have left. Psychologically, emotionally, mentally, etc., I should have left four years ago or even longer ago. I look at what I've managed to do in just under two months, and I know that if I'd had those four years under my belt by now, maybe I'd be a firmly established author. I'll never know because I didn't give myself those years to write. It's easier to turn this regret around because I did do some good things at school the past four years, and I needed the money to help my kids and my friend, Silvia; but, I still feel Regret niggling at my brain when I think about the time I wasted. Then, again, I get mad at myself for wasting my time, and Regret sits back and laughs and laughs at me.

So, I'm writing this post to effectively tell Regret to take a hike, to go fly a kite, and to take a long walk off a short pier. 

From this moment on, I regret nothing! Nothing! 

All the extra weight I'm carrying? Ha! It shows I'm not starving. It's extra protection against a lengthy illness. It makes me super buoyant when swimming. Everyone should be so lucky as to be chubby like I am!

The friends and family I love who have passed away these past few years? Hmmmm. Well, I certainly don't regret a minute of time I spent with them or that I knew them. I'm a better person for knowing them. They live on through me because I still talk about them. I miss them, and missing someone simply shows that you have a great love for that person, so I'm lucky to have loved them and to have been loved by them.

The books I should have written by now? "Come on," Regret whispers in my ear, "don't tell me that you don't regret that you're not the established writer you wanted to be by now? After all, you're over 50, for Pete's sake. You should have accomplished more by now." First, allow me to duct tape his mouth shut. There.

Part of the beauty of writing a book is that the book can live on long after you're gone, so I'm hopeful that some of my books will still be read years and years into the future. With luck, I have years of writing ahead of me, so I'll be established enough by the time I'm old. Well, by the time I'm older, at least.

Those twelve years I wasted? All right, let's tackle that big regr . . . uh, dilemma. I understand and have a level of empathy for others that I might not have had if I hadn't suffered. I now know everything I don't want in a significant other. I have fodder and material for, like, a million stand-up comedy bits and stories should I choose to milk my experience. Many of his own friends and family like me better. If I can survive marriage to him and come out of it stronger, wiser, and happier, then I can survive other bad things.

So, I hereby renounce Regret. I permanently kick it out of my life, my mind, and my heart. I'm this guy with better spelling and a better choice of tattoo placement. 

 

Shtick This! Help Silvia!

Twenty-four years ago during the 1997-98 school year, I hosted my first exchange student, a wonderful girl from Mexico named Silvia Realpozo Sanchez. Afterwards, I went on to host students from Spain, Italy, Germany, and the Czech Republic, and I loved all of them, but without that first phenomenal experience with Silvia, I probably wouldn't have hosted again or as often as I did.

Since then, Silvia has simply become part of my family and my dearest friend. Her own parents died in a car accident a short time after her stay with me, and I started going down to Mexico to attend family events with her as a sort of second mom, but we're only eleven years apart in age, so I'm more like an older sister, really. She's also come back here for many short visits (the photo is from her first return visit after Sam was born in 1999), an extended stay, and then for two years as an non-traditional student at Norfolk Community College. 

She planned to stay longer and get a second degree, but her health dictated otherwise. Last November, after a lengthy stay in the hospital, Silvia had to return to Mexico to receive affordable dialysis because her kidneys shut down and, essentially, died. Since then, she has had a roller coaster ride dealing with many issues, but her need for a kidney transplant remains. Without one, her life is very limited because she has to receive dialysis three times a week. Naturally, that makes having any sort of normal job difficult for her as well.

She's managed to get by, barely, and there is hope that her cousin will be able to donate a kidney to her, but Mexico recently suspended all transplants with a surge in covid cases. So, for now, she must remain on dialysis.

As I mentioned before, dialysis in Mexico is affordable at least. Here, in the U.S., it can run up to thousands of dollars per treatment. In Mexico, it costs her $100 per treatment, which is still a lot to handle for her since she can't find steady work. Then, there is the upcoming cost of the transplant, if and when it finally happens, to contend with.

I am doing what I can to help her, naturally. I always will. She is my family and my friend and one of the best persons I've ever known. I miss having her around, and I hope to travel to see her soon, but since I've left teaching to focus on my writing and I'm not old enough yet for my monthly retirement pension to kick in, my finances don't allow for as much as I'd like to do for her.

I'm writing this to ask anyone who knows Silvia and how wonderful she is, to please help me to help her. She still has her bank account here from when she was a student. I've been holding off on closing it because it's a way for me to easily transfer money to her. I asked her to see if she could use her debit card from it for a dialysis treatment, so she gave it a try, and it worked.

I can transfer money straight to her account from mine. If you are someone who would like to help, you have some options. 

First, you can personally give me money that I can deposit in her account either by coming to my house and handing me the money or by sending me a check. I will provide my address to anyone who messages me to ask for it. 

Secondly, if you live in or near Neligh, you can go to Heritage Bank and directly deposit money into her account in person. Naturally, you can totally trust me to do that for you, but I understand if you would prefer to do it yourself and have a receipt to acknowledge it.

Third, Silvia is setting up a GoFundMe page, but as of this writing, she hasn't yet. A part of her is resisting doing it because she doesn't like to ask for help. That's another reason I'm writing this -- I'm asking on her behalf. I don't much like the GoFundMe possibility myself, either, but that's mostly because that company keeps a small part of each donation, and I'd rather Silvia benefited from every dime that people want to give her. 

Fourth, and I only offer this as an option for people who like to get something for their money, I will give her my earnings from any book or Mary Kay product that you come to my house to buy in person from me for this purpose. It won't amount to a lot, unless you want a lot of my books or a lot of products, but every dollar helps.

In the past three years, I've lost my best friend from college to cancer at the age of 50 (Silvia went to Dallas with me four summers ago so I could spend some time with that friend --see above photo -- and she attended that friend's funeral with me and helped me grieve), one of my best friends at work who was also one of the best men I've ever known to cancer and a surgery gone wrong at the age of 40, my boyfriend's son to suicide at the age of 32 (Silvia was there for us through all of that), my beloved uncle to covid at the age of 60 (you can read about him in an earlier post on this site if you want, and Silvia was there for me during that time, too, even though she was already getting sick but didn't know it yet), and my dear aunt only a few days after my uncle. There have been others, too, and we have all experienced loss these past few years, so I'm, by no means, alone in dealing with grief.

Silvia is only 41, and she has a daughter who needs her (the following photo is of Silvia and Constanza, her daughter and her world). She and I had hopes of one day opening a retreat for writers, artists, yoga, etc., in Mexico, so that was part of her reason for getting a business degree. She also has so many other aspirations that, for now, aren't possible until she gets a kidney, so she can travel with ease again.

She and I have seen and done a lot together. We've been to Jaltipan, Xalapa, Veracruz, Cancun, Playa del Carmen, Cozumel, Chichen Itza, Progreso, Holbox Island, Merida, and many other places in Mexico as well as here in the U.S., but there are so many others we still want to see. We've climbed ruins, swum with whale sharks, jumped into cenotes, and laughed until we cried over a giant takeout bag in a Chili's in Merida. 

At the end of this, I'm going to put some of photos of Silvia and me over the years, so you can see how much she's been in my life. This was the last photo we were able to take together the night before she flew back to Mexico. I've missed her every day since. 

If you know her, consider yourself lucky because she's one of the sweetest people you could ever know. If you don't know her, help me to help her stay healthy until she can get a kidney, and then we'll be sure to visit, so you can get to know her. 

Any amount, seriously any amount, would be appreciated. It's $100 U.S.dollars -- well, specifically $102.46 -- (2,000 pesos) per dialysis, three times per week. If you can help, just let me know. Thank you from the bottom of my heart.

Love, 

Tammy