Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp- Chapters 5, 6

cover design by Farah Evers

I've spent time writing over the weekend and today and have two more chapters done of Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp.

Even though it's a bit unorthodox to have the cover design done so early, I love having it to show with every update about the writing. It actually inspires me to write, having Paddy looking at me so plaintively! I'm hoping it makes you curious too.

Here's an excerpt from Chapter 6:

    The café had been modernized fairly recently. Probably its location on the edge of a larger town helped build the customer base and bring in enough income to cover occasional renovations. There was an entryway with heavy glass doors, and a bulletin board choked with business cards on the wall. Two posters with cars for sale, and another asking for help to locate a lost dog were also taped to the wall. I wondered if someone had taped up pictures of Angelica eight years ago.

For some strange reason I struggled a lot with chapter 5. It's short and straightforward, but it took me a whole afternoon to write. Chapter 6 just sort of rolled along. Writing is like that!

You can buy book 1, News from Dead Mule Swamp, for only 99¢ at Smashwords, or Amazon

Hey- at least click the Google+ button if you like this!

Publicity is Always Good!

Joan H. Young with a print mock-up of News from Dead Mule Swamp (photo by Rob Alway)

This week, I was interviewed by Rob Alway, editor of the newly created (some might say resurrected from a long defunct print paper) Mason County Press. Rob hopes to bring an online news magazine of mostly human interest stories to life for Mason County, Michigan.

Rob thought that my publication of News from Dead Mule Swamp was newsworthy, and I'm not about to argue with that!

He did a good interview, which you can read at Joan Young Begins a New Adventure- Writes First Mystery Novel

Next week I begin writing a regular column for Mason County Press, too!

You can buy News from Dead Mule Swamp, for only 99¢ at Smashwords, Amazon

Cover for Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp

I wasn't sure that I could get the cover for Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp created as cleanly as the one for News from Dead Mule Swamp, all by myself. I decided to give Farah Evers' design services a try, as she has designed some great covers for other members of Accentuate Writers.

I told her what I had in mind, and she immediately "got it." We did about four rounds of editing until we were both happy with the design. Here it is!



I highly recommend Farah if you need a book cover that is professional and reasonable. Whether you have a concept in mind, or even need someone to help you start from scratch on a graphic representation of your book, she can do the job!

Visit Farah Evers' web site. This link takes you to her graphics services page.

New Regular Writing Opportunity

Today, I met with Rob Alway, who has (very) recently launched a local on-line news magazine called Mason County Press.

He's looking for quite a few regular columnists who can fill any number of niches, and I'll be writing about quiet outdoor recreation in West Michigan. No surprise there, right?

We're still working on the exact name of the column, but it will probably run on Thursdays.

Rob hopes to attract readers who are looking for human interest stories in and around Mason County, Michigan. He's not trying to compete with the Ludington Daily News as a purveyor of hard news. There used to be a print newspaper called the Mason County Press. It covered more of the small towns in the county than the News could, or still can. Rob hopes to bring back some of that small-town flavor.

He also plans to make good use of the kinds of advantages there can be by designing for the web right from the beginning. Rob says "We are a county of communities, each separately unique and each linked by together by an incredible spirit of kindness and pride." Check it out!

Submission to Glimmer Train

Well, I worked up some courage and submitted a short story to Glimmer Train.

"One of the most respected short-story journals in print, Glimmer Train Stories is represented in recent editions of the Pushcart Prize, New Stories from the Midwest, O.Henry, New Stories from the South, Best of the West, and Best American Short Stories anthologies."

There are contests every month. For a $15 entry fee you are buying a shot at a $1500 first prize. Some months you can also do standard submissions, which are free, but you would only get $700 if your story is accepted. Even my ego isn't large enough to think I'd win first place, so I saved the $15 and did a standard submission.

I entered the story that didn't place in the contest I sent it to last fall. This is not a blind submission, so I can say that the title is "The Room with No Name."

I can also say that the story is much better than it was in October. It's amazing what a few months away from a piece can do for it. I had thought it was great! Today, I realized that it had way too many adverbs, several trite expressions, and too many long sentences. It could probably be improved even more. But I feel as if I've done as much as I can with it for now, and I've sent it out once again, to try to make its way in the world.

Some Painful Editing

After getting feedback from my writing support group, I realized that I needed to make a major change in the beginning of Paddy Plays in Dead Mule Swamp.

I had thought that Ana could become involved in the lives of the Corliss Leonard family through becoming a tutor with the adult literacy program. But then I learned that someone with this program would never be sent to a student's house. So I had to backtrack and change all of that. It's going to be fine.

The church can still sponsor the literacy program, and Corliss can still have signed up. I changed it so that Ana has volunteered to find out what else the family might need. This actually gives her more latitude to visit their house, and Corliss would still want to talk to her about the whole situation.

The painful part comes in because I have now spent a lot of time just reworking four chapters that were already pretty well done. O well, they needed some other work too. There was too much exposition, and not enough interaction between characters. It's tricky to introduce a serial character in subsequent books without boring familiar readers to death, and yet getting in enough detail to fill in new readers.

The comments from the West Side Gang have been very helpful!

You can buy book 1, News from Dead Mule Swamp, for only 99¢ at Smashwords, Amazon, or iWriteReadRate.

Writers Weekly Short Story Entry

We received our length and topic paragraph at noon Central Time today. Length is not to exceed 850 words. Entries are due by noon Sunday. The theme is publicly posted, so I can share it.

"Blue ice stretched to the horizon, fading into the blinding rays of another waning winter sun. She shivered violently as the shifting mass groaned under her feet. She instinctively glanced down, looking for cracks under the transparent sheen. Suddenly, she tensed and dropped to her knees. Desperately clawing at the ice, she screamed... "

The deal is... we don't have to use this exactly. We don't even have to use it very specifically. But, the essence of the scene must be in the story so that the judges can be certain the story was written for this contest.

Writers Weekly likes unpredictable tales with surprise endings. They have a whole page full of trite plots that they see over and over again. Writers are urged to skip these, as stories using them will go nowhere.

I spent about an hour contemplating a plot. One thought jumped out at me, but I had to figure a way to turn it into a story. Once I had the scenario, the first draft was easy.

I liked it. Then I read it over a few more times and decided that I didn't like it. Then I decided it was trite, after all. I mean... all stories can be reduced to one of a handful of plots. Fussed about that for a few hours. Finally changed one line, and now I'm feeling better again.

Time to sleep on it. Hopefully, I'll still be satisfied in the morning and will submit it!