Apprentice House is, as their site states, “the nation’s first entirely student-managed book publisher. Students at Loyola University Maryland are responsible for every aspect of the publishing process, from acquisitions to design and publication of every book.”

I think that model is thrilling, because it’s focused on educating students about book publishing, and our industry desperately needs new blood; this sort of curriculum might engender more passion in the next generation of publishers and book-sellers than the time-worn process of hiring college grads as interns to read towering slush piles and answer phones for peanuts.

The latest title from Apprentice House is The Geography of Desire: A Memoir of West Africa (buy it at Bookshop.org) by Linda Gambill, which came out this week; I found it on NetGalley and read in an digital ARC. The book was transporting, and not just because the author travels, courtesy of the Peace Corps, to such an unusual setting—a devout Muslim village in The Gambia. I admired how Gambill (who went on to be an acclaimed photographer, a therapist, and an ESL teacher) managed to make the setting come to life on the page.

I felt the heat, saw the red dirt paths through the dense jungle, and tasted fresh mangoes, still warm from the sun. I experienced the hardship of gardening in the jungle, the thrill of riding a motorbike to the nearest ferry stop along the river, and the joy of falling in lust, as well as in love. The villagers I met were real people I laughed or argued with; the young women were open and friendly, the young men sometimes a bit too friendly. Endless insects and some religious intolerance were equally annoying.

Gambill, like most young Peace Corps volunteers, was searching for meaning and purpose; she left a complicated life behind her in the U.S., in the form of a toxic relationship. In The Gambia, she finds desire—see the title—but in the couple of years the memoir covers, she learns much more about herself (her own nature, as it were) than she does about the two young men she has relationships with.

If this fine book is a representative sample of the kind of titles that Apprentice House will be publishing, then I am bound to be bringing you more recommendations from their lists in the future.

Another independent publisher who turned a meaningful mission into a successful publishing house is Patagonia. If you’ve heard of Patagonia Books then you most likely know about Let My People Go Surfing, written by Yvon Chouinard, founder of the Patagonia clothing brand. The company’s books are nearly always centered on nature or outdoor sports (from rock climbing to surfing) or the “business” of saving what is left of the natural world. Their newest title covers all three subjects, with wit and style.

Water Lines: A Life on Marshes, Rivers, Seas and in the Rain by Riverhorse Nakadate, just came out this week. Nakadate is a man who seems to have done it all—his bio includes angler, musician, filmmaker, and conservationist—and he lives well, in the truest sense of the words. His essays focus on nature in a way that made me think of Edward Abbey, but the meandering pace of his travels, on foot and on wheels—from Texas to Minnesota and the Yucatan—put me in mind of William Least Heat-Moon’s Blue Highways. One big difference between those two authors and Nakadate is fishing.

Nakadate loves fishing, wherever and whenever he can, but he lives to fly-fish. His essays about fishing follow the grand tradition of literary anglers—from Izaak Walton to Earnest Hemingway—but his love of nature comes through much more clearly and vividly. He’s also funny and irreverent—I was reminded of The River Why, a book I adored long ago, and now want to read again; perhaps that book’s humor is dated now, Water Lines is definitely not.

I have never tried fly-fishing, but caught many a fish with a fishing pole—or with a spear, when the water was warm enough to dive—when we were living in Baja. I’ve seldom thrown back a fish, unless they were way too small, something Nakadate does on a daily basis. In fact, he seldom eats the fish he catches, preferring to release them back into the stream or river or whatever body of water he’s currently fishing. If you have a fly fishing friend who is aware of how threatened most aquatic species are, this is the perfect book for them. Buy it directly from Patagonia Books.

But fisher folk aren’t the only ones who will treasure Nakadate’s book, because Water Lines is also a hardcover work of art, illuminated as it is in gorgeous full-color by watercolor illustrations from artist Sarah Lamar Stephens.

And speaking of gorgeous books, Sunbelt Publications has just released the first volume of Baja to Bering, by husband and wife team Doc and Ceci White, and Neva Sullaway. This first volume covers La Paz, Baja California, to San Diego, California.

Yes, the photos are amazing, but this is much more than a coffee-table book; it is a deep dive into the marine ecosystem of the West Coast of America, seen through the lens, and the pens, of Doc and Ceci White, long-time sea adventurers. Whales take center stage here, as the authors’ research vessel follows the gray whales’ titular migration path, but there’s a wealth of insights into other marine mammals, as well as sea birds and fish. The full-color hardcover is stunning and would make a perfect gift for the Baja buff, animal photographer, or nature lover in your circle.

Sunbelt has a wide variety of books and maps about Southern California and Mexico, especially Baja, as well as titles about the US Southwest—with books for for kids, too. Many titles are marked down right now as they attempt to clear out the warehouse to make room for the new fall titles that will arrive in late summer. You can shop the Chula Vista warehouse in person if you live in or near San Diego, or just click to shop the new and “shelf-worn” discount racks online; they ship anywhere in the US.

Sunbelt also carries Honeymoon at Sea, by Yours Truly, another memoir that puts nature front and center, so feel free to add a copy to your cart, or ask for it at your favorite bookstore. Ebooks and audiobooks are available at the usual online retailers.

Finally, Happy Juneteenth! I’m happy to be in green and sunny Port Townsend as it warms up to summer; not so happy to be back to living in the boatyard, but seemingly endless boat work is the price we sometimes pay to live the boating life.

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hasta pronto!

I’m going to start with sexist language—which, in this case, chiefly means words and phrases that are inherently misogynistic—because it seems like they are invisible to many people, including authors I like. It always make me cringe, onscreen or on the page.

We’ll start with a fun ice breaker: Think of some phrases that are sex-specific, meaning they are coined for one sex only, for no logical reason.

I’ll start: “Plain Jane”, “Black Widow,” “Damsel in Distress,” “Man-eater,” and “Mistress.” Most of these are simply weird, and some are happily becoming outdated (though they might be useful in books set in the past as a way to show that someone is a male chauvinist).

A “Black Widow” is more of a Hollywood concoction than a reality, and it’s odd that we don’t have a catchy term for a husband or boyfriend who murders his wife or partner, since that happens far more commonly. According to the FBI, for every 100 women killed by a male intimate partner, around 25 men are killed by a female partner. But no one uses the phrase “Black Widower.”

Oddly enough, the word “women” itself is not used the same way as the word “men.” Often, in pop culture and in life, a boy or man will use the word “women” like it is synonymous with the many desirable objects they want to possess, or refer to “women” as a reward. That’s objectification, and we all want to be aware when we use that kind of language, because language inspires behavior, not just vice-versa.

Can you imagine a woman saying, “I want fame and money so I can get a lot of hot men”? (Not saying it doesn’t happen; Mae West, for one, used her fame to hang out with hot guys, but it is nowhere as common as the use of the word “women” in that context.) And, of course, there are phrases like “fast cars and fast women” and “wine, women, and song,” which have no male equivalent.

We need to put our sexist terms to the test, as we write, making sure that we spot sexist tropes like the aforementioned men who want money and fame because they want the “things” that this will bring—including “women.” If a man says he wants to get rich so he can “get any woman he wants,” he is really saying he can buy any woman. Do we want to condone or promote that? I would at least use a term for a sex worker like hooker or prostitute, but I think I’d cut the whole line.

The words Bossy and Strident are almost always applied to women; every female candidate for higher office has probably been called strident. A man who is bossy is called a strong leader; strident is just loud when describing a man. Similarly, the word ambitious is praise when referring to a man, but often used negatively for women.

Words that pertain only to men include: “Ladies’ Man,” “Lothario” and, of course, “Big Dick Energy.” Phrases include “sowing his wild oats,” “old boys’ club,” and “What a stud!”—for women, sadly, “stud” would probably become “slut”! Find many more of these words and phrases at Sacraparental. (Thanks to Joe Shea for sharing that site with me—and for our brainstorming on this subject when I was preparing for my class.)

Some sexist tropes may fly under the radar because we simply don’t see the inherent sexism of them, such as female characters who don’t eat when worried, anxious, or when in the throes of pretty much any other strong emotion. How often do you see a male character do that? (Personally, I eat more when I’m worried or anxious!) Women often get societal praise for making themselves less, or less-than; a “shrinking Violet” may not always get ahead, but being rewarded for getting smaller is baked into our cultural training.

I have thoughts on racist language, too, but so much has been written in the last few years about how to write about race, from not using food words like coffee and chocolate to describe skin color (because of disastrous colonial practices around growing coffee and cocoa, among other reasons) to eliminating racist tropes and cliches.

I’ll bet we all know what racist tropes and cliches are, but the simplest way to check your work is to interrogate yourself about words or phrases you’ve included that are solely used to comment on what have long been called “inherent characteristics.” Not all of these supposed characteristics are seen as negative, so uninformed speakers or writers use tropes and cliches that pigeonhole Latinas into sexy and flirtatious roles, Pacific Islanders into exotic babes or big dumb surfers, Asian students into solely hardworking teacher’s pets, etc.

Simply ask yourself if you would make this sort of insinuation about this particular character if they were “white” or if their race was not mentioned at all? I have to add that many people, including Yours Truly, don’t believe there is a “white” race, merely a large group of people that come from an amalgamation of races that resulted in lighter skin color for most of them, but that’s a subject for another time. Notice I didn’t say “fairer” skin color, because that word is unfair.

On a related subject, many people have commented to me, or in my hearing, about the irksome work of having to deal with non-binary gender identities. As you can see in the first sentence of the previous paragraph, it is quite common to use they or their in situations where we don’t know a person’s gender identity, like when we are talking about groups of people, or about a person we don’t know or have not seen. In fact, most of us have been doing this all our lives

Think of when a phone call comes in for you in a work situation—or at home when you’re fresh from a shower—someone might answer a landline and say that there’s a call for you, and you’d likely answer something like “Tell them to hold on, I’ll be right there.” Tell them to hold on, not him or her, because, at that point, you don’t know. And that was not such a terrifying challenge for us, was it? We didn’t know, so we simply used gender-neutral language.

Moving forward in life, all of us can simply stop assuming that we know what a “he” or a “she” looks like, and when we’re not sure of the person’s preferences, we can use gender-neutral language. And, of course, use the pronouns the person tells us they prefer, once we know them. None of this is as challenging as we’ve been led to believe by people who have a stake in promoting our fear and resentment.

Bottom line, don’t use sexist or racist language in your writing unless its purpose is to show a character as ignorant, bigoted, or stuck in the past—literally or figuratively. We literary artists need to be aware of the effect of our words. Be a wordsmith, not simply a recycler of tired tropes. AI can do that sort of thing—we don’t need to resort to it.

I’m lucky that I held off on posting this, because I am able to link to this amazing post about rape culture, posted today by of (and author of Widow in the City, which I reviewed recently here). Here’s the book/ebook on Amazon.

Feel free to comment below (click the heart icon to go right to Substack in order to comment), or, if you prefer to keep your thoughts private, simply reply to this email which means that only I see your message. Of course, if you think this post would be of interest to someone you know, you can share it in an email or message them the link (click share below). Editor on Board is always free, with no paywalls!

Our numbers are growing (EoB gained over 50 new subscribers in May and another dozen in June!) and I’m so grateful for all the likes and re-stacks, comments, and notes. Each of those responses is helpful, as a post’s engagement triggers Substack’s algorithm to help other readers find Editor on Board.

hasta pronto!

In fact, I’d never even imagined having friends who had horses, but suddenly, I did. Both Kelly and Tish boarded their horses in Lakeside, which was only about 20 miles inland from my home in the barrio of East San Diego, but might as well have been in another state. When Kelly asked me if I wanted to come out to Lakeside with them for a long weekend of riding, my head nearly exploded. Yes, I really did want to come!

The weekend was wonderful, filled with long sunny hours of grooming and hanging with the horses. There were loaner mounts to befriend at the boarding stables, which was owned by a local family, including Lisa, a 25-year-old Thoroughbred who’d once been a show jumper. I learned to pick out hooves, curry-comb dusty coats, cool-walk sweaty horses, and all the stuff I’d been dying to know from my years of reading. We even lounged on horseback in the hot afternoons, leaning back on our mount’s rump or withers as they grazed, and sometimes tumbling off.

And of course, we rode. When I wasn’t riding Lisa, I got to ride Tish’s spotted pony, or Kelly’s gorgeous, high-spirited, half-Arab bay mare Glory. We three took long meandering rides through the back-country—Lakeside was nearly out in the country back then—and rode single file alongside every road with no worries. Once we even got shakes at the Jack in the Box drive through on horseback, without raising any eyebrows. The town was pretty horse-crazy, and the rodeo grounds only blocks away, so we could watch older girls barrel-racing when not riding ourselves.

That magical horse-filled weekend was followed by a few others over the spring and summer, before my star-struck teenaged self was completely distracted from everything else in life by getting cast in a play at the Old Globe that fall. That, and a serious lack of funds, kept me from ever blooming into a true Horse Girl.

Over the years, I managed a few more rides here and there, but as Russel once said, “Unless someone is rich, they have to choose between horses and sailboats.” I chose the boat life, obviously, but I did treasure the glimpses I got into the world of horse-ownership. Not long ago, on our first road trip up to Washington, I contacted Kelly, who was living with her husband in Olympia and we got the chance to catch up. Of course, they had horses, and a sweet little ranchette that seemed like perfection.

So that’s the background I bring to Mare, by Emily Haworth-Booth a deeply affecting debut novel by an English author and illustrator of children’s books. You all know I tend to review books by independent publishers, and this one was published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux, hardly an indie. But the book seems to have gotten very few reviews, at least on this side of the pond, and very little coverage, at least that I have seen. So, since I only review books I love, I wanted to tell you all, “I love this book!”

The protagonist of the book is married and approaching middle age when she discovers she cannot have children. She wasn’t planning to, exactly, but she now knows she can’t which is a very different thing. And her dog has just died. So she decides to do something very different and take riding lessons at a nearby ranch. (The book is set in England, in a semi-rural area that I could see and feel on every page.) When she meets the titular mare, she begins to bond with her. There are other human characters of course, including her husband and two neighbor kids who she befriends.

Well, some other things the author and I have in common is we love animals and don’t have kids. Like the character in her book, and perhaps like the author herself, I was never very focused on having children, and then when I wanted to—a bit late in life—we didn’t. Being child-free is not a source of grief for me—my life continues to be full of love, joy, and adventure—but it does make me quite unusual in my age-group. Though the author of Mare is younger than I, she has perfectly captured the odd angst and the not-quite-fitting-in aspect of being childless in middle age.

Suffice to say, in this novel, the mare becomes quite important to the woman, and they develop a profound and meaningful connection. And the human character’s life is changed in many ways by that bond, as anyone who has ever deeply loved another living being can well imagine. Mare is a lovely, witty, transporting work of fiction, gorgeously written but never overwritten, unlike so much literary fiction.

By the way, this post’s title referenced a not-so-old gray mare and a filly—both are me, in case that meaning was obscure. I feel like an old gray mare or like a spunky filly, depending on the day of the week. The horse in the novel is neither old nor a filly. I recommend Mare for horse-people, of course, but for non-horse people, as well. Books about obsession, focus, upheaval, and letting go—not necessarily in that order—are usually fascinating to me. Maybe they are to you, too.

Feel free to comment below (click the heart icon to go right to Substack in order to comment), or, if you prefer to keep your thoughts private, simply reply to this email which means that only I see your message. Of course, if you think this review or book would be of interest to someone you know, you can share it in an email or message them the link (click share below). Editor on Board is always free, with no paywalls!

Our numbers are growing and I am grateful for all the likes and re-stacks, comments, and notes. Each of those responses is deeply appreciated, and helpful, too, as a post’s engagement triggers Substack’s algorithm to help other readers find Editor on Board.

hasta pronto!

But deep in the post, where the author was listing the steps to self-publish a book, she said, and this is a direct quote: “Hire a book editor or use editing programs.” Or use editing programs? Is there really some sort of editing program will help you shape and craft your manuscript into a sale-able book? Can AI do that for you?

That spurred me to update the following post, originally written in 2018, when Jeanine’s newest book at the time, Wheels Up, was newly released. This is the first in a series of newsletters where authors I have worked with, often more than once, will explain what they think their books/writing gained from the process. Read on!

This post was written with my friend/client and fellow Substacker of the always-fascinating ‘stack Mexico Soul. Jeanine has written a couple of nonfiction books and is also the author of two “narco lit” crime novels, Wheels Up—A Novel of Drugs, Cartels and Survival (May 2018) and Tulum Takedown (2020), which I also edited; NOTE: all her ebooks are available for free right now on Kindle Unlimited.

I’ll let Jeanine go first (she’s talking about “Wheels Up,” her first novel):
                                   
     “For me, writing fiction did not come easy. With a background in journalism, my early attempts to create fiction contained lengthy back stories and copious blocks of information. That style may have worked several decades ago when Michener was king, but didn’t cut it now.
     Early on I fell into my old habit of researching, my comfortable companion. My initial efforts burgeoned into a whopper of a book, well over 93,000 words. It had taken me years to write and re-write my beginning chapters. I knew something wasn’t quite right but couldn’t put my finger on it, nor could my writing group or my Beta readers.
    Enter Jennifer Silva Redmond. Before I turned over the manuscript, she explained that her first edit, called a content edit, was when the editor basically checks out the bones of a writer’s work. When she got back to me, I was devastated by her initial advice—make huge cuts, especially at the beginning. I’d wanted someone to come in with a magic wand and divine where the structure of the story lay, and Jennifer did that. Little did I know that the cutting would be done by hatchet!
    For two days, I sulked. After a sleepless night or two, I digested Jennifer’s suggestions—then went to work. I xeroxed her six pages of comments and that became my Bible. I started to cut, paste, and scrap text. It took me three weeks.
     Jennifer suggested a second content edit. I happily complied. She came  back to me with more suggested cuts, now using a scalpel. By this time I was getting the hang of it. Her edits helped me to streamline the book—made it punchier, edgier, a faster-moving story.
    The final thrust came with the line edit, where Jennifer worked pockets of words into cleaner, more readable prose. I felt good—really good—about the finished product. It was down to under 73,000 words. We’d cut over 20,000 words. And I didn’t miss those words at all.” 

Thanks, Jeanine!
And, just so you readers know that all that work was worth it, the first of her book's glowing reviews mentioned the “immediately hooked reader” and said that Wheels Up has “enough adventure packed into its fast-moving pages to satisfy the most ravenous armchair thrill-seeker. The book begins with a drug-loaded airplane crash into the jungle and never relinquishes its momentum after that.” The review closes with: “Ms. Kitchel gives the avid reader no further chance to breathe as she narrows her exciting plot down to its final, deadly confrontation.”
    Another reviewer called Wheels Up “a fast and fun read, reminiscent of sunny South Florida crime novels…It’s not a lightweight story by any means, but there’s a breeziness mixed with intrigue that makes a perfect summer beach read. All in all, Wheels Up is an expertly crafted work of crime fiction—fast-paced when it needs to be, with gripping detail about the Mexican drug trade, and well-drawn characters to match.”
    I don’t think those comments about timing and pace would have been quite so complimentary if Jeanine hadn’t gone through the editing process, been able to hear my criticism (and praise) so clearly, and been willing do the hard work to cut the book’s text down, in order to reveal the exciting story at its core.
    So, editing is really worth the time and money—because it works.
    hasta pronto!

I’d been disappointed in my attempts to get him to see my side of the story as far as his failures as a father. He wanted to put an equal amount of responsibility on me, the me I was at the time. A small child. Which I wasn’t buying, so I figured why even try to to talk to this man; I would just, you know, ignore any attempt to reconcile.

So, many months went by in Los Angeles and I eventually stopped hearing from him. And, with that I realized that the only person who was missing out by refusing to engage in this relationship was me. My dad just went on with his life—he wasn’t someone to struggle against a locked door or even think about that door. He just said okay, fine, and went off and had his life.

The bottom line was that I could have an inadequate father or I could have no father at all, which I could handle—after all, he hadn’t been much of a father all along—but to be able to move forward in my life, I felt that I had to forgive him. And I think I made the right choice in doing so. For me, not for him.

Forgiveness is the toughest part of healing, but I think it is an essential part of the process, and one that often gets left out of self-help books. So many books just focus on you focusing on yourself, and though I love self care, giving forgiveness short shrift hurts us all. Because hanging on to our hurts is often just as harmful to us as the original pain. It is like the famous, if famously unattributed, line about resentment being “like drinking poison and expecting it to kill someone else.”

Forgiveness is one of the main themes of the new memoir by , Bitter, Sweet: How to Heal Yourself When Your Family Is Broken. I admire the book for its unflinching look at how tough it is to be estranged from family, but I’m even more impressed with the author’s desire to forgive her parents, in the absence of any sort of apologetic or even conciliatory behavior. Instead, her parents and one of her brothers acts as if she’s a lunatic who made up all of her “issues” with her father and mother. This contributes to Weaver’s sense of having been gaslighted, which is a very common phase of all sexual abuse, where the abuser denies it all, or simply blames the victim.

Weaver’s whole family is forced to choose sides, with or against her, and even once she makes the decision to open the lines of communication again, her family of origin is never truly healed, because the parents never accept any blame for what they did (the father sexually abused his daughters; the mother knew but looked the other way).

I feel like America is very much caught up with partisanship, in everyday life as well as politics. And though I was not aware that a quarter of Americans are estranged from their families, the number didn’t exactly surprise me. Why struggle with a relationship when you can simply end things? It is like, wherever we turn, we get the advice that a clean cut is easier than going through the hassle of dealing with something that troubles you.

I won’t say that my dad and I always enjoyed smooth sailing after that reunion in Los Angeles, but we always managed to come back to being at least friends. He got to know Russel, who christened him Dad Dude, which fit him perfectly. Dad Dude came to Loreto when we were living there on our boat in the late 1990s, and hung out with us and our friends. The three of us even drove back up the peninsula together, and though it was a “long, strange trip” as the saying goes, it is one I’ll always remember.

Dad and I took another long pause in our friendship, years later, when he was living in Thailand (the reasons involved $ and are too convoluted to go into). But, though I let a couple of years go by, I ended up accepting his rapprochement, this time via email. Of course, it is possible that my self-centered father simply forgot that I was not speaking to him and hadn’t in over two years. But whatever led to us becoming friends again, it was the right thing to do, for me. It enabled me to let go of what I was holding on to, which made his death (in 2025, at age 91) much easier for me.

Not everyone is going to feel that way, which is of course, as it should be. Everyone gets to choose their path, and some people are better at forgetting the past and its inhabitants than I am. And some victims of abuse are going to truly be happy to be estranged from the people who hurt them, and then denied it, which I can certainly understand and sympathize with.

Readers who are at effect of their own family estrangement may find Weaver’s book to be reassuring, though others may find the book to be less than optimistic about the uneasy outcome of spilling one’s family secrets. Either way, I think her book is well worth reading. Her bravery is commendable, and her story may be eye-opening for many readers. Her memoir may be of interest for therapists and counselors, too.

Feel free to comment below (click the heart icon to go right to Substack in order to comment), or, if you prefer to keep your comments private, you can simply reply to this email which mean that only I see your message. Of course, if you think this review or book would be of interest to someone you know, you can share it in an email or message with the link (click share below). EoB is always free, with no paywalls!

Our numbers are growing and we (another editorial we!) thank you for all the likes and re-stacks, comments, and notes. All of those responses are deeply appreciated, as a post’s engagement triggers Substack’s algorithm to help others find Editor on Board.

The Shea/O’Shea family, including Dad Dude, at our wedding in 1989.

Next time I post, I will have officially become a senior citizen, as my 65th birthday falls on Memorial Day, Monday the 25th this year. And our 37th wedding anniversary is on the 27th. Whew! I’ll have some thoughts on both those events soon, no doubt.

hasta pronto!

Anyway, I was missing my mom, as most of us do on Mother’s Day, if our mothers are no longer with us. Don’t get me wrong, I look back with gratitude and joy on the life that she lived and the wonderful years I shared with her, but there’s a definite hole in my life now. Even after seven years, I still get the urge to pick up the phone and call her. That’s the flip side of having a “she’s also my best friend” kind of mother, because the loss of them leaves you without someone you can complain to about life without your mom.

Though I was never a mother, I am a doting aunt and am lucky enough to get calls and texts and communications of various sorts from my three wonderful nieces, plus my nephew the sailor, and my great nephew, who is turning into another world traveler.

I got a text from my cousin who sent photos from the Mother’s Day High Tea she had with her mom, my dear aunt Cheryle, in the assisted living and memory care facility where Cheryle resides. My other cousin Maya celebrated with her mom, Anne, and my brother Jack visited them too. And Joe was home celebrating his wife Teresa along with their daughters. I’m so happy that my family keeps the love circulating. Here’s a photo of me and Aunt Cheryle from my last visit.

But Monday, after the long driving and talking and visiting day, I woke up with a sore throat, and I’ve had a head cold all week. That’s two colds in the last 4 months, which is quite shocking for me. I’m not really sick but my head just feels heavy and dull, so I don’t get as much done in a day as I’d like. Luckily, I’m not coughing or sneezing, so I hope I can keep Russel from catching it. I like to share only good things with him.

I’ve been so proud and happy to see my brother Joe Shea, who is a candidate for congress representing California’s 50th District, get some good local coverage (two brief articles and a radio interview) and, most important, see him get to share his thoughtful insights and political philosophy with others. If you missed my interview with him last week, you can read all about it here. Or you can go to his website.

This week brought news of the updated edition of Under the Perfect Sun: The San Diego Tourists Never See, by my friends and compatriots Kelly Mayhew and Jim Miller, which will have its launch at the wonderful Book Catapult in South Park on May 21. (I so wish I could be there, but it is time to get serious about early summer boat work in advance of our late summer sailing trip.) If you can’t make the launch, you can still order the book from the Book Catapult and support a great local indie bookstore. Or check out Sunbelt Publications’ website as I am sure they will be carrying it.

This week also marked 3 years from the date—May 12th, 2023, to be exact—that I got my first blurb from another author for Honeymoon at Sea. I had reached out to a friend of mine, Judy Goldstein Botello, who was kind enough in the midst of dealing with the fresh grief of having recently lost her life partner to read my book. Yes, I had felt odd even asking her, but then I thought maybe this is a perfect thing for her to do because she met her husband in Baja (her wonderful book, The Other Side: Journeys in Baja California is a fictionalized version of some of those events; it takes place on el otro lado, meaning the other side of the border). 

Judy said that she was willing to do it so I sent her the PDF and she devoured my book in a couple of days and wrote a wonderful review which I’ve included here. Her appreciative words had me dancing with delight.

I was lucky enough to have another wonderfully talented writer friend (of ) also review my book that very same week in 2023, so it was an exciting and validating time. I was moved that these two busy women took the time to do that for me, and to do it so beautifully and generously. Three years later, I am still so grateful to them as well as the other people who wrote such glowing book jacket testimonials and those who continue to review the book so lovingly. Check them all out here and read a sample.

NOTE: Don’t forget to review books that you love online. It really helps those of us whose books are published by small independent presses. I haven’t made that appeal in recent newsletters, so there you go, now you have your marching orders!

Another bit of good news is that my “little book that could” just keeps selling! The sales numbers are small still, but the fact that it stays up in the top 100 or 200 in its categories on Kindle (see today’s ebook ranking below) and also as an audiobook really make me happy—all I wanted to do was to share my story with readers.

I’ll be back next week with three more book reviews. You see, I’m keeping the circle going—get great reviews, give great reviews! For those who don’t know, I don’t do reviews of book unless I think they are worth recommending. I think there’s already enough negativity out there right now, why add to it? I know some book critics love to be catty and cutting, but I’d rather say, “This book is so great, you should read it.”

hasta pronto!

Laurel moved to Canada (like many of us have threatened to!) back when He Who Shall Not Be Named came into office. She now happily resides in lovely Victoria, B.C. when she isn’t on an ocean cruise, regaling groups of rapt attendees with tales about literature, history, and art. I missed meeting up with Laurel when I was in Victoria last summer, but we stay in touch via email, social media, and mutual friends.

Luckily, this meant I was well aware that Laurel had signed a contract to publish her latest book, Aloha Wanderwell Takes the Wheel, with Sybilline Press, a new publisher I am following closely (their motto is “Publishing the Brilliant Work of Women Authors Over 50” so what’s not to like?). This newest book from Laurel Corona is coming out May 22, digitally, so you can pre-order the ebook here for only $5.99!

I like the idea of having books come out in different formats at different times, over a few months or even years, because it gives us authors much more marketing time to promote the title again in each new format. That’s how it used to happen, back in the day—hardcover, then paperback, then audio or ebook. Now all books seem to come out in every format on the same launch day.

At any rate, I started reading an ARC of the new book and didn’t get far before I was Googling the main character’s name, thinking “This person cannot be real!” But yes, indeed, Aloha Wanderwell, a brave, intrepid, gorgeous world traveler was a real person. In 1924, at sixteen, the then-named Idris Hall ran away from boarding school and joined the around-the-world expedition of Walter “Cap” Wanderwell. She traveled with him across five continents, traveling rough dirt roads behind the wheel of a Model T. Eventually the two married, had two children, and became a sensation in movie houses and various other venues where they’d show thrilling—and sometimes scandalous—footage of their travels.

The book starts in 1932, just after the murder of Cap Wanderwell and gets more exciting from there. The author takes us on the couple’s journey around the world and then back in time as we meet young Idris, her sister, and their mother in a small town on Vancouver Island, B.C. Back and forth we dash, learning more about every one of the book’s fascinating characters, including Mary Pickford. (I was reminded of “The Cat’s Meow,” a film set in roughly the same era with Kirsten Dunst as Marion Davies; if you love Marion Davies, too, check out The Blue Butterfly by Leslie Johansen Nack.)

Those characters include Aloha’s younger sister Miki and a hard-boiled Long Beach police detective, and the period comes to life through them, in the 1930s chapters, as well as in the past, through other characters, including Aloha herself. Tall, beautiful, and glamorous, Aloha is not only sexually liberated but not at all a prude about showing her body, so that adds to the judgement she gets from all parties. The “murdered husband” story attracts attention from the cut-throat “journalists” of the day, who paint Aloha as potentially a murderer and definitely as a Black Widow.

Speaking of widows, I just read a doozy of a book, Widow in the City: A Memoir of Heartbreaks and Hookups by Amy Gabrielle that comes out on Tuesday, May 5 (pre-order the book here). This is definitely not a book that would have come out at any other time, or have been written about any other time in history. Amy Gabrielle was widowed and left a single mother after her husband’s three year fight against an incurable cancer. She lives in Manhattan, where I lived for many years. But this is not the NYC of the 1980s, when people met in bars or clubs, by luck or by chance, or were introduced by friends.

Amy, after a long sexual dry spell that began while her husband was still living, soon finds herself looking for lust using apps like Bumble and Feeld. And she jumps into the experience with both high heels. Of course, not all the dates go well, and of course, finding a real relationship on apps is tricky, but all is not lost. Amy rediscovers her sexuality, and discovers that she likes role playing, costumes, and photography.

There’s much more to tell, but I hate to give away too much of the often-shocking turns of events. Since I used the words sexuality and shocking, I have to explain that the shocks didn’t come from me being a prude (long-time readers know me better than that—I’m quite sex-positive!) but from the author’s honesty and vulnerability.

In fact, I can safely state that I haven’t ever read a memoir written so honestly about the author’s own flaws—Amy never tries to make herself look smarter or more secure and she never hides her thoughts from us, even in her most intimate moments. She questions her choices about men, about how she is raising her neurodivergent child, and about her own body image issues. When I got the digital ARC from Amy (we connected here on Substack), I thought I’d read a couple pages to see what the writing was like. I finished reading it less than two days later. Widow in the City won’t be for everyone (see above) but those of you who choose to read it may just find it as compelling as I did.

On a completely different subject, I read Picky: How American Children Became the Fussiest Eaters in History and found it quite enlightening. This book made me aware of just how unaware I was of the larger “epidemic” of pickiness, and I was fascinated by the author’s reasoned arguments for why it happened. I’d thought a bit about the subject over many years (I worked as a babysitter and then a nanny in my early 20s so I’ve dealt with a lot of little humans’ food issues) and I was dead wrong about most everything I thought I knew. I highly recommend this book for parents, aunts, uncles and other caregivers of young children.

That’s all for now—except, first, I have a favor to ask. If you know someone who likes book reviews that are definitely not written by AI, or who might enjoy reading these particular books, please share, send, or restack this post—it really helps people to find us! And feel free to comment below or to like this post by clicking on the heart.

Once you’ve clicked through to Substack, you can also comment below the post. Maybe you have something to share about your own world travels or about your sexual journey, life as a widow, or even something about a picky eater you happen to know. I usually get some lively comments in the section below; maybe this time you’ll join in.

hasta pronto!

hosts another must-follow and you-must-read the comments—the contributors are laugh-out-loud funny or insightful or both. I only had to hear Nan talk about WBTYS (and her dream of doing a story slam live on Zoom) to know I wanted to be a part of it, and soon I was. The most recent WBTYS story slam was last Saturday and now you can watch it all right here. Funny enough, two of my fellow writer-performers were Betsy Marro and Rona Maynard. Full circle!

Another comments section I always read is for and from the brilliant . I sent Sari a note asking about Oldster Magazine way back when my book was coming out in 2023 and got to be part of it through the Oldster Questionnaire, which was a huge thrill. In May, I will be featured as part of the Memoir Land Author Questionnaire, an even bigger thrill. I’ve also been featured in Memoir Land’s “Goodbye to All That,” in essays written about 1980s NYC.

When I discovered , which publishes great flash nonfiction, I was inspired by their theme of “Home” to write a piece of short flash memoir. It was accepted by the editors and published later that year, and is still one of my favorite essays I’ve written. The whole process was a joy, especially working with my editor whose memoir, Body: My Life In Parts I reviewed here.

Since I said this post was about book marketing, am I suggesting that you go onto the comments section of your favorite ‘stack and start spamming everyone about you and your book? Of course not. That’s no more imaginative that constantly posting “Buy my book” on any social media platform. No one wants to see that kind of thing.

What I’m talking about is becoming part of a community by truly participating in it. Substack can be a virtual town square, a creative commons, a fun and exhilarating place for people to air their ideas and opinions, refer great books and podcasts, and to share your best finds with other ‘stackers and friends. When you discover a publication you love, you can support it, comment on posts, and restack them.

I loved so I jumped on the comments and became a part of the conversation. That led to EIC and I connecting, which led to me writing some essays for her, and then a long series of travel columns for Womancake. The travel columns are still on Womancake but have also been picked up to run again (with credit to Womancake) on Tom Shess’ popular, long-running Pillar to Post blog.

I’ve been lucky enough to have a few old friends join Substack, like , an author whose last two books I edited, who writes about the Maya, the Yucatan, and all things that speak to and from the Mexican Soul (her ‘stack). Other author friends include whose intimate is so important, and whose lovely writing always makes me smile.

The latest addition to Substack by an old friend of mine is Still Here by . Those of you who’ve read my memoir will know Helen as my teenage theater friend though two productions at San Diego’s Old Globe Theater; she was there when I met Russel Redmond. Helen is an author, actress, a teacher (of Pilates and dance), and so much more, including a cancer survivor—and that’s the focus of her ‘stack.

When I met Helen, she was in treatment for—living under the threat of death from—Stage IV Hodgkin’s Lymphoma. Being teens, we didn’t discuss that much; we talked about boys, plays, auditions, and our families. Helen actually met my brothers before I met her. Soon after, Helen met my mom, who cast Helen as my mother in “The Diary of Anne Frank.” In spite of her youth, Helen played the part so believably and beautifully, and I know she’ll wow us here, as well. If you or someone you love has survived or is living with cancer, share this first post by with them.

I’ll bet you’re beginning to see how this all works, at least in my life. Even before Substack, in fact ever since I started working as an editor, I’ve thought of myself as a sort of literary matchmaker. Once a book I’ve edited is ready to publish, I love to help the author find the right home for it. Sometimes that might take the form of sharing the name of an agent friend, sometimes, it means matching them with a publisher. Of course, this doesn’t always work out—many clients find their own way in the world— but it isn’t from lack of trying…

I think of presenting to groups in exactly the same way. Not solely as an opportunity to market myself, but as an opportunity to share something I value with like-minded, or curious and open-minded people. Tonight I’ll be sharing a sea story on She Sailor Sea Story, a storytelling venue created and hosted by the National Womens Sailing Association. I have been wanting to do one of these SSSS talks for years, and all it took was asking nicely again and again. (“Still she persisted!”)

On Monday night, I’ll be doing a presentation for one of my hometown literary groups, the San Diego Writers and Editors Guild. I’ll explain what a good book pitch consists of, listen to their pitches, and try to help the authors hone and polish them. In June, I’ll be teaching two different classes for San Diego Writers, Ink.

All of this is good marketing for me and my book, if you think of it that way, but it is also good for me—good to connect, exchange ideas, listen to other people’s stories, and just be a productive part of the incredible writing communities that surround me.

I hope to see you at one of these events one day (perhaps you are already planning to be in San Diego in January, to attend SCWC). Or maybe I’ll see you here—in the comments section below, or on one of my favorite ‘stacks!

hasta pronto!

Tense is just one of the many factors that come into play when deciding what Point of View (POV) to choose for writing your novel: You get to choose between first person (I/me), second (you/your) or third person (he/her, they/them), and also pick between past tense or present tense. I used “novel” rather than book, because almost all memoirs are written in first person, past tense, though occasionally they may veer into first person, present tense; most other nonfiction is written in third person past tense (or in third person, present tense).

Okay, you may be saying, so what’s the big deal? I pick a tense—past or present—and I stick to it. What is so hard about that? In theory, nothing. In practice, plenty.

Of course, there are the typical improper tense shifts, which many readers and any editor should be able to spot. These are places where the author has fallen into the wrong tense while writing, and managed to not spot it in the rewriting and self-editing (reading it aloud is the only surefire way to be sure to catch these sorts of errors!). If the manuscript is written in first person past tense, like this: “I went into the bedroom and looked through the chest of drawers for the gun. Then I heard a sound…” but then the text continues, “I turn around and there he is.” No, he isn’t. The line should be “I turned around and there he was.”

As I said, those obvious past tense to present tense shifts are pretty easy to spot and simple to correct. They seldom happen the other way around, but of course they can. Most of the time, these are the result of parts of the book being written at different times, for different reasons, or they may be because small sections were cut and pasted from a later chapter into an earlier chapter, or vice versa, perhaps due to the input of an editor like myself: “Move the action earlier, save the expository for later!” runs one of my oft written notes to a first-time novelist.

The sort of minor but bothersome or potentially problematic things that derive from tense issues are harder to notice in a manuscript, because they are much less obvious. One is the prevalence of words like “had” and “was,” when we are writing in past tense—and the overuse of words like “is” and “have” in present tense writing (I won’t go into the overuse of “I” in first person writing, no matter what tense you are in!).

Part of the issue with “had” is that it is such a helpful word—it alerts readers to something being in the past, and it can work well in both tenses. You can be writing in present tense and then want to mention something that happened in the past, so you add “had.” Perhaps it is something simple, like: “That was the way she had always done things.” What you don’t want is another “had” in there to confuse things, like: “She had to feed the cats before she went out walking, because that was the way she had always done things.” Maybe instead: “She would feed the cats before going out walking, because that was the way she had always done things.”

Occasionally, writers go further, into the realm of the dreaded “had had.” Like, “She had written the letter in pencil first, then she had had to rewrite it in ink.” I would rewrite this as: “She’d written the letter in pencil, and had to rewrite it in ink.” No one is going to be confused about whether the rewriting happened in the past. (If it didn’t actually happen in the past, you could write: “She’d written the letter in pencil, and had yet to rewrite it in ink.”)

Why, you might be asking, do I sometimes turn “she had” into “she’d”? I usually do it if the “had” is not important, or if I can’t avoid using it, but I want it to be less obvious for purposes of rhythm or to improve the flow of a sentence. If an author writes: “She had to do it today, there was no other option she had been able to come up with.” I would edit the second “she had” to “she’d” because the first one is necessary to understanding the sentence, and the second one is purely a tool. Of course, I’d probably suggest: “She had to do it today, there was no other option.”

One of the reasons I’m glad to be alive and writing in the 21st century is the ability to easily search for words like “was” and “had” in a manuscript, rather than having to search for them and mark them for removal manually, as we did in “the old days” when I started out. I’ve written before about cutting “thought verbs” (knew, wanted, needed, realized) and “filter words” (saw, heard, felt) in your manuscript to make it more visual and active. See my post Five Tips For Writers, From an Editor. The tedious process of searching for overused words is instantaneous now, though the replacing, and the expanding it often entails, takes quite a bit of time and careful thought.

So when you are choosing a tense, or perhaps realizing that you need to rewrite your novel in a different tense—yes, I have completely rewritten a manuscript from past to present tense or vice-versa, and I’ve even recommended the process to an author-client or two over the years—you need to be aware of the changes that will be made beyond simply changing “I do” to “I did.” Everything that happens needs to be changed to the new tense, which creates ripples that might affect everything else in the manuscript. That means it isn’t just a simple “search and replace” task.

Of course, sometimes the change that needs to be made is the POV itself—from first person to third or vice-versa, and that makes for a much more challenging rewrite. A first person POV means that everything in a book’s plot needs to be revealed to the protagonist or narrator visually or told to them in dialogue, unless it is something they already know. You don’t get to drop in the third person omniscient narrator and have them list facts like “Chicago can be bitterly cold in spring,” unless the protagonist or narrator knows that themselves. Writers have to adapt by using lines like “I figured that Chicago might still be cold, since it was only the first week of April, so I packed my coat,” which works fine, but that begins to feel awkward if it’s overused.

Speaking of present tense—Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam! is happening tomorrow, Saturday, April 18, at 2pm PT on Zoom. WBTYS is an online feminist story slam created and hosted by Nan Tepper of The Next Write Thing. The theme for this month’s slam is Death & Taxes.

Our “doors” open at 4:45pm, and the show will start promptly on the hour, 2pm PST (5pm EST). You’ll have to do the time-zone math as it applies to your locale.

I’ll be reading in the company of ten very talented women. Come listen!

Get tickets

More info

Hope to see you tomorrow! Either way…

Hasta pronto!

When a writer writes, “Mary felt terrible after her argument with Paul,” they are picturing Mary, in that wood-paneled apartment of hers staring blankly out the window at an old gray fence covered in dead ivy. They see her lying like a corpse in bed while the old AC unit keeps it cold enough to hid under a huge mound of white down comforters. But the readers don’t see any of that.

When they are rewriting, writers may think, “Hmm, I’d better make that more visual,” so they might add the window and the cold bedroom and the comforters. But they don’t always remember to take out the summary sentence that began it all, “Mary felt terrible after her argument with Paul.” In other words, readers are told, and then they are shown, making for a wordy, repetitive read.

As with many lessons of writing craft, writers learn this by getting lukewarm feedback from their Beta readers or friends and family. “The book is slow,” they are told, “it didn’t grab me,” or worse, “I lost interest.” Even editors may fail to identify what exactly is missing—or in this case, not missing—from the writing.

So writers need to learn to spot this in their own writing, which is very difficult. The best way to do this is to read your writing aloud, preferably to someone, but you can also record yourself and listen to it with the manuscript in hand, or on screen. When you reach a dense passage, slow down and try to determine the purpose of each of the sentences. Description, check; action, check; aha, summary—let’s look more closely.

Summary is a useful tool, don’t get me wrong, because readers don’t need to know everything that happened between the end of chapter 12 and the beginning of chapter 13, but they might need to know something key before moving on. Like, if we already know that Paul is waiting to hear from Mary, a day could be summarized in a line: “Paul spent Saturday doing yard work, his phone resting silently in his pocket the whole day,” rather than be a whole series of paragraphs, detailing the weeding, mowing, and raking.

But if you’ve given us a summary of a largely unimportant series of events and then you have written all the details of those things as well, that’s an easy problem to solve. Keep the summary, toss the rest. Sometimes, what you thought was unimportant turns out to be full of character-revealing action, so you decide to keep it; in that case, toss the summary.

Another place where writers often tell then show is when they are leading up to a scene, and they want to make sure we readers are going to get what happens so they telegraph it to us first. “Over dinner, Mary told Paul what she’d decided was the problem with their relationship.” And then they write a dinner scene in which Mary does just that. Of course, writers don’t usually notice that they are telegraphing when they are creating, when they are keeping the flow of creativity going, and they don’t need to worry about it then. But they have to learn to spot it when they are rewriting.

Check the ends of chapters or sections for these “telegraphs,” too, because often writers lose confidence in their ability to keep us readers reading so they give us a teaser, an appetizer of sorts. If a writer knows the big showdown is coming in the next chapter, then she may feel compelled to write something like: “Going to bed that night, Paul felt sure that the things would be back to normal the next day. He could not have been more wrong.”

There’s nothing inherently wrong with doing this sort of thing in a manuscript. In Honeymoon at Sea, I ended a chapter set in Baja’s Sea of Cortez by writing that it was time “to continue our journey south and eventually east, toward New York City and our new life,” and ended with the line: “At least, that was our plan at the time.” It was foreshadowing a big turning point in the book, and I think it works. But often writers who do that are simply, as my friend Marla Miller says, “stealing their own thunder.”

You can decide to telegraph an idea in your work or not, but what you don’t want is to be doing it unconsciously, to be filling your manuscript with sentences that have been made redundant by what came before them, or what will come after. To be left with sentences that are not “paying their way on the page,” as I often tell my author clients.

The process of rewriting is made a lot more manageable by having concrete things to look for, such as repetition, clunky expository, and the overuse of thought verbs and filter words I’ve written about here before.

Now that you know what to look for, you will more easily spot some examples of “telling then showing” and “telegraphing” in your manuscript as you read it over. Hopefully you’ll get most all of these things eliminated before you give it to your Beta readers—definitely before you send it off to an editor.

Before I end this, I wanted to make sure that I told you all about the next WBTYS which is happening in a week, on Saturday April 18th at 2pm PT. The month’s theme is “Death and Taxes” and I am very excited to be one of the WBTYS storytellers again.

You can subscribe to Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam! hosted by and get all the live shows and podcasts for free, or you can buy a single ticket each time (for more $). So maybe you should subscribe, but definitely you should get a ticket if you can (If you can’t afford it, let me know). It is always such a cool and inspiring event. And I’m telling a true story I have never told before, except in private conversations.

Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam!

Humans crave stories — and the women of Substack know exactly how to make them sting, sparkle, and stay in your head. No apologies. No tidy arcs. Just the parts we usually whisper.

By Nan Tepper

That’s it for this week. Thank you for joining me here again and for liking, sharing, re-stacking and commenting below, should you feel so moved. I sure appreciate it!

hasta pronto!

I worked with dozens of authors over the years, but few were as important to me and to Sunbelt as Harry Crosby. I’ve written about him here before, including in this piece:

I include that link not just because you may be curious, but because that image is a section of the cover of Harry’s Gateway to Alta California: The Expedition to San Diego, 1769 (and the painting is by Russel Redmond!). The project took years, beginning with Harry’s extensive research into the Mexican military archives in Mexico City, and ending with the two years of book development, editing, design, and production.

Harry always maintained that Gateway was as important as any of his renowned books, chiefly because so few people know about the difficult overland expedition to Alta California from what is now Baja California in 1769. He insisted on including a biography of each Hispanic person who’d made the arduous trek, many of whose descendants live in California today. He’d grouse to me that it was “nuts” for kids in the Southwest U.S. to know more about Lewis and Clark than Portola and Rivera, among the first Europeans to explore the coast of California on foot. I agreed with him, and Gateway is one of the books I’m most proud of having worked on.

Harry privately bemoaned the fact that he wouldn’t live to write the third book in what he had envisioned as a trilogy; his story began with Antigua California: Mission and Colony on the Peninsular Frontier, 1697-1768 which tells of the earliest of the Baja California missions and presidios, in Loreto; the story continued on with Gateway, which ends in San Diego just before the founding of the presidio. The third book would have followed the Portola expedition on to Monterey, later in 1769. Harry was correct, he was never able to complete that book.

Not long ago, my cousin (professor of literature, early American researcher, and author of acclaimed works, as well as ) told me about a new memoir that included California history and natural history, saying she knew I would love it. It’s a measure of my respect for her insight and knowledge that I immediately bought the book. Reading the first pages, I knew she was right.

Alta California: From San Diego to San Francisco, A Journey on Foot to Rediscover the Golden State by Nick Neely is his account of walking 650 miles—San Diego to San Francisco—following the path of Portola and Rivera’s expedition northward from San Diego in 1769, in search of Monterey. Of course, they found that bay, and also what is now San Francisco. (I do not use the word “discovered,” as both areas—especially what is now the “Bay Area”—were already well populated by indigenous peoples.)

Neely grew up in the Golden State, but he realized as an adult how little he knew about its history (see, Harry was right!). Neely walks the route that would become El Camino Real, reading the 1769 journal entries of Friar Juan Crespi at each location (Harry Crosby availed himself of that resource as well). Neely stares unflinchingly into the past, unafraid to acknowledge the sins of “the fathers,” and points out the echoes of history with wit and insight. His descriptions of the (mostly) thriving flora and fauna along the way—from tiny hummingbirds to massive whales—are written through the adoring lens of an amateur naturalist.

Neely’s writing is clear, accessible, and often quietly brilliant. I marked many a passage, including this line he wrote about Hearst Castle: “The two bell towers of the Castle’s facade pay homage to a Christian past, but inside they hold tanks for water, the new religion.” As a memoirist, I admired his ability to weave together the threads of his daily treks and his inner journey, and to effectively integrate his knowledge and research with his “man on the street” conversations with today’s Californians.

I highly recommend Alta California for residents (or lovers) of the state who’d like to know more about the natural history and cultural heritage that often goes unnoticed all around them. And, because Sunbelt Publications specializes in such books, I want to list here some of their books that I recently read (or re-read) and recommend:

The Rise and Fall of San Diego: 150 Million Years of History Recorded in Sedimentary Rocks by Patrick L Abbott is newly out in a highly anticipated, updated and revised second edition. The book recounts “the prehistory of the region as recorded in the layers of sedimentary rocks.” It’s a great gift for geology buffs, because the author includes field-trips that direct readers to key locations, so they can not only observe but understand the history. (For those who don’t know, Pat Abbott is professor emeritus of geology at San Diego State University, a well-published author, and a recognized authority on the geology of San Diego County.)

With Seashells of San Diego County and the Animals within Them: A Beginner’s Guide, author Judy Carlstrom has provided us shore walkers and beachcombers a simple guide for identifying the most common shells found along San Diego County’s many beaches (and other Southern California shorelines). Her drawings make it easy to identify each shell, and the text gives plenty of information about the critters that lived in them, which makes it way more interesting than most shell books. Get this book now so you can take it with you to the beach this summer!

San Diego Seafood: Then & Now (Editors: Emily Soye Miller, Neva Sullaway, Theresa Sinicrope Talley. Photographer Chris Rov Costa) blends local history and cuisine to celebrate the region’s rich maritime heritage and culinary diversity. Much more than a cookbook, it features colorful historic stories, stunning visuals, helpful tips on buying and preparing seafood, and over 75 recipes that showcase local catch—tuna, halibut, black cod, and spiny lobster. San Diego Seafood is an essential addition to any kitchen that values history, human stories, and the responsibly harvested bounty of the sea.

Another great title available from Sunbelt and on SALE for April, is San Diego: California's Cornerstone, 2nd Edition by Iris Engstrand, which is a sweeping history of the region from the time of its indigenous people to the 21st century. I believe it is still the only single-volume history of America’s Finest City. And it’s under $15!

Speaking of books you can buy at Sunbelt, there’s my memoir: Honeymoon at Sea: How I Found Myself Living on a Small Boat (or you may order it at your favorite bookstore).

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Hasta pronto!

Girl Boner Radio with August McLaughlin was just as fun as it sounds—we laughed quite a lot. And there were plenty of laughs when Janis Thomas interviewed Judy Reeves and me about writing memoir at SCWC; you can see that at SCWC.com on YouTube. I enjoyed doing Adam Greenfield’s podcast, The Written Scene—he’s great at formulating questions, and a good listener. And I loved doing the very first live on-camera interview with The Boat Geeks, with Daeron Katz and Darren O’Brien aboard the fabulous vessel “Traveler” (find the Boat Geeks here on Substack at ).

I won’t mention the many interviews and podcasts that failed to launch in one way or the other—some because they had allotted such a short time for the “interview” that I barely got to mention my book, and many where the host or hostess had clearly not read my book, so they asked canned questions that were hardly even interesting to me, and probably much less so to listeners.

But last Friday, I was interviewed by my old friend and “Pitch Witch” partner about how my first career (acting) may have been one of the big reasons that I thrived in my second career, publishing (especially marketing books). If you haven’t read about Marla Miller here previously, click here to find out how we met, what a “Pitch Witch” does, and read a short review of her latest book.

I always enjoy my conversations with Marla, but this one involved a couple of on-air epiphanies, and that is a rare thing in interview-land. I mean mostly when we authors or “content creators” do interviews or podcasts, we get asked questions that we already know—perhaps we even wrote them!—and we give answers that we have given, in some form, before. It isn’t often that we are really exchanging ideas, and building upon them. It isn’t often that either person in an interview is surprised.

Part of that conversational spark comes from Marla—she doesn’t ask for an interview fact sheet or have you provide her with questions or answers. She wants to have an actual discussion, and that only happens when both people are contributing. Once again, that is fairly uncommon in the “book industry” podcasts I have listened to. Most authors/artists want to simply plug their book/art/content and interviewers seem to want to put another video in the can. Honestly, very few are illuminating at all.

Usually, my favorite talks or interviews are where I get to take some questions from the audience, either in person or on-air, because then I at least have the opportunity to be surprised. One young man called into a live radio program I was on to talk about Honeymoon at Sea, because he wanted me to explain latitude and longitude to him!

Anyway, I hope I am not coming off as cynical and bored—I have a great time talking about my book and my careers in any setting any time, but I wanted to make sure you clicked on the podcast link I’m going to post below, and listened to this one, because it was what I consider a successful interview. I will be curious what those of you who watch it think. Here’s the link to the interview on Marla’s YouTube channel.

Oh, and stay to the very end, so you can have a laugh as you watch me wait for Marla to turn off the recording. I once left a Zoom meeting too early and it messed up the recording, so now I always wait until the host ends it, and this time I looked so funny as I waited a few long seconds for her to do that.

Next week I’ll have three short reviews of excellent books—all having to do with California history and/or natural history. One of them, Alta California by Nick Neely (thank you ) I loved so much that I’m already looking forward to reading it again, and I can definitely predict that it will be on the list of my top ten, or maybe top three, favorite books of this year. And it is only March.

hasta pronto!

First off, the always entertaining WHAM! BAM! THANK YOU! SLAM! (WBTYS) is happening tomorrow, Saturday March 21, at 5pm ET; 2pm here on the Pacific Coast. WBTYS is an online story slam created by Nan Tepper of The Next Write Thing. The theme this month is E.R.A. Now, Dammit! The door opens at 4:45pm; there will be ten talented storytellers; Nan will tell a story, too. Please join us for a fun 90 minutes this Saturday. I’m not telling a story this time but will be listening and supporting. I’ll be back with a brand-new story in April; stay tuned for more on that. Tickets are here.

Enough promotion and marketing—on to my news about promotion and marketing:

Yesterday marked six months since I did my last round up of book marketing events for Honeymoon at Sea: How I Found Myself Living on a Small Boat. If you haven’t read my memoir, you may check out a couple of chapters in the free sample here, or check out the beginning to the audiobook right here (Yes, I narrated the book.)

I think it’s really important to document just how hard a “nobody” author like me has to work to get their book noticed, so I sat down yesterday to add this year’s events to the long list of appearances (live and virtual) I’ve done to market myself and my book.

This should be of interest to all new and aspiring authors, no matter who published (or will publish) your book. Publishers spend the majority of their time and marketing money promoting their biggest books by their best known authors. So promoting and marketing your book, unless you’re a household name, is going to be your problem.

And it turns out that doing something, often enough, does work. My little unknown book, with its “marketing on a shoestring” budget, keeps on selling—at least in its ebook version (which of course earns me only pennies per sale, if you care).

The recent sales rankings are due to my efforts, and to the many recommendations here on Substack, and my guest columns and other published essays; the book’s listing on the (which has made the HatS ebook quite popular in Australia); and to great book recommendation sites like www.Shepherd.com

When I sit down to pick which of the most recent events go on the big list below—deciding between writing posts versus doing teaching gigs, for example—the choice begs the question: what exactly defines, to an author, a book-marketing event?

Personally, I count any event—an essay, column, or story getting published; a class, seminar or workshop I teach; a podcast I guest on—as long as my book’s title or image will be seen by a potential reader. So, if I publish an essay that runs with a link to this ‘stack or to HatS, then it becomes a book-marketing event. I don’t list my own ‘stack.

And…I didn’t start the list on the book’s actual pub date of September 19th, 2023 because marketing started much earlier than that. The first two official marketing events happened in June of 2023, including starting this Substack newsletter.

I’ve surely missed a few things in the past two years—especially pitches to podcasts, because so many of those don’t get captured if there’s no reply received. I could have done better at that, but you’ll get the idea from the pitches/submissions I did include.

For every appearance I did in the last six months, I personally pitched myself to that venue/publication. On the list, I am JSR or JR; the book itself is abbreviated as HatS.

Here goes:

2023 (37 events/activities)

June 28, the book got a five-star review from Reader’s Favorite Book Reviews

June 29, JSR started this HatS Substack newsletter

June 30, Latitude 38 published JSR’s sailing article

July 26-29 JSR recorded the audiobook at Mirror Sound in Seattle

July 30, JSR did her first podcast: Jake’s Take.

Aug 9, JSR on podcast: Real Life Matters with D’Boss

Aug 10, JSR on podcast with Lisa Angle: Literary Gumbo

Aug 15, pitched myself to August McLaughlin of Girl Boner Radio

Aug 25, JSR radio show interview for Positive Talk Radio

Sept 1, JSR featured in She Is Magazine

Sept 5, JSR on podcast: Too Opinionated

Sept 7, JSR on podcast: Chatter that Matters

Sept 8, JSR on podcast with August McLaughlin: Girl Boner Radio

Sept 10, Medium’s Authority Magazine runs interview with me as a “marriage expert”

Sept 13, JSR on podcast: Finding Your Bliss on Zoomer Radio

Sept 13, JSR appearance on Positive Talk Radio

Sept 15, Discover Baja Article about HatS comes out online

Sept 16, JSR’s Baja book list went live on Shepherd.com

Sept 16, JSR virtual appearances at Southern California Writers Conference

Sept 19, Pub day—JSR posted on A Mighty Blaze

Sept 22, JSR on podcast: Words and Pictures, from the UK

Sept 23, JSR taught San Diego Writers, Ink class online about writing memoir

Sept 24, Posted local event notices for PT Library event in Oct

Sept 26, Zoom interview with Carmel for Keepin’ it Real

Sept 29, JSR on Positive Talk Radio show live Seattle KIXI

Sept 30, JSR did phone interview with Port Townsend Leader

Oct 2, Baja Traveler video and photos posted online

Oct 4, JSR Port Townsend library book launch slideshow 7pm

Oct 7, JSR did write up for PT Yacht Club newsletter

Oct 10, JSR on book marketing podcast with Marla Miller

Oct 16, JSR on Zoom Meeting with Northwest Women Who Sail

Oct 17, JSR on a podcast: Author Wheel (Greta and Megan)

Oct 19, JSR did live recording for a podcast: The Boat Geeks (YouTube)

Oct 23 HatS entered in the 2024 Southern California Book Festival awards

Oct 26, Small Craft Advisor online HatS prologue was live

Nov 14, JSR and RR did an in-person slideshow at PT Yacht Club meeting 7pm

Dec 3, JSR’s Best 3 books of 2023 list went live on shepherd.com

2024 (56 events/activities)

Jan 2, Zoom interview with Alicia Dara of Womancake Mag

Jan 24, WomanCake Mag interview published today

Jan 26, Attended Local Authors event at Library downtown San Diego

Jan 27, Book launch & book-signing event at La Playa Books

Jan 31, JSR at in-person Writers of Substack meeting in SD

Feb 2, JSR Book-signing event and reading at SDWI/Liberty Station First Friday

Feb 3, JSR on Zoom event with Int’l Memoir Writers

Feb 3, JSR and RR person-Oceanside YC slideshow

Feb 10, JSR taught in person Editing for writers class at SDWI

Feb 12, HatS submitted to Next Generation Indie Book Awards

Feb 14, JSR in person slideshow with RR for A-16 at Helix brewery

Feb 15, JSR slideshow for SWYC and Women who sail 7pm-9pm

Feb 16-18 JSR was SCWC Friday night speaker plus taught 4 classes plus book signing

Feb 21, JSR Book signing and talk at Small World Books in Venice CA

March 7, JSR Launch Pad appearance on Facebook Live on Bookish Road Trip

March 12, HatS reviewed on Story Circle Network Book Reviews site

March 21, JSR online author appearance and slideshow for Discover Baja

March 21, HatS submitted for National Indie Excellence Award

March 25, Signed up to do a Zoom class on Scribophile

March 25, JSR pitched to Latino Book Chat podcast

March 26, JSR marketing afloat feature on SoNovelicious went live today

March 30, Medium Authority Magazine runs “5 Things I wish someone had told me”

March 31, JSR wrote up Oldster Author Questionnaire and submitted it

April 7th Submitted HatS for a SW Regional Book Festival award

April 17, JSR on book marketing podcast interview with Marla Miller

April 21 Signed up to do a virtual class for Story Circle Network

April 24, “I Will Survive” essay in Womancake Magazine

May 10, Taught a Zoom class on Scribophile

May 21, JSR short story is chosen as best 20-word short story at SDWI

May 24, JSR and HatS is featured in

May 29, Oldster Magazine JSR’s Author Questionnaire

May 30, HatS glowingly reviewed by Pat Rains for The So Cal Log newspaper

June 9, JSR attended local Women’s Fiction Writing Association meeting in PT

June 12, JSR’s first travel column “Two States of Mind” runs in Womancake Magazine

June 13, HatS wins National Indie Excellence Award for Latinx Nonfiction

June 17, New essay accepted for Sunshine Noir III collection at CityWorks Press

June 18, Signed up for author Book Boost on shepherd.com

June 25, HatS and JSR are featured on Lupita Reads Nuevas Paginas

June 30, HatS added to Authors XP listing in ebook/Audio for Audiobook August

July 10, HatS won the memoir category of the Great Southwest Book Festival

July 25, HatS is a silver medal finalist in the Next Generation Indie Book Awards

July 26, Travel Column for Womancake Magazine about visiting Central California

August 17, JSR short story submitted to SD Writers and Editors Guild anthology

Aug 30, JSR’s Travel column for Womancake Magazine on sailing and marriage-savers

Sept 10, HatS is Memoir runner-up in 2024 Southern California Book Festival awards

Sept 25, Travel Column for Womancake Magazine is a Venice, California, love letter

Oct 11, SCWC JSR and Judy Reeves interview posted on SCWC.com on YouTube

Oct 12, JSR interview posted on Indie Authors site and image on Carousel of Authors

Oct 17, JSR accepted for Authors Guild membership

Oct 18, Sent sample book to Watermark Book Company in Anacortes, Washington

Nov 2, Short story accepted in SDWEG’s Gilded Pen anthology, Good Luck With That.

Nov 13, JSR webinar on editing for Story Circle Network

Nov 14 JSR submitted My Library Story to LA County Library Foundation site

Nov 26, JSR My Top Three Books of 2024 list submitted to shepherd.com

Dec 8, JSR memoir class taught online at SDWI

Dec 10, JSR Bold Journeys interview goes live

2025 (45)

Jan 17, JSR guests on Adam Greenfield’s San Diego-based The Written Scene podcast

Jan 22, JSR Travel column for is an essay excerpt from HatS

Jan 30, Canvas Rebel JSR interview written

Feb 11, pitched HatS to “Bookish Buddies” interview series

Feb 14-16, Presented workshops at SCWC, with book signing

Feb 17, Canvas Rebel interview goes live

Feb 17, Travel Column for Womancake a Baja/La Paz love letter)

Feb 18, Well Read Magazine accepts JSR article about writing and editing

March 10, Sasha set up JSR interview for the Sherard Show in Los Angeles

March 14, Two classes on marketing/editing pitched/accepted for SDWI in April

March 19, Live on-air Interview with the Sherard Show LA

April 8, set up online class for SD Writers and Editors Guild

April 9, Travel Column for Womancake on Travel Books

April 12, Teach online class on : “Marketing and Promoting Your Work in Progress” at SD Writers, Ink

April 26, Teach online class on : “Self-editing for Writers” at SD Writers, Ink

May 3, My long-form essay is published in Sunshine/Noir III anthology which launches at Centro Cultural de la Raza

May 14, “Bookish Buddies” interview, Bookish Road Trip

May 14, Teach Story Circle Network online class: “What Writers Should Know About Editing”

May 18, Teach online class: “Marketing on a Shoestring” at SD Writers, Ink

May 26, Record Podcast with Jeniffer Thompson

May 27, Post 36th wedding anniversary for “Honeymooners”

June 17th, My “Bookish Buddies” interview is live on FB

June 23, JSR flash essay “The Pale Green Teapot” is accepted for publication on the In a Flash Substack

June 25, Travel Column for Womancake: “Victoria by Boat”

July 30, Travel Column, Womancake: “Hot and Cool Vancouver”

August 1, JSR flash essay “The Pale Green Teapot” is live on In a Flash Substack

Aug 11, Memoir Monday round up features JSR flash essay “The Pale Green Teapot” on In a Flash Substack

August 15, JSR essay accepted for publication in SCN’s Real Women Write anthology, “In the Garden”

August 16, JSR SDWEG anthology story promo goes live on Facebook and the author interview is live on YouTube

Sept 10, Travel Column, Womancake: “Deep Delights in Desolation Sound”

Sept 19, HatS celebrated its two-year birthday. JR posts to social media

Sept 26, Pitch JR sea story telling to She Tells Sea Tales

Oct 1, JR pitched WBTYS story slam for February 21, accepted

Oct 7, JR’s Central California travel column featured on Pillar to Post blog

Oct. 17-19, JR teaching/booksigning/talk at Central Oregon Writers’ Conference

Oct 25, JR teaching a Story Circle class online

Nov 5, JR’s Independence Day essay featured on Memoir Land’s “Goodbye to All That”

Nov 9, JR’s San Francisco (Giants) travel column featured on Pillar to Post blog

Nov 19, JR to online book club 3pm

Nov 19, JR to San Diego Writers and Editors meeting

Nov 25, JR’s 3 Favorite Reads of 2025 is live on www.shepherd.com

Dec 3, JR on Substack Live with Alicia Dara of Womancake

Dec 13, JR attends in-person local prose/poetry slam to read from HatS

Dec 16, JR’s Palm Springs Holidays travel column featured on Pillar to Post blog

Dec 24, JR’s Holiday Serenade essay featured on Memoir Land’s “Goodbye to All That”

2025 (14 so far)

Jan 9, JR’s song lyrics performed at Thursday Writers post-holiday party

Jan 15, JR’s San Juan Islands travel column featured on Pillar to Post blog

Jan 16-18, JR teaching/signing/talk at Southern California Writers’ Conference

Feb 1, JR book-signing at Seattle Boat Show at Captain’s Nautical 3:30

Feb 2, JR “From Passenger to Partner” sailing seminar @ Seattle Boat Show

Feb 2, JR book-signing 12pm at Captain’s Nautical booth @ Seattle Boat Show

Feb 2, JR at Women’s Day Seattle Boat Show after party event at Brewery

Feb 3, JR “From Passenger to Partner” sailing seminar @ Seattle Boat Show

Feb 3, JR book-signing 2pm at Captain’s Nautical booth @ Seattle Boat Show

Feb 17, JR’s Port Townsend travel column featured on Pillar to Post blog

Feb 20, JR’s social media/Substack posts promoting WBTYS “The Love Boat”

Feb 21, JR on Zoom for WBTYS “The Love Boat” perform story slam

Mar 9, JR contracted with Latitude 38 to publish “Honeymoon at Sea” piece in May

Mar 15, JR guests on “Anchored In Books” book club online

Total: I’ve done over 150 events (152), since spring of 2023. Onward and upward…

hasta pronto!

As so often happens to freelance writers, the editor came back with an assignment instead. His reply was: “It would be fun to have a cruising story from you in our upcoming issue and we could include mention of your new book. Since it’s summer and you’ve spent a couple of years in the Delta would you be interested in doing something about cruising the Delta for our July issue? Something like 1500 -1800 words and 4-6 hi-res photos?”

Latitude 38 doesn’t pay its writers anything, but everyone who races or cruises on a sailboat or power boat along the coast of the Golden State reads it. Even people who no longer cruise or race read it, to keep up with the travels of those they know who are still “out there.” They also ran the “Baja Ha-ha” which is a big group sailing adventure from SF to Baja California that takes place each year, and is perfectly timed to remind readers about beautiful Baja each summer.

So of course, I agreed and wrote the Delta sailing piece and it came out in July, which was perfect, as most people in the SF Bay area go boating at that time of the year. I’ll show you a couple screenshots of it below, as it lives in their online archives now.

Almost a year later, in April of 2024, I sent the editor another email: “I did a story for Latitude last year about cruising the Sacramento Delta on our 35 foot Coronado. I’ve written a 2500-word piece about the first sailing trip Russel and I took, as newlyweds, on our 26 foot Columbia sloop, from San Diego to the Sea of Cortez, where we stayed a year before going south to Panama, through the Canal, then on to Florida.”

I heard nothing back, so I sent him the email again in May. He replied: “Jennifer - always enjoy and opportunity to look at a story. We love boats like the Columbia 26 which makes sailing affordable and accessible to many. What year did you sail the boat to Baja?” I answered in an email to which was attached the 2500 word piece, along with a sample photo, a favorite one which has been reprinted many times now.

He replied: “Jennifer—Thanks for sending. We'll have a look as soon as we can.” After that email I heard nothing from him for three weeks. On May 30th I sent a quick email: “My book was just reviewed by Pat Rains in the Log in SoCal...and she recommended it! Thought you’d like to know.” I received no reply.

From June to October I heard nothing, despite two cheery follow up emails. I looked the guy up, and he was still listed as the editor. I called and left a message. No answer.

In November, I emailed him this: “It’s been over six months so I am guessing you are passing on this sailing to Baja story submitted to you back in May. I thought you might be considering it for Ha-Ha season. Let me know.” Nothing.

So, after thinking about sending it elsewhere, and thinking about rewriting it for another publication, I did what any good freelance writer does when they get ghosted by their chosen publication—I gave up on it, and went on to another project altogether. And I basically forgot about the snub, though it still rankled.

Yesterday, I got an email from the new editor at Latitude 38, a woman who wrote: “I’m circling back to your story ‘Honeymoon at Sea.’ We're interested in including it in an upcoming issue.” She specified the number of photos and added that, as registrations for the Ha-ha were opening early, “your story would fit just about anytime over the coming summer.” Naturally, I said yes.

The magazine with my story in it, the one that I originally pitched to the magazine’s editor in April of 2023, will be out sometime in the summer of 2026. What perfect timing, that piece coming out just as we prepare to head south once more.

And after all, every new piece I publish is an opportunity for a new reader to hear about me and “Honeymoon,” and a chance for them to click through and take a look at it, maybe download the sample to read, or even buy a copy.

So, take heart, my writer friends, and keep sending out those stories and essays and pitches and queries. Your acceptance letter could be in the mail to you right now, or it might just appear in your inbox tomorrow—or in a year or two or three.

hasta pronto!

I finally read Heart The Lover by Lily King. I love her writing, but I have a hard time setting aside time to read books that are getting so much press already. I prefer to read and review books from small presses that you might not have heard about. Since Grove Atlantic, Lily King’s publisher, is “an independent literary publisher” (thought a pretty major one) I bought myself a copy of Heart The Lover and it was as good as I expected, and more. I laughed and I cried—seriously, it ran the gamut. My favorite book of hers is still Writers & Lovers but that might be because it focuses more on the young woman—a student of her craft who dreams of doing big things—and how she supports herself in a city waiting tables. Yes, that sounds like me, long ago. Here’s a pic of me in those days, serving brunch at Maxwell’s Plum back in 1984 or so.

Of course, it is easy for me to simply talk about books and authors I admire—which I love to do, obviously—but I want to help that next Lily King to do her very best, too. So here’s a tip to use when rewriting, to avoid leaving in some things I’d cut out.

One of the difficult parts about writing a novel or memoir is knowing how much of your expository can be left for later—or left out, if it has already been said or implied. But when we are actively writing a manuscript, and moving forward in the story as we go, we tend to forget, by the time we are on Chapter 15, what we wrote in Chapter 2.

If your friends or Beta readers tell you your book is “slow” at the beginning or that the opening chapters didn’t “hook” them, what they are probably saying is that it is front-loaded with expository, meaning that there’s simply too much information about the character(s) before the character(s) or the story itself has intrigued them.

This can be true about describing our setting as well—we’re so excited to show the reader how much homework and research we’ve done about Bangor or Seattle or the Okefenokee Swamp, that we go on and on about it, ad nauseam. In writing-craft circles, such an overdose is known as an “info dump” and it translates to boredom.

So, at the beginning of your next rewrite, try this tip: Print out the first two or three chapters (you can also do this digitally, with the highlighter tool on a PDF). Then go through each of the chapters, armed with a yellow highlighter, and mark all the facts readers need to know, anything that’s integral to the story. Then highlight in pink (go over the yellow) anything that the reader doesn’t have to know at that point; see how much of the page is pink—you will need to move a majority of that later.

Most importantly, highlight all the repetitions of information in blue so you can see which one to cut (usually the one I cut will be the first iteration of the fact/info, but not always) and eventually decide where in the story to put that information for the most impact. (As I have said before, we only need to learn enough in Chapter 1 to read Chapter 2, and so on.) Too many repetitions, whether they are restated in some way or not—will dampen a reader’s interest, or perhaps destroy it.

But don’t stop with repetitions: Look over those highlighted pages or chapters. You have a clear visual diagram—all the non-highlighted paragraphs and pages—of how much of your writing is inconsequential details that may be brilliantly written but don’t further the story. Some of that could be eliminated, but the majority can be trimmed down so it adds life and color to your characters and setting, without becoming a drag to the book’s opening chapters.

For example, if the opening lines of a manuscript was: “Sherry woke up that Saturday morning a bit hungover and more than a bit perturbed with herself. She got out of bed, let her dog Skippy dog out to pee and poop in the side yard, and then took a shower, all the while keeping up a silent inner monologue of self-berating comments like ‘what is wrong with me?’ What was wrong with her? At thirty-five, she shouldn’t be going out drinking with her younger co-workers at the design firm on Friday afternoons, right after work.” The highlighted words/phrases would be: Sherry; Saturday, hungover, dog Skippy, self-berating, thirty-five, younger co-workers.

I don’t consider it pertinent that she woke up (and starting a story or book with the MC waking up is seriously such a cliche that agents and editors often laugh about it). Also unimportant is the fact that her dog pees/poops, that she showers, and the content of her monologue beyond the words self-berating and drinking.

Maybe later we’ll find out that her mental anguish is key, but right now we are simply looking for facts about this person. If the next pages fill us in on what she ate for breakfast, the kibble she fed Skippy, and the fact that she walked around the boat pond in Central Park on her way to her therapist appointment, the only words that would be highlighted are Central Park and therapist.

When you can easily see, in living color, all the extra words that are not propelling the plot, it is easier to decide which ones to delete. Of course, the non-highlighted words don’t all have to be cut—and they shouldn’t. Which ones get removed is your call. After all, choosing which words stay on the page is the art of the art form.

So, while you are eliminating repetition, you can also look out for obvious and clunky expository dialogue, like: “I’m so glad you’re my older sister and live only three blocks from me” or, even worse, “I am so grateful that you and I have been repairing our formerly estranged relationship since our beloved mother died four years ago.”

This would be termed “on the nose” dialogue—named for the finger to nose move in a game of charades, meaning that someone has guessed a word exactly. And when a reader says your dialogue is “on the nose” it is not meant in a complimentary way.

Writing is rewriting, as you have all heard. First, you need to put down all your ideas in as many words as it takes, then winnowing out the unnecessary ones until you have just the right words on the page to convey exactly what you pictured in your head, or felt, so that we can picture it—and hopefully feel it, too.

Let me know if you have tried this sort of tip—or maybe this very tip, which I’ve shared with many of my clients—and if it helped you to cut extraneous expository, and perhaps some of your elusive recurring text.

Write on. Hasta pronto!

What makes a written character interesting to readers? There are plenty of answers, of course, from honesty to loyalty to the ability to laugh at oneself. I think all those rank high on the list, but for me, what makes a character feel real is contradictions. If I am reading about a detective who is trying to solve a crime but also has a deep need to keep secrets, even when revealing one of those secrets will help bring a criminal to justice, I find that intriguing. If a character says they are doing everything in their power to help someone, but we see them take actions that clearly impede that assistance, that piques my interest.

This illogical, irrational behavior makes us able to relate to characters because, very simply, contradictions are in our DNA; they are a huge part of what makes us human. We constantly use our big brains to rationalize our behavior, because what we do—not just the actions we take, personally, but our influence and downright manipulation of others’ actions—so often goes against what we have professed to believe or know, and may even be in opposition to what we believe to be true about ourselves. 

That’s why when a character says one thing and does another, or thinks one thing, says another, and does a third, we sit up and take notice. We may or may not empathize, or even sympathize with the actions they take, but we are able to connect with that person on a level that we can’t reach with characters who are so squeaky clean that they don’t even think thoughts they wouldn’t articulate aloud. (Those people may work fine as secondary characters, because we won’t be likely to know their innermost thoughts, anyway, and will have to simply take their actions and words at face value.)

But our protagonist and hopefully, our antagonist as well, should be three-dimensional—living, breathing people who most often reveal their inner yearnings obliquely, not directly; the kind of people who don’t say everything they are thinking at all times, the kind of people we instinctively relate to, because we know them intimately and have been privy to their secrets all of our lives. Our parents, our brothers and sisters, our best friends, ourselves.

So, when your heroine has to make a tough decision between equally compelling arguments—one of which will benefit her more and the other option that is the right thing to do, don’t skimp on the moments when she vacillates. Show the inner struggle before she rises to the occasion and does the right thing (or the wrong thing for the right reason). And if she is required to show courage in the face of danger, don’t skip over the part of her that wants to cut and run, to save her own skin, to protect her precious loved ones at the expense of strangers. Because that is what makes simply “doing the right thing” into something righteous, and what makes a kick-ass fight scene meaningful as well as exciting.

This kind of complicated and contradictory inner life is what makes characters written by skilled authors like Elizabeth Strout, Jennifer Egan, and Lily King—I highly recommend Writers and Lovers, pictured here— so very intriguing and so darned likable, even when what they do and say is not always likable.

We humans are flawed. We are selfish, often defensive, and easily scared by change. In an age of better and better artificial intelligence, those foibles might be the final thing that we can cling to, as proof of our kinship with the rest of the animal kingdom. One thing is for sure, though: our insecurities and our self-doubt, and our willingness to rationalize away our bad choices are all a huge part of what make us—and the people and worlds we create on the page—so very interesting.

Keep writing, keep challenging yourself, keep growing. 
Hasta pronto!

If you’re interested, I suggest you get your ticket ASAP because there is a limit to how many people get to be in the virtual room and it could well, sell out. If you want to subscribe to Nan Tepper’s Substack, you can do that and at the $10 a month level that will get you in to WBTYS for free to each of the monthly readings, which is pretty amazing. There will be more on buying tickets below…

Nan Tepper is a fantastic performer and writer and the women story tellers from the last WBTYS in January were great, so I’m really looking forward to it. It’s going to continue to be a thing here on Substack, every month, and get more and more popular.

It’s all short takes, only 4 minutes, “no dicks” as she says—everyone is welcome to attend, but no men performing on this stage. (That’s cool, let’s face it, there were many, years that no women were allowed on stage. We have a lot of years to catch up on, so please don’t post any comments about why women not men. One, it is not my venue, I am being asked to attend and two, I am all for it being all women.)

About a dozen women, including Yours Truly, will each perform a 4 minute piece. I love storytelling—both the listening and the performing side of things—so, as I said, I am really excited about this event. And of course, I’m a little bit anxious—not nervous, exactly, but just “filled with anticipatory glee” as Russel would say.

I still can’t decide which of my two favorite 4 minute pieces to do because all of them have to do with being in love on a boat. I’ve tried a couple of them out and I like them both so it’s a little bit challenging for me to choose one. So, I guess you’ll have to tune in tomorrow to see which story I end up performing.

Anyway, if you are not a paid subscriber to Nan’s Substack, don’t forget to get a ticket for Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam! Here’s the Eventbrite link for anyone who’d rather purchase a ticket than become a paid subscriber (which really is a far better deal, you get 12 shows for the price of 10). I hope to see you there.

I also wanted to post a link to another interview published with San Diego Voyager, which came out in January. The interview asked where we lived in San Diego and instead of North Park I said Point Loma, because that was where we lived on the boat most recently, so I am called a Point Loma resident here.

That’s kind of funny, but it feels right because we know that neighborhood so well. And La Playa Books of Point Loma is one of my favorite bookstores, where my local book launch party happened, so that is another cool connection. Anyway, you can read the whole (short) San Diego Voyager interview here.

Okay, now I am going back to trying out my stories and timing them and trying to decide which one to tell at WBTYS…Decisions, decisions.

hasta pronto!

The long history of Puerto Rico is, in a nutshell, complicated. And, since it is an unincorporated U.S. territory—like American Samoa, Guam, the Northern Mariana Islands, and the U.S. Virgin Islands—much of the island’s history has become even more complicated, in recent years, due to its odd connection to the U.S.A. There is no current path for Puerto Rico to become a state, and most of the island’s inhabitants do not wish for that to happen, anyway. One example they hold up of an independent island kingdom that was taken over or stolen is Hawaiʻi. Bad Bunny’s song “Lo Que Le Paso A Hawaii” contains the lyrics “What happened to Hawaii can also happen here," and is seen as a plea to Puertorriqueños to hold on to their culture and traditions.

Hawaiʻi’s long and colorful history has been written about by many people, and in the last couple of decades, some of those books were even written by residents or writers who knew the islands well. However, very few of the authors have succeeded—or even attempted—to tell the story of the islands within a fictional narrative. All that has now changed with the arrival of The Pōhaku, a new novel by Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes.

About ten years ago, I was teaching at the Southern California Writers’ Conference in Irvine, back when we still had an LA area conference; that weekend I heard an author read from her manuscript and what I heard knocked my socks off. That author was Jasmin ‘Iolani Hakes. We immediately clicked and she soon sent me her entire manuscript to read. I already knew it was going to be something special, but the writing in The Pōhaku exceeded my expectations. The structure of the story needed some work, and we chatted a few times about suggestions that I had and her thoughts about my feedback. Along the way, we got to be friends.

She reworked that first manuscript but didn’t have any success with querying agents, as I recall, or maybe they liked her writing but not the book, and she kept writing, eventually sending me the manuscript for her second novel, Hula. I loved it and thought it was much more marketable—not least because Jasmin supported herself as a hula dancer for years—she was quickly able to solve the minor story issues with that one and start submitting it. She soon signed with a high-powered literary agent and they started sending Hula out. I waited to hear more, confident that it would be well received but still with my fingers crossed (this crazy business breeds self doubt!).

Thanksgiving week of 2019, I got an email from Jasmin saying that the book had gone to auction and that the major publisher whose bid won the book had huge plans for it and had sent a marketing plans covered with quotes that raved about the book. She was thrilled by the feedback from all the acquisition editors and concluded her email to me with this: “All this to say: I learned so much from you when you edited the Pohaku, and your help editing Hula got it where it is today. I’m still digesting what’s happening, but mostly I feel so grateful to you for helping me get this far.”

Hula, published by HarperCollins in early 2023, was a big hit. It was named a Best Book of the Summer by Harper’s Bazaar and ELLE, was an Audiofile Magazine Earphones Award Winner and was awarded HONOLULU Magazine’s Book of the Year About Hawaiʻi. You can read my review of it here. I don’t recall if she got a two book deal or not, but Jasmin signed with HarperCollins to publish The Pōhaku. And now that long-awaited book—the manuscript I read back in 2017—is now out!

The structure of The Pōhaku is quite different from that early draft, but the basic story has remained; it is still powerful, important, and perhaps even more timely now. The novel opens in a hospital in modern-day Hawaiʻi, where a repentant and estranged grandmother sits beside her comatose granddaughter, who was injured in a mysterious fall. As part of the healing process, the grandmother tells her unresponsive granddaughter the story of of an ancient stone known as The Pōhaku; the tale she relates spans centuries and takes us readers from Hawaiʻi to California and back.

If you’ve always wanted to know more about Hawaiʻian culture, but didn’t want to sit down with a thick historical tome or settle for James Michener’s glossed over version of events, this is the book for you. The story is human and intimate, but along the way you will learn a great deal about Hawaiʻi—about the missionaries, the relentless corruption by big-money interests, and the years of federal government overreach.

The author also explores the history of the California Gold Rush and the exploitation of its indigenous peoples. In fact, the original inhabitants of California and Hawaiʻi had a great deal in common, though their modern-day stories played out very differently. The two states are now known to travel agents as “tourist paradises.” Well, to quote an Eagles song, “You call some place paradise, kiss it goodbye.”

Hawaiʻi is not going anywhere, but, like every “paradise” it currently faces the need to make existential choices about how to move forward in this modern world without losing its unique culture and deep-rooted traditions. Sound familiar? Yep, this is all coming full circle. I believe that U.S. citizens, and their government, can acknowledge the mistakes we’ve made as a country, from colonization to genocide, and strive to do much much better, without losing anything. In fact, our entire continent can evolve and grow together; because, “Together, We Are America.”

hasta pronto!

What I think is that the things most of us like to do—making new friends with whom we share common interests, for example—are the best types of book marketing. One easy way to market yourself and your skills is by sharing your writing or ideas here on Substack; others include teaching classes, attending conferences, and going to local book events.

January was a month in which I did all of those things and more. We started off by visiting our families and some old friends. Then we attended the Southern California Writers’ Conference in San Diego (SCWC), where I taught a few workshops, co-taught another, sat in on a couple, and was even on a panel. I saw writer friends, made some new friends, and gained a few new clients as well. My after-the-conference Substack newsletter covered a few takeaways from SCWC for new writers.

As soon as the conference, the long road trip, and my terrible head cold were over, it was time to start preparing for my next marketing event—the big annual Seattle Boat Show. I’d been hoping to be asked to be a presenter at the boat show—it is the biggest West Coast boat show after all—for three years. The experience did NOT disappoint.

There was so much to see and do in the massive Lumen Field event and convention space, which I’d never been to before. It is crazy big, with three levels, and the boat show used the space to great advantage, with seminars on two floors and five separate stages. I did two seminars about how to become a “partner” not just a “passenger” on a boat. And I was thrilled to be invited to do a few hours of book-signing at the world of boat books that was the Captain’s Nautical booth. Find Captain’s Nautical online here or visit their Inglewood store in person (it’s in west Los Angeles, near LAX).

My seminars were well-received, and a few attendees even came by after to talk about their cruising dreams. It is always fun to talk to people about big life plans and schemes and to hopefully inspire some action. I sold and signed some copies of Honeymoon at Sea, as well as Beyond Baja Legends (by long-time Baja aficionado Greg Niemann), and got to “talk Baja,” plenty. The slideshow that accompanied my talk included some aspirational Baja slides like these; I know how to keep an audience happy.

Speaking of making connections, one of the people who came by to visit and buy a signed copy of my book was of Floating in Memory. Karson had bought my book as an audiobook and wanted a physical copy too. Is there a better feeling than to talk to a new friend who’s bright and fun and who loved your book? No, there is not. I am going to get an ARC of her adventure memoir, 48 Days to Barbados, and I can’t wait. She is a fine writer: check out her most recent Substack post below about getting tear-gassed by federal agents last week at a peaceful Portland protest.

Just yesterday I returned from Seattle, tired but happy; it is so good to be back on my boat home. Even when Watchfire is cold and bare and sitting in the boatyard. I go to my next dog-sitting gig Sunday—a tiny home with a tiny dog. I am housesitting in downtown Port Townsend after that, which will carry me into March, which is good because the big boat steering redo job will take place in March and be a big mess.

So does all this work (travel and talks) result in books sold or any other tangible progress? Well, HatS is still in the top 400 in three different ebook categories, and January brought 25 new subscribers to this Substack, including a new paid subscriber, which is always a thrill. I consider that everything I am doing helps. And, I like it.

Let’s keep Editor on Board going and growing! Feel free to share this post on social media, for those who do such things—EOB can use the exposure. You can always subscribe, like (heart), share, or restack this, with or w/out a note, which I appreciate. I believe that committed communities (the arts and activism) will save us all.

And speaking of community, don’t forget to put the Feb 21 event from Wham! Bam! Thank You! Slam! on your calendar, and please subscribe to WBTYS (or buy a ticket). Here’s the Eventbrite link for anyone who’d rather purchase a ticket than become a paid subscriber (which really is a far better deal, you get 12 shows for the price of 10). I hope to see you—I’ll be there, sharing a story, like I do.

hasta pronto!

Sit, Cinderella Sit, by Lisa Cheek, begins with an adorable dog and the woman who adores him. The handsome and charming dog is named Ron Howard, which made me laugh, but which suits him because, as the author puts it—who doesn’t love Ron Howard? The first few chapters are set in Southern California, and even better, the main character works in the movie business. Lisa Cheek was not an aspiring actor, like Yours Truly was, Once Upon a Time In Hollywood. She was a film editor.

The story starts with Lisa getting canned, and feeling like she has aged out of the business (not an uncommon occurrence for women in Tinsel Town, for those who don’t know). Funny enough, Lisa gets offered a job in China, and soon is winging her way across the Pacific Ocean to edit the first Chinese-language movie of “Cinderella.”

I’ll bet you already guessed the hardest part of this job—leaving behind her furry four-legged friend. That’s right, Ron Howard stays with a trusted human neighbor who has her own canine best buddy. So Lisa shows up in a country where she speaks not a word of the language, is questioning her place in the world, and is without her friendly emotional support dog. To top it all off, she has never edited a feature film before—and she’s going to be editing one that’s all in Chinese.

I was caught up in this book from page one, but this is where the story got truly interesting for me. It echoed my own experience of being an actor in New York City who suddenly finds herself living on a boat in remote and beautiful Baja California, Mexico. Not just geographically a stranger in a strange land, but also in terms of not knowing what I was doing with my life. I felt compelled to make this new lifestyle work, to become a productive member of this two-person team, but I didn’t know how. So I dove in, both literally and metaphorically.

Lisa starts by cutting the first scene she is given and moving on from there, in spite of being overwhelmed in good and bad ways by the job and the incredible setting she’s been thrust into. Naturally, her work is made even more difficult by being lonely and cut off, both by language and culture. Luckily, along the way, she adopts a little dog who is somewhat neglected, and names her Cinderella. In true doggy fashion Cinderella befriends not only Lisa but the cast and crew, and finds her way in the world alongside her human friend.

Like most “travel” memoirs, the external adventure is a mirror for the internal journey Lisa is on, and there is much to discover on both the inner and outer levels. I was pleased to see that the author (or editor?) chose an organic, unfolding type of story structure, something which I often recommend to memoirists, and which I feel worked very successfully. The book’s publisher is She Writes Press, which often chooses unusual stories, instead of picking only those manuscripts which conform in every way.

I hope the book finds a wide readership, not only to reward its evocative writing and heartfelt story, but because I think we readers need to read different types of books—not every adventure needs to start off with a bang and run headlong to the end, with the race to its climax punctuated by crises after crises. Some stories are more like relationships in that they catch fire slowly and burn brightly only once those involved are committed to seeing them through. And though every story is a sort of love story, not every love story is a romance, and a loving friend can truly be a lifesaver. I highly recommend this book for writers, film buffs, China aficionados, and, of course, dog lovers.

Speaking of love stories, if you are in a romantic relationship with someone who is not neurotypical, or you are not neurotypical yourself, you might want to pick up a copy of Disconnected: Portrait of a Neurodiverse Marriage by Eleanor Vincent. The story of a woman in her early seventies who married an undiagnosed man who is clearly on the Autism spectrum, this relationship had enough red flags to warn off almost anyone. Except a woman born to a gay father and a lesbian mother who both pretended to be straight and so unwittingly taught their daughter that love was about keeping secrets, and who was deeply in love with a man who could only love her in his own unique way. The love story, which starts with Zydeco dancing, has a rhythm all its own.

Speaking of how many different ways there are to tell our personal stories—see my recent post on this subject—I read How to Plant a Billion Trees: A Memoir of Childhood Trauma and the Healing Power of Nature by Nicole Walker and found yet another way. I could have thought long and hard about how to tell a story of childhood sexual abuse, and never come up with the braided style that the author uses to tell her story. She puts her damaged young life against the ongoing damage of global climate change, and shows us how plant ecosystems (and sometimes, human ones) support each individual.

The juxtaposition becomes even more profound when one learns that the author was raped and had to have an abortion at age 11. (That is not a typo. She was 11.) Walker is a scientist so she does not shy from being direct, which is what we all need at this moment in time. Plants and planets need preventative healthcare. So do people. Women who need healthcare (and yes, abortions are health care) are people, not statistics or types. They each have a unique story. This is one of them. Preorder the book right here; it comes out in a couple of weeks.

For those of you who are, like me, heartsick over the murders by ICE in Minnesota, and the ongoing trauma of ICE raids and arrests there, a friend of mine has spoken to her friend “on the ground” in the state and sent me a recommendation of where/how to donate: The Women's Foundation of Minnesota, and their newly created Immigrant Rapid Response Fund, are real people helping real people in Minnesota. Donate if you can, spread the word or re-stack if you cannot give money.

Community will save us. And speaking of community, don’t forget to put the Feb 21 event from on your calendar, and please subscribe to WBTYS (or buy a ticket). Here’s the Eventbrite link for anyone who’d rather purchase a ticket than become a paid subscriber (which really is a far better deal, you get 12 shows for the price of 10). I hope to see you—I’ll be there with bells on.

hasta pronto!