Launch of a new American Classic

Well, the big party this weekend was a smash. Chandler Reach Winery was a fantastic location, Meghan a kind and gracious host, and Cristy and Claire were lovely and efficient wine pourers. Thank you all so much for helping make this day a success.

All set up at Chandler Reach Winery in Woodinville on Sunday 6/24.

Part of preparing for this weekend was refining how I tell people what the story is about. I’ve been doing a lot of summarizing the action when I talk about it without really expressing what I feel about the book and why I wrote it. That’s even evident in the book blurb.

Gee Evars stumbles into Rosebud Falls just in time to rescue a toddler from the raging torrent of the Rose River. And to lose his memory.

When I started for Seattle on Friday, the road seemed to stretch out before me like it did before Gee.

Okay. Those are the facts, but that was never really what the book was about.

I’ve read novels and watched movies featuring people with amnesia. Ludlum’s The Bourne Identity, Sheldon’s Memories of Midnight, Follett’s Code to Zero, Ondaatje’s The English Patient, Keyes’ Flowers for Algernon, Morgan’s Altered Carbon, Kaufman’s Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Segal’s 50 First Dates. The list of mostly excellent memory loss stories goes on. In every instance, though, the key to the story is the importance of or struggle to remember.

The canola fields near Freeman, WA add a splash of color to the Palouse.

What I asked myself in City Limits was if it was really that important. Here is the new blurb I’ve come up with.

* * *

Who am I, really? It’s a common question. It’s part of being self-aware. “Know thyself,” is an ancient aphorism inscribed in the Temple of Apollo at Delphi. But is it important? Are we really nothing more than our accumulated lifetime of memories? Or is there something inside that makes us inherently who we are?

Stripped of his memories and identity, Gee Evars must come to grips with who he is as he attempts to make a home among strangers by simply doing the right thing. He must draw on his inner resources to determine what that is, often acting before he has fully thought a situation through.

The right thing, it turns out, is not always the popular thing, nor is it perceived the same by all observers. In becoming a hero and the City Champion, Gee also becomes a threat to those who see their power eroding and will go to any extreme to preserve it. He becomes the unwitting catalyst for a revolution that will change the way Rosebud Falls sees itself and the Forest at its heart.

City Limits is the story of Gee’s loss of memory and the life and love he gains.

It was great to see old friends and new acquaintances at the launch party. And to sell some books!

So, after nine months of working on this story, I finally have a summary I’m pleased with. I might have to redo the back-cover blurb!

I came back across Washington State Monday morning along a route I haven’t used in five years. US Hwy 2. It’s pretty, but I warn you, there is nothing there. From Wenatchee to Spokane, the drive is across a million miles of open range. It’s ten miles longer than following I-90 but with construction around Snoqualmie Pass and on toward Ellensburg, the total time was only an hour different. Lower speed limits and a few slow-moving vehicles with nowhere to pass. There simply aren’t as many places to stop and rest along the way. Even the restaurant I planned to stop at in Coulee City was closed. There was a park with restrooms, fortunately.

NO DOGS? No kidding! The beach at Coulee City was fully occupied by geese. At least there was a restroom!

A single diner in Wilbur Washington should have a big sign outside that says “Only place to eat in a hundred miles!” And the burger and fries there were terrific!

I’ve always wondered what on earth this building was in Rockford, WA. Every time I pass, I think, “There was an old woman who lived  in a shoe.”

Next is Walla Walla. I’ll leave early Saturday morning for the 150-mile drive and plan to be at the Book and Game Company on Main Street by 11:00 for a signing. Stop in and join me! Seriously, just come by and talk for a while. I could get lonely there. See the details here: https://www.facebook.com/events/313904725810092/

I’ll be greeting sun worshipers at the Skin to the Wind Festival at Sun Meadow Resort on July 14. I’ll keep you posted on that as the time draws nearer.

See all my upcoming events at http://www.nathaneverett.com/events.html

One of the best parts of the weekend was spending time with my daughter. Love you, baby!

I’m available. If you have a club, organization, or upcoming party, I can be your entertainment. In addition to talking about City Limits—which I could do all day—I have entertaining slides from my travels and insights into the writing process and the book industry today. Besides which, I’m a fun guy just to have hang around and talk to. Some of my best book events were organized as private parties in people’s homes. It makes you look so literary to have an author reception in your home. Here’s your opportunity!

Drop me a line at nathan@nathaneverett.com.

Interview with author Nathan Everett

Author Nathan Everett adds to his opus of literary fiction with City Limits, an unusual tale that captures the heart of small-town America. Everett travels the world, visiting towns and countryside to capture characters and locations for some thirty books published under different pen names. A true peripatetic author, tomorrow, he may be writing near you!

City Limits officially releases June 23, 2018. Pre-order at https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07DGMG4SQ

First Exit: We’re taking a different approach to today’s blog post. To celebrate the upcoming release of City Limits, we will be interviewing the author. And interspersing some pretty pictures into the works as well. Nathan, when did you first decide to become a novelist?

Nathan: Sitting in Mrs. Fites’ fourth grade classroom. That’s when I started my first novel.

First Exit: What did a fourth grader have to write about.

Nathan: I had a secret love. My very first and I still have a bit of crush on her, though I haven’t seen her in several years. But I also loved the ‘Classic Comics’ we had in the classroom. I read Ivanhoe, King Arthur, The Iliad, and several others. So, I decided to write my own. It would be about two princes and two princesses in neighboring countries who rode horses and had adventures.

One of my favorite spots along US 95 about 25 miles south of Coeur d'Alene, ID. This is where I imagine my princes and princesses riding their horses on adventures.

First Exit: Did you finish the book?

Nathan: Eventually. I had a problem with the fourth-grade draft. I kept getting confused about the number of esses in princess vs. princes vs. princesses. I ended up drawing a blank line in the manuscript every time I used one of those words. Eventually, though, about twenty years ago I finished the story for my daughter. She liked it and is still the only person who has ever heard the finished version.

First Exit: An author is born. How long between that and your first publication.

Nathan: Ouch. I continued to write a lot during school. My next unfinished novel was a science fiction piece that I wrote in Miss Sullivan’s classroom during recesses in fifth grade. As to publishing… Let’s say I got distracted. I wrote a lot, but my first fiction book didn’t come out until 2007—almost 50 years after my early attempt. Prior to that time, I was prolific as a technical writer and publisher. I wrote training programs for a variety of computer publishing software, homebuilding and real estate manuals, books on design and typography and the history of printing, trade journals, and newsletters. But For Blood or Money was the first novel I treated seriously enough to get published. As for writing, it was probably my tenth or twelfth.

Going from my campsite to Spokane, I travel along the Palouse Scenic Byway.

Interview: And that brings us to your involvement in National Novel Writing Month or NaNoWriMo. Was For Blood or Money your first NaNoWriMo work?

Nathan: No. It was my third. It was probably the most pre-planned book I wrote during NaNoWriMo in the fourteen years I’ve been involved. At least until City Limits.

Apparently, Amazon has given up marketing my books to other people and is thinking that I might want to buy them myself! If you'd like to win a copy of The Gutenberg Rubric, enter the raffle at http://www.rafflecopter.com/rafl/display/402f96ad3/?widget_template=5ace39411b5c47c90d0a5316

First Exit: How did it come about?

Nathan: I did my first NaNo in relative isolation. My wife actually found out about it and recommended that I do it. I’d been laid off and I think we were all going stir-crazy in the house. She decided to participate as well and that year my daughter became one of the youngest NaNo participants. The next year, I was back at work at a corporate tech giant and a coworker who has become a great friend and a force to be reckoned with in the field of editing—Jason Black—said he’d participate with me if we could do something worthwhile with our books. (Visit Jason at http://plottopunctuation.com/) I also met fellow-employee Nina Tang who agreed. We wrote our 2005 novels and did a limited edition of about fifty copies, I think, that we had bound and sold as a fund-raiser for the Giving Campaign. We were extremely successful and gave the funds to the organization that NaNoWriMo supported that built libraries around the world.

First Exit: That was before For Blood or Money?

Nathan: Yes. We were pretty charged up and the next year recruited another couple of authors that we knew and totally conquered NaNo, including becoming their largest single financial donor ever (at the time). With the matching grant we received, we sent well over $5,000 to the Office of Letters and Light. And as a result of that success, Jason, a second co-worker and friend named Gary Syck, and I started our own publishing company, Long Tale Press. It happened that we had an immediate success with another author and decided that in order to fill out our catalog we’d each contribute one of our own books, to be carefully edited by the other two partners, and publish them. For Blood or Money became my first standalone paperback novel.

Not all the crops out here are green. Fields of yellow flowering canola.

First Exit: You said that was your third year in NaNoWriMo and that you’ve completed how many???

Nathan: Fourteen, not including the several times I’ve participated in Camp NaNoWriMo and Script Frenzy. A couple of years, I wrote two different books during NaNo. On average the past five years I’ve completed the equivalent of a NaNo goal every month—50,000 words.

First Exit: And you publish all of them?

Nathan: No, though all six of my published Nathan Everett books were drafted during NaNoWriMos. Four others were published under a different name along with four from Camp NaNo. I’m still a strong supporter of NaNoWriMo and encourage people to participate. That’s what got my daughter writing. It’s what has fueled my long-smoldering passion for writing novels.

First Exit: Since there is such a big division in NaNoWriMo circles between what are called ‘plotters’ and ‘pantsers’, why don’t we talk about planning a novel the next time we get together.

Nathan: It’s obvious from where I live that I’m not a pantser. But how to plan or not plan a novel is always a favorite topic.

I'll be at a meet and greet at Sun Meadow during the Skin to the Wind Festival of Fun on July 14. Check out my events page!

First Exit: Read more about Nathan’s books, his short stories, and his upcoming events at http://www.nathaneverett.com.

It’s all about me

I haven’t been away from my campsite in over a week! As a result, there are no astounding new pictures to show this week. I’m heading toward Spokane for the day today, though, and will keep an eye out for interesting things. In the meantime, here’s a family I caught outside my door a while back.

I have a lot of “Very Important Things” that I need to be doing. In one way or another, nearly all of them involve promoting my new book, City Limits. Promotion is one of the things in this world that I am worst at. Self-promotion borders on abhorrent.

I can sit and talk to people all day long. I can tell about what I’m writing, the development of my characters, funny things about raising a daughter, or my method for choosing a campsite and direction to go when I’m traveling. But my cell phone… I used 15 gigabytes of data a month without breaking a sweat but have a total of only 40 minutes of call time and about 30 text messages. And people ask why I have a flip phone instead of a smart phone!

I will choose almost anything that “Looks Like Work” over doing the “Very Important Things”.

Based on a fan’s very coherent argument that I should write a sequel to one of my online serials (under the name Devon Layne), I was possessed during my 700 miles of travel over Memorial Day by conversations in my head. So, in spite of having two works in progress and two works steeping on the shelf, I started another novel. It was easy at first. I just wrote from another person’s perspective about events I’d already written of in the first serial. But then I realized I needed to coordinate the two perspectives and in order to do that, I needed a calendar of events that both referred to. To create such a calendar, I needed to search through the original serial. Searching through the original serial, I discovered *gasp* errors! There was nothing I could do but start re-editing the original serial. I was only going to edit Book 1 (of 9), but the interesting parts where the two stories collide are in Book 2, so I started compiling the html files for that book and editing.

It looked like work!

Unfortunately, it means that for the past five days, I’ve done no writing, no publicity, no blog posts, and I don’t even think I posted an update on Facebook! I almost forgot to actually order copies of City Limits for the release party. Whew!

Okay. It’s time to get serious here and start promoting the release of City Limits. It’s less than two weeks away!  And there are new developments.

I’ll be signing books and greeting readers at Book & Game Company in Walla Walla, WA on Saturday June 30 from 11:00 until 2:00. If you are in the Walla Walla area or know people who are, please let them know and ask them to help promote the event. This is a casual event and I’ll be located just inside the doors.

I did a book tour for The Gutenberg Rubric that included Book & Game Company a few years ago and was delighted that the staff remembered the presentation and invited me back for this event. Look for my colorful banner!

I’ll also be at the Sun Meadow Patio Party on July 14 during the “Skin to the Wind” Festival of Fun. 4:30-6:00. http://www.sunmeadow.org/ If you are coming to the resort this weekend, be sure to stop and say hi!

There are more things coming. I’m dropping off an ARC of City Limits at Auntie’s Books in Spokane today along with my application for an author event there. If you are willing to help promote an event in Spokane, please let me know!

Okay. I need to get back to the “Very Important Things” now. I’ll talk to you again soon!

Travel and Jelly Beans

After scooting 350 miles west to Bellevue, driving around for a few days, and scooting 350 miles east to get back to Sun Meadow, I finally ran out of jelly beans. Summer is truly here. Once a year, I indulge my jelly bean cravings and buy a jar of the dang things about the time Lent starts. This time I bought it in February. After carrying the jar around on the front seat of the truck for over three months, I ran out. Time for the next season to begin. I’ll buy jelly beans again next year.

And it was a good trip. I got to spend time with my daughter, family, friends, and businesses. Even went to church Sunday and was delighted to touch base with folks at Northlake. I miss going to the men’s group, but I just can’t repeat the 700-mile roundtrip every other Saturday.

Speaking of the daughter, she and her friend are going to Burning Man this fall and they are equipping the jeep for the journey. Never too soon to start the journey. They practiced by setting up their new pavilion in the driveway. I’m assuming it will look a little more stable when it’s on the flat desert sand than on the sloping driveway.

She has told me that she’d like to illustrate the cover for one of my artist stories and after seeing some of her new work, I have to agree. I’m going to send her a commission for four covers soon. I think it is significant that I got this picture of her art with her standing on one side and one of my paintings on the other. I’d like to claim credit for her talent, but I think she inherited it from a higher power. It’s way beyond mine.

Amidst dog walks, barbecues, telling tales, and greeting people, I also managed to get the first announced location for my new book release, City Limits. The reading and signing will take place at Chandler Reach Winery Tasting Room in Woodinville, WA on June 24 from 4-6 p.m. What a great way to spend a Sunday afternoon. Wine and words. Taste a flight of Chandler Reach’s premium wines and listen to me read from City Limits. I’ll sign your personal copy of the book for a small consideration!

In case you are wondering, that’s me on the right. On the left is the delightful Meghan Potter, owner and manager of the tasting room. It’s really great to be working with Meghan again. I’ve held two previous release parties in her establishment, but that was back when she sold coffee instead of wine at Jitters in Bellevue. It was a sad day when her shop closed and we could no longer walk the dogs through the drive-through. But it’s wonderful to be back with Meghan for a book release and I’m very excited for the event.

Just in case you are partial to electronic books, City Limits is on presale at both Amazon Presale and Barnes and Noble Presale. Pre-order now and the book will automatically be downloaded to your device on June 23. What a deal!

The opening of presales also means that Amazon and Goodreads are open for your reviews. If you have an ARC (advance review copy), now is the time to post your review and rating to help generate sales on opening day. Here are a couple of comments I’ve received from readers who are only up to chapter 10:

“A Great tale. Grows on one and becomes more enthralling with each chapter. It has been clear from quite early that much of the town folks' behaviour and reactions have their origin in the Forest and should be read as such. Most enjoyable.”—Moronoxy

“I can just see this as I read—as if it were a movie!”—Colleen

“Man you need to sell this to Netflix it would make a HELL of a tv show!”—XyberDruid

Funny thing. When I originally conceived the novel, my thought process was that I would structure this as if it were a thirteen-episode first season of a new television series. Apparently, it worked!

I’ll be doing a blog tour the week of June 25-29 (and possibly beyond) as well. If you are a book blogger or book reviewer or travel writer, please contact us at BLOG TOUR SIGN-UP to get on the tour. All kinds of options are available, including review, excerpt, interview, travel, and top ten questions. Graphics for your site, a complimentary review copy, and a prize drawing will be included. This is your chance to get on the bandwagon early.

Well, I headed home to Idaho on Thursday and decided to pull off I-90 to snap a picture of the Wild Horse Monument from eastbound. The monument area is more accessible from this side of the freeway and you can actually hike up to the ridge and stand by the horses. Might do that sometime in the future, but I was making several stops on this journey and needed to get on to Spokane.

The good news is that I met the very nice and friendly folks at Auntie Anne’s Bookstore and hope to arrange a reading there in the near future. Many details to pull together.

Have taken some time this weekend to hang out with my friend and fellow-author Mark Sawyer who has come out to Sun Meadow to see if the nomadic life is a fit for him. It’s been a great treat to catch up with each other’s lives as we sit around the campfire at night. Tomorrow, he continues his journey home to Mount Shasta where he will continue tallying up the plusses and minuses of becoming a full-time RVer.

In the meantime, I’m continuing to write new material under various pennames, including having over 7,000 words now on the City Limits sequel, Wild Woods. If you like the TV series concept, consider this season two! The network has contracted another thirteen episodes.

Remember that for all the information and excerpts from my books, check out my website, Author Nathan Everett.