Summer Reading Program

 I should have been writing this summer, but the last book I wrote was still my Redwoods book. Instead of writing, I have been traveling From the OR/CA Border Pacific Coast, to visit family in DC and then we had company visit us here and spent a lot of days playing in the Redwoods, exploring the lighthouse and the sea animals.

 Then I had to rip old, ugly carpeting out of my room, and while doing that, thin out the books crowding my bedroom library. The granddaughter thought I should keep all the books and just not put a bed back in. She assured me her dolly said the floor was comfortable to sleep on.

 but her grandpa assured me a bed was necessary so she was out-voted.

 I did keep the first books I ever wrote

 and I took the granddaughter to arts and crafts at our local library to convince both of us that we don't have to OWN every book to be able to enjoy them.

the books I got rid of

The Virdi Goode reading picnic

But of course I got new books. Three books by R. R. Virdi, with lots of super supernatural encounters, mystery, mayhem and adventure joined my own novels and picture books for a pleasant afternoon under the maple tree.

Winning

Thank you to the 660 people who signed up for an opportunity to win an autographed copy of my most recent novel in The Tales of Uhrlin, Duffy Barkley: the Third Charm. The Goodreads Giveaway ended on 4/16/16 with three winners.

Mary from Maryland
Chelene from Ohio
Benoit from Quebec

It is gratifying to see so many people express an interest in one of my books, and while I wish I could give that many away, of course I can't. Still, I hope that some of you who did not win are intrigued enough to buy a copy, and if, like me, cash is too tight, I hope sometime in the future you remember my hero and his ability to have adventures and make friends in spite of what others would consider his handicapping condition. After having a chance to live without it for awhile, of course, Duffy now knows he isn't strong in spite of having cp, but he is strong and who he is, because of having cp. like Duffy, I have learned to embrace all the things that make me who I am, even those I fought against for years.

Again, thanks for your time and attention.

Joy and beauty to all of you.

Camp NaNo and Trying for Lucky 7 while marketing my 6th book

On February 5th, the third Duffy Barkley adventure in Uhrlin, Duffy Barkley: the Third Charm, was published. Now it is being offered on Goodreads with a chance to win one of three autographed paperbacks.

https://www.goodreads.com/giveaway/show/177180-duffy-barkley-the-third-charm-tales-of-uhrlin-3?utm_medium=email&utm_source=giveaway_approved

If you are interested in the other books in the series, they are available on Amazon, or can be ordered by your local bookstore. http://www.amazon.com/Dixie-Dawn-Miller-Goode/e/B004458ES2/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1457742536&sr=1-1

Duffy Barkley: the Third Charm

It gives me a lot of happiness to finally be able to announce that the Third book in the Tales of Uhrlin is available. This has been one long process, and I had fun working on it, but for awhile I felt like I was telling too many stories and had lost the p;ace where they could intersect. Sometimes I plan the story I tell, but this one seemed to be running ahead of me, telling me I was much too slow in following after and jotting down my notes.  Even once the story was completed, I kept making strange things happen in the book formatting so that I was being told it would need a minimum price of $72 !!! 

 Finally I got it to $15 for the paper book and $2.99 on kindle.  So this adventure begins without Duffy. He is 13 in this third book, and his sister Izzy and his Great-Aunt Peg go missing from Peg's farm. Many of the old friends show up again of course, and Uhrlin as always, has danger and adventure enough to make a tale worth telling, and worth reading.

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B01BH38TWO?*Version*=1&*entries*=0

The paperback may not be live until February 8th, which is a good day for me, my Father-In-Law has been a second Father to me for 33 years now and it is his 87th birthday.

This map was the source of my pricing headaches, as trying to have a color map made the printer think the entire book needed to be priced as if the pages were all in full color. 

SeaBee meets a tiny Hippocampus

Winning My 8th NaNoWriMo (But still only have 5 books)

Success!  I am delighted to say that I have finished the first draft of the Third Book of the Tales of Uhrlin.  Duffy Barkley doesn't get to be the star of the show as much in this book, but I had so much fun when it finally started coming together.

trying to remain organized

 When I tried to finish this book in November of 2012, I had written the two earlier Duffy Barkley books. They were different though. In spite of being started in a NaNoWriMo push, they really had been developing over several years of playing with my sons and their friends. This third book was the first attempt when my boys were men, and I had lost the companionship of the children who inspired it. Having seen them graduate from High School, I was proud of them, but uninspired to keep developing this fantasy world without being able to bounce ideas of them and have them say, "What if, this happens?"  Plus those first two books are complicated.  There are two worlds, a timeline that moves back and forth through time, characters and more characters and as the years passed, my brain struggled to hold on to the little details that help with continuity.  I know there are programs to help writers build complicated worlds and keep track of the various threads, but what worked, finally for me, was keeping a word document with my notes, a draft post from this blog with every story line color coded so I could see who had been neglected too long, and an open office file to write the actual book.  So I tried to write this in 2012, and in summer and again. There was always something jangling in my brain, tangling the threads and making me have questions I didn't know the answer to, but this time, it was like all that time had been brewing the ingredients, and aging them and when I sat down this month, my fingers raced to get where they already knew they were going.  I have to edit, re-write, and edit again, so I'm not sure when the final product will be available. But I already love this book.  Finally.

Changes in publishing and letting go while writing

 I have been living with Duffy Barkley in my head since my own sons were children playing on the beach and in the redwood forest with me, and I would tell them stories, based in part upon the places we found ourselves, so the world Duffy finds himself in, shares many details with the Redwood Coast where I raised my sons, and the Northwest Corner of Wyoming where my grandfather, my mom, and I all grew up.  But it also has a lot of details from out lives, blended with real and imaginary things from the books, movies and news of out time.  In short, when my Mom read my fiction, and told me that she could find me on every page, I was only surprised until I thought about it.

I realize there are only so many plots in the world, and it is how we take in the world around us, take it apart, mix it up and give it our own special twist that makes each storyteller still have something only we can share because only we have experienced our unique life.

So in Duffy's world, you can see the fact that I work with handicapped children and the fact that I love being out in nature far more than being in a city, and that I believe there is strength and joy in diversity.  The times have changed since I started telling these stories.   Even the way I write them and share them has evolved. My first manuscript was written on a typewriter, then when I got a computer, scanned page by page into it. Then I had to go through and change everything the scanner had misread, like g's turned into s, or worse.

Then I edited once on screen and printed it out and read it out loud to my husband and both sons, who were in Jr. high by then but went on long car trips with us when they were a captive audience.

Duffy's "first printing" and the "books" I wrote in grade school

While I read, I penned in changes and additions and corrections and then had to fix it on my computer, which by the way was still not online, then print out a copy and take it to the office supply store and have 4 copies printed (which cost over $100 dollars) and then mailed those around to editors and agents, paying postage and waiting months each time.

 When things finally started to change and books could be attached as a pdf file and sent with an email, it was a great relief for my dwindling savings and when I discovered createspace and print-on-demand I was thrilled and terrified.  Could publishing this way ever make sense?  Anyway, I could rough out a cover and get a proof copy from them and see my story as an actual book, for about $7, way less than the stack of loos photocopied pages.

The first proof copy

Even since I did print that novel in 2010, things keep changing, giving both authors and readers more options as time moves quickly in the book world now.  Kindle and Nook readers seemed incredible with their replica of the printed page at first, and now have kept evolving to come in color and interactive, have kept changing what can be done.  I'm slowly evolving and learning some of the new tricks like actually getting my hand drawn map into pic monkey and adding color, but there is so much more to learn, and the skills of other artists and authors and editors keep it exciting.

The most exciting thing of all to me though, is that once my books started finding readers, I had to realize they were not just mine anymore.  I might have given them to the world, but each reader adds their own interpretation, and takes away different things.  If I write that someone is in a house and I'm seeing a cabin, I can't always know how each reader will visualize the house unless I have been really specific, do they see a plank house, a trailer, an apartment?  I don't control Duffy and friends anymore, now they have slipped into the world as surely as my sons have done.

Princess SeaBee and Boo

Talking to book clubs about my book

I like to think of myself as a writer. Ever since I was a child that is one of the happier labels I have applied to myself.  When I was a child, a preschooler, I was a talker.  My Dad said I had been "vaccinated with a record needle and never stopped talking since."  Yet, as I started school, and learned that the other kids didn't like my non stop talking, and the fact that as an only child until just before I started school had created a child with no idea how to play well with others. I got slapped down hard, and rejected many times and it wasn't until the end of high school that I started to make friends and realize that I could both talk and listen.

So in school my best friends were the characters in books, and I have always considered myself an introvert.  It goes well with being the person who observes and records instead of interacting.  I curled up with my notebook, or hunched over a desk, and rarely made eye contact or had to speak.

Oddly enough though, when my brother was born with Down's syndrome and I learned to work with him, I also learned to be a teacher, and to work in front of large groups of children.  But that was separate.  I could talk to a class, and I could write - but I was too introverted to talk about my books out loud, so on-line I talked, in person I listened.  But Marketing books means you have to believe in them, AND you have to be their loudest, most vocal word of mouth advocate.  If I believed someone would love my story, nothing would happen until I would open my mouth and tell them why they would love my book.

Double Time On The Oregon Trail

So I wrote Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog, and very few people read it, even though I loved it, and the ones who did read it were positive.  Then I wrote Double Time on the Oregon Trail, and I started talking about it to 5th grade students who were studying the Oregon Trail, and then to a 5th grade teacher, who passed it to a School District Director of Curriculum who authorized the Instructional Media Center to order a class set of 38 copies. Then another 5th grade teacher convinced her book club to read it and asked me to come to their meeting and talk about it.  I was scared, but brought my handwritten draft, and some research, and some old storied I wrote in 5th grade myself and talked, and they listened and asked questions and it was fun.

 This year I am in a book club myself, and we read The Invention of Wings and ate dinner at one members house, and then read The Orphan Train and ate dinner at another members house, and it was my turn to be hostess, and I never invite people into my old house, decorated in Early American Yard Sale.  But I'm a good cook, so I said I can do it, and we chose my first book, Duffy Barkley and I cooked and they came over.

My old, chilly, very Green living room

 But what did I learn?  I learned you can't point out where the glasses and the garbage can are, and serve the food, and sit down and present about how you wrote a book, or ask the questions you want your readers to answer about what worked and where they loved, or hated my book.  Going into classes as an author presenter has been fun and satisfying.  Presenting in someone else's home as an author at their book club, I was focused and had planned ahead what to tell them and which questions to ask. In my home I kept wandering out of the conversation, and still missed a lot of what they said about my book

Duffy Barkley is Not a Dog

 So, when you want to market your book to book clubs, it is a good idea.  You do get a group of people willing to spend time and money on your book, but if you find yourself thinking about hosting the book club, find a partner, and focus for that evening, on being a speaker, speaking passionately about a book you really believe in.

 Amazon's Dixie Dawn Miller Goode Page - You can view it at:

http://www.amazon.com/-/e/B004458ES2

Twitter link: http://twitter.com/#!/pandorasecho

Twitter # 2;  http://twitter.com/#!/DuffyBarkley  

Author Blog:  http://duffybarkley.blogspot.com/

Blog # 2:      http://echo-echosvoice.blogspot.com/

Book Genre:  Fantasy/Young Adult/children's picture books

Doing what I do, every Fall

I have been reading and writing book reviews.

I have been conversing with other authors and with some of my own readers.  I have been walking on the beach and baking blackberry custard pies.

I have been sweeping my floors, and then not mopping them - which is good right, because California is in a drought and all the spare water we might have had has been being used in the ice bucket challenge.

Nothing against the Ice Bucket Challenge.  Two of my friends lost spouses to that nightmare disease, and an old High school class mate just lost her aunt to it days ago. I'm glad that ALS research is getting attention - and I'm laughing at the videos, or getting teary eyed.

What I am not doing is writing. My Novels that is.

One of the authors whose books I have been reading is Michael Angel and after I read and reviewed two of his Fantasy and Forensics books,

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1014233402?book_show_action=false

http://www.amazon.com/gp/review/R2G6YHCX1G5SXD/ref=cm_cr_pr_rvw_ttl?ASIN=B00K3Y08P0

 he sent me a message thanking me and trying to entice me into reading a book from another series. It is tempting. I enjoyed his books but there is Duffy's third book waiting, or the next Double Time book stuck between Pompeii and Mt. St. Helens.  My books, patiently waiting my attention.

Mr. Angel tells me, "Oh, c'mon, what could a chapter or two hurt? And a third of the way through the book you get to meet a cute pegasus colt named 'Thunderbolt the Wondercolt!'"

Which prompted me to reply, "Yeah, but if I get back into Duffy's world I get to hang with a sea Monster and a Unicorn/centaur cross with attitude. I get to play with micro monkeys on a bouncing forest floor and referee a war between two sides of an Island shipwreck. Why am I resisting? Oh, yeah, because I'm at 60,000 words in book 3 and no road map of where I'm supposed to be weaving all these threads together!"

The Truth is, I do love my own books - but Fall throws me out of my game every year.  After summer with my teacher husband around, and being untethered from clocks, the start of school and alarm clocks and big empty stretches of time suddenly alone, waiting for a call to substitute teach from teachers who are not yet established enough to be comfortable being ill for a day. I feel restless and bored, depressed and excited, like I should have made more out of summer but I have this wonderful new beginning so I should make resolutions and be better at everything this new year.

This book is waiting for me to finish it!

The truth is, there is a new set of students to read my books to, and to convince that they want to be writers, and there are two books getting close to done. There is also an amazing 4 month old granddaughter to snuggle. 

 Life is Good.

writing today

 When I was a kid, I found a pack of labels designed to join the message space on a postcard. I don't know who wrote them but I memorized them and they said,

Can't think, brain numb,
inspiration won't come,
No ink, bum pen,
best wishes
Amen


even then I was learning the curse of writer's block, the longing to write and the abundance of ideas,
until faced with a blank paper
or a keyboard
and then nothing

doodled and watercolored and added photo faces to
add my boys to their favorite book as a poster

giving my own books the spotlight

playing with book covers
and my Betty Award for Duffy

but I am still writing, grocery lists, or postcards or scribbled poems, or facebook posts or book reviews or blogs, and while I do, the ideas and characters in the two books I am working on keep demanding their room in my mind.  And the stories are percolating and taking shape.  Today I wrote on a a snippet from Duffy Barkley: The Third Charm  This book is taking it's time but did some growth today.  I haven't edited it or figured out where the story ends but there are two groups on an Island, at the brink of war because both groups are uncertain how they got there and one group is trying to attract the attention of a passing ship but the other group is terrified of attracting the attention of whomever dumped them all on the Island in the first place

To Boldly Go

So Anyway,
Today's effort . . .

“There are so many things that could still happen here,” Peg said. “There are a multitude of choices, you could erupt into war, which is sure to draw attention if someone is really looking for you. You could leave the Island together, and try to take up the life that was interrupted, maybe never finding out what happened here, or maybe finding yourself in the middle of something bigger than all this by far. Some could stay while others leave. You could continue trying to each live your own way, but that hasn't worked well and has only caused fear and resentment. You could decide to really make this your home and work together to build a new life you all approve of.

“There are a multitude of choices here, and probably more than I am seeing now. Until you make one small change, then the fork in the road is behind you and the path seems to narrow and lead you in a new direction. Maybe you go to someplace better or someplace worse, but you find yourself in a new place even if you never leave the island.”

A few of the women gathered around her looked uncomfortable, and one of those spoke now, “but what if I can't choose? I don't want to make a choice.”

Izzy wondered how Peg would answer that. But she found herself speaking up before her great-aunt said a word, “Ignoring the options and refusing to choose; that's a choice too.”

Another woman spoke, so softly everyone quieted in an effort to hear her nervous voice, “but how can we know which is the right choice? I try to sleep and I can't stop thinking about the problems. My head fills with so many things that I hope for and then the things I'm afraid of chase them out of my mind.”

Peg smiled, “I know exactly what you mean. Sometimes when I want to work out the best choice among many which are overwhelming me, I have found a simple way to make my head clearer. When I am home, I take a walk where the direction of my feet leaves me no choices. So my mind is free to float where it wants to go and I find out which hopes are the ones I really want to see become reality.”

“But if we tried walking like that here, without paying attention, we'd get lost or fall off a cliff or end up in enemy land.”

“Well, I don't think they have to be enemies. That may be the first choice, to choose not to see them as enemies anymore.”

“My farm has a lot of land, So I made a big path to walk. But it only goes in circles, in and out from a center. It is from an ancient pattern that many cultures in out world had even before recorded history. It starts and ends in the same place but flows through many turns. We call it a labyrinth. It is like a maze but a maze has wrong turns in it and false trails and is designed to get you lost. A labyrinth is designed to get you found.”

Peg picked up a stick and smoothed a circle in the sand and began to draw, winding back and forth through the circle in small wedges like the slice of a pie. She wandered in and our of the circle until the design blossomed in the sand like an abstract rose.

The women were intrigued and excited and began to expand on the idea until they decided to lay out their own labyrinth and chose a spot on a hill, far enough away that it had been ignored and unclaimed by both groups.

As the group trudged up the hill to check out the location, there was laughter and soft, excited chatter. Izzy placed her hand in Peg's and gave it a squeeze. Peg looked down at her, “How are you doing?”

“I'm ok, but I wonder if this will matter at all if the rest of the people still want to kill each other off.”

Peg hugged her niece, “It might not make any difference at all, but it probably will. It is hard to ignore the voices of the Mom who raised you, and fed you and cared for you. It is hard to ignore the wife who welcomes you home and feeds you. In our world when men want to cause hatred and make people so angry and fearful that they are willing to die for the cause, they know they need to start telling their stories of hate young, and they know the ones whose voices are heard even more loudly than their own are the moms. That is why so many hate filled extremists, do not want the girls to be educated or the women to realize their own power. A good man is not afraid of a smart woman.”

“You make it sound like all the war is started by men.”

“No, and you know there are good men, and bad women. I don't mean to imply that Dads don't teach their children to be strong and kind, or that women can't be war mongers. I'm old enough that I think in the ways I was taught as a child, and the roles of men and women were more tightly defined then. You are lucky Izzy, you can be anything you want to be and people will judge how you do it. That I wanted to be a woman farmer even without a man around made some people judge me, even hate me, because If I didn't want to be a nurse or a teacher and then a wife and a mom, I must nor be a real woman.”

“Then how did you get brave enough to follow your dream?”

“I came here as a child, well not here to the Island, but to Uhrlin. And I had to be strong, and bull headed and no-one had the same prejudices as in earth in my time or knew me at all, so they waited to see what I did before judging me.”

“But really, my point here is not what men or woman can do, but that a few small voices, men, women or children, speaking calmly, can show sense to the fearful and calm an angry mob.”