Buttoning and Unbuttoning: an Update

Lord Byron once said, "When one subtracts from life infancy (which is vegetation), - sleep, eating and swilling, - buttoning and unbuttoning - how much remains of downright existence?" [Journal, December 7, 1813. Vol. 3, p. 235]

I have been doing a lot of buttoning and unbuttoning. There is so much to putting out a book. I had been reading a great deal about book launches and marketing. Presenting at conferences, publishing papers, and speaking to the media whenever possible. I made a marketing plan. I took some seminars, teleconferences, and webinars and grilled my fellow authors for their advice. I thought I had prepared for everything. One learns that this is never the case.

As a tarot card reader, it really is a damned shame that I (like most) am not able to read for myself. Oh, the trouble I might have avoided!

I have not posted too often here because I have been so busy with my tarot reading appointments and events, and the book projects. The tarot life has never been better, and if you are interested in scheduling a party or getting a reading; or if you'd like to stop by an event for a free reading, please see the calendar page here.

About six months ago, a book trailer was being filmed to promote my forthcoming Fixed Stars Govern a Life: Decoding Sylvia Plath. The concept of it alone, "Digitizing the Occult," got the attention of the Long Beach Indie Film Festival this year. Exciting! It was my dream to release the trailer a month or two before the book's release. Things happened in that filming where I could really see the director's genius; he had a vision (several, actually) that I hadn't thought of. He pushed me out of my comfort zone of speaking to academia, and into new places, teaching me how the world sees what I am doing, and how to speak to them. During the filming, it seemed like all the stars had lined up and Sylvia and Ted were right there with us. There were some beautiful shots, some amazing moments. And yet there were technical hitches I do not fully understand, and file transfer problems from the filmmaker/director to the editor, and I am in a place of despair at the moment where I am not sure the book trailer will even happen. If it does, it will probably not be a "trailer." Perhaps just a marketing piece after the fact. I still hope for it.

And then there is the question of the day: When will the book be released (followed by, Is there a release party)? I was told it would have a spring release at the end of May/early June months ago. Here we are, teetering on the very edge of June, ready to tumble into summer. Last week I received the manuscript's first layout, and I am going over final final edits. But of course, until I am finished with these the changes cannot be made. I have been given no release date, probably because of this (although someone in the Powers That Be put "July 15" up on Amazon). This will of course make it hard to read and do book-signings at my June and July conference presentations. Sigh.

Beyond the unknown release date, I am asked: Will there be advance copies for press reviews? How many will be printed? How many of the first printing will there be? Will there be a second printing if the first run sells out? Will you be at the NEXT BookExpo? Is your publisher buying advertising? What is your budget for a release party? How long until FSGL Volume Two comes out? All of these are questions to which I do not know the answer. I am still hoping to have a book release party. I just want to be sure that I have a book to put on the tables on that date, so hang tight.

Meanwhile, in the marketing world, I have hired and fired two different email companies, picked the brains of another, and have a proposal from another still to consider. Email marketing is not what it used to be five years ago. The CAN-SPAM Act, like most regulations, ties the hands of the law-abiding people while the criminals ignore it and keep doing what they're doing. Services like Constant Contact, Mail-Chimp, AWeber and the like will not even send press releases out to the media anymore because of this act. Opt-In widgets are the only verifiable tools, and so mass-mailings don't really exist any longer. It is boggling to a person like me, with a background in marketing and public relations from 15 years ago. So much has changed and doing business today through any sort of direct mailing is virtually impossible without a huge budget to override all the rules. I have found a new someone--a new service--and will probably give it yet another try. Fingers crossed. In the meantime, if you are not on my email list, please write me and I'll save your email as documented permission, should the Feds try to lock me up for sending to you.

This is a time to remind myself it all happens exactly as it must.

To further complicate matters, I have the (delightful) problem of never being more busy as a tarot card reader, and trying to finish two other books, The Magician's Girl, and Sylvia Plath: The Early Poems, for which there is already strong interest and one publisher looking to get The Early Poems on their calendar.

Alas! Like Lord Byron, I am more interested in "downright existence" than in all this vegetation, buttoning, and unbuttoning (although I dare say Lord Byron's existence was a tad wilder than my own). A few years ago, I decided that instead of sending out my poems for publication, and trying to get my own collection of work bound and in print, I would concentrate instead at the writing itself---and only that. I would let go of all ego, of all world affirmations and validation, upon which I was putting too much attention. I was making the idea of publication more important than the art, which is a critical mistake that I think most writers are guilty of, at least for a time. I decided instead to make writing the spiritual act that it is, and let it guide me, as tarot does. I would let it take me wherever it chooses to go and not become too attached to how I think success should look. So far, so good.

Like with my own poetry and prose, my focus then for Fixed Stars Govern a Life, and all the rest of my Plath work, is not about the publication, but rather the joy of the work and the secrets opening up and revealing themselves to me, and eventually sharing them with you. However this looks, and whenever it decides to happen. Occasionally this marketing and publishing nonsense derails me and pulls at my attention, steering me off-course into the far more depressing, miserable, temporal world of business. That is a place I really do not enjoy. I encourage my clients and readers to look at what pulls your own attention away from what you most want to accomplish. Whether it is writing or some other dream, ask yourself: What is the most important thing? What do you live for? For what reasons are we really doing the work? Abandon the ego and stay on course for this thing you most want, whatever it is. For me, it is to witness miracles and to demonstrate a higher order to the universe. I have found out how to do this, amazingly, through the work of Sylvia Plath.

When I turn my focus away from the spiritual, away from the art and onto the publishing and marketing, there is nothing but stress, which does none of us any good. As I tell my clients in their tarot readings when they pull that reversed Two of Swords: "You will never look back on your life and say, 'I wish I worried more!" And, as Lord Byron once said, "The busy have no time for tears."