A Word Please

I’m excited to have my good friend Stacy Juba here today to discuss her new children’s book The Flag Keeper! Stacy has also generously offered to provide a free e-book download of her mystery novel Twenty-Five Years Ago Today to one lucky commenter! Read on for the details!

Before we talk about Stacy’s new book, I should introduce you:

Award-winning writer Stacy Juba has published books for all ages, including the brand new patriotic children’s book The Flag Keeper. Her recent mystery novels for adults include Twenty-Five Years Ago Today and the upcoming Sink or Swim. Stacy has written more than 2,000 articles and won over a dozen writing awards. Her young adult novel Face-Off was published by Avon Books when she was 18 years old. After years of working as a reporter, Stacy now concentrates on writing fiction and freelancing.

Here’s a look at The Flag Keeper:

Elizabeth may be a little bear, but she treats the American flag with big respect. After Dad leaves for a trip, Elizabeth pledges to raise the flag all by herself and create her own Independence Day. This patriotic picture book is designed to teach children about U.S. flag etiquette through an educational fiction story. It includes discussion questions, flag facts, and an activity. The Flag Keeper is ideal for military families, Girl Scout and Boy Scout troops, classroom and library use, and for anyone who wishes to teach a special child about American flag etiquette. It is a perfect complement to patriotic holidays.
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Stacy took time out of her crazy schedule to chat with me about The Flag Keeper and her foray into writing for children. Here’s what she had to say:

What prompted you to write this particular book?

I wrote this story about seven years ago and got the idea after seeing how patriotic my husband was. He has always loved flags, and after we moved into our house, I encouraged him to buy a flag pole. Once we had the pole installed, I was intrigued by how he always carried the flag outside every morning and brought it inside at night. I didn’t understand why we couldn’t just leave the flag outside in the dark. That would have been a lot easier. He explained to me about U.S. flag etiquette and how the American flag should be brought in at night unless it’s under a spotlight. I never realized that and asked him about other aspects of U.S. flag etiquette. I found out, for example, that if your flag gets worn out, you should give it a proper retirement and get a new one. Every couple years, my husband purchases a new flag and brings the worn one to the local VFW as the post properly retires worn-out flags in a special Flag Day ceremony. I remembered learning about Betsy Ross and the history of the flag in elementary school, but I’d never heard about any of these flag etiquette rules before. I don’t think this is something that’s taught in most schools and decided to fill a niche by writing a children’s book about it. The overall theme is that while you won’t go to jail for breaking these rules, following them displays your respect and makes us all better Americans.

The artwork was done by your father. Is this the first picture book he has seen his work published in?

Yes. Initially, I submitted the story to children’s book publishers, just the text of the book, before he ever did illustrations. Publishers want to use their own illustrators for picture books. I was frustrated that all I got were form rejection letters on the story. With my young adult and adult manuscripts at that time, I had an agent and had some close calls. Even before that, I’d get some personal rejection letters from publishers on my novels, but with The Flag Keeper, it was 100 percent form letters. There was absolutely no interest in a fiction book about flag etiquette. Eventually, I gave up and it became a family project. I had envisioned Elizabeth as a young girl, but my father likes drawing animals and made her into a bear. I thought that added a dimension of sweetness and gentleness to the story. I never intended to independently publish the book, but then I found out how easy it was, especially because my husband is a talented graphic designer.

How do your children feel about being able to sit and read one of mom’s books?

They aren’t that curious about my adult books, but they thought the picture book was neat. I have a college friend with two children and they were fascinated when my first adult mystery novel Twenty-Five Years Ago Today was published. They were asking her questions about the cover and the book trailer video, but she didn’t want to give them much detail since it is a murder mystery. I recently sent them a copy of The Flag Keeper in the mail with a note that said “Here’s a book from Auntie Stacy that you don’t have to wait 10 years to read!” So, it’s nice to share a published book with young readers.

Any plans to write another children’s book?

My father and I did another children’s picture book for fun, but I’m not sure whether I will publish it or not. I don’t foresee myself writing more picture books as I want to focus on launching an adult mystery series. I initially wrote the picture book manuscripts around the time I discovered that I had hypothyroidism. I was absolutely exhausted and was in a brain fog much of the time, and couldn’t focus on writing a novel. Once I finally went on the medication, it took awhile to feel back to normal, but I missed writing. I decided to write a couple of picture book manuscripts as I had several friends who were children’s book authors and it seemed more manageable as I’d be focusing on a much shorter story. I shared the manuscripts with them in online critique groups and they worked with me to make the stories stronger.

I do have a young adult paranormal thriller Dark Before Dawn which I expect to be published within the next couple of years, and within the next five years I plan to reissue an updated version of my 1992 young adult hockey novel Face-Off and possibly publish its never-before seen sequel Offsides. So, I will have future books coming out for a junior high and high school audience.

You typically write in the mystery genre. What did you enjoy most about breaking out of that mold and writing for kids? What did you find the hardest?

I enjoyed analyzing a lot of picture books to get a feel for the genre. It was fun sharing The Flag Keeper manuscript with my critique partners and using my journalistic skills to convey factual information about the flag code into a fiction story. I enjoyed doing the research and compiling the flag facts at the end of the book. My published children’s author friends believed the book was strong enough to be published, so even though I put it on the shelf for a few years, I never forgot about the manuscript. The most rewarding part for me was seeing it brought to life with illustrations, then seeing the terrific job my husband did with the graphic design. He used whimsical stars and stripes lettering and really dressed up the book with small touches here and there.

Even though it was easier for me to focus on a short manuscript at that fatigued time of my life, writing a picture book manuscript was far from easy. The hard parts were using a vocabulary at a child’s level, making sure every paragraph or so gave enough visuals to inspire an illustration, and cutting, cutting, cutting so the story didn’t get too long. I love describing characters and scenery in novels, but in a picture book, it’s the illustrator’s job to convey those details. I had to cut most of my descriptions as they bogged down the story. It’s challenging to write tight, yet give the illustrator enough detail to create the pictures. I also wanted to make sure that the book would be a valuable teaching tool for teachers, school librarians and troop leaders, so that they could read the story to their group and then have a discussion about flag etiquette to help reinforce the information. An educator friend tested the pre-published version on an elementary school class and gave me input on the topics they discussed and a flag-folding activity that the class did. I used her feedback to create discussion questions and include a suggested activity in the book. So, a variety of people lent their feedback to The Flag Keeper to make it as strong as possible. I am excited to finally share the published book with young readers!
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I’ve read The Flag Keeper and it is truly both fun and educational (for kids and adults)! You can check it out on Amazon:

Curious? Here’s a glimpse at both the print copy and Kindle version:

For twenty-five years, Diana Ferguson’s killer has gotten away with murder. When rookie obit writer and newsroom editorial assistant Kris Langley investigates the cold case of the artistic young cocktail waitress who was obsessed with Greek and Roman mythology, she must fight to stay off the obituary page herself.

Leave a comment here before midnight EST on Saturday, October 23. I’ll randomly pick the winner and announce it here. Be sure to use a valid email address and watch your spam folder. I’ll pass the winner’s email address on to Stacy and she’ll provide that lucky person with a free download code!

Now go ahead an leave a comment! Happy reading.

Free stuff always gets attention, doesn’t it?

I am currently giving away downloads of my romantic suspense novel Enemies and Playmates! You can download the e-book free on Smashwords and on Scribd. This is temporary giveaway. I haven’t decided how long I’ll let it run, so download Enemies and Playmates soon!

I’ve also uploaded my other five novels onto Scribd and they are now available as e-book purchases on that site!

https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DarciaHelle

http://www.scribd.com/darciah

Visiting me today is Pablo D’Stair, a man with a brilliant literary mind. His words are meant to be savored. His novels are the type that leave lasting impressions and have you contemplating their meaning long after turning the last page. Pablo has graciously agreed to indulge my questions about his book i poisoned you, his publishing company, and himself.

About Pablo:

Pablo D’Stair is a novelist and the founder of Brown Paper Publishing, an independent literary press. His novels *Kaspar Traulhaine, approximate*, *i poisoned you*, *twelve ELEVEN thirteen* (June 2010) and *witness nothing*(forthcoming October 2010) are distributed free-of-charge upon
request.

About i poisoned you:
After his brother drunkenly confesses that he thinks his own girlfriend has taken a lover, Aldous Kline decides to investigate whether there is any basis for the suspicion.

What begins as an evening of detached voyeurism-following the girl from her work to her apartment to a study date to a late meal-descends into macabre possessiveness as Aldous becomes lost to the amoral whims of his own latent obsession.
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Pablo, thank you for hanging out here with us!

1. First, to settle my own curiosity, why did you choose to have your title – i poisoned you – in all lowercase letters?

Very cool question, actually, and I have a long winded answer I’ll try to keep short. So much of the novel has to do with variants on personal identity—conscious versus unconscious, active versus reflective, victim versus victimizer etc.—and with a sense of turmoil that has no exact pinpoint, no dominating origin and so I felt there needed to be a subtle reflection of this in the title. Keeping both the I and You in the lowercase—neither given a sense of superficial domination, both equally diminutive—I think fit. Already, when the content of the story is reflected on, I felt the oddness of the expression ‘I poisoned you’ –as opposed to “You poisoned me”— was bound to come up, seem a bit off, and with the ‘I’ capitalized this seemed all the more pronounced. This all has to do with the surface story of the novel, but also touches just as much on what I meant to be the more abstracted canvas the novel hoped to present on, but I will not try anyone’s patience with that, here.

2. This is a short novel, more of a novella. Did you ever consider making it a full-length novel?
In general, I always aim my novels to be longer than they turn out—there’s something to the truncation, the cleaving, pairing down to the essentials, that I know is naturally going to happen, but that nonetheless carries with it a tension to the writing. There needs to be a kind of violence in my head, emphasis versus expectation, doubting myself versus an arrogant going ahead unchecked. So, with ‘i poisoned you’ I initially figured it to go about another ten thousand words—not necessarily more would happen, it would start and end in the same place, but I figured I’d spend more time on X or Y or Z point, but the clip of the novel just decided itself, had to be maintained and certain neat little ideas became ancillary. Blah blah blah. I don’t exactly differentiate between novella and novel, except on the most literal level—novella is ‘short novel’, relative to length, nothing to do with import, content, stature or anything. I’ve found in conversation with a lot of writers, that nowadays there is something of a qualitative difference in definition that I can’t be bothered with. Otherwise, artistically, philosophically, I get spooked, worrying that people would think less of ‘The Stranger’ or ‘Doctor Glas’ or ‘Chronicle of a Death Foretold’ or the lot because they are Novella as opposed to Novel, as though they would be made more pertinent or improved-on by adding more words—it would be spooky to me. I used to write much longer things, really, much much longer, and now when I write I can hardly figure out how I managed it. I’d like to write a longer piece, again, I just haven’t found that anything I’m working on would feel correct that way.

3. Aldous, your main character, has an abrupt decline in his mental state, which leads him to do some horrible things. Without giving too much away, can you tell us where your idea for his character came from?

Aldous floated around in this or that form for awhile—I’m writing four novels, which I consider sibling novels (or at least cousin novels) ‘Kaspar Trualhaine, approximate’, ‘i poisoned you’, one about to be available called ‘twelve ELEVEN thirteen’, and there is a great deal of pleasant turmoil in me to balancing some superficial similarities I want—and need—to be there but at the same time not just retreading. Honestly, I abandoned two other ‘versions’ of ‘i poisoned you’ at about ten to fifteen thousand words in each because the tone just didn’t hit right—too ethereal, too contrived, whatever—but Aldous was always principally the same. To me, he is a character who, while of course having a literal, personal identity (one that he is wholly detached from) really only exists as vicarious expression, he exists ‘on behalf’ of someone else, his latent desires or anguishes or passions or guilts directed outward, observed and then rather violently confronted or interacted with. Aldous was always meant to be someone who first acts on behalf of what he perceives as a betrayal against someone and then acts against this act from the point of view of it being a more reprehensible betrayal of someone else. Not to sound too nonsensical there, right? In the novel, to me, Aldous (until the first confrontation) is Bertram, acting more or less a jilted lover, then is Lecia, acting as revenger, both rightfully and at the same time venomously spiteful. All of this, though, honestly is not meant to go as subtext, and so Aldous is, bluntly, for purposes of the story, a kind of trait-less person, a cipher.

4. You wrote this in the first person, from Aldous’ perspective, and you did a masterful job. Was there any specific process or writing routine you followed to get into his character so perfectly?

There’re little things, but nothing I have the talent to make decipherable—no process, just writing when I get a free minute here or there, though there does have to be an acceptance of the text as it goes, the inertia, the constraint, the tension of expressing-within-confines is kind of a technique. It’s odd, because before writing Kaspar I tended to never write first person, almost maniacally would set my stories in third person with the exact same intention of detachment I now use first person for. The shift was built around wanting get into novels that held to surface narratives, tangible, very recognizable progressions of events—my old writing wasn’t about that, so it kind of makes sense there would need to be a fundamental shift to the surface. As it comes to the character—and I feel odd every time I say it—the character (Aldous, Kaspar, whomever) is built very much outward from myself, I serve as a kind of anchor I suppose, so it doesn’t get too adrift from some recognizable humanity, doesn’t become too much a game of symbol, icon, semantic—it also allows me an imperative sense of sympathy for Aldous, that kind of unconscious acceptance of one’s own deeds, no matter how out of orbit they get, as being somehow fundamentally appropriate. If Aldous were a third person expression it would be a matter of a make-believed-true-crime-narrative more than an expressive work of paranoia, of shame.

5. You don’t necessarily offer an explanation for Aldous’ decline. Is this intentional?

Absolutely the thing of Aldous is the lack of explanation—principally it is necessary, because the voice of the piece being his—and he being someone who is behaving without a conscious understanding—he could never seek to give explanation in the traditional sense of motive, of keen psychological observation and so the novel could never offer such things. Even if Aldous could give such observations, coming from him (the one perpetrating the very actions being observed) such statements would seem perversely surreal, especially as he locked-in-the-moment. And picking up from that, there is a fundamental belief of mine that a close observation of anyone’s behavior over a period (without the comfortable remove of time-passed, of distanced observation) cannot help but lead to a sense of surreality—if moment-by-moment (no literary aside, even asides having to be made as time ticks by) the sensation of one’s life are fixedly observed, reasons, causation, connections become difficult to pinpoint, it gets disquieting. The novel portrays something like twenty-four hours, during which time Aldous goes through with what he does and it is the condensed time frame and the over-intimate proximity to him and his actions that I think (and hope) leads to the sense of foreignness, of no-intimacy to him. Were it possible to speak to Aldous a month after the events of the novel, maybe he could offer insights of gravity, explanations—but there cannot be explanation until there is event, and this novel—and much of my work—is about documenting the moment, the shift, the space between where ‘Nothing Has Yet Happened’ and ‘Something Has Already Happened’. I feel like I’m blathering a bit, but I suppose a concise way to get at one of the principles of what I’m writing is that one can have a theory of why one might do something and one can have a theory of why one did do something, but in the instant something happens, in that buffer, neither of these more steadying viewpoints can exist yet and this is where Aldous is speaking from, so in that a lack of explanation is very intentional.

6. I found your writing style – your word choices and phrasing – truly captivating. Is this something that comes easily for you and do you have educational background in writing?

I’ve no educational background, no, I’m just one of the lowly proletariat. My style, I think, it has a lot to do with a penchant for Norwegian literature, Scandinavian literature, French literature—all in translation—things I just happened upon or had handed to me. I really like to think of my writing as trying to get that really wonderful sound of work in translation, so that the phrases all have a distinct and absolute clip, but at the same time are obviously not saying exactly the thing they are saying, they’re stabbing at it, at best, but to a reader what’s the difference? I often think about my love of Knut Hamsun, for example, and the fact that gun-to-my-head I wonder if I feel I’ve actually ‘read Hamsun’ no matter how many translations I get my hands on and the same with a lot of my formative and favorite authors. And there’s something in that I don’t second guess, I treat my novels a bit like transcription, or at least like retelling something that’s been written already by somebody else, nothing to change, nothing to alter, just things to interpret, say how I’d say something someone else might as well have said—I mean, once the work is out, mine is no different to me than Camus’—I might find some passage in ‘The Fall’ I don’t really like (theoretically, not very likely in reality) but when such a thing happens with someone else’s literature I don’t as a reader think it’s a mistake or something to play with, I just think ‘That’s what it is, that’s what was said, how about it, what do I think of it?’ So I just try to be a foreigner to my own literature, which does make it easy and enveloping and I dig the sort of quirk to the style it’s created—it drives some people crazy, however, and I well understand that as well.

7. You founded a small independent literary press called Brown Paper Publishing. Can you tell us a bit about it?

It’s a lot more boring than you’d think. It started with the idea that I had no interest in pursuing publication, little motivation to get my own stuff out, but had this real fixation with independent literature, with Literature-for-the-sake-of-Literature, never found a press that seemed to offer writers what I always wanted from a press for myself and so I cobbled it up. It’s been going about five years now, gone through a lot of permutations and is finally running more or less how I always dreamed it—I just publish work I like, sell the books as inexpensively as humanly possible, give free copies whenever I can (to authors and readers) kick the writers every cent of the very paltry money that comes in and it’s a kick. Anything I can do to get out work I like is what BPP is about, provided the author knows I’m an art pour l’art sort of guy, cannot be bothered with anything remotely sniffing of commerciality—not that I’m down on other authors or presses doing so, quite the contrary, just not my thing. Brown Paper is a press that digs on being small, staying small, staying practically invisible, just making a few books available here or there.

8. Through Brown Paper Publishing, you give some of your books away. While this is great for readers, it obviously doesn’t pay your bills. What is your reasoning behind these giveaways?

Well, for the novels and collections by other authors, the free print copies and the free PDFs are tied in to my publishing philosophy—if a reader wants, a reader should have—and as nobody really takes advantage of it, people only ask if they genuinely have an interest, it’s just about getting these artists I admire read. If I could afford it, my dream would be to produce limited edition short runs of titles, a few a year, two hundred copies or something, no profit, just give them all away to people who want to read them—not willy-nilly, there has to be desire—and that would be that. BPP authors always retain rights, so it would just be cool to get some work into people’s hands in nice volumes, nothing to worry about, no stress. With my own work, it’s just that I’m truly only interested in the novel-in-conversation. I like to know every nuance of people’s thoughts about literature and use my own work as a prompt—some people just read my stuff, give it a little review, other people start with commenting on my work and then we just move on to general correspondence about matters literary. Literature is a constant strum to me, alive and moaning not just to be heard but to expand, so I feel like giving the book away profits me—it’s a fair exchange, at the least, and often I come out well ahead, as I always get what I want, but a reader might just get stuck with a novel they can’t make heads nor tails of.
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You can find Pablo and his work in the following places:
His novels: www.kasparta.wordpress.com
Brown Paper Publishing: www.brownpaperpub.wordpress.com
His e-mail: unburiedcomments@gmail.com

Pablo has a gift with words. Check out his work. You won’t regret it!

Like e-books? I’m giving away copies of my novel Enemies and Playmates! Just go to Smashwords, where you can download whichever format you prefer, and use the coupon code PJ89P. It’s good through May 7.

https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3957

Enjoy!

Free Enemies and Playmates download!

When the abused decide to fight back, the abuser’s world might just shatter.

Lauren Covington’s family maintains a grand facade that hides the private abuse they suffer at the hands of her father. Jesse Ryder, a private detective, steps into that world and, in the process, falls in love with Lauren. Together, Lauren and Jesse dodge death and expose the truth behind the facade.

Now through Saturday, April 10, you can download my romantic suspense novel Enemies and Playmates free on Smashwords! You can pick any format that’s convenient for you, for any e-Reader or computer. Don’t forget to use the coupon code!

Smashwords Link: https://www.smashwords.com/books/view/3957
Coupon Code: FM54Z

Read An e-Book Week has begun! Click on the banner to see a list of all the participating sites, authors, and publishers!

All of my e-books are discounted and available on Smashwords. Enemies and Playmates is a free download this week! My other four novels are available at big discounts. The codes are given to you on the purchase pages.

While you’re there, check out all the other free and discounted books! Stock up on your reading material during Read An e-Book Week!

My Smashwords page: https://www.smashwords.com/profile/view/DarciaHelle