Doesn’t break my heart.

Posted on October 18, 2011 by Jim

As I’ve said before, traditional publishing is essentially broken. My experiences with working with a small independent publisher to get Communion of Dreams to press, and having that go screwy only confirm my thoughts on the matter. Certainly, the process of trying to find a publisher for CoD and then a year ago for Her Final Year haven’t changed my mind at all.

So it doesn’t break my heart to read an article like this:

Amazon Signs Up Authors, Writing Publishers Out of Deal

SEATTLE — Amazon.com has taught readers that they do not need bookstores. Now it is encouraging writers to cast aside their publishers.

Amazon will publish 122 books this fall in an array of genres, in both physical and e-book form. It is a striking acceleration of the retailer’s fledging publishing program that will place Amazon squarely in competition with the New York houses that are also its most prominent suppliers.

* * *

Publishers say Amazon is aggressively wooing some of their top authors. And the company is gnawing away at the services that publishers, critics and agents used to provide.

Her Final Year hasn’t yet found the audience I expected it would. Maybe it never will. Maybe it would with a major publishing house behind it. Maybe we’ll just get lucky, and get some good word-of-mouth going on it (you can help, hint, hint…).

But regardless, Communion of Dreams (my novel) has been downloaded over 33,000 times in the last four years, and by any measure that’s an indication that there is an audience out there for it. Yet my years of trying to find a publisher for it have always ended in frustration – even after I had received an offer to publish it, as well as communications from several other publishers that they thought it was an excellent book, but ‘just not quite what we’re looking for…’

So yeah, forgive me if I don’t shed a tear for the traditional publishers, and whatever services they supposedly provided. Self-publishing is the new reality. If Amazon wants to tie into that with a new model for publishing, then good – it can’t be any worse than the way things don’t work now.

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to the Communion of Dreams blog.)

“…and a time for every purpose…”

Posted on October 17, 2011 by Jim

Six years ago I wrote the following for my newspaper column:

This is the heavy harvest time for my garden. I’ve been bringing in 20-plus pounds of tomatoes daily: sweet golden tomatoes that make a perfect sauce, meaty Romas great for salsa or drying, Celebrity and Brandywine tomatoes chopped up and canned for enjoyment later. I’ve also got bell peppers warming to red, brilliant Cayennes for a little spice, and hot hot hot Habaneros to roast and use in sauces to shake off winter’s deepest chill. All thanks to the extra time and work I put in this spring, prepping the ground, selecting plants, laying the soaker hoses, putting down a thick mat of straw to retain moisture and keep out weeds.

I was reminded of this passage this morning as I harvested what could well be the last tomatoes of this season. It’s been a late harvest this year, delayed by a very wet early summer, but the fall has stayed warm long enough that in the last few days I’ve brought in over 100 pounds of just beautiful tomatoes. They now cover the kitchen counter two deep, and I have already cooked up about two gallons of thick sauce. Friends will come by over the next day or two to collect a portion, and my good lady wife and I are gorging ourselves on them, enjoying fresh, flavorful tomatoes while they’re here.

* * * * * * *

The subject of that column, Naoma Powell, is still alive, though her fall season is now also coming to a close. We recently attended a special event honoring her and the program she nurtured for so long. Naoma was able to attend for a while, happy to be surrounded by those who still love and respect her, even if she was no longer sure who they were.

It was a well attended event, and I was surprised by how many of the people I knew. My roots into the arts community here are still deep, even after long years of neglect. I closed the gallery over 7 years ago, and stopped writing my column on the arts at the end of 2006, when the demands of care-giving for Martha Sr because such that I could no longer reliably maintain involvement with the community.

I’m not thinking of opening another gallery or anything like that. Legacy Art was a good experience on the whole, though the financial losses were quite painful. For a long time I carried a bitterness over the difference between what people professed (supporting the arts) and what they actually did (not opening their wallets to actually buy art). But that bitterness has mellowed, perhaps ripened.

* * * * * * *

You know how when you try a new tomato varietal, you can’t be entirely sure what you’re getting yourself in for? I mean, yeah, it’s a tomato, and will fall within a certain range of flavor profiles. But a Lemon Boy tomato tastes completely differently than a Brandywine does. You just have to dive in and try it, savoring it for what it is rather than what you expect it to be.

One variety I tried growing this year is like that: “Black Prince” It has a dark, earthy flavor I didn’t really expect. But I have come to enjoy it a great deal for what it is, and the plants are doing quite well this late in the season.

Expectations are like that. I expected that our book would be a lot more popular than what it has turned out to be. For a while I was again bitter at the disappointment, feeling that I had made the same mistake that I had made previously with the gallery, believing what people professed rather than what they actually did.

But the truth is, you can’t know what people are going to do, until they do it. All you can do is plan, and prepare, tend your garden to the best of your ability. And then hope that the weather favors you, and that the harvest, when it comes, brings something you enjoy.

Jim Downey

Cross posted to my personal blog.

Of cats, and care-giving memories.

Posted on October 15, 2011 by Jim

Our elderly cat seems to have had another stroke.

Yesterday, she was showing signs of lethargy. This morning, she was uninterested in food, and twice fell off the little platform where we keep the cat’s food and water in the time it took me to turn around and grab the can of moist food to give her. The third time, I held her until I got the food down in her bowl, then placed her gently in front of it. She was uninterested, and again stepped off into space – though I was able to grab her before she fell. I placed her back on her favorite pillow here in my office, and she slept most of the morning.

Just now, she was rustling around a bit. She’s blind, and mostly deaf, but she manages to navigate pretty well most of the time. Now, however, she was bumping into the side of her litterbox. I picked her up, and again tried to get her something to eat. Not interested. But she did drink a bunch of water as I held her steady, and was happy when I again placed her in front of her litterbox.

Reminds me of this (placed appropriately in “October” in the book):

I got back from my morning walk with the dog to find my wife helping her mom take her after-breakfast pills. Not just encouraging her, but actually placing the pills in her mouth for her, helping her hold up and drink from the glass of juice.

I changed the dog’s collar, put away his leash. Took off my knee braces and the little belly pouch I wear for walking the dog which contains some treats, a small bottle of water, plastic bags for droppings. Removed my light jacket and MP3 player. Went back into the kitchen and leaned against the counter opposite where my wife and MIL were sitting. My wife looked up.

“Another T.I.A.?”

She nodded.

That’s not to say that caring for a cat is like caring for a human. Nor to compare the two. I love my pets, and honor my responsibility to them, but when it comes down to it, they are just pets, however much I consider them part of the family.

But there is an echo, a memory of how things were some four years ago . . .

Jim Downey

Have a little perspective.

Posted on October 14, 2011 by Jim

I was chatting about preparations for an upcoming trip with a friend, who asked me whether I had made plans for having sufficient prescription painkillers. See, I’m still suffering from some significant pain due to intercostal muscle damage I had from a very bad case of pneumonia a year ago. Basically, it feels like a broken rib. I usually only need to take the Rx stuff in the evenings and overnight so I can sleep comfortably, relying on over-the-counter analgesics during the day. I assured her that I had taken the proper steps to have both what I needed and the written prescription for it, so I shouldn’t have any problems.

Anyway, it reminded me of this passage from the book, and how one’s attitude towards such matters shifts when you’re coming to the end of hospice care, originally written about two weeks before Martha Sr’s death:

They usually won’t tell you this beforehand, but there comes a point in hospice care where the usual restrictions about medicine dosage and usage becomes, let us say, somewhat more casual. The rules are in place to control the abuse of very dangerous and addicting drugs, after all. But when the end comes, no one in their right mind is going to be worrying about addiction, when there is comfort to be given.

We’ve reached this point. My wife and I had realized it last week, but were reluctant to act too much on this knowledge without confirmation from our nurse. No, she didn’t tell us to exceed any prescriptions, but was willing to answer our questions about what medicines were suitable for what problems. So, in response to anxiety, or breathing difficulty, or coughing spasms, we add in a few drops of this solution, another one of those pills, maybe a small shot of whiskey.

Palliative care still faces some struggles for acceptance, and I am sorry to say that there actually are people who are more concerned with addiction than providing comfort for the dying. Or, even worse, with maintaining an absolute prohibition on the use of medical marijuana, when that may be the best solution for relieving pain. “Reefer Madness”, indeed.

Jim Downey

Or longer.

Posted on October 13, 2011 by Jim

This is from almost the end of the book, an excerpt from a blog entry originally posted in late January, 2009:

They tell you to expect it to take a year to recover. You don’t believe them.

But they’re right.

Oh, that doesn’t relieve you of the duty to try and get your shit together more quickly. To try and get past the soul-aching exhaustion that comes with having fought the good fight for so very, very long. You have to do that. It is absolutely necessary.

But it isn’t sufficient. It will still take a year. Or longer.

Yeah, longer. How much longer? Hard to say. At what point does “recovery” shift over to just “experience?” Because, after all, it is the sum of our experiences which makes us what we are. And that time is spent – you can’t reset the clock, reclaim four or five or six or more years of your life. You’re older. Your body has been stressed, just as your mind has gained perspective.

Martha Sr died a little less than four years ago. I no longer feel that I am “in recovery” from being a care-provider. But I’m not sure that I can point to a moment when I stopped feeling like I was “in recovery”. You just do what you need to do. So give it time. A year. Or longer. There’s no rush.

Jim Downey

To a Mouse.*

Posted on October 11, 2011 by Jim

A good friend was visiting last weekend. We see each other fairly often, communicate regularly. But there are things best discussed in person.

“How’s your mom doing?”

“Not bad. I think we’re getting to the point where we need to have that conversation about her driving.”

“Ah. That’s a hard one.”

“Yeah. But my sister largely drives her everywhere as it is, anyway. So that will make it easier.”

* * * * * * *

I mentioned a week ago that I was surprised that Her Final Year hasn’t done better.

Well, I had been waiting for a couple of additional pieces to appear in different publications in the hopes that would spur awareness of the book, as well as sales. One of those being my college alumni magazine. Yesterday I saw that they had posted the Fall 2011 issue as a .pdf on their website, so I took a look.

It’s a blurb, not a review. You can find it at the bottom of page 39, if you want. Next to another book blurb, and one of about a dozen in this issue. My fellow alumni are intelligent, accomplished people.

* * * * * * *

After discovering that, I went out to pick tomatoes from my garden. The very wet summer we had meant that there was a big delay in a bunch of the tomato plants blooming and setting fruit. But I am lucky, since many people I know have had a horrible year for tomatoes, while mine were just delayed.

I was able to pick about 25 pounds of tomatoes, a nice mix of Lemon Boy and Brandywine and Black Prince and Better Boy. Most look great, have a wonderful taste. We had some with BLTs last night for dinner, and I made up two quarts of sauce from the ones with slight blemishes. I’ll probably go ahead and can or sauce the rest in the next day or two.

But I didn’t get to picking them for about two hours, because first I had to completely re-do the netting around the garden (about 40×50). Deer had gotten in, then tore the hell out of everything getting out.

Yeah, they munched on the tomato plants, and that was annoying. But they also ate the tops out of my habanero plants. Well, not all of them. Just the ones which had done the best.

See, as bad as the summer was on tomatoes, it was worse on the habaneros. They just started setting fruit a couple of weeks ago. And it was a race to see whether any of the pods ripened fully before I leave for New Zealand.

Now I doubt whether any of the pods will ripen. Oh, the deer stayed away from the fruit. But with the bulk of the leaves eaten out of the top, I don’t know whether they can ripen. We’ll see.

* * * * * * *

A dear friend used to always say “Live as if you were going to die tomorrow. Plan as if you will live forever.”

She passed away over 20 years ago from breast cancer.

* * * * * * *

“Still, once you tell her that she has to stop driving, things change.”

“I know.” He looked at me. “I got copies of your book for all four of my siblings. Told them to read it.”

“Thanks.”

“No, thank you – I don’t think any of them have really thought through how this is likely to go with Mom.”

“Every experience is different.”

“Yeah, but at least having *some* idea of what to plan for, what to watch for, will help.”

Jim Downey

*from this. Cross posted to my personal blog.

Senior Care – no, literally: seniors, caring for seniors

Posted on October 10, 2011 by John

Via @Clear_care RT’ing one of @Home_Instead’s tweets, this is an interesting article about a novel concept: Seniors caring for seniors.

From the article:

“In the past few years, the company has met the challenge of staffing shortages for nursing assistants and caregivers in the senior care industry with a unique solution: opening up its pool of employee candidates to seniors themselves. Responding to its clients requests for more “mature” companions, it has found that hiring older employees not only makes the company’s services more marketable to customers but has allowed the business to keep its staff expanding with growth.”

Interesting, and worth watching.

When we were caring for Georgia, one of the things that we found helpful for both ourselves as well as Georgia was when she would have a “night out” with other adults (who were aware of the impact that Alzheimer’s had taken) or an occasional lunch date with friends of near-ish age. Georgia was still in the relatively early stages, so the ability to still go out “on her own” (i.e., without me or Kathi needing to accompany her like mother hens or circling hawks) was very important to her.

It also gave us some much-needed time to ourselves to tend to other things. We were still on call if there was an issue, of course…but nobody ever needed to take advantage of that accessibility, and Georgia had a great time.

It’s partially with those memories, and with the knowledge that seniors may understand other seniors & associated issues (as well as memories from contemporary times), that I think the approach of using seniors as part of staff to help other seniors may be a brilliant opportunity.

What’s valued.

Posted on October 4, 2011 by Jim

As a side-line, I’m a writer for Guns.com. Mostly what are called ‘features’ but are actually akin to a newspaper column, plus some reviews and other things now and again. I generally write about one piece a week. It’s fun, they let me write about just anything I want, and I like the discipline of sitting down to write a column of a specific length and focus as I did when I was writing about the arts for my local paper. It doesn’t pay much, but for the approximately 20,000 words I’ve written for them this year, I’ve made over a thousand dollars. And I’m told by my editor that I’m considered one of the best and most popular writers for the site, but that could just be blowing smoke. Regardless, I know that thousands of people see almost everything I write there, and the direct feedback I get is very positive. I consider the hour or two I put into writing each article to be time well spent.

So far this month we haven’t sold any copies of Her Final Year. Last month we sold 11. All told, we’ve sold about 30. That’s about 10% of what we need to sell just to break even on out-of-pocket expenses.

I’m honestly surprised by this. Oh, I know that it takes time for word to get around, that times are tight for people. Et cetera. But by about this point in time, my novel had been downloaded over 2,000 times (currently the total is well over 30,000 downloads). And that launched with less of a promotional effort than we put behind HFY, without the supporting structures of social media and forums dedicated to care-giving.

Granted, Communion of Dreams is free. But it is also just an e-book. You can’t (yet) get a paperback copy of it to keep, or to give as a gift. And while I think that it is well written, Her Final Year is a much better and more powerful book.

This isn’t meant to be a “woe is me, please buy my book” plea. Rather, it is just an observation on what is valued by our culture. Writing about firearms is. I get paid for that, and know that it is well received. Writing fiction is. Word of my novel spread widely, and it remains popular (some 636 people downloaded it last month.) Even writing about the arts was valued – my newspaper columns generated a little income, and were once again fairly popular.

Writing about care-giving? Not so much, it seems. I wonder why that is.

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to my personal blog.)

What’s important.

Posted on October 2, 2011 by Jim

Four years ago we were in the closing months of my Mother-in-law’s life. She was starting her final downturn, and had a series of transient ischemic attacks. On October 1, 2007 I posted a piece titled “Another day, another T.I.A.”. Here’s an excerpt from that:

So, we wait. For either another T.I.A., or a full-fledged stroke. And we try to make her days as comfortable and enjoyable as we can, within the constraints of our own exhaustion and need to pace ourselves for what could yet be a long haul.

And in the meantime, tomorrow is our 20th wedding anniversary. For the most part, observation of same is postponed until later by tacit agreement between my wife and I, though we will make a favorite meal and bake a cake. We have one another, the details will sort themselves out later.

The details did sort themselves out, and today we celebrate 24 years of marriage. Looking back, I’m glad we were able to make it through those difficult years, and do not regret having to defer the traditional celebrations in order to care for Martha Sr. Caring for her was what was important at the time, though of course it also was disappointing to miss some celebrations and family events.

So, what special occasions have you needed to miss or observe later because of your care-giving? Did others understand? Do you resent having to do so?

Jim Downey

(Cross posted to the Daily Kos.)

Moments of change.

Posted on September 30, 2011 by Jim

September winds down. The leaves here in central Missouri are starting to change. This weekend Martha and I will celebrate being married for 24 years.

As the first World Alzheimer’s Month comes to a close I am waiting for at least two more publications who are doing stories on Her Final Year. There is an odd frisson, a sensation almost like standing on a cliff, looking out over a vista because I am afraid to look straight down to the river below. Is this an ending, or a beginning?

And I am reminded of this passage, originally written 5 days before Martha Sr died, now in the month of “December: Passing”:

There is something to this of that bittersweet moment, that sense of coming to conclusions you know are there, the resolution of conversations and plot lines that you get at the end of a cherished book. She no longer needs to wait for the usual markers of the day – when to get up, when to eat, when to nap. She got up this morning, and the rest of the day has followed as best we can to her wants and desires. Lunch an hour early, and including her favorite soup even though she just had it yesterday. (Campbell’s Tomato, if you want to know.) Supper about a half hour early. Bed more than an hour early. Because that is what she wanted.

Her worries we have answered as best we can, telling her that tomorrow we will see if we can help her find “the people she came here with.”

Unless she finds them on her own in her sleep.

We don’t always recognize the moments of change in our lives, or what they mean.

But sometimes, we do.

Jim D.

(Cross posted to my personal blog.)