"Is that Aunt Pittipat, I hear?"

The Pottery Barn catalog takes my senses apart puts each in a 600 thread count tub of fantastic bs and creates a swoon fest of images of how life could be if I hadn’t mindlessly filled my house with all the feng shui killer stuff I already live with.

The Pottery Barn catalog sinks a nostalgia chip in my right brain and turns me into a Manchurian Candidate zombie ready to kill in order to buy the Charlston Sofa that has a “soft inviting shape and six scatterback pillows.” Is that Aunt Pittipat I hear visiting from Atlanta? I want the Hamilton coffee table “expertly crafted from reclaimed pine.” Reclaimed pine! I’m a connoisseur, yippee!

I want the two arched windows in back of the sofa with the weathered full-length Celadon shutter doors and a Clemons bamboo window ledge mirror in between. Even more, I want the muted sunlight spilling in, creating a forever late-afternoon half-light over the candles on the coffee table and the books stacked next to them.

In my bathroom the Mason wood console crafted from reclaimed pine with pronounced grain and visible cracks and fissures and retrofitted to serve a new use holds my porcelain sink. See the four 500 thread count terry towels in rose, moss, pewter and pumpkin stacked in the galvanized metal floor storage trolley and the wicker basket with eight eternally unused loofahs. This is just like Shelley’s Ode To A Grecian Urn, isn’t it? Everything remains uncorrupted by time or use. This bathroom makes me want to cry with appreciation.

Oh, the bedroom. Simplicity and fine craftsmanship are the hallmarks of my Farmhouse Bed masterfully crafted to mimic and honor classic Shaker furniture. I’ve crowned my bed with a deep pillowed mattress dressed with the Morgan 400 thread count duvet cover and sham and the Morgan 400 thread count sheets with flat piping and a slim mitered border made by fine Italian hands and not slovenly American ones.

I have no closing remark for this post except that I am a “reclaimed” writer with visible cracks and retrofitted to serve a new use.

sales, giveaways, guest blogging, good pitches, reviews and Uncle Charlie

Writers mostly live in their heads and like to move their lives along through magical thinking.  In the e-book world you can’t do that.  If you want sales. you have to get out there like Willie Loman in Death of Salesman and sell.  I come from a family of merchants.  My uncle and father used to own a department store, Jean Matou, La Maison de Trousseau, on the corner of Connecticut Avenue and M Street in Washington, D.C.  Bess Truman and later Jackie Kennedy shopped there.  My father once declined to take Bess Truman’s check.  His exact words after Mrs. Truman said: “But Mr. Saah, I live at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.” were  “I don’t care where you live, we don’t take checks.”  Uncle Charlie had to pull him aside and knock some sense into him.  Uncle Charlie used to travel to Sarasota, Florida  (the winter home of the circus) and sell trousseaus to the daughters of the Ringlings and the Norths.

Commerce is in my blood and very little gives me more pleasure than seeing that “unit sales” line flip upward after a good block of promoting.  Sales of my ebooks have improved each month since I began selling them in early September but I know sales would wither if I didn’t take advantage of every marketing opportunity.

In November, I guest blogged on three blog sites, revamped my opening pitch on four of the books, entered the Goodreads “giveaway” program, ran a small ad on the Kindleboards, posted my books on every possible thread both at Amazon and Barnes & Noble discussion forums and sent review copies to some reputable reviewers who will post reviews on Amazon. Legitimate reviews help a buyer decide if your book is worth their money.   I continue to comment on news websites.  All of it together moves the brand along and results in increased viewership for this blog.

One of my children pointed out that I am competing for sales with millions of other items. A million is a lot. If a buyer’s eye settles on one of my ebooks AND if those eyes linger there for more than a second AND if that person decides to click on the "buy" button, well....you get the picture.

The most wonderful news of the month was not increased sales.  It was the birth of the beauty, Gwyneth Baehr, who arrived in our lives a little early but perfect in every way.

Read a sample of my book: One Hundred Open Houses

http://www.kindleboards.com/book/?asin=B0042P5ES2
I'm trying to be smart and use all technology available to me.  Yes, that bunch of red letters and numbers up above can take you instantly into the inside of one of my books the way an ultrasound takes you into the inside of your body.  There is a man, Harvey, over at the Kindleboards who spends  most of his off-time devising ways to help the authors on his forum sell their books.  I could spend all day chatting and reading on the Kindleboards.  I've entered two contests and come in second in both of them.  The first one was to write a book in 55 words or less.  For a person who spent her youth writing catalogue copy for Macy's that was a snap.  Try writing "Toddlers all cotton girls camisole tops in green, blue, white and pink, small, med. lge.  Lambs, turtle, piggy motifs," in a one inch slot. Those catalogue entries could have been early tweets that's how economical they were.   I came in second in the "55 word novel contest "and also second in the "eulogy of a character in a novel contest."  My eulogy was for the Tin Man in Frank Baum's Wizard of Oz. Tin was a victim of the skyrocketing price of scrap metal.  In both cases I've won small gift certificates to use at Amazon.  I used the money to buy an e-book that was part of a marketing scheme of another indy author to help him run up the Amazon bestseller list.

If I had any discipline or any idea of how fast time is going and how old I am getting, I would spend my time writing my own books and winning the contest of self-esteem instead of trying to win $10 gift certificates. But here's the dirty little secret.  I feel so validated when my fellow authors vote for my anonymous entries.

Next blog I might put up a sample of Best Friends.  I hope you like it.