For Those Who Read, or Write, or Want To - Celebrate!

Although Sylvia Plath won a Pulitzer Prize for her book “The Collected Poems,” she is perhaps best known for “The Bell Jar.” 

Alfred A. Knopf, Plath’s first American publisher, passed on “The Bell Jar” twice. But through the author’s strong belief in her talent and her dedication, she acquired a measured response to such brushoffs. 

Plath understood that professional writing meant courting criticism — first from editors, then reviewers, and finally readers. Rather than fretting over responses she couldn’t control, Plath celebrated each time she was vulnerable enough to send her work out into the world.

 

From Steven King:

 "If you wrote something for which someone sent you a check, if you cashed the check and it didn't bounce, and if you then paid the light bill with the money, I consider you talented."

 

I've neglected you guys over the past couple of week. I'm sorry about that. How can I make it up to you? And yet I turn to you when I am in a quandary about writing. I figure you guys understand, for sisnce you are here, I figure many of you are either writers or want-a-bees. 

 

 I have put out two children's books within the past week, and I'm been struggling to get them properly formatted for Amazon to publish. 

 

This morning, in preparation for the paperback edition of The Incredible Yellow School Bus, I wrote a dedication to my daughter Nina:

 

 For my beautiful daughter Nina.

 I wrote this story when my daughter was in the first grade and read it to her class. (It kept their attention.) Ever since, Nina has often admonished me by saying, “Mom, publish the school bus story.”

 But I didn’t, until now.

 It was my first fiction story of any length, and I thought I needed to learn more before anyone read it. Often, I would dink with it and make it worse.

 Now, these many years later, Nina says to me, “Mom, sometimes a person’s first work is the best. And then we think we ought to make it a certain way and lose the purity of it.” See, she grew into a wise adult.

 And then I wrote Incredible's sequel, A Journey Into Inner Earth, and that was a fun write and read. 

 Thanks Nina. This is for you.

Mom

A click on the cover picture will take you to the book on Amazon. 

 

 

 

 I thought perhaps you could relate, how you first write something in the throes of enthusiasm, and then doubt yourself. Or else have let it sit so long you're afraid it has dried up. Also, some say,  that gremlins come in during the night and dink with your prose. They probably dink with your poetry too, but I'm not a poet, so I can't say. I admire you who write it though.

  

And from Amazon:

While Amazon’s algorithms are somewhat of a mystery, it’s a known truth that when your book accrues a certain number of reviews, or a lot of reviews in a short amount of (unspecified) time, Amazon kicks into gear multiple promotions for your book. Free promotion that would probably cost a fortune if you had to foot the bill.

 Every time your book is reviewed, the algorithms are updated, and your book’s internal ranking increases.

 They say the magic number is 50 reviews. Wow.

 

A special Thanks.

  So, my dear ones, for anyone who will kindly write a review,  I will thank you profoundly. For the first FIVE people--kids or adults--to write a review for either or both books, I will send you a  tee-shirt as a special THANK YOU.

 (I will need your NAME, ADDRESS and size. Adult or child, S, M, L, XL, 2XL.)

 I’m providing links to review the books, for it took me a while to learn how to do it, and that will, hopefully save you time.*

To write a review for The Incredible Yellow School Bus, please click on the below picture: This will take you to the Amazon review page. 

For A Journey Into Inner Earth, click below:

 

 

*To go the Amazon route, go to the item you want, SCROLL WAY DOWN on the left side of the page, past other books until you come to this:

 

Thanks for reading. You know I love you,

Jo