Guest Blogger - Mark R. Hunter
May. 27th, 2014 01:45 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
jana_denardoWelcome a friend of mine, Mark Hunter with his new book No-Campfire Girls, which sounds like a lot of fun and it helps support a good cause.
So giving the reins over to Mark.
Now that I have another book coming out, The No-Campfire Girls, people want to know what the writing life is really like. This is how it is:
Thanks to continually typing when I should rest it, my entire right arm is killing me because of unhealed tendonitis.
I’m in a state of perpetual exhaustion from trying to jumpstart a fiction writing career while also working a full time and part time job.
I’m twenty pounds overweight from writing instead of exercising.
With more than half a dozen manuscripts making the rounds of publishers and agents, I’m in a state of perpetual stress akin to sitting on death row, waiting for the governor to call.
I love it.
Weaving stories is my life; I wouldn’t give it up for anything. In jags of depression I’ve given up trying to get published for months at a time, but I’ve never stopped writing. Some people claim they love their jobs so much they’d do them for free, but writers actually live that cliché. If J.K. Rowling showed up with an industrial strength time-turner right now (You know she has one) and broke it to me that I’ll never make another dime writing fiction, I’d give stories away for free.
(Naturally, I hope it doesn’t come to that. Uh-oh—who’s that at the door?)
There are a lot of great things about writing. It’s therapeutic, for one thing. Get into it with a coworker? In your next book, kill them off. Horribly.
You can write anywhere, especially in these days of electronic devices of all sizes. My wife put an app on my iPhone that allows me to write. On my phone. When I was younger, the only thing you could do with your phone besides making calls was smash it over the head of an intruder. I used to always have with me either a book or my laptop, but now I can have both in my hip pocket. Of course, I have to have my other pocket free for chocolate—let’s not get crazy.
If you don’t have money for a smart phone or an iPad, you can pick up a notebook for a buck, and you can pick up a pen anywhere that likes to advertise. Stop in the bank, ask them about their rates, walk away with a pen. I have a collection. In a good year you can pick up notepaper from people running for office, if you can call that a good year.
You might say the best thing about writing is the ability to exercise your imagination, but something else is just as good: Meeting other writers.
When I was a kid, back in the olden days when we hacked out fiction on a slab of stone with a piece of charred stick, it wasn’t all that easy to meet other writers. I knew they were out there, because I read their books. As near as I could figure, they all lived in New York, with a few in Chicago and the really odd ones on the West Coast. There were none in Indiana.
Then I met the internet, shook its mousy hand, and said: “When we’re done wasting time, can you take me to other writers?”
And it did.
Turns out the internet is more than cute kittens and ugly sex.
Once you know where to look, you can’t swing a cute kitten having ugly sex without finding writers, although I should point out they don’t like being hit by swinging kittens—even cute ones. I started out on LiveJournal, which is all about journaling, which is writing, but writers are on every social networking site. If there’s an “I hate writing” website somewhere, there’s a guy on it, writing … about hating writing, I assume.
And the best part is, they’re great people. They don’t compete with their competitors: They support them. Imagine that! Do the corner pizza parlors give each other advice and encouragement? Do politicians exchange debating tips?
So when I mentioned my new book, The No-Campfire Girls, what did they do? Spread nasty rumors? Leave bad reviews? Burn the first printing? No. One of the groups I’m involved with online, The Ink-slingers League, came up with the idea of a blog tour to support my release. And here we are, back on Live Journal … blog touring, thanks to the support and encouragement of fellow writers.
And if that’s not a good reason to stay sore, tired, stressed and unhealthy, I don’t know what is.
Blurb: Fifteen year old Beth Hamlin is horrified to discover her beloved summer camp must go without campfires this year, due to the fire hazard from a drought. At first she and her friends try to perk up the other campers, but Beth isn't one to just sit (or swim, or boat, or horseback) around, when there's a challenge to be met.
Beth discovers her new cabinmate, Cassidy, knows a local Cherokee who claims the ability to do a rain dance. Now all they have to do is trick the Camp Director into letting Running Creek do the dance there, avoid the local bully and a flying arrow or two … and keep from getting caught plotting with the local fire captain on a forbidden cell phone. With luck southern Indiana will get a nice, soaking rain, and when it's over Camp Inipi can have proper campfires again.
But when things go horribly wrong, the whole area is endangered by a double disaster. Now Beth, Cassidy, and the rest of their unit may be the only people who can save not only their camp, but everyone in it.
When Beth's big brother told her being a teenager could be rough … he probably didn't have this in mind.
*A portion of the proceeds of this book will benefit Friends of Latonka, an organization made to save a summer camp in Wappapello, Missouri, until the fundraising deadline.*
Buy it here
So giving the reins over to Mark.
Now that I have another book coming out, The No-Campfire Girls, people want to know what the writing life is really like. This is how it is:
Thanks to continually typing when I should rest it, my entire right arm is killing me because of unhealed tendonitis.
I’m in a state of perpetual exhaustion from trying to jumpstart a fiction writing career while also working a full time and part time job.
I’m twenty pounds overweight from writing instead of exercising.
With more than half a dozen manuscripts making the rounds of publishers and agents, I’m in a state of perpetual stress akin to sitting on death row, waiting for the governor to call.
I love it.
Weaving stories is my life; I wouldn’t give it up for anything. In jags of depression I’ve given up trying to get published for months at a time, but I’ve never stopped writing. Some people claim they love their jobs so much they’d do them for free, but writers actually live that cliché. If J.K. Rowling showed up with an industrial strength time-turner right now (You know she has one) and broke it to me that I’ll never make another dime writing fiction, I’d give stories away for free.
(Naturally, I hope it doesn’t come to that. Uh-oh—who’s that at the door?)
There are a lot of great things about writing. It’s therapeutic, for one thing. Get into it with a coworker? In your next book, kill them off. Horribly.
You can write anywhere, especially in these days of electronic devices of all sizes. My wife put an app on my iPhone that allows me to write. On my phone. When I was younger, the only thing you could do with your phone besides making calls was smash it over the head of an intruder. I used to always have with me either a book or my laptop, but now I can have both in my hip pocket. Of course, I have to have my other pocket free for chocolate—let’s not get crazy.
If you don’t have money for a smart phone or an iPad, you can pick up a notebook for a buck, and you can pick up a pen anywhere that likes to advertise. Stop in the bank, ask them about their rates, walk away with a pen. I have a collection. In a good year you can pick up notepaper from people running for office, if you can call that a good year.
You might say the best thing about writing is the ability to exercise your imagination, but something else is just as good: Meeting other writers.
When I was a kid, back in the olden days when we hacked out fiction on a slab of stone with a piece of charred stick, it wasn’t all that easy to meet other writers. I knew they were out there, because I read their books. As near as I could figure, they all lived in New York, with a few in Chicago and the really odd ones on the West Coast. There were none in Indiana.
Then I met the internet, shook its mousy hand, and said: “When we’re done wasting time, can you take me to other writers?”
And it did.
Turns out the internet is more than cute kittens and ugly sex.
Once you know where to look, you can’t swing a cute kitten having ugly sex without finding writers, although I should point out they don’t like being hit by swinging kittens—even cute ones. I started out on LiveJournal, which is all about journaling, which is writing, but writers are on every social networking site. If there’s an “I hate writing” website somewhere, there’s a guy on it, writing … about hating writing, I assume.
And the best part is, they’re great people. They don’t compete with their competitors: They support them. Imagine that! Do the corner pizza parlors give each other advice and encouragement? Do politicians exchange debating tips?
So when I mentioned my new book, The No-Campfire Girls, what did they do? Spread nasty rumors? Leave bad reviews? Burn the first printing? No. One of the groups I’m involved with online, The Ink-slingers League, came up with the idea of a blog tour to support my release. And here we are, back on Live Journal … blog touring, thanks to the support and encouragement of fellow writers.
And if that’s not a good reason to stay sore, tired, stressed and unhealthy, I don’t know what is.
Blurb: Fifteen year old Beth Hamlin is horrified to discover her beloved summer camp must go without campfires this year, due to the fire hazard from a drought. At first she and her friends try to perk up the other campers, but Beth isn't one to just sit (or swim, or boat, or horseback) around, when there's a challenge to be met.
Beth discovers her new cabinmate, Cassidy, knows a local Cherokee who claims the ability to do a rain dance. Now all they have to do is trick the Camp Director into letting Running Creek do the dance there, avoid the local bully and a flying arrow or two … and keep from getting caught plotting with the local fire captain on a forbidden cell phone. With luck southern Indiana will get a nice, soaking rain, and when it's over Camp Inipi can have proper campfires again.
But when things go horribly wrong, the whole area is endangered by a double disaster. Now Beth, Cassidy, and the rest of their unit may be the only people who can save not only their camp, but everyone in it.
When Beth's big brother told her being a teenager could be rough … he probably didn't have this in mind.
*A portion of the proceeds of this book will benefit Friends of Latonka, an organization made to save a summer camp in Wappapello, Missouri, until the fundraising deadline.*
Buy it here
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2014-05-27 07:45 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-27 07:57 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 05:22 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 03:12 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 06:49 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 02:50 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-27 09:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 05:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 06:45 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-27 11:49 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 05:34 am (UTC)Mark
Date: 2014-05-28 01:27 am (UTC)Re: Mark
Date: 2014-05-28 01:33 am (UTC)Re: Mark
Date: 2014-05-28 05:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 02:26 pm (UTC)Of course, then the internet came along and alerted me to the fact that there was a huge community of writers out there, and my writing has improved dramatically.
Great post, Mark. I especially loved the comparison to death row inmates. :)
no subject
Date: 2014-05-28 03:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2014-05-29 06:47 am (UTC)Thanks!