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Looking Forward

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In 2016, I had one real resolution for the year -Finish Wine Bottles and Broomsticks and get it published. I may as well have just gone with the old stand-by of ‘lose 30 pounds and run a half-marathon’ because that was going to be a hell of a lot easier to pull off. Sure, I did finish, but that’s as far as I got in the success bracket.

On Christmas, we had friends over for dinner. It was a pretty mellow affair on the whole and the usual get-together at the Koster’s – food, drink & conversation. The topic of Wine Bottles and Broomsticks came up with the question “so what’s next for Wine Bottles and Broomsticks?” I thought I had a good plan and answer for that, write book two, and self-publish both sometime late next year. That’s what I said. However, in the week since, I’ve been thinking about it more. I even had a lengthy discussion with a co-worker the other day on the topic. His perspective was something to the effect of: “It doesn’t matter if it’s un-edited shit. You just need to get your name out there, put it on Amazon.”

I got to thinking about that in preparation for this obligatory new year blog. There are a lot of perspectives out there and I’ve received a ton of good advice. Hell, most of the blogs I even bothered to write in the last half of this year have covered just that. All of the advice has basically been in the vein of, “Don’t give up!” It’s good advice. Being discouraged is not a route to success. However, at some point, you need to move on.

The real, honest truth about Wine Bottles and Broomsticks is that I don’t have a plan. Yes, I could spend a lot of money to self publish – annoy all of my friends and family with pleas of ‘buy my book’ …. again. I could try to go through the process of crowd-funding using a slightly different approach, but I’ve basically burned that option down. The fact is, I did everything I could this year and it just wasn’t good enough – I’m not sure which part was not good enough, but it was a big enough part that the book wasn’t going to catch anyone’s eye. The only practical plan is to move forward. Don’t look back, just keep looking forward. What’s done is done and I need to look to the next thing.

So, if you’re wondering what’s going to become of Wine Bottles and Broomsticks, the answer is nothing. I’m moving forward now. Other projects are  in the works, and no I haven’t been moping around kicking myself either. I’ve got 3 other projects in the air just now and I’m happily plotting them out and moving them forward. My hope for this year is that I finish at least one of those and I’ll have something new to share.

Happy new year.

 

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Another goodbye as we close out 2016

79b018-david-gma-ar-kathPictured Left to Right Dave S. Koster, Emily Plotnik, Arliss Banta, and Kathleen Comerate, sometime in the spring of 1979, Forest Lake, MN.

To say that I’m growing weary of posting goodbyes this year would be an understatement. This time, I’m afraid I haven’t got a witty story, I’m just really sad. Today, we lost my grandmother, Arliss. It was one of those inevitable things the family has been dreading for a couple of years of deteriorating health. Her time finally came this morning.

As with many non-Alaskan native transplants, my extended family is far away. Hell, much of my immediate family is far away and some of them are even in the same state. You simply can’t get to where my youngest brother lives without taking a plane or possibly extended dog-sled trip. It means that routine visits to grandparents, cousins, uncles, aunts that so many others around the country take for granted, and even dread over the holidays, aren’t always possible. When the trips to visit family do happen, each one ends up being a memorable event and a time of celebration  – good times, good conversation and connections that are far more infrequent and generally more appreciated by folks like us. Without question, my fondest, most cherished, childhood memories are those of visiting my grandparents in Minnesota. I loved waking up there, the smell of the coffee pot on in that old farm house is what I think of when I’ve woken up on a particularly fine day. That smell meant spending the morning visiting with my grandparents at the kitchen table before heading off on some adventure which sometimes just involved mowing the lawn and goofing off with the uncles.

The sheer distance an Alaskan immigrant is from family is never so apparent as when a family member grows ill or passes. You can’t get there in time to say goodbye. In my case, I wasn’t able to visit as often as I really should have. Getting a family of five halfway across the continent is generally more expensive than an family of 5 can afford. I did get the chance to visit the summer before last and I’m glad I did. I should have visited more. Perhaps once a year even, but the distance and expense is real and while it’s not true in this case, it can be, believe it or not, dangerous.

Three years ago, my mother in law passed. I was on a business trip in Fairbanks, a 45 minute flight from Anchorage, which is about an hour from home. I got the call in the middle of a presentation for which I explicitly told my wife not to call me in the middle of unless her mom was dying. Well, she was. Fortunately, I had (and still have) excellent co-workers and they had me on the next flight to Anchorage. Unfortunately, the weather turned, as it sometimes does, so I made it to Anchorage, but was advised against the 3-hour drive to Seward due to dangerous road conditions. We opted to be safe and stayed until morning. The call came at just after 6am. We didn’t make it. I am still kicking myself for not just putting on my Alaskan hat and getting our ass down the road. I mean, come on, I drive to work in worse conditions right? Well, maybe not in this case, it was the remnants of a typhoon crashing up against the Chugach range. Instead, we found ourselves there in time for the funeral.

I only relate this story because my mom had intended to get down there this weekend in the hopes of a last visit. She didn’t make it. She got the call today, her birthday, 4000 miles and 3 time zones away. Now, she’ll be making it for the funeral. Watching my wife lose her mother and being just short of getting there in time brings into focus just how difficult this is and how hard it can be when you live in a place so completely disconnected from your roots and family.

Anyhow. The point of all of this is that I’m going to miss my grandmother and I hate the fact that my family and I weren’t a bit closer. Alaska is great, but there are sacrifices.

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Wine Bottles and Broomsticks takes a bow, moves off stage

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Last week, I wrote a blog post about how Wine Bottles and Broomsticks wasn’t going to happen. Today, it didn’t. It didn’t achieve the requisite number of pre-orders on Inkshares.com in order to produce a limited run of the book. After the post from last week, I received a lot of really excellent feedback and advice. The basic gist of the advice was to keep moving, not just with writing, but with this project. Publishing is a tough business and Inkshares was probably not the best venue for an unknown author, especially given the fact that a pre-order there is more expensive than readers are comfortable paying for, and the incentives weren’t enough to overcome that cost difference. In short, just because this effort failed, doesn’t mean that continuing to explore other directions isn’t worth the time. I just need to sit-down and re-think what I’ve done and what other options remain.

At the moment, the basic direction is to keep moving. I’ve gotten some interesting and creative ideas to work with, but I think the first thing is to hit up a few indie publishers to see if I can find a fit for the project there. In the mean time, I’ve started working on book two and hope to have that drafted and ready for editing sometime next spring. If I don’t manage to pick up a publisher for Wine Bottles and Broomsticks by then, I will move forward with publishing it, along with the sequel myself. I’m not sure what that might look like, and I might yet conclude that self-publishing won’t be a successful route for me, but at least I’ve got an idea of how to proceed.

Anyhow, that’s the state of things. Thank you all so much for all of your support, this isn’t the last word on Wine Bottles and Broomsticks, but it is going on the shelf for a while.

Thanks,

Dave.