The Underneath the Juniper Tree Anthology is coming soon! Can’t wait!
It’s moments like these that remind me why I work hard on my passions for no money and little recognition. Moments like these:
It’s coming, friends.
Good writing comes first because no amount of marketing will salvage a poorly crafted book.
By Lyn Horner
I’m sure you’ve all heard this before but it bears repeating. When you publish an e-book, expect to spend as much time on marketing as you spend writing the next book, especially if you’re new on the publishing scene. In order to get the most from promotional efforts, it’s wise to pick and choose where you’ll invest your precious time. Today I’ll share some suggestions gleaned from two successful e-book authors.
Most writers have heard of John Locke, the New York Times Best Selling Author who was the first self-published author in history to sell one million Kindle books. Last year he published How I Sold 1 Million eBooks in 5 Months, a helpful guide I highly recommend. It reveals how the author built a loyal following of readers who promote his books for him. Before Mr. Locke explained his marketing system, he listed several…
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OUR GREAT EMU ADVENTURE
Steve Pisturino tries to capture a lost emu wandering down Chinle Road in Golden Valley, Arizona.
Our great EMU adventure began when the neighbor’s dogs started barking at something in the field across the road. We figured it was the coyote that comes to drink water in our front yard. Boy, were we wrong!
Racing through the desert was a prehistoric-looking creature with long legs and a long neck that looked tired, hungry, and thirsty. I don’t know how long or how far he had run, but the temperature was at least 110 degrees outside, the noontime sun burned with fierce intensity, and the only water available came from human sources.
My husband grabbed some water and followed the animal in his truck while I got on the phone and called every agency I could find in the phone book. The standard response? “We don’t handle emus.” It didn’t matter that the creature was going to die without food, water, and shelter. Frustrated, I called the local newspaper and reported what was happening. Happily, one of the reporters also got on the phone and began calling people.
I finally got hold of a local animal rescue sanctuary, and the owners told me that if we could corral the emu, they would come and get him! Finally! Results!
By that time, my husband had returned home. He had offered him water, but Big Bird ignored it and ran off — luckily, into a residential neighborhood. We took off in the truck and scoured the neighborhood, hoping to find him, capture him, and send him off to the animal sanctuary. We finally found him wandering down a dirt road, tired and worn out.
As you can see in the above photo, my husband tried to befriend him and lasso him with a soft nylon rope. But the animal wasn’t going for it and took off again into the desert. I ran after him, trying to herd him back to the road. Once or twice, I got close enough to touch him. He never tried to bite or kick me and seemed friendly enough. He was obviously accustomed to humans. But he was scared and didn’t know his way home.
I chased him to the edge of a wash. Big Bird realized that the sides of the wash were too steep, and he let me herd him along the edge and back to the road. Several times he looked back at me with a glint in his eye, like it was some sort of game, and I had high hopes that eventually he would stop and let me catch him. That was an idealistic thought!
Back on the road a man in a red truck offered the bird water, but once again he ignored it and headed on down the road. My husband parked his truck and threw me the rope. Finally, I got close enough to the bird to throw my arms around him and hang on for dear life. I managed to loop the rope around his neck, but I was so scared of hurting him, I let it hang loose.
My husband asked me, “Okay, now we’ve got him, what are we going to do with him?” Good question! The man in the red truck had taken off, and we had nobody to help us. We decided to walk Big Bird back to the truck and somehow get him into the back.
When we got back to the truck I told my husband, “You get behind him and push.” He reluctantly grabbed the back end of the bird and tried to push him up into the truck.
Big Bird bolted, gouged my left ankle with his huge toenail, knocked me flat on my back, and ran off into the desert!
Hot, tired, and thirsty, I laid in the dirt with the sun in my eyes and waited for the stars to stop swirling around my head.
As my husband helped me up I said, “I’m done. I can’t do anymore.” Beaten, bruised, scuffed, cut, dirty, sweaty, and stunned, we drove home in defeat.
To this day, we don’t know where the emu came from or where he ended up. We suspect that somebody who didn’t want him anymore let him loose in the desert. A cruel thing to do in the hot summer! At the very best, somebody found him and gave him a home. At the very worst, coyotes attacked and killed him. Even as I chased him through the desert, vultures circled overhead, waiting for a fresh kill.
Was it worth it? Even though he injured me, and we weren’t able to catch him, I feel happy that we at least tried to help this poor creature. I have the satisfaction of knowing that the newspaper reporter tried to track down the owner.
And I have a great story to tell my future grandkids.
Dawn Pisturino
Copyright 2012 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved. Photo by Dawn Pisturino.
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A Writer 24/7
by Dawn Pisturino
Adopting the writer’s mantle places us instantly in the spotlight. Everything we say, write, and do is being evaluated and judged by people we don’t even know.
With this in mind, it’s important to display our best writing at every opportunity.
I recently read a blog post by an English writer that was poorly formatted, riddled with errors, and unprofessional-looking. The purpose of the blog was to dispense writing advice to budding young authors. But what can a young author learn from run-on sentences and words that blend into one another with no punctuation or spaces? Needless to say, I no longer follow that blog.
Many self-proclaimed authors haunt Facebook and other social media sites. They promote their books with quickly-composed, ungrammatical sales pitches that reflect poorly on their abilities as writers. My thought is this: if they can’t write a simple post on Facebook, how can they write the next Great American novel? The answer is obvious.
E-mail tends to be a casual form of communication, but some people take it for granted that it’s okay to write in texting jargon and incomplete sentences. Clear, concise communication should be even more important when writing e-mails. I check my grammar and spelling every time I send out an e-mail because I want my readers to see me as a real writer.
My elderly aunt in Michigan fills her hand-written letters with poetic descriptions of the seasons and countryside where she lives. She’s not a writer, but she knows how to write. She knows how to turn a phrase and color a description so that it sticks in my head. She makes me imagine that once upon a time she wrote poetry in some dark garret. That reminds me–I need to ask her!
Writing is a 24/7 job. And everything we compose should reflect our abilities as a writer. Our readers expect it. Our profession demands it.
Published in the July-August 2012 issue of Working Writer.
Copyright 2012 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.
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Cheap Wine, Dried Salame, and You
My husband was one of those “bad boys” that girls fall in love with and parents deplore. With his black jacket and black leather cap, he looked like a Sicilian gangster out on a hit.
His pent-up anger spilled out of him in dangerous ways. For example, he mapped out a plan whereby every bank in the city of San Francisco could be robbed on the same day.
His dark nature captivated me, and soon, I was hooked for life.
We fought like cats and dogs, but oh, the fun we had! We went treasure hunting in crazy, out-of-the-way places, finding cold hard cash lying in the sand in a cave. We drove up and down the Pacific Coast Highway in his green Fiat X-19, enjoying the sun on our faces, the wind in our hair. We hiked through the redwoods on Mt. Tamalpais and watched the ocean tides under a full moon at Ocean Beach.
One day, singing at the top of his lungs, my husband suddenly stripped down and drove naked with the top of his car open along the 92 over to Half Moon Bay. Thrilled and excited, I watched for the cops, laughing all the way.
On cool, foggy nights, we slipped away into the darkness and made love on sandy beaches. On warm afternoons, we packed a picnic snack: a bottle of Riunite Lambrusco and a link of dried salame. Sun, warmth, ocean air, sand, green grass, and a hazy glow of love and darkness and friendship between us.
After our daughter was born, we included her in our crazy life. Archery at the range on King’s Mountain, afternoon tea at Agatha’s, strolling the malls, tramping through the sand at Half Moon Bay, riding the carousel at the San Francisco Zoo, flying kites down on the Marina.
Those days are over now. Our daughter is grown, and we’re not as skinny as we used to be. We live in the desert in Arizona, work, walk the dog, watch TV, and complain about the heat, wind, and dust. But whenever I go back to California, I relive those glory days of sunshine and salt air. Whenever I spot a bottle of Riunite or a link of dried salame at the grocery store, I remember foggy nights and making love in the sand.
So let me fill my plastic cup with cheap red wine, arrange slices of salame and cheese on a paper plate, and offer this toast to the man I love:
I LOVE YOU, DEAR HEART, MY LOVER, MY BEST FRIEND, MY MENTOR, MY DEVIL’S ADVOCATE, MY DARK KNIGHT — AND I ALWAYS WILL.
Dawn
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Happy Mother’s Day
Translation: “Mother’s Day: I only found an artichoke, but my heart’s in it!”
On May 12, 1907, Anna Jarvis of Philadelphia held a memorial service for her departed mother in Grafton, West Virginia. This simple act of devotion started a trend that spread to every state in the nation.
The second Sunday in May was declared a federal holiday—Mother’s Day— by President Woodrow Wilson in 1914.
It became customary to wear a red or pink carnation to honor living mothers and a white carnation to honor the deceased.
The greeting card companies seized on this opportunity to promote sending flowers, cards, and gifts. In her later years, Anna Jarvis resented the commercialization of Mother’s Day and lobbied to abolish the holiday.
Whether we honor our mothers with store-purchased items or handmade goodies, the idea behind Mother’s Day is still valid. My mother worked hard all of her life. She was unhappy and stressed out much of the time. But she tried her best to love us, protect us, and give us what we needed.
One of my fondest memories is a rainy night in 1965. The school chorus was giving a concert, and the streets in L.A. were flooded. I was afraid that my mother wouldn’t be able to attend our performance. But somehow, someway, she made it, and I always remembered that. Her efforts let me know how much she cared.
She’s gone now, and I miss her, but she suffered from chronic pain and a severe heart condition. Death brought her relief. And I try to remember that even as I wish she were here.
HONOR THE ONES YOU LOVE EVERY DAY OF THE YEAR. I wish now that I had done more for her.
HAPPY MOTHER’S DAY, EVERYONE!
Dawn Pisturino
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a pinko commie under every bush
Patty Hearst
Yes! I admit it!
When I was fifteen years old, I read The Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx.
In an era when hordes of university students were toting around copies of Chairman Mao’s Little Red Book, this wasn’t anything unusual.
Who, after all, could ignore these glorious words?
“The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains.
“They have a world to win.
“WORKING MEN OF ALL COUNTRIES, UNITE!”
Can’t you hear the fist-pounding and finger-pointing in those words? Can’t you hear the stampeding hordes and gunfire behind those phrases?
ALL GLORY TO THE REVOLUTION!
We already had the Women’s Liberation Movement, La Raza, the Black Panthers, the Civil Rights Movement, the Gay and Lesbian Movement, Earth Day, peace-loving Hippies, the Free Speech Movement, Timothy Leary, the Sexual Liberation Movement, and the Anti-Vietnam War Movement. Tune out, drop out. Question authority. Don’t trust anyone over 30. If it feels good, do it!!
The anti-establishment revolution. Black is beautiful. All Power to the People!
“The history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggles . . .”
The rich get richer and the poor get poorer,
The government becomes a little bit bolder
And a little bit colder
And you know that we told her it would happen.
The Left of the Right began to struggle with all its might
And decided to declare a revolution.
It’s the only solution to the capitalist institution,
And you know we’ve got to do it for our own evolution.
written spring 1971
a pinko commie under every bush
ring out the old, bring in the new
the clash of two opposing ideas morphs into Hegel’s dialectic
Cold War, a flash of nuclear destruction
and death.
Copyright 2012 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.
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Spiders — Guardians of the Human Race?!?
“Spider, spider,
You climb so high,
You make your web so high, too.
Spider, spider,
You are a nice friend.
I really like you, too.” — age 8
I grew up in a wild, green place on the banks of the St. Joseph River.
Every spring, the teachers at Washington Township Elementary School crammed our gaping minds with scientific facts about the wonders of nature. On a more romantic level, they portayed spiders as friendly little creatures that ate yucky bugs and protected the human race from deadly disease. Hence the above poem, written in third grade to cement my newfound friendship with the guardians of the human race.
But wait! I hated those creepy, crawly critters lurking in the dark corners of our musty old basement. I hated those clingy, sticky webs hanging like booby traps in the shadows of dank closets, the branches of aging bushes, and the cracks of rotting logs.
What kind of scam were these teachers trying to pull?
My parents terrified me with stories about glossy black widows hatching eggs in the stiff, hairsprayed hairdos of sleeping women. Injected with poisonous venom, these unsuspecting, perfectly-coiffed women never woke up again. What a price to pay for a trip to the beauty parlor!
And the fiddle spider, now known as the brown recluse, became a legendary predator in our household. I never fully understood its deadly attributes until I became a registered nurse and saw for myself the necrotizing wounds that robbed innocent people of their limbs and vital organs.
Friendly spiders? Give me a break. There are good spiders out there, of course, but I avoid ALL spiders at all cost. I guess I’m just funny that way.
Copyright 2012 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.
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Lessons from Lewis Carroll
Have you ever felt like Alice falling down the rabbit hole? It wasn’t until she hit rock bottom that she found the tools to cope with her environment.
Or what about the White Rabbit? His obsession with time makes him sound like a classic Type A personality.
We all know people who act as if they are running a marathon race against Time. The most familiar thing out of their mouths is, “I’m busy. I don’t have time. Not right now. Good grief, I have to be somewhere in five minutes!”
Like the Red Queen, they are always running in place and getting nowhere fast. And no matter how hard they try to catch up, they never will. And no matter how much we try to convince them to slow down, they never will—until they suffer a heart attack or some other misfortune.
Appearing and disappearing like the Cheshire cat, they smile smugly and proudly tell us how terribly important they are; but they may as well be saying, “We’re all mad here. I’m mad. You’re mad.”
“How do you know I’m mad?” said Alice.
“You must be,” said the Cat, “or you wouldn’t have come here.”
Alice had many curious adventures in Wonderland, but even she had her limits. When she finally got tired of the Queen of Hearts screaming, “Off with their heads!” and all the other zany, madcap characters, she stood up and cried, “I can’t stand this any longer!”
And with one pull of the tablecloth, she was back home again with her beloved kitten Dinah.
The wacky world of Lewis Carroll can be seen as a reflection of our own crazy world. And, just like Alice, we sometimes have to pull ourselves in many directions to adapt to our environment. But when we can no longer tolerate living in this way, it’s time to stand up and shout, “Enough is enough!”
Dawn Pisturino
Published in The Kingman Daily Miner, September 11, 2007.
Copyright 2012 Dawn Pisturino. All Rights Reserved.
Related articles
- Alice in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (arlasworld.wordpress.com)
- Friday poem: The Lobster (learntodivetoday.co.za)
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- genericwhitegirl’s CBR book #30: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll (cannonballread3.wordpress.com)
- The Origin of Snark: Original Illustrations from Lewis Carroll’s “The Hunting of the Snark,” 1876 (brainpickings.org)
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Dawn Pisturino's Blog 
by Dawn Pisturino
In 1912, Henry Gilbert released his epic novel, Robin Hood.
In 1922, released was the stunning Ulysses by James Joyce.
Albert Camus brought us Existentialism with The Stranger and The Myth of Sisyphus in the year 1942.
1952, had us all crying over a spider with E.B. White’s Charlotte’s Web.
A Winkle in Time, Something Wicked Comes This Way, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, and Clockwork Orange all blew our minds in 1962.
No one will ever love a book more than The Princess Bride which 1972 brought us.
Roald Dahl owned the year before I was born, 1982, with James and the Giant Peach and The BFG.
In 1992, The Motorcycle Diaries: Notes on a Latin American Journey by Ernesto “Che” Guevara had us rethinking our lives and the journey’s we have taken.
2002 had us evaluating family…
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