Adventure: Getting Ready for India - again

Courtesy: The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Rubel Collection, Purchase, Anonymous Gift and Cynthia Hazen Polsky Gift, 1997

First of all, having worked on Suzanne Blaney's Impressionism: Inspiration & Evolution, I now know our art museums are excellent resources for public domain images - but you need to give credit as specified. I haven't got my own photos yet, but this one's a beauty. Photos like this first piqued my interest in India as a child, plus the Secret Garden by Frances Hodgson Burnett. Then I actually had a roommate in college who'd grown up with diplomatic parents in India - and she didn't pick up after herself! And then movies introduced me to Shah Rukh Khan and the music of A. R. Rahman and beautiful landscapes.

My local bookstore owner in Arizona had previously been a nurse and she had traveled to India as part of a medical Yatra with a group of doctors from Ohio. She wasn't going again, but she hooked me up and, in January 2014, I was all set to go to India for five weeks with a group of doctors I'd never met. I bought my own plane ticket, but they would take care of accommodations and food while we traveled to villages where they'd provide medical services and I would teach CPR. I was even learning Hindi, though there are so many languages in India I'm not sure that would have been of great use out in villages.

Then my son was in an accident. Goofy on a concussion and pain killers, he insisted I not be contacted because I was in India (I hadn't left yet), and he told his siblings he just had a broken arm. When they kept him overnight, his sister got suspicious and let me know he was hurt and what hospital to call. Bless the nurse who ignored HIPAA enough to let me know he was still in ICU awaiting surgery on a broken back. I never remember names, so she's safe. I made the fourteen hour drive in about twelve.

He was still in the hospital the day I was to leave for India and he would need help with the back brace because his dominant arm had been shattered as well. The five weeks I'd cleared for the trip was exactly the amount of time he needed assistance.

Looking back, I wasn't completely comfortable with the arrangements for my arrival in India. The docs were from there originally and I wasn't sure if anyone was actually meeting my flight or not. So, rather than try to do that again, I have paid a crazy amount for a week tour of the "Golden Triangle" - Delhi, Agra (the Taj), and Jaipur - plus Ranthambore National Park. I paid a "solo" surcharge - next trip I'm looking for a company that specializes in solo folk. However, the cost included my flight, hotels with good reputations, and a small group.

Meanwhile, I did the Visa application online - MUCH easier as a simple tourist, checked what inoculations I had and got one I needed, and have contacted my cell carrier (because I will NOT have service there and we decided I can turn off the phone as I leave the US and my texts etc. will be waiting when I get back and turn it on again). We've got my cheap little notebook working good enough for email and possibly Skype - and since I'm with a tour staying in nice hotels, internet will probably be available enough. It's only a week.

I've been reviewing my guide books, too.

Maybe I'll have time to review a little Hindi, just for fun.

www.sherimcguinn.com

So how’d you like it?

I put The Incident up over the summer because I was going to be on the road while my home was for sale. 8400 miles later, I’m home again, except my place has been sold so I’m staying with friends while I figure out what’s next.

Serendipity, as always, is playing a role. At the beginning of July, my plans to visit family on the East Coast were bumped a week due to circumstances beyond my control. Denver was kind of on the way, so I decided to attend the RWA conference  and see if romance writing would be a good fit for me. (2018 workshops are still listed at that link, but if they’ve been removed when you read this, check RWA events.)

Well, it was an amazing conference, loaded with so many sessions you could only attend a fraction of them, with thousands of people attending. After listening to an editor and agent address a sub-group of people who write Romantic Women’s Fiction (where the woman’s journey is the core of the story and the romance is secondary), I decided to give traditional publishing another try. So I spent a day pitching and had a really good response. Still waiting while requested materials are reviewed by several people.

I also got to talk with Robin Cutler of Ingram Spark about getting my back list onto Ingram as well as Amazon. That work’s on the list for the next few weeks. Now that CreateSpace is closing, I want to make sure I’ve got everything with Ingram for distribution beyond Amazon. (In case you didn’t realize, CreateSpace was also a division of Amazon – they’re consolidating services to KDP, but no longer doing Expanded Distribution.)

Last week, I gave a Basics of Self-Publishing class through Community Education at Sierra Community College and realized how much I enjoy helping people figure out this process – at the same time I’m hoping to land a traditional contract for Peg’s Story, One Woman’s Journey. Each route has its benefits and drawbacks.

However, with either road to publishing, building a readership is key.

That’s where you come in – while The Incident trickled out over 13 episodes, my followers increased. However, you’re not commenting! Tough to know what you want that way.

Please take a minute to comment. I’d really like to know:

1. Did you like having a story come in pieces over two months? Would a few weeks be better? Or a short-short that’s all in one blog? Or a whole novel over months?

2. Do you want the fiction to keep coming or would you rather I go back to writing about writing? Or do you want both?

3. I keep hearing that a newsletter’s better than a blog because you address people who want to hear from you, as individuals. Would you want to be on a mailing list that alerted you when I post new stories and/or gave you other updates and/or writing tips?

4. Do you care what time of day the blog arrives? (If so, when’s better?)

Let me know soon, so I can have a story or article ready for you next week!

www.sherimcguinn.com www.amazon.com/author/sherimcguinn

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Never Pay to Publish – and OMG

I had this writer’s blog, Never Pay to Publish, ready to post today. For anyone following this for writing tips, it’s below.

But sometimes life happens.

Katie has always been a risk taker – when she was twelve, she bought two tickets to whitewater the Colorado River for my birthday. She knew it was the only way she’d get to go. That’s her grinning. I’m under the wave, still in the boat.

After college, she surfed the beach off San Francisco alone – worried me sick. When she and her husband first met, they surfed the Pacific beaches all the way to Panama. She has a little scar where coral ripped open her lip in Costa Rica. Now she lives in far northern California where she can teach safe kayaking and surf year round – with a wet suit.

She’s gotten old enough to call people in their late teens and twenties “kids” and when she and her husband saw the surf near home was big and rough this morning, they decided to go north to a different beach. On the way home, they stopped on the cliff overlooking the beach they’d decided was too rough to surf – they always take time to enjoy life like that. What they saw was three “kids” on boogie boards in an area they NEVER surf because of the rip tides, two boys and a girl in their late teens or twenties. They saw the white of the boys’ backs and realized they had no wet suits. Even in August, the water up there is icy cold. The “kids” were caught in a rip.

Katie and her husband drove down to the beach, where the kids’ friends were finally calling 911 – they’d already been in the water at least 45 minutes. Katie and her husband got their boards and headed out, through the waves they’d chosen not to surf, out into the rip they’d never go near.

When they got to the kids, Eric took charge of the two who still had some strength to help them back to safety. Katie took the boy who was sinking into hypothermia.

At first she tried to tow him to shore, but he was too weak to hold onto the board. So she pulled him onto it, got on top of him, and paddled the best she could.

Once they got back to the break, they still had to ride the waves into shore – the waves that were big enough Katie and her husband hadn’t surfed that beach earlier. The other two were still strong enough to ride in on their own and walk out of the water. Katie’s kid couldn’t hold onto the board. She had to ride in on top of him.

They made it most of the way before they got dumped and she lost him. But by then, the fire and rescue crews were on the beach, ready to help, and they got her kid to shore and onto a stretcher for the ride to the hospital.

The helicopter that would have looked for them at sea was still at least 15 minutes away.

Today, my daughter called me from under a tree, where she’s sitting, still shaken up by the whole episode. She didn’t want me to find out by reading about it somewhere. But there were no news cameras, so it may never be noticed by media. She found out the kid she helped warmed up and was released from the hospital.

I’m still tearful. My daughter saved that kid’s life by risking her own. I’m terribly proud of her – both her actions and her need to sit under a tree and absorb it all today.

Update 12/13/2020:

Katie and Eric now do water tours in North Carolina and Puerto Rico as Greenflash Watersports. You'll be safe with them!

Also, the self-publishing industry changes so much so quickly, I discontinued Self-Publishing for Schools and decided against writing any others. Carla King is on her Fourth Edition of Self-Publishing Boot Camp Guide for Independent Authors. I recommend it.

www.sherimcguinn.com

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