"Books for Soldiers": Here's your chance to show appreciation

Hey, Everyone,

I've pasted below the information from Press 53 about its 2nd "Books for Soldiers" campaign. Last year's campaign was wildly successful, and Kevin, the publisher, heard a resounding thanks from our troops and their families.

If you've been thinking today about how to show your appreciation, I hope you'll consider participating in "Books for "Soldiers."

From Press 53's Kevin Watson:

From Memorial Day (May 30) until Flag Day (June 14), for every book purchased at Press 53, we will ship a book at no additional cost to an active-duty soldier. Help us send a bit of home to our active-duty troops who are now overseas.

Here's how it works:

1. Buy a book for yourself, or for someone you love, at http://www.press53.com/, between May 30 (Memorial Day) and June 14 (Flag Day).

2. We will send a book to an active-duty soldier (found through AnySoldier.com) in your name at no additional cost to you.

3. After completing your order, send an email to your friends telling them how they too can have a book sent to a soldier.

4. Enjoy your book when it arrives.

5. Share this with all of your Facebook friends. Last year, Press 53 shipped more than 80 books to active-duty soldiers. This year, we would like to top that.

Thank you for caring and sharing.

Semper Fi to my fellow Marines and other servicemembers

Did I invite you? An explanation regarding our new connection...

A couple of days ago, I agreed to become the nonfiction editor of Prime Number Magazine. (More about this in a future blog.)

My good friend, Jeff Hess, e-mailed his congratulations and encouraged me to join Linkedin, a social networking site that does for business what Facebook does for our social lives: it connects us. All you have to do is enter the e-mail address of someone with whom you'd like to make a business connection, and Linkedin e-mails the message for you, something like, Tracy Crow would like to connect with you...

I'd been avoiding the whole Linkedin thing. In fact, I didn't give in to Facebook until about a year ago, about the same time I started this blog. But Jeff had a point. If I wanted to connect with great writers for the purpose of soliciting their best creative nonfiction, then I needed to be "Linkedin."

Setting up the profile page was simple enough. I easily uploaded a photo and entered employment information, happy I could now add the new editor's position. Next, my blog address and the Web address for Prime Number Magazine.

And then it happened. How, I'm still not exactly certain. Suddenly, my Blackberry, which was lying on the sofa beside me, began dinging with alarmity. I was receiving e-mail after e-mail. Dozens of e-mails, then tens of dozens. Ding-ding-ding...ding-ding-ding, like the winning slot machines at Vegas.

When I saw an "invite" sail off through cyberspace to the president of my college, I heard a voice like mine scream, "No, make it stop!" I pressed buttons. I checked box after box, as quickly as possible, beside the names of folks I hadn't contacted in years, hardly knew, or shouldn't anymore, then clicked "delete."

Too late.

Linkedin had a job to do, and apparently, the job was to connect me to my past, to everyone with whom I'd exchanged an e-mail, including the guy at Sir Speedy. Every contact in twenty years was "invited" to (re) connect with me through Linkedin. That should be a good thing, right?

Well, consider this short list:

The president of my college
The dean
My ex-husband
Another ex-husband
The ex-wife of an ex-husband
Every literary agent I contacted years ago when looking for representation
Every editor with whom I have or have not published, but shared an e-mail
The grandchildren of an ex-husband
Every former client when I sold real estate --Hello, Greenville!
Every professor
Every student
My former attorney
Every past employer and colleague
The dogs' vet

My past is catching up and about to run me over. Within minutes, an old flame quickly responded with "Thanks for the invite. Did you ever marry that baseball scout?"

Another, "I believe we've already 'connected.'" Followed by a wink. ;)

Ding-ding. Ding-ding.

Today, I turned off the Blackberry.

Get a little angry

Last weekend, I returned to Queens University of Charlotte in North Carolina to read selections from EYES RIGHT and to participate on a panel about the publishing process.

Five others joined me on the publishing panel. Each had a different experience with specific lessons to share. One had usurped the entire agent process until after acceptance by a publisher; one discussed the process of finding an agent; another talked about soliciting and editing for an anthology.

I talked about the value of getting angry.

I told the story about how the initial rejection process of finding an agent after grad school only made me more determined...and a little angry...and compelled me to e-mail 20 query letters (19 to agents and 1 to the University of Nebraska Press) one Friday night when I was supposed to be packing for a vacation in Panama.

By Monday, the editor of Nebraska said she was interested in taking the project before the board for approval; the process, she explained would take several weeks. At least a dozen other agents asked me to e-mail the full manuscript, one of them even e-mailing early Saturday morning.

I never made it to Panama that week. I came down with the flu. But exactly one week from "getting angry" and sending out those 20 query letters, an agent called. I was in bed, nearly too sick to answer the phone, but the area code looked intriguing. I paced the house, as if miraculously cured of the flu, while he rambled on about what he liked about the book, which was mainly about how it had as much appeal to men as to women. I loved his impressive resume; he'd been an editor at several large houses before becoming an agent. I loved his enthusiasm. I needed his enthusiasm. Finally, someone outside of grad school professors and fellow writers was expressing a legitimacy about my work. I was so thirsty for this I'd have drank sand in the desert if it offered such a hint.

You'd think the story would end there, right? That obtaining the agent led to a publishing contract. Nope. By the way, the Nebraska Press decided three weeks afterward to pass because it was backlogged with so many titles it would take years to release mine, and since I'd recently signed with an agent, the board didn't think it fair to hold me up.

Unfortunately, agents don't always have success selling the manuscripts they're passionate about. Turns out, my agent didn't even try. A few months after signing the contract with him, he decided we should hold the memoir, and that I should write a military novel, instead. So, like a good little Marine who follows orders, I did. And he came close to selling the novel. But only close.

Fast forward two years (it takes time to write a novel and revise that novel several times, you know) to when I discovered his photo and bio were missing from the agency website. Have I mentioned he was with one of the oldest, most prestigious agencies in New York? I called. He'd left the business, said his apologetic colleague. "He plans to contact each of his clients," she said. But he never did.

That night, I got angry, again. I got so angry that I sent an updated query letter to the new editor of the University of Nebraska Press, explaining that Nebraska once had interest in the memoir and that my agent, former agent, hadn't taken the book anywhere, after all. I asked if she'd take another look.

Yes, she e-mailed. The rest, as they say, is history. Three weeks later, she had unanimous support from the board, and EYES RIGHT was green-lighted for publication.

So my advice to grad school friends this past weekend was to get angry. More importantly, to put positive action behind that anger. No one is going to care about your success more than you. Not your spouse, believe it or not, not your children, not even your mother.

So, if not you, who?

It's okay to get a little angry. It's okay to feel passionate about your work. It's okay NOT to quit. In fact, I beg you not to quit.

You could be one query letter from success.

On the road to publishing EYES RIGHT...

We're several steps closer.

EYES RIGHT now has an ISBN and "cloth" information for the cover.

And yesterday, I received the copyedited manuscript. Thankfully, blissfully, the copyedits are light -- with one exception. The copyeditor has lowercased "Marine" to "marine."

Now, if you're one of my Facebook friends, you've already read the lengthy list of snarky comments regarding this, maybe even posted one or two. But to be fair to the copyeditor, the lowercase of Marine to marine is common in publishing, especially since publishers bow to Chicago style.

But what about bowing to hundreds of years of tradition? The word Marine is, technically, uppercased because the word is part of the actual title of "Marine Corps." At least, that's the story they're still telling recruits in boot camp.

For example, the word, soldier, is generic; therefore, soldier is not capitalized even when referring to someone within the U.S. Army, and neither is sailor. Coast Guardsman is capitalized, though.

Just the other day, I stumbled across a news story that stated the U.S. Army was now demanding that all references to soldier be capitalized. In fact, someone pretty high up there in the Army had sent the "order" to Webster for new inclusion in forthcoming dictionaries and to the Associated Press, which determines style usage for hundreds of newspapers. According to the article, the Army has suddenly had enough of what it considers favoritism toward Marines.

Was this, perhaps, also in response to the recent New York Times in-house style change? For more than a hundred years, the New York Times had been reporting Marines as marines. And then a sudden style shift to "Marines." Why? I don't know. Maybe someone on the Times staff, a former Marine, made a persuasive argument for bowing to hundreds of years of tradition?

So, what do I do about the hundred or so changes of Marine to marine within my own manuscript? I'm going to plead, shamelessly. I'll find her Achilles' heel -- chocolate, wine, puppies, Peeps -- and I'll bribe her with a lifetime supply.

Everyone has a price, and I'm willing to pay, BIG, not to offend my fellow Marines.

Nothing could be finer than to be in Carolina in the morning...

...especially when our lovable neighbor, Wyatt the Basset Hound, wanders over to welcome us home.

Hello, Wyatt.

Hello, Summer of 2011.

Hello, Summer of Writing.

Hello, Summer of Great Expectations.