Follow me over.

If you're someone who regularly reads this blog, I'd like to invite you to my new wordpress blog. I don't come here anymore, and I would shut it down if not for laziness. I want to be able to access some of my earlier blogs posted here, but going through all of them and copying and pasting them is just a bit too much work to put into it. So, I keep this page up just in case there's something I want to find from long ago.

New stuff posts fairly regularly at the new blog. C'mon over!

Win a signed copy of “Homefront” – and more

Visit Backword Books to read Threshold author Bonnie Kozek’s fun and revealing interview with me, and to find out how you can win a signed copy of Homefront.

CONTEST ENDS THURSDAY, OCT. 29.

Some of the questions she asks:

1. The subject of military separation lends itself to gravity and heartache. Yet, you’re funny. And the book is darkly humorous. I think you need to explain yourself!

2. Is there a particular scene or sentence in the book that gives potential readers the essence of what’s in store for them?

3. Homefront has received tremendous critical acclaim. Has it gone to your head?

4. Is there a question that’s too private to answer? If so, what’s that question?

Visit Backword Books for more, and good luck.

A book’s stages of growth – in pictures.

Everyone probably has their own way of going about writing a book, but I would bet there’s a general, and fairly common, series of steps.

1. The Writing Journal

Practically essential (for those who are into writing journals, anyway) for initial ideas and ongoing notes. I can’t have enough of these things. The one you see to the left has about 1/3 of the pages unused, but once I finished using it for Homefront, I figured I’d need a new one for the next project. (Yes, need. And then I needed another one for the project I imagined I might someday work on years from now. What? Writers need journals like chefs need good knives!)

The unused pages don’t go to waste, though. They’re good for jotting notes to Ian or folding in half and turning into bookmarks.

2. The Writing In The Writing Journal

(read the rest at "Little Office." [I don't really blog here, anymore.])

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Must - see.

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A fantastic book trailer, and also, my "acting" debut!

("From a little office...")
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Win 7 signed paperbacks! - GUIDELINES REVISED.

Welcome to the NEW Backword Books contest.

Grand Prize: A package of seven books by Backword authors: Homefront by Kristen Tsetsi, Spam & Eggs by Andrew Kent, The Brightest Moon of the Century by Christopher Meeks, Threshold by Bonnie Kozek, Broken Bulbs by Eddie Wright, Waiting for Spring by RJ Keller, and North of Sunset by Henry Baum.

Second Prize: 1 of each goes to 7 different entrants.

The rules: We want to hear your thoughts about self-publishing in a blog post. What is your general opinion of it? How likely are you to do it? Do you think it will change the face of publishing in the future? That sort of thing. The drawbacks of self-publishing are welcome as well – if you don’t like it, you don’t like it. But include your reasoning, while keeping in mind that a scathing attack on self-publishing probably isn’t going to do it for us. You know…just keep it polite.

The main requirements for the contest are:

1. The post links back to www.backwordbooks.com, as well as the URL for this contest.

2. We’d also like to hear which book you’d most like to receive from our list – perhaps where you heard about the book first and why it interests you. This will help us choose where to send books for second prize winners.

Please let us know of your entry because we want to compile them all in one place. Winners will be chosen randomly. We hope it’s a good way to get a discussion about self-publishing spreading throughout the blogosphere.

For further instructions and to enter, go here.

Good luck!

Publishers Weekly takes notice of New Literary Collective

Los Angeles, CA (PRWEB) – September 8, 2009

Publishers Weekly, the most influential daily news journal of the publishing industry, recently took notice of the emergence of a new literary consortium, Backwords Books, which offers a new approach to marketing books by independent authors.

As PW writer Wendy Werris explains, “With self-publishing gaining both recognition and credibility in recent months, Backwords Books, in Los Angeles, has taken the first steps toward creating a literary component to the model by enlisting seven authors to include their books on its Web site and bring more awareness to the unfolding technologies in the field.”

And evidence shows it just may be working.

One Backword Books novel, Homefront by Kristen J. Tsetsi, was recently profiled on NPR, on NBC TV's "Better Nashville," and in the Stars and Stripes, a newspaper distributed worldwide to U.S. military, Department of Defense civilians, contractors, and their families.

Additionally, several Backword Books authors will appear as guests Friday, September 11 on Stacey Cochran's BookChatter (http://www.ustream.tv/channel/bookchatter), airing at 9 p.m., EDT.

Founder and literary author Henry Baum (North of Sunset) explains, “With the changing landscape of the publishing industry and the countless new avenues for authors to directly reach readers, there has never been a time like this. There’s a perfect storm brewing.”

The perfect storm is that publishers are less willing to take chances with literary fiction while, Baum says, “Emerging media make it easier for quality writers to reach readers. Backword Books is a new approach to the book business.”

Backword’s authors are active in not only promoting their work, but in making it available to readers using a variety of methods. Each Backword author's novel is available in paperback, but their work is also available on Kindle and Smashwords for those using modern book-buying technology. This wide accessibility helps achieve the goal of each Backword author: to bridge the gap between the books they write and the readers who want to read them.

Briefly, the books are as follows. More in-depth overviews can be found at www.backwordbooks.com.

• Homefront (ISBN: 978-0615139906) by Kristen Tsetsi, a former reporter and award-winning fiction writer. Readers are dropped into a world that allows them to live the hell, the horror, and the unexpected humor of waiting through a war deployment. Says Emmy Award-winning news correspondent James Moore, "Haunting and lyrical. Tsetsi has taken us inside the hearts and houses of people who love and hurt as a consequence of war. Her sentences are as true as bullets whizzing past the ear."

• Broken Bulbs (ISBN: 978-0578004259) by Eddie Wright. Called "a brilliant and stunningly original work," Broken Bulbs tells the story of Frank Fisher and his search for "something." When a mysterious young woman named Bonnie offers assistance by injecting seeds of inspiration directly into his brain, Frank finds himself involved in a twisting mystery full of addiction, desperation, toothaches, hamsters, a vindictive postal worker, and self-discovery.

• Waiting for Spring (ISBN 978-1440461163) by R.J. Keller. Waiting For Spring takes readers beyond the Maine tourists know, beyond lighthouses and lobster and rocky beaches, and drops them instead into a rural town whose citizens struggle with poverty and loss, yet push onward with stubbornness and humor.

• Spam and Eggs: A Johnny Denovo Mystery (ISBN: 978-1598588644) by Andrew Kent, pen-name of Kent Anderson, a writer and publishing expert living in Massachusetts. Johnny Denovo strips crimes down to their metaphorical roots then uses these mental insights to unnerve and thwart criminal plots. This fast-paced novel has been hailed as "a masterpiece of deductive challenge, engrossing reading, and engaging entertainment.”

• Threshold (ISBN: 978-0595497584) by Bonnie Kozek, recipient of National Endowment for the Arts and the Rockefeller Foundation awards. Threshold is a take-no-prisoners noir thriller whose protagonist, Honey McGuinness—a gal who moves to Skid Row to escape a haunting past—descends into a dark, seedy, and dangerously seductive underworld in the fearless pursuit of her best friend’s killer.

• The American Book of the Dead (ISBN: 978-0578026930) by Henry Baum. Eugene Myers is writing a book about the end of the world, and he soon discovers that his novel is predicting real events. He may be the one to stop the apocalypse. In the tradition of Philip K. Dick and Robert Anton Wilson, The American Book of the Dead explores the nature of reality and the human race’s potential to either disintegrate or evolve.

• The Brightest Moon of the Century (ISBN: 978-0615249148) by Christopher Meeks, whose book The Middle-Aged Man and the Sea joined Baum’s book in the “Best Of” Entertainment Weekly article. Brightest is a comic novel of a young Minnesotan blessed with an abundance of “experience”—first when his mother dies and next when his father shoehorns him into a private school where he’s tortured and groomed.

Meet the Backword Books authors Friday, September 11 on "BookChatter" at 9 p.m. EDT.

The full text to the PW article can be seen at http://www.publishersweekly.com/article/CA6687523.html?nid=2286&rid=#CustomerId&source=link

Can't "immorality" just as easily be called "honesty"?

A couple of weeks ago, I received an email from a blog talk radio host just hours before we were due to go live. The host, afraid to upset the show’s listeners, wanted to change topics from talking (with a book club) about Homefront’s story and characters to talking about publishing and writing, in general, because there was concern the readers of the book, and listeners of the show, would get upset.

(Read the rest at "Little Office.")
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CAROL'S AQUARIUM ON KINDLE

And for just $0.99. I love Kindle. I wish I had a Kindle. For now, I'll have to be satisfied just publishing on Kindle.

Sixteen stories. Brief novel excerpts. (Two - one from Homefront, one from the novel in progress, The Year of Dan Palace. Consider it a sneak peek!)

Stories vary in length as much as they vary in subject matter. Some regular-length short fiction, much very short fiction, and some flash fiction. Some drama, lots of humor, some uptight lust, and some realistic (nitty-gritty-and-not-so-pretty) love.

All that for - yes! - the bargain price of ninety-nine cents. (Plus the $300 you spent on your Kindle, I suppose...)

Read it now!
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Carol's Aquarium - A Collection

COMING SOON to Scribd and Kindle.

"Better Nashville" interview

I’m excited to share this video with you of an interview Aug. 13 on WSMV-TV’s “Better Nashville” about Homefront. The show’s producer thought the story of those waiting for service members to return from war was an important one, as I do.

I hope you enjoy it, and I hope you’ll help spread it around. We often see people on TV talking about how difficult it is to have a loved one at war, but the experience is far more complex and surreal than is suggested by the word “difficult.”

Click the image to link to the video. Many thanks to WSMV-TV for the interview!

And thank you for watching. (When Ian watched it, he wasn’t expecting to see himself on our TV. Oops. And the last line of the interview – re: “cats” – made him cover his face and say, “Oh, noooo!!!” For the record, I made no mention to anyone of cats. Somebody googled!)

Kristen

Our visiting luna moth

This gynormous thing fluttered into our house last night.

Contest:: Book Giveaway!

“Age 30+…A Lifetime of Books” is sponsoring a contest for a Homefront giveaway. It ends this Friday, August 14. Even if you’re not interested in the contest, it’s a good opportunity to check out the site and read the guest post I was allowed to write about Backword Books. Blog creator Heather is an incredibly prolific and dedicated book reviewer who will read and review just about anything. (Her latest review is of Homer’s Iliad.)

There’s always something new and interesting at “Age 30+.” It’s definitely worth a look-see.

"Homefront" now a free download at Scribd.com

For those of you who have far more patience than I with sitting in front of a computer (or who aren’t snobby about holding a paper book in your hand and who are just fine, thank you very much, with scrolling through pages rather than flipping through them), I’m experimenting with a free release of Homefront. Not the print version–there’s no way I can make that free–but a PDF you can find at SCRIBD. (LINK)

Here’s the thing: I know $16.94 is a lot. Like most, when I want a book, I go to Amazon.com and look for the cheapest used copy I can find. Only, I’ve noticed Homefront is listed in the used books on Amazon at the “low” price of $13.99. The financial climate being what it is, and my goal as a writer to be read rather than to be wealthy, I decided today to offer Homefront for free.

The most recent review, provided by Pop Culture Zoo (.com), says “Make this the next book you read.” Read, not buy, see? (If you’d like to read more reviews, visit KristenTsetsi.com.)

If you’ve already read it, and if it’s something you enjoyed, I hope you’ll share with others that it can now be read for zero dollars. If you haven’t read it, now you can do it guilt-free!

I hope you enjoy, and I hope you’ll join me Aug. 25 on “Homefront in Focus” with Beth Wilson. (Here’s a link to the last time she and I talked. She’s a lot of fun.) I’ll be discussing Homefront, their first official book club selection, with the members of the club. And, if you’re living in the Clarksville, TN (or Hopkinsville, KY) area, I hope to see you at Books-a-Million Saturday, Aug. 15 where I’ll be signing copies of Homefront from 1:30 – 3:30pm.

Kristen

Response to bestselling author J.A. Konrath’s foggy portrait of the “confident” writer

A Real Publisher puts you on any number of bookstore shelves once they publish you, because–since they’re apparently not doing much marketing for their authors, anymore–that is their primary power.

But getting on a shelf yourself? How can you not feel an incredible sense of accomplishment? (Is it disgusting that I took a picture of my independently released book on a bookstore shelf? Say what you will. I did it, anyway.)

That was in Nashville’s Davis-Kidd Booksellers. Since they wrote me the letter saying they wanted Homefront for their store (after I submitted it for review, that is…they made sure to read it, first, which makes their invitation that much more significant), I’d been back twice: once to look at it on the shelf, and once to do a reading.

This third visit, I just wanted Ian (my husband) to look, to see what I saw: that all of those books surrounding Homefront were distributed by major publishers, and I–sans agent (for that book), sans Real Publisher–was still able to include mine among them. (I make no comparisons here when I say I’m just a shelf away from Mark Twain! Why, it’s like walking around in his neighborhood! And, while we’re on the subject, if you’re ever in Connecticut, I highly recommend visiting the Mark Twain House.)

In March of this year, The Publetariat creator April Hamilton drew attention to a February blog post by bestselling detective/crime author J.A. Konrath, whose blog site is titled “A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing.” Hamilton points to this passage:

“Are you confident or delusional?

Chances are high the delusional people will believe they’re confident, since self-awareness is in short supply in the writing community. Here are some questions to ask yourself.

Have you been published by an impartial third party? Confident writers eventually get traditionally published. Period.”

And to this:

“Would you rather be paid or be praised?

Confident writers know the best form of praise is a royalty check.”

Both of these assertions, as well as the following by Konrath, are worth responding to:

Confident writers work within the system, even though the system is flawed.
Delusional writers work outside of the system, even though they long to work within the system.

Let’s take them one by one, yes?

(read the rest, posted at Backword Books)

Jul. 25 signing rescheduled

July 25 book signing at Clarksville, TN's Books-a-Million has been rescheduled for Saturday, Aug. 15 from 1:30pm - 3:30pm.

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Books-a-Million signing

On Saturday, July 25 (1pm - 3pm), I’ll be signing copies of Homefront at Books-a-Million in Clarksville, TN. Clarksville is the town bordering Hopkinsville, KY, which is the home of Fort Campbell, KY and the 101st Airborne Division.

Characters Jake and William, Apache pilots whose absence affects the lives and behavior of those they leave behind, are based on 101st pilots, although the 101st is never mentioned by name.

Clarksville, also unnamed, is the town around which Mia (Jake’s girlfriend) drives her old Ford taxi while waiting for Jake to make it back from Iraq.

(Incidentally, Clarksville is where I lived while waiting for Ian to make it back from Iraq. He was a 101st Airborne Chinook pilot.)

I’d love to participate in book signings in all possible stores, but there’s something very right about doing them in Clarksville.

The Clarksville, TN Books-a-Million is located at 125 South Hampton Place.

Backword Books swag!

We at Backword Books are having way too much fun at Zazzle.
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PopCultureZoo review and an interview

(Internet radio, that is.)

PopCultureZoo.com, made up of “a plucky group of writers who earnestly want to help spread proper entertainment news” (read the rest of their appropriately plucky bio here), posted its review of Homefront yesterday.

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Snippets:

In every aspect, from style to subject matter, this book feels refreshingly honest and new while also feeling strangely familiar. I say that because there are times where you are certain how things are going to play out, but Tsetsi chooses a slightly unexpected direction…

…On a personal note, this is an extremely difficult book to properly review. It is an intimate and personal look into a soul bared raw for us all to see and it’s sometimes difficult to not feel like an unwelcome voyeur, especially when you find yourself quick to want to judge. I don’t think anything I can say will really do the book justice… make this the next book you read.

Read the full review at PopCultureZoo.com.

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And at noon (CST) today, I’ll be discussing Homefront with Beth Wilson on her blog talk radio show “Navy Homefront Talk.” (The times listed on the website are inaccurate and, Wilson said, in the process of being updated. Noon CST is the correct time.)

Wilson is the founder of “Homefront in Focus” and a syndicated columnist who has appeared on Fox News and was recently featured in the Washington Times as the “first spouse embedded on a mission with the armed forces.” She said yesterday that she wants me to discuss – among other characters in Homefront – my favorite character. I’m still not sure who it’s going to be; it’s a tie between two characters, and for two very different reasons. I’ll be interested to know who I pick when the time comes.

I’m looking forward to the show! I hope you’re able to listen in.

If you're raising kids and like discounts and tips...

...a friend I've known since high school - a vibrant, upbeat, sarcastic, warm, and kind woman - has started a new blog to benefit mothers, Simply Peggy's Mommies-and-Babies page. A mother herself, Peggy's goal is to help other mothers by hosting discussions about motherhood and pregnancy, locating and offering discounts and coupons (to stores like Pea in a Pod...I think that's what it's called...and other mommy/maternity stores), and more.

You can find her blog at http://simplypeggy.webs.com/. Today, Monday, at 4pm central, it seems to be having trouble opening. If you stop by and you have the same trouble but are still interested (if I were a mom, I know I would be), please check again later and, if you like it, let your mom friends know about it.

(I wish I had someone out there hunting for World Market discounts and coupons for me the way Peggy is finding these mommy discounts. Why do baby-moms get all the breaks? Am I not a cat mom?)
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Today's authors should be monitored.

I’m scared for today’s authors.

Our access to the internet and immediate gratification is dangerous.

We should be monitored.

Recently, author Alice Hoffman complained on her twitter page about a bad review. According to an article in Entertainment Weekly, she had these things to say about the reviewer:

“Roberta Silman in the Boston Globe is a moron. How do some people get to review books? And give the plot away.”

“Now any idiot can be a critic. Writers used to review writers. My second novel was reviewed by Ann Tyler. So who is Roberta Silman?”

“No wonder there is no book section in the Globe anymore — they don’t care about their readers, why should we care about them”

(Read the rest.)
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From driving a cab to being interviewed on NPR

[re-post, but if you haven't read it, it's new to you.]

I was never so sick of a book cover, so sick of a project, so sick of my own name. I’d watch commercials that have J.Lo and Beyonce advertising anything from socks to celery sticks, and I’d think, “How can you not want to shoot yourself in the face?”

Read the rest at Backword Books.

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Diary of a 17yr-old - Final Entry

On graduating, high school being the "best" years, and popularity-schmopularity.

(found here)





(Oh, perm ^ ...how I Loved thee.)
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Diary of a 17 year-old

High school love drama.



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