‘Stories’ gets another review and I get a nifty stamp September 15, 2009

I love getting letters in the mail. Not only is it refreshing and dramatic and delicious to receive good news in the form of a paper letter which you tear open in anticipation, it is always interesting to take note of the kinds of stamps people use. For example, I know a certain podcaster who always uses Darth Vader stamps when filing her taxes. These days a lot of people are using up their 42 cent stamps by adding those little 2 cent ones. Me, I’m too lazy to keep buying 2-cent stamps so of late I’ve been just slapping two whole 42 cent stamps on all my letters and hoping for the best. I know it’s wasteful, but I just tell myself it’s a tip for the post office. They need all the help they can get. And anyway, I have an uncle who works for the USPS, and I also happen to like my dog-biscuit-carrying mailman very much. So does my dog.

So anyway … This might be the coolest stamp I’ve ever received on a letter. George and Gracie! In a tiny television set! Where do they get those?

This adorable little stamp came bearing good news, as it should. It was attached to a notifications that Midwest Book Review has given my little book, “Stories of Clean Living, the Dutch-American Way” a recommendation! They’ve very graciously posted the review on Amazon, as well as on the MBR website’s September online magazine, “Small Press Bookwatch.” You can take a gander right here, by scrolling down to the biography section. Pretty cool.

Actually, I do know where they get those cool stamps. They’re donated. The MBR is a not a profit-making business. They place priority on small, independent presses and self-published authors. I’m guessing, there’s not a lot of dough in providing a service like that. In return, authors and publishers (and I would guess anybody else) can help out by donating stamps. If ya’ll feel inspired to do so, you can mail your donated stamps to:

The Midwest Book Review

278 Orchard Drive

Oregon, WI 53575

To get an idea of what this review is talking about, you can read a sample essay, and the book can be ordered through Amazon.com or createspace.com.

Another review of my book! July 14, 2009

Thanks to David for posting this awesome little review on Amazon.

David is a fellow product of our particular brand of upbringing in Northwest Indiana, now living in beautiful South America, whose parents are friends of my parents. One time, while I was visiting my parents in the New Dutch Ghetto of Saint John, IN, we stopped by David’s parents’ house. It just so happened David was also home for a visit, and had generously bought up half the coffee in Colombia to hand out as presents in America. My parents received a little bag of this stuff as well. I remember spending the rest of my visit waking up extra early to hog the coffee maker, before my parents woke up and made the usual stuff, or the stomach-cramp-inducing decaf (Seriously, what is the point?). How to buy good coffee is one of those things not taught by the calvinists, in fact, most of us grow up learning how to get the most volume of coffee grounds out of our thinly stretched pennies.

Nice compliments and good coffee — two things I can never get enough of!

I don’t know what to say … May 28, 2009

Take a look at this review of my book by Dr. James Schaap. I almost expected the book to come back marked up with red pen, but this is better.

http://siouxlander.blogspot.com/

I’m searchable! May 8, 2009

My book is now available on Amazon and at Target.com!

Last I heard, the shipments were starting to arrive. I’m itching in a very hard-to-reach place to know what y’all think. If you want to, you can leave a review at Amazon.

We like things cheap and clean May 5, 2009

On thrift: For those of you on a budget, please note my book is also available as a download for a cheaper price. Either way, ten percent is still going to charity. If you don’t have one of those fancy Kindle things, the download is a pdf, which you can read right at your desktop.

For those if you, like me, who like your books to be smelly, but are suspicious that computer gremlins will steal your credit card number, you can buy a copy directly from me or Erick. Just shoot me a comment here on the blog, or through the contacts page at www.jennerick.com and we’ll put you on our super-secret exclusive List. Mind you, the inventory won’t be here until the end of the month. And, chances are, the next time you see me in person, I might have a stack o’books for you to purchase right outta my giant purse.

On Cleanliness: I was walking the little white poop machine today and she started growling at a perfectly nice lady in a Harley shirt, who was taking her garbage to our community trash compactor. We were heading the same direction, because I was on my way to throw out “the doggy bag” – that symbol of man’s sure decline on the food chain by way of being subjugated to the level of picking up our animal’s feces and then CARRYING THEM AROUND WHILE WALKING BEHIND THEM – anyway, as we were following biker lady, I realized she was taking her trash out in her bare feet. I mean, I love being barefoot. I might go get the mail in my bare feet. But how committed to bare feet do you have to be to walk three buildings away, all the way up to the trash compactor, which is generally well kept, but always has little bits of ick and mysterious goop around it on the sidewalk. Just thinking about what she might have been stepping on is making me gag right now. Please, BIker Lady, because the world obviously revolves around me, go to the Old Navy and get yourself some of them $5 flip flops to use on garbage day.

Stories of Clean Living, the Dutch-American Way May 4, 2009

I always said I was going to be a published author by the age of 30. I found out that when you choose journalism as your Plan B, it sucks the life out of you. The last thing I ever wanted to do when I got home from my day job is do some more blood letting – I mean writing.

But I am a published author before the age of 40, even though I’m now choking on that number as it’s a mere four years away and not looming so far in the distant future as to make my fear of it laughable, a la Meg Ryan in “When Harry Met Sally.”

Thanks in no small part to an unbelievably supportive husband/editor/tech support guru/manager/cattle prodder, It Is Finished.

And I have to say, I kinda like it. The husband likes it, too, but as we all know, editors are not to be trusted.

You can get more information about my book at www.jennerick.com. Click the “book” button on the left hand side. If you like what you see, you can go directly to check out by clicking “order.” It’s also available at a reduced rate for the Kindle and as a pdf download, for all you people who don’t feel like waiting for your book to arrive, or who don’t care about the tactile experience of reading.

If you’re not so sure if you’re interested, feel free to read a sample excerpt. Whatever you decide to do, I hope you enjoy it and give me some feedback.

And, feel free to contact my tech support guru through the jennerick website and tell him what you think of the site. He worked hard on it, despite all my kvetching about him spending his entire weekend with the square-headed-spouse. Good thing he’s such a looker.

I gave up on predestination long ago, however … April 24, 2009

Sometimes the universe gives you signs that you are doing exactly what you are meant to be doing.

Earlier this week I was having a near mental breakdown about my book. I was tired of looking at the words, sick of thinking and re-thinking and over-thinking it. I was worried that I had not changed the names appropriately. I was concerned that I had included too many personal details about me, certain family members. I fretted over what my family would think, and whether these stories were any good at all.

On Wednesday, the proof copy of my book came in the mail, and everything shifted. I scurried off to my favorite coffee shop and sat perfectly still for three hours, scouring every last word of the proof for typos, grammatical errors, unclear sentences and general unnecessary language mayhem. I cleaned it up, and along the way, I realized it was pretty good. Maybe it won’t set the world on fire, but it does justice to my memories, and it makes me smile here and there.

The real difference in my attitude didn’t come from holding the book in my hands, though that helped. A lot. What really kicked my sad sack butt out of the doldrums was one of my Texas lifelines. I phoned my friend Tammy, my former partner in slack at our tiny rural town newspaper. I told her the title of the book, “Stories of Clean Living, the Dutch-American Way,” and I told her about the general idea of the essays I had written, and about how my awesome tech support guy/husband had designed this gorgeous sepia-tone cover with a photo of me from the fourth grade in my Dutch girl costume. Then Tammy opened her mouth and my head exploded.

“You know,” she said, “This is going to sound crazy but that reminds me of something you would see on the Bonnie Hunt Show.”

After I picked myself up off the ground, I said, “Well, this is going to sound extra crazy, but I was thinking of sending a copy to the show. AND, we’re donating 10 percent of the cover price to cancer research, the SAME research facility which Bonnie donates to and talks about all the time on the show – the Robert Lurie Comprehensive Cancer Center at Northwestern. Not because of Bonnie Hunt, but because after a full day of researching and asking questions of different charities, I settled on that one. It’s also the same hospital where my late cousin was treated.”

Tammy: “Jennifer, I think this is your destiny.”

Tammy and I used to talk a lot about The Secret, about putting positive energy out into the universe and receiving it back, and about whether or not this Law of Attraction business is just a bunch of hokum. Sometimes I think it is. Most of the time I just think things come together at certain points in your life and you just gotta grab on and go for it, whether or not it’s something you created or it’s something God is telling you to do. I like to think that Tammy has a bit of the psychic in her – she has the kind of perception that can scare a person sometimes. Before I moved away from Texas, she was my barometer for good and bad ideas. When she gets a good feeling about something, I listen.

If I hadn’t called Tammy, I suppose I would have been just fine doing what I needed to do with the book, and just found the confidence somehow in myself to take the next step. But I also suppose it sometimes helps a girl avoid a mental breakdown with a little pixie dust from a friend.

In the meantime, here’s where you can look at a synopsis of the book: https://www.createspace.com/3380992