Robert Allerton: The Private Man & The Public Gifts

In 2007, the Illinois Bureau of Tourism designated Allerton Park at Monticello, Illinois, as one of the Seven Wonders of Illinois. The central Illinois representative on a list determined by popular vote, Allerton was described as a National Natural Landmark that "invites guests to explore a sprawling 1,500-acre estate with picturesque gardens, unique sculptures, winding trails, nature areas and a stunning mansion."

Robert Allerton (1873-1964), who managed the farming property for his father Samuel Allerton, did not believe in being an absentee landlord. His father, a wealthy Chicago banker and stockyard founder was, no doubt, surprised when his son moved onto the property and made it his home. The 30,000-square foot house Robert built on the Sangamon River and the art he collected for its gardens, was donated by Allerton to the University of Illinois in 1946 when Allerton's attention was drawn to his new holdings in Hawaii.

I saw Robert Allerton Park in 1953 when my father, a journalism educator, conducted a University of Illinois short course for publications advisers there. Though I was only nine years old, the memory of the Carl Milles statue "The Sun Singer" stuck with me and became the catalyst for my novel The Sun Singer. (The novel is set Decatur, Illinois, Allerton Park and Glacier National Park.)

In spite of my interest in the park, it was only through a chance Facebook conversation with fellow Vanilla Heart Publishing author and Illinois native Robert Hays that I learned of a book just published last September, Robert Allerton: The Private Man & The Public Gifts. (The book is available new on B&N but not as new on Amazon.)

Thanks to Robert Hays, I now have a wonderful new resource about Robert Allerton and about the development of his former estate. Authors Martha Burgin and Maureen Holtz show us a man chiefly known through the gift he left behind rather than as a once living, breathing person. The lavishly illustrated volume features new photography by Michael Holtz and archival materials.

"The creation that Robert left us seems to be built for show," the authors write, "but was actually modest and restrained by the standards of his contemporaries, hidden away from sightseers, designated for the pleasures of intimate friends. After repeated visits, the elegant simplicity of his presentation becomes clear. The care with which he leads us from scene to scene in the gardens is a humble offering. Even today, with Robert long gone, one walks his paths as his honored guest, discovering secret after secret."

Allerton Park's donors, volunteers, visitors and long-time friends will enjoy this book.

Drawing Boards and Writer's Journeys

Perhaps this is a mistake.

This morning I added a "My Projects" page to my website. I wanted to make the projects real, to get them partially outside the realm of my imagination in hopes this will help keep me on track and possibly remind the Universe this is what I'm about.

There's a danger here, of course. I might change my mind. The Universe may test me with writer's block or a ruinous association with bad whiskey. What will I say then? Perhaps I'll incorporate my experiences into my novels in progress, Garden of Heaven and Sarabande.

Garden of Heaven is a solar journey like The Sun Singer. Sarabande is a lunar journey, the flip side of humankind's single coin of the realm. Both journeys include dark gods, sweet faerie folk, death and dismemberment, sunshine and roses, and encounters with oneself at a binary level. Suffice it to say, there is room for whiskey here as well as milk and honey.

Now, for the hundreds of agents out there who read this blog on an hourly basis hoping against hope that I'm somewhat less crazy than I sound, Garden of Heaven is ready for you to read. (As you know, no publisher will read it until you read it first, so if you like the experience of the sun and the moon, then call me. On the other hand, if you tell me that nobody reads 240,000-word novels in today's texting and Twitter world, I will invite you to look at my bookshelf and tell me how many novels over 300,000 words you see there, all of which are bestsellers.)

As for Sarabande, this is my sequel to "The Sun Singer" where you will once again meet Sarabande, Gem, and young Robert Adams. This is also the journey of a female character and she is, by definition, outside my comfort area. She consorts with dragons and the moon and the deeps of the great sea, and I'm trying to follow her to these places without losing my way to I can tell her story. Time will tell.

For now, the chaos and imagination of my drawing board, as hinted at by my new website page, provide all of the fire and rain I need to hear my muse's voice.

And keep writing.

DCOM process server terminated unexpectedly

My main computer is now in a mess because of an error message and/or virus I cannot unravel: DCOM process server terminated unexpectedly.

The message appeared shortly after I installed an updated version of McAfee's anti-virus software. The thing acts like a virus in that it won't let me run either of my anti-virus packages, McAfee and Malaware bytes.

Yet, I wonder. It has also diabled my Internet connection via a wireless router I share with my wife's computer. Her computer works fine, but mine says I'm connected to the access point (the router) but that the Internet is "not found." We usually see that whehn we need to reset the modem. Yet, the Internet is ocming through loud and clear.

So now, I can't tell whether I have incomptible programs here or have had a software or a hardware failure. Other programs work, just no Internet and no anti-virus.

We become dependent on our computers over time. Having one down is a major hassle and makes the whole day kind of bumpn along like its's running on square wheels.

Perhaps I'll sumble across an answer before having to find somebody to come out and take a look at it. Meanwhile, I'm on the laptop.

--Malcolm

Braselton - West Jackson Friends of the Library

I'm looking forward to meeting the members of the Braselton - West Jackson Library's, Friends of the Library Tuesday evening, September 20 at the Hoschton, Georgia Depot.

This is the Friends of the Library's annual meeting. I'll be speaking about "What a Writer Knows."

My theme here is, basically, there's no need to be overwhelmed as a writer when looking at the over-the-top subjects of bestselling novels, and say, "If we're supposed to write what we know, how can I compete with Harlen Coben and Diana Gabaldon?"

Ah, but we know more than we think we do. It comes from our personal experiences, the kind of experiences we have in common with readers we'll never meet.

If you're a member of the Friends of the Library, I'll look forward to seeing you.

Malcolm

Is Your Writing Space Spartan or Cluttered?

"Appealing workplaces are to be avoided. One wants a room with no view, so imagination can meet memory in the dark." -- Annie Dillard

Annie Dillard's prescription for the room where a writer writes contrasts greatly with the stereotypical cabin in the woods as well as the reality most of us face.

Our computers are often set up in a corner of a kitchen, bedroom, or family room in a typical house or apartment. Most of us have a view of a typical yard or a typical streetscape from a room that, along with our desk, contains a refrigerator or a bed and nightstands or the family's TV-entertainment center.

We have too much stuff to create the spartan room with the appropriate feng shui for writing or even an elegant room with grand furniture and classical wood furniture and other appointments.

Those of us coming out of corporate America or newspapers are used to writing in noisy places while others choose the ambiance of a cafe or a city park.

What helps or hinders your imagination when you write? Do you need a room that's devoid of distracting "stuff" and a window covered over by blinds or curtains?

I find that I'm most comfortable in a cluttered den stuffed with bookshelves, filing cabinets and office supplies. My window faces a rather nondescript side yard.

If I could afford the cabin in the woods, I would certainly be there. The natural world figures strongly in my writing, so without the view, I have nature-related books at hand, photographs on the wall and a desktop background that looks exactly like the scenery in the novel I'm writing.

While I find it difficult to write fiction in noisy environment (TV, kids, colleagues, vocal music) many writers thrive on this or tune it out. On the other hand, those who can tune out the noise can't tune out clutter, meaning that my home office would look like a junk room to them.

However, I often find that non-vocal music enhances the mood I want to be in for the material I'm writing. When I wrote "The Sun Singer" I listened to Deuter's new age "Nirvana Road" instrumental album and when I wrote the "Garden of Heaven" I listened to Mary Youngblood's flute in "Beneath the Raven Moon."

How about you:

* Writing-oriented room or writing desk in a room for another purpose?
* Cluttered room or spartan room?
* Noise or no noise?
* View or no view?
* Music or silence?

What kinds of auditory and visual cues help your imagination work and what has a neutral impact and what is distracting?

--Malcolm

Promoting with Bookbuzzr and Odiogo

Authors are always looking for more ways to get the word out about their books. I signed up this week with two free services, Bookbuzzer and Odiogo.

As you can see by the widget on the right hand sidebar of this blog, Bookbuzzr provdes a handy way for advertising your book through the upload of sample pages that turn (sort of) like the pages on an iPad. Bookbuzzr is the software that handles the pages and their display on the fReado site.

While you may well meet other authors on fReado and enjoy the networking, the beauty of the system for me is that it can be seen by readers who are looking at your website or your blog. Bookbuzzr takes a little time to set up because the site displays a variety of information and links about you and your book.

The intent of course is to give prospective readers what they would have if they picked up your book in a bricks and mortar store: the chance to open the book and see how it begins. (One author friend of mine notes that even though Bookbuzzr says the widget works on WordPress blogs, she couldn't find a way to do it.)

Odiogo uses a computer-generated voice to put the posts from your blog into podcasts. The intent here is that people who are too busy to read can put the posts on their MP3 players and listen to them later. I've set this up on my Writer's Notebook blog on Typepad.

It was very easy. All I needed to do was enter the URL for my blog and my e-mail address into a two-field form, and then paste the Odiogo widget into the sidebar of my blog.

Perhaps these are novelties, but even if they are they are new and different and might at least catch people's attention for a while. And who knows, perhaps all of us will be using these as promotional tools we cannot do with out ten years from now.

--Malcolm

WANTED: Publisher of Literary Fiction

Two query packets for my 240,000 word novel GARDEN OF HEAVEN: AN ODYSSEY will go out in tomorrow morning's mail.

I finished the novel two years ago, sent it around, tinkered with it, got busy on other things, and am now ready to find a publisher of literary fiction for a manuscript I'm very passionate about.

BLURB: A college student’s 1963 vision quest doesn’t reveal that he’ll propose to a young woman in Glacier Park’s “Garden of Heaven” in 1964 and then lose her after he sleeps with her “double” in Florida’s Tate’s Hell Swamp in 1965. One woman has his child and the other wants revenge 18 years later after Vietnam, a bad marriage and a prostituted teaching career have further blinded him to everything that matters.

There are risks to this sort of story, its length, its non-linear approach, its variations on Odysseus' quest, its multi-column format, and its general quantum mechanics approach to storytelling. This novel is going to take a publisher with both lunacy and grit, along with an editor who doesn't mess with my quasi-experimental approach.

Sound like a sure money loser? I am reassured by the fact that far stranger novels have been published without driving their houses into bankruptcy.

If you are curious. I invite you to take a look at the Garden of Heaven website.

--Malcolm

You can now read "The Sun Singer" on your iPad!

As swine love marjoram

The proverb is sicut sus amaricinum amat for those of you speaking the old language.

Swine hate marjoram, and so do I, actually, though I'm not swine--unless you're talking to Circe and she's likely to keep telling the other gods and goddesses and whatever mortals appear on her island that all men are pigs.

Keeping it light today, here's a list of some of the things I love as swine love marjoram.

* Telephone fund raisers who presume that I want to "start out" with a $50 donation.

* Finding out at tax time that I spent $20 in promotional efforts and overhead for each copy of a book that I told.

* Twitter.

* Seeing news stories about people who died yet "had a full life" who turn out to be younger than I am.

* The plastic bags at the grocery store that (a) spill the groceries out in my car before I get home, and (b) aren't biodegradable.

* The current trend in news reporting that "permits" the reporter or anchorman to mix personal opinions in with the facts.

* Calamari.

* Those nasty apps that show up on some web pages that announce that your computer needs a free security scan and then proceed to do that even if you scream ABORT ABORT ABORT

* Kids who think they are entitled to mooch off their parents until they (the kids) are in their 40s

* Microwaved pizza.

* Ladies on MySpace who send me messages saying they are looking for a "special someone" and think I am he, and so do I want to look at their nude pictures.

* Bookstores that order a hundred extra books from the publisher for a window display and then return then to the publisher in damaged condition.

* Food companies who think I want (or need) more salt than my RDA allows in one can of soup or one hamburger.

* White wine.

* Dogs that pee in my yard.

* Owners who are walking their dogs who encourage them to pee in my yard.

* Owners who pee in my yard because, what the hell, their dog's already doing it.

* Government paternalism.

* TV sitcoms filled with people who are clearly too stupid to live.

* Celebrities who star in sitcoms who either pee in my yard or don't realize the sitcoms are filled with people too stupid to live.

* Having to scan my own groceries at Kroger.

* Yellow lights set for a nanosecond at intersections with red light cameras.

* Census workers who pee in my hard when I tell them all they can do is count me, not ask me my nationality or my favorite ice cream.

* Canned potatoes.

* Finding canned potatoes in my yard because somebody who was too stupid to live bought them and slung them onto my lawn while they were walking one of those yapping, rat-sized dogs too small to have all the required internal organs.

* Census workers who think I threw the canned potatoes in the yard.

* An excessive number of onions in anything, especially meatloaf and fruitcake.

* Extended car warranties that require me to spend more than the car is worth in maintenance to keep the warrant intact.

* Car salesmen who either pee in my yard or pose as census workers asking me whether I like caned potatoes more than calamari.

* English peas.

* English peas in my yard.

* Dreams like the one I had last night where I'm suddenly back in the military and have been placed on a detail expected to clean up after a census workers convention where most of the people eating dinner ordered and then threw away calamari, English peas, white wine and salt-filled soup while the generals were all walking their dogs and peeing in each other people's yards.

* Swine who are so non-picky that they eat marjoram anyway.

--Malcolm, whose satirical novel "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire" is available on Smashwords in iBook and other e-book formats for only $5.99.

Oh my goodness, marketing again

"The first year after a book is released is often termed as the 'one-year honeymoon period' by those in the industry. This is because many authors run out of contacts (friends, family, local media, colleagues, etc) and marketing tactics around the one-year mark. Therefore, we stress again the importance of a well-designed marketing plan." --Dave and Lillian Brummet in Purple Snowflake Marketing

The cover of Dave and Lillian Brummet's marketing book for authors says it all. In a publishing world where there seem to be as many books and authors as there are snowflakes in a blizzard, you want to be the one who stands out.

I've bought a fair number of marketing books and Purple Snowflake Marketing is just about the best. It's based on the Brummets' real world experience, it's practical, it contains solutions that work for authors with different levels of experience and a variety of budgets, and it contains appendices and links that help you do what the Brummets' discovered throughout their writing career.

Table of Contents

A quick glance at the table of comments shows the wide scope of this book.

1 ~ A Realistic Look at Book Marketing
2 ~ Common New Author Questions
3 ~ Reviews
4 ~ Internet Marketing
5 ~ Building an Audience
6 ~ Purple Snowflake Techniques
7 ~ Marketing and Advertising
8 ~ Promotional Materials
9 ~ A Word About the Media
10 ~ Filler Materials
11 ~ Press Releases
12 ~ Managing Books
13 ~ Book Events
14 ~ Bookstores
15 ~ Libraries and Schools
16 ~ Interviews
18 ~ Tracking Marketing
19 ~ A Word of Encouragement

Chapter 19 is followed by 25 appendices that, for me, are worth the price of the book (print or e-book).

The authors note that "Eighty to ninety percent of our time is spent just marketing our work in hopes that readers will support us by purchasing a book or article." That's not what most of us were led to expect back in Mrs. Johnston's Creative Writing class. One has to do more than write it and expect readers to appear. Purple Snowflake Marketing offers a pragmatic approach to the bulk of your professional efforts.

Recent Posts on My Other Blogs

Note To Interviewers Talking to Writers - If you're going to interview a writer and post the results on your blog as part of the author's tour, please don't use a set of canned questions.

Lust Under the Elms - A humorous look at how the lack of research has kept me from writing a scandalous novel.

--Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of the contemporary mythic novel "The Sun Singer" and the comedy/thriller "Jock Stewart and the Missing Sea of Fire." Both books are available in paperback as well as multiple e-book formats including Kindle and iPad.

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From Words to Peak Experience

I read to learn, to escape, and to experience a good story. For me, the Holy Grail of a good story is the peak experience conjured up by the fusion of the tale with my imagination.

I write to convey information, ideas, opinions and stories. For me, the Holy Grail of my writing is the peak experience, found in the act of writing itself, and then conveyed to the reader with varying levels of success. My worst writing may capture the reader on a day when s/he needs to be captured. My best writing may lose a reader on a day when his/her attention is elsewhere.

Maslow

In his popular and profound Motivation and Personality (1954), Abraham Maslow wrote that the highest order of peak experiences include "feelings of limitless horizons opening up to the vision, the feeling of being. Simultaneously more powerful and also more helpless than one ever was before, the feeling of great ecstasy and wonder and awe, the loss of placing in time and space"

Much has been written about the triggers of peak experiences--shock, emotional responses to nature, "Kodak moments," literature, art, sex, drugs and probably rock and roll. Much has also been written about the meaning of such experiences, whether their cathartic nature is biological, psychological and/or transcendent, and whether they are "devalued" or "compromised" when one either forces them or tries to live a life of all peaks and no valleys.

Gabaldon

While reading Diana Gabaldon's An Echo in the Bone, a simply said comment by one of the female characters near the end of the book triggered a peak experience in me, at once emotional and transcendent. Needless to say, the statement might have meant nothing had I read or heard it out of context without first experiencing the story up to that point.

I doubt that Gabaldon intentionally wrote that line of conversation expecting to produce a peak experience in any of her readers. It was a natural thing for the character to say when she said it. It was said simply and with no sentimentality, philosophizing, or extravagances of writing technique.

Out of the nature of things

We know we can engineer the environment so that a peak experience is possible or even probable. One makes love, listens to inspiring music, meditates, observes sunsets and sunrises and mountains and oceans and fields of wildflowers, one reads inspirational books, goes to operas and plays, and seeks out the kinds of fiction that best matches his/her needs, frame of reference private religion, and psche.

Then the experience if it occurs, it comes out of the nature of the moment, and that seems to me to be the kind of peak experience that's most likely to match Maslow's words about the highest of peaks. As a writer, I simply want to set the stage so that the experience is possible and natural.

There's no need here for recipes or tricks. Tell the story and tell it true. Then, whether it's a simply said line of dialogue or a stream-of-consciousness passage or the description of a face or a beach or a forest, the words will capture the reader unaware within the space-time moment where his imagination and your words intersect.

Another box of books for the library

Okay, the books in my compact den got out of control again. As I mentioned in today's Facebook status, I was thinking of buying a book that I actually already had. I just couldn't find it and assumed I hadn't ordered it.

We have a small public library and the annual book sale is a popular money maker. The librarians save books all year for the big sale. It's nice to have a place to send the books I enjoyed but never plan to read again or save for reference.

I have mixed feelings about having to throw away the ARCs that come with DO NOT RESEL stamps or generic DO NOT RESELL covers. I end up throwing them away, while the more traditional review copies of books that I see through out the year hopefully find a new home via the library sale. A few of the books actually get into the library collection, but they have a bigger space problem than I do and can't absorb many ad hock books that show up out of nowhere.

-

As I read on the Yahoo news page that singer and actress Jennifer Lopez at 40 is having a difficult time making a comeback, I thought of my Writer's Notebook post called Writers' Journeys Through Non-ordinary Reality post about the rather imaginary world most writers live in. Our triumphs and failures are seldom noticed by anyone, and they probably never will be unless we find our ways onto the bestseller list. I wish J-Lo well, though I wouldn't mind having had a fraction ofher success.

-

Looking at one of the themes from my novel "The Sun Singer," I posted Meditation on the Everlasting Waters on my Xanga blog; and, thinking of my Glacier National Park essay in the recent Vanilla Heart Publishing release of the "Nature's Gifts" Earth Day anthology, my Xanga blod also includes Places and Their Stories. I'm intrigued by the way we tie our personal experiences together with places and then see them in a new way.

Best wishes for a wonderful weekend,

Malcolm

Vanilla Heart Releases Earth Day Anthology

Vanilla Heart Publishing's Earth Day anthology Nature's Gifts "went live" in trade paperback today. Also available in multiple e-book formats from Smashwords, the anthology offers more than twenty short stories, poems and essays that focus in multifaceted ways on the natural world.

Since 2010 is Glacier National Park's centennial year, I contributed an essay about the stories coming out of the park's Swiftcurrent Valley over the years called "Bears, Where They Fought."

My brother Doug contributed two poems "Angel's Rest," about a rocky outcropping in Oregon providing a view of the Columbia River Gorge and "Erosion" about a beach in Oregon's Smuggler's Cove.

The anthology's editor, Smoky Trudeau contributed an article called "Music Of The Indian Canyons" about her visit to the tribal land of the Agua Calliente Indians at Palm Springs and the poem "Hawk Dance" about the red-shouldered hawks flying overhead near her home.

Kimberlee Williams had a high school education that makes me jealous, one that gave her the freedom to explore nature in the wild rather than in a classroom; we see the results of one of her studies in an essay called "Owl Pellets Aren’t Poop!"

In "I Swear That Raccoon Just Knocked On The Door," Chelle Cordero tells a true story about how she (a "Bronx kid") learned the true meaning of wildlife.

I wish I had the space here to talk about every contribution from the anthology's wonderful line-up of authors: Kathi Anderson, Douglas G. Campbell, Malcolm R. Campbell, Sam Cash, Chelle Cordero, Helen Fanick, jeglaze, S. Kelley Harrell, Robert Hays, Donna Henes, Lisa Houff, Victoria Howard, Leah Mooney, Thom Newnham, Deanne Quarrie, Connie Spittler, Smoky Trudeau, Kimberlee Williams and Scott Zeidel.

But the offerings follow a common theme, and that's being within nature rather than just looking at it through a car window or from your front porch. I hope you will sample these contributions and let your imagination--and then your feet--run free.

The icing on the cake here is that 50% of the profits from this book and e-book are being donated to the Nature Conservancy for one year.

--Malcolm