Monday, March 28, 2005

Monday Smells Like Onions Wrapped in a Newsletter

Here in Marin, the wild onions are blooming. They're absolutely beautiful and evocative! (I'd love to rip out the grass in our front yard and replace it with wild onions. Pity that my husband nixed the idea...) But they smell very, very strong! You can maybe smell them from where YOU are.

I promised you some new stuff, didn't I? Well, as of today here in Martha-Blog-Land, we have a signup sheet for my Author Newsletter! Applause, please~this represents the endeavors of one entire tech-impaired morning!

More on the newsletter later, but first... YOU DON'T WANT TO MISS THIS!

Katharine Weber, the author of the wonderful books The Little Women, The Music Lesson, and Objects in Mirror Are Closer Than They Appear, has an incredible excerpt of her latest novel, Triangle (which is about the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire), in yesterday's Hartford Courant. Hasn't she got the voice TOTALLY NAILED?
The fire was getting hotter and it was everywhere, on the machines and the tables and all our work was burning up and the smoke was so thick and the smell was just terrible, black from the oil and the goods and the smell was so strong, and there was also the very horrible smell of burning hair, and all those girls were pushing and pushing together. ...

I tried to get to my sister but the flames caught on my hair and I was getting burned and I had to go back so I went back to that door Mr. Kaplan had unlocked, and he was gone, there was nobody else near me now and there was nothing behind me but flames, like a wall of fire, and I went through and went up the stairs to the tenth floor and there was nobody there, they had all saved themselves already.
You couldn't BUY a narrative voice like this. It's so genuine. My hat is off to Ms. Weber, and I look forward to picking this one up (Farrar, Straus & Giroux~2006).

And as for the other thing~I've been laboring all morning figuring out what will be the best e-newsletter service to use on this blog and my site when it's launched (very soon~I've seen the beta site and I can't wait!).

I STRONGLY believe that writers ought to keep in touch with their fan base and should NEVER take them for granted! You're not just a bunch of drones putting down money for my books, you are thinking, breathing humans! (I hope so, anyway.)

So~thanks to advice from the lovely Lynn, a life coach at BloomNGrow.net, I have signed on with EzEzine. I recommend it to anyone who is planning to use a newsletter for their site. (The signup sheet will look better on my site, but Blogger made it all funky. I'll mess with it more later, but my brain is a mashed potato right now.) So~DRUMROLL, PLEASE!


All the cool kids are doing it! (Even if I have to threaten them... J/K.)

Seriously~I'm very psyched about doing a newsletter. It will come about once a month and will be filled with updates on the site, tour information, gossip about my exciting life~and EACH AND EVERY ISSUE will contain BOTH a writing tip/technique AND a useful writing link. And something funny maybe, if I can think of or steal it. Doesn't that sound fun?

HERE'S THE EMBARRASSING PART~right now there are EXACTLY THREE subscribers~me, myself, and I. Well, cut me some slack~I've only had the newsletter account for oh, THREE HOURS or so. But still, we're getting a bit lonely, so please do sign on! (I'll also add a permanent link to my sidebar.)

Whew! That made me tired!

Have a Happy Monday!