Scouting Seasons.

Here's the big news I promised you last week: Seasons of the Fool is one of the first books accepted into Amazon's Kindle Scout program. And I'm asking for your help.

First, let me explain what Kindle Scout is, as it's brand new. Amazon is accepting never-before-published manuscripts for this program. It's posting the cover, description, and an excerpt for each book for one month only.

Readers will have the chance to peruse the offerings and nominate their favorites. You can have up to three favorites at a time. But it's not a one-time thing; Amazon intends to post new books to the program all year 'round. When the month is up for one of your favorites, that slot will open up so you can nominate another book. You can click here for more reader info for Kindle Scout.

But what's the point? Well, books that do really well will be picked up by Amazon's new Kindle Press. The author gets a $1,500 advance and a five-year contract.

So what I'm hoping you will do tomorrow -- the link won't be live until then -- is go to the Kindle Scout page for Seasons of the Fool and use one of your nominations for my book. If Seasons is accepted by Kindle Press, you would get one of the first copies free. I'm going to send a reminder email tomorrow to the folks on my mailing list, so if you're not on the list yet but you'd like a reminder, you can click here to sign up. Or you can use the "No spam. No, really" form at the top of the column to the left -- they both go to the same place. And I'll also be posting reminders in the usual places (Facebook, Twitter, G+) throughout the month.

To further entice you, here's a little more about the book:

~~~

A Fool's journey begins with a single step...

Julia has fled Chicago for her grandparents’ old cottage–a refuge from her failed marriage. But she may have to testify against her husband, who defrauded his wealthy investors. And she’s falling for David, an old friend trapped in his own troubled marriage. 

Seeking guidance, Julia finds a labyrinth in the woods–and the elderly women who own it have their own reasons for wanting her to walk it. 

What Julia learns in the labyrinth could change all their lives, if only she would take it to heart.

~~~

Thanks so much in advance for your help.

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This moment of bloggy entreaty has been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

My own Fool's Journey (writing edition).

Over the past couple of weeks, I've been talking about various aspects of my new book, Seasons of the Fool. And in an aside a couple of weeks ago, I mentioned that at one point, I embarked on my own Fool's Journey via a series of meditations with the Major Arcana of the Tarot, and that's what convinced me to start writing seriously.

I remembered that comment earlier this week, when my IU pal Laurie Boris talked about her own journey as a writer on her blog. Her post was sparked by a couple of questions Kim Emerson posted in the MasterKoda group on Facebook: Where were you as a writer ten years ago? How about five years ago?

Those questions had made me think, as well. (They made me do math, too -- darn it, Kim!) And I realized how far I've come in the past ten years. So let's set the Wayback Machine to 2004, Sherman....

Ten years ago, I was a single mom with two kids in high school. I had the same day job I have right now -- legal secretary at a big law firm in Washington, DC -- and way more education than anyone should ever need: a journalism degree, a creative writing degree, and a paralegal certificate. And I wasn't using any of it. I'd bailed on broadcast journalism five or six years before. The business had changed a lot since I'd started in it, to the point where there was less of an emphasis on news that mattered and more on news that would boost the ratings. And neither the crazy work hours nor the every-two-years-like-clockwork layoffs were conducive to raising kids.

I wasn't writing any fiction in 2004, either. Right after grad school, I'd tried marketing some of my short stories to various magazines and literary journals, but I didn't get any takers. In hindsight, I can see that the business was in transition (and still is, come to that); mass-market magazines had pretty much stopped publishing fiction, many smaller journals were succumbing to financial pressures, and e-zines weren't a thing yet. It had gotten to the point where your best option for getting published was to show up at writing seminars and schmooze with editors and agents, so they'd recognize your name when you sent them your work. And I had neither the budget nor the time for that sort of thing (see "single mom," above).

But by 2009, things were very different. I'd had two short stories published by Calderwood Press and was putting the finishing touches on The Maidens' War, which Calderwood published later that year. What had happened in the interim?

For one thing, my kids were both away at college, which freed up a lot of my time. For another, we published the Kevinswatch anthologies in 2006-07; for the first time in years, I was writing fiction again -- and I was writing fantasy, instead of trying to shoehorn my style into realistic fiction. I met Joy Calderwood at the Watch. E-publishing was becoming a thing. And I did my first NaNoWriMo in 2008.

I was beginning to think maybe I ought to do more writing. But it wasn't until I did the Fool's Journey exercise that I committed to it. You see, I'd always been under the impression that you couldn't make a living as a fiction writer. I kept thinking I needed something else to pay the bills. And too, I wanted to "pay it forward" -- to provide some way to help others write, too. So I thought maybe I'd start a writer's retreat B&B, or some kind of office-space-with-daycare facility, or something.

But when I posed the question to the Universe, the answer that came back was that I was supposed to be writing. The Universe wanted me to be a writer. All this other stuff was just a distraction.

So I began to concentrate on writing. Now I've got ten novels published, and another one in the slot. And as for paying it forward, I'm doing that by writing for Indies Unlimited. Funny how things work out, isn't it?

Where do I see myself five years from now, in 2019? If the Universe is kind to me, I'll be making a living from my books; I'll have another 15 novels published then, at my current pace. And in any event, I'll be eligible for early retirement at the end of that year. So one way or another, I'll be on the verge of writing full-time. No fooling.

Where were you ten years ago? And where do you see yourself in five years?

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This week, I'll be putting the finishing touches on a Land, Sea, Sky omnibus. And come to think of it, it's probably time for another newsletter. Stay tuned....

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These moments of bloggy reflection have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.

The Journey of the Fool.

Leo Karchesky/flickr.com

I mentioned last week that I had started working on the new book. I'm pleased (and fairly relieved, to be honest) to report that as of the end of my writing session today, I'm 31,000 words in -- or in NaNoWriMo terms, the first draft is more than half done.

First drafts of even the best-planned novels offer some surprises to the writer along the way, and this book did not start out as one of the best-planned novels I've ever attempted. So I was surprised when I realized my protagonist, whose name is Julia, is on a Fool's Journey. I mean, I wanted to work a labyrinth into the story, and I intended for the action to stretch over the course of a year. And I had the setting all picked out (more on that in weeks to come). But when Julia first stepped into the labyrinth and found herself at the edge of a cliff, with a little dog nipping at her heels...well, I had to sit back for a minute. Because that's the scene depicted in Card Zero -- also known as The Fool -- of the Major Arcana in a Tarot deck.

A typical Tarot deck is made up of 78 cards. Fifty-six of them are split into four suits, similar to a regular deck of playing cards, and in fact you can match up the suits in a Tarot deck with the suits in a playing card deck: Wands (Clubs), Swords (Spades), Cups (Hearts), and Pentacles (Diamonds). Each suit in a Tarot deck has 14 cards: Ace through 10, Page, Knight, Queen, and King. So that, too, is similar to a deck of playing cards, except for the addition of the Page.

Those 56 cards are collectively called the Minor Arcana. The remaining 22 cards, the Major Arcana, have no corresponding cards in a regular deck -- except for The Fool, which evolved into the Joker.

Now, sometimes people get a little nervous when you start talking about the Tarot. The first thing they think of is gypsy fortune-tellers and "Cross my palm with silver" and all that junk. Yes, you can use the Tarot for divination, if you're so inclined. But the cards can also be used as a springboard for meditation, and as a tool for self-discovery.

That's where the Journey of the Fool comes in. Many folks over the years have strung together a narrative that likens the progression of cards in the Major Arcana to a journey through life. You can take the journey yourself. One technique is to pick a day each month on which you will sit down, clear your mind, imagine yourself in the scene of one of the Major Arcana cards -- starting with The Fool and taking each card in order, all the way to Card 21, The World -- and see what your subconscious spits out at you. (Fun fact: Going through this exercise is what convinced me to start writing seriously.)

I'm not going to step Julia through every card in the Major Arcana, but I am keeping the cards in order. It's been an interesting exercise so far, and it promises to get extremely interesting shortly. She hasn't gotten to The Tower yet.

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Speaking of life's journeys, I was saddened to learn this week of the passing of one of my favorite authors. Graham Joyce was a British author who wrote dark fantasy; I stumbled across his work in my local library one day and, once begun, gobbled his books as fast as I could. His work was better known in the U.K. than here in the States, and I've always thought that was a shame.

I met him at the World Fantasy Convention in San Diego in 2011. The Silent Land had just come out; he signed my copy for me, and showed me a cool thing about the dust jacket design (ping me in the comments, and I'll tell you what it is). Just a nice guy.

I loved The Silent Land, but my favorite book of his is probably still The Tooth Fairy. Really, all of his work is excellent. I'm so sorry that he's gone. RIP, Graham.

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These moments of Foolish blogginess have been brought to you, as a public service, by Lynne Cantwell.