Just Because Book Sale

Just want to announce that for a limited time I've lowered the price on all my Kindle version books, so if you've been meaning to read one (or all), now's a good time to go to Amazon and download them! Here are the links to each book:

Uncharted

Blind Stitches 

Spilled Coffee

 Girl Running

Protégé

Girl Adrift

Five Books in Thirteen Months! Yikes!

I’m coming up on one year since I published Portrait of a Girl Running and its sequel, Portrait of a Protégé. And last year at this time, I also received the reversioning rights to my debut novel, Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright. This was only months after publishing my second novel, Spilled Coffee. That was a lot of publishing in a short period of time! And on the heels of all that, I dove into my fifth novel, Blind Stitches and published it this past July. Yikes! That’s five novels in a little over a year—no wonder I feel story weary, which explains my recent silence on this blog. In fact, I haven’t been online much at all since the beginning of August, and I have to say, it has been very good for me. Especially for my stress levels.

It may be hard for a non-writer to understand the kind of pressure a storyteller feels, not only from the voices of all those characters who want resolution to their conflicts, but from those voices (real or imagined) that insist a novelist must continue to produce or they’ll lose their audience. And that sicky-sweet voice that says, “It doesn’t matter what you write as long as you’re writing! Write for yourself! Write for fun—you remember what that is, right?” when the contrapuntal voice is saying, “Oh please, there’s no possible way you could ever write without analyzing every word, every sentence, every plot twist and character profile. Writing for fun is like losing your virginity—you can never get it back!”

So, that’s where I’m at … sort of. I don’t have a story and characters wrestling in my head and it feels good—like relief … like I can breathe. I’m finding it so much easier to focus on other things that are, quite simply, more important to me than writing. Not that I won’t start some project when something compelling strikes me (especially in the dead of winter), but nothing has at this point. If I do get a creative surge in the form of a story, you may not hear about it until after I decide what to do with it. As an experiment, I’d kind of like to try writing for fun again—just to see if I can actually do it!

Review of Spilled Coffee

I just received a very nice review of Spilled Coffee on author Carol Newman Cronin’s blog, Where Books Meet Boats. While this story has no sailing in it, there is a rowboat, but that has nothing to do with the review. This is what she says, in part:

"The opening scene (in a coffee shop, of course) drew me in quickly, just as I expected. Ben Hughes meets a potential love interest, drops hints about his recently ended engagement, and lets us know he’s on a curious mission involving a lakeside summer cottage, some dark personal history, and a dysfunctional family.... I couldn’t wait to find out what happened next…."

"…Once I had enough information to draw my own conclusions about the ending, I enjoyed the steady drip, drip, drip of details that were carefully woven into the narrative. With each new step back into the past (artfully marked with a pocket watch picon), the story unfolded. And then in spite of my preconceived notions, the ending completely surprised me—another reason I love Chicoine’s books."

I just love how you tied in the coffee theme throughout your review. Thank you so much Carol!

Spilled Coffee Launched!

I was going to wait and post this until after all the formats are available (specifically ePub), but since word is already out (yes, I 'spilled' the beans* on Facebook), I might as well officially launch Spilled Coffee, my latest work.

I love this story. It’s a little ‘darker’ than Uncharted, in as much as it deals with more adult issues, although they are tempered through the eyes of a nearly fourteen-year-old boy, Benjamin, back in 1969—a more innocent, dare I say naïve time for someone not old enough to comprehend all the complexities of the social revolution taking place around him. Like Uncharted, I wrote Spilled Coffee in the male, first person point of view. Here’s the description from the back cover:

Benjamin Hughes is on a mission. He has just bought back the New Hampshire lake cottage his family lost eighteen summers ago, in 1969, just before he turned fourteen—just before his life blew apart.

Still reeling from a broken engagement, Ben has committed himself to relive that momentous summer for the next twenty-four hours.

Every summer as a boy, Ben has gawked at the pretty redhead Amelia, granddaughter to the richest man on the lake, Doc Burns—owner of a Cessna floatplane and the Whispering Narrows estate. During the summer of ’69, Ben not only sneaks around with Amelia, but he learns how to fly with Doc, and meets an eclectic cast of characters that will change him forever. The best summer of Ben’s life turns out to be the worst as the Burns’ family dysfunction collides with his own family’s skeletons.

Here’s where you can purchase a copy, in either trade paperback, or for your Kindle. It will soon be available for your iPad through Smashwords, but remember, there’s a Kindle app for that! If anyone is interested in a Review Copy, in either eBook, PDF, or paperback version, please e-mail me via:  bridget at jbchicoine dot com. If you like it well enough to leave a review, that would be groovy. You can also find it on Goodreads.

*yes, that would be coffee beans!

Spilled Coffee Cover

I've been picking away at each item on my To Do—that is, my To Publish list for Spilled Coffee. The cover has been in the works for months now, but I’ve finally settled on all the particulars (not that my perfectionism won’t kick in for some last-minute tweaks).

I like it—it’s kind of quirky and layered, like the story. I have also established my publishing entity: Straw Hill Publishing. Depending on how complicated my life becomes over the next couple moths, I plan to release Spilled Coffee this late spring/early summer. 

Playing Along Nicely

Yvonne Osborne, over at The Organic Writer tagged me for The Next Big Thing blog tour. I really enjoyed reading the concise breakdown of her work in progress, Black River.  Yvonne's prose is layered and lyrical--I can't wait to read the completed novel.  I don't usually do blogfests and tours, but the questions seemed straightforward enough that I could come up with some answers, seeing as I actually have a ‘next big thing’. So here goes:

• What is the working title of your next book? Spilled Coffee

•  Where did the idea come from for this book? I had in mind a snippet of a scene—a man who clumsily bumps the elbow of a woman sitting at a diner counter, spilling her coffee all over her sketchpad. From there, it was a matter of figuring out who each of the characters are and why they were in the diner.

•  What genre does your book fall under? Adult literary fiction, though a large portion has a Young Adult appeal. I guess it's a little Romancey, too.

•  What actors would you choose to play the part of the characters in a movie rendition? That’s really hard—I guess I don’t watch enough television of movies to choose anyone in particular. Any tall, quirky, attractive, dark curlyish-haired guy, and a pretty, petite curly redheaded young lady could audition for the main characters.

•  What is a one-sentence synopsis of your book? Ben Hughes buys back the lake cottage his family lost eighteen years ago, and for the next twenty-four hours, he is committed to reliving that summer when his life blew apart.

• Will your book be self-published or represented by an agency? I simply can’t resist fulfilling my dream of self-publishing.

•  How long did it take you to write the first draft of the manuscript? I started it back in April of 2010. It sat dormant for nearly a year—I added a few hundred words and it again sat until last winter. I wrote the bulk of 80K words over the course of a couple months—I’ve never been that productive in my life!

•  What other books would you compare this to in your genre? Oh goodness, I haven’t any idea. I guess the best I can say is it’s a coming-of-age story, and there are so many of them out there…

•  Who or what inspired you to write this book? Of course any characters, places, or situations are purely coincidental and the product of my imagination, but my husband may disagree…

•  What else about your book might pique the reader’s interest? Although Spilled Coffee delves into family dysfunction, it is against the backdrop of the 1960s and experienced through the eyes of an innocent fourteen-year-old boy. Anyone who grew up during that time period will appreciate the nostalgic snapshots, yet the awkward emotions of adolescence are universal and will strike a chord with many, especially as we so often look back on those years with mixed feelings. 

I'm not sure if providing a snippet is part of the rules, but since my predecessors have done so, here's something:

The odor of rotting pine needles, decaying asphalt shingles, and mold stirs a nondescript memory—a fleeting sense of childhood—of me as a child, the innocent who had not yet gained a broader perspective. That child inserts the key and turns it. The adult, the man who understands that nothing stays the same, pushes the door open.

I'm also supposed to tag a few others--Yvonne already tagged Liza Carens Salerno, but I'm still going to! and I shall also nudge Robynne Rand (aka, Anne Gallagher) and she can fill us in on what she's up to over on her Women's Fiction blog. And finally, Jayne Ferst—A Novice Novelist, who has been working on a novel and I'm dying to find out about it!

My Big Plans

For the past month, I’ve been working on some graphics for my next novel, Spilled Coffee. Not only that, but I’ve made the decision to publish Spilled Coffee  independently, yes, self-publishing. Even before I started this blog—nearly five years ago—I was enamored with the idea of self-publishing. I’ve always had a Do-It-Yourself mindset which extends to my writing. I learned how to write by writing and researching and connecting with a few other writers. I even went so far as to format, print, and bind one of my earlier novels (I plan to resurrect this novel in the future).

My writing has come a long way, even to the point of being traditionally published, which has been a huge boost to my confidence. Not only that, but I’ve received some greatly-appreciated correspondence from some who have read Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright and really enjoyed it. Thank you so much to all those who took the time to share their thoughts!

Anyone who has read this blog for any length of time knows I’m not a hard-sell—I find promotion, networking, and marketing very awkward (as do many writers). I’ve also heard it said that the best way to sell one book is by writing another…well, I can do that! In fact I’ve done that, and now it’s getting near time to put the next novel out there. I had a few works to choose from and picked Spilled Coffee as a follow-up to Uncharted. Like Uncharted, I wrote Spilled Coffee in first person point of view as a man. It’s not so much nautical, though a rowboat on a lake in New Hampshire plays a role in the story. What the two stories have in common are the thirty-something men coming to terms with their family and past. Here’s the logline, a bit of promotional art, and what you’d read on the back cover:

A Novel About Coming of Age…Again…

Benjamin Hughes is on a mission. He has just bought back the New Hampshire lake cottage his family lost eighteen summers ago, in 1969, just before he turned fourteen—just before his life blew apart.

Still reeling from a broken engagement, Ben has committed himself to relive that momentous summer for the next twenty-four hours. 

Every summer as a boy, Ben has gawked at the pretty redhead Amelia, granddaughter to the richest man on the lake, Doc Burns—owner of a Cessna floatplane and the Whispering Narrows estate. During the summer of ’69, Ben not only sneaks around with Amelia, but he learns how to fly with Doc, and meets an eclectic cast of characters that will change him forever. The best summer of Ben’s life turns out to be the worst as the Burns’ family dysfunction collides with his own family’s skeletons.

So, that’s the news for this week. Soon I will be posting the cover art I’ve been messing around with, perhaps some of the interior art,  and updates on the publication progress.

Coming of Age

When I search for Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright on Google, this is the first result that shows up:

Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright: J. B. Chicoine: 978193685 www.amazon.com › ... › Genre Fiction › Coming of Age

I’m not entirely certain how the algorithms work or how Amazon categorizes novels, but “Coming of Age” really jumps out at me—I hadn’t ever thought of Uncharted as a 'coming of age story', but on second thought, yes, I suppose it is. Perhaps the term has more to do with how loosely it is applied.

Wikipedia says “Coming of age is a young person's transition from childhood to adulthood.” Aspects of Uncharted—specifically, Marlena’s personal accounts—deal directly with her coming of age. But in a broader sense, (if one goes by Merriam Webster—“to reach maturity”) then the definition also fits Samuel, for although he is thirty one years old, he is finally coming to terms with his childhood and now his adulthood—finally maturing as a person.

It seems to me (and this from a meager fifty-two years of experience) that the ‘thirties’ is as much a time of transition and coming of age as is adolescence. Yes, the changes of puberty and reaching physical adulthood are momentous and highly visible, yet I don’t think it’s until one’s thirties that a person begins to grasp who they are and how they came to be. I don’t mean to get overly psychological here, but if the decade or so following adolescence establishes patterns in our behavior and thoughts, congealing into ‘adulthood’, it seems that by our thirties we are confronted with what has either been working for us or inhibiting who we’d like to be. And how did we end up with this person we look at in the mirror? Are our traits genetic, or did we learn them? Can we change the things we don’t like in ourselves? Or are we doomed to struggle with seemingly inherent weaknesses for the rest of our lives? Can we reconcile any of it and find peace with it all? Perhaps it was just me, but my thirties launched me into a great deal of introspection.

It is this introspection that I write about in my novels. I’m fascinated with the concept of ‘Coming of Age.’ Yes, I wrote about it in Uncharted without necessarily analyzing is as such. Now that I’m deep into revising Spilled Coffee, I see that it is the central theme approached from both the adolescent perspective of a fourteen-year-old boy and from his thirty-one year old self as he reflects on his formative years.

Even as I write this piece for my blog, I wonder if midlife could also be classified as another ‘Coming of Age’ episode. By now I am an established adult in my own right, but there is nothing like being in close proximity with aging parents (yes, cohabitating with them) to force another full-blown self-analysis and growth spurt—but that’s a whole ‘nother topic!

An Uncharted Break

In the middle of all this pre-release date stuff for Uncharted: Story for a Shipwright, I thought it would be nice to take a little break and talk about the story I’m working on—the one I mentioned a while back. The coming of age story set primarily in 1969. It started out as SPILLED COFFEE, changed to WHISPERING NARROWS, but now I think I’m back at  SPILLED COFFEE.  WHISPERING NARROWS  seems too romancey and sounds too much like a mystery (yes there is some romance and a bit of mystery, but it’s more literary fiction with a commercial bent, like Uncharted).

The first draft is complete at 80k words and now it’s revision time. My trusted beta readers have provided helpful feedback and now I need to address the problems with the story. It’s always a challenge to know what to alter and what suggestions to veto, but when certain issues gain a consensus, there’s probably something to it. So, for the past few months, it has been sitting in the corner like a problem child—a source of vexation. I think the biggest fault with this novel is that I simply didn’t know the main character, Benjamin Hughes, well enough. I knew him quite well as an adolescent—his early teen summer of 1969 is the primary part of the story. But I hadn’t developed enough of his adult life to flesh him out as a thirty-five-ish year old character my reader can relate to in the early 1990s, when the story opens and to where it returns at the beginning of each chapter. (The switching back and forth is a trick in itself!)

So, I’ve been taking long walks lately, bringing Benjamin along. I asked him, “So what exactly did happen to you and your sister between 1970 and 1992?”

And guess what! He’s been very cooperative! In fact, he introduced me to a new character, Christopher, and cleared up some details on other players in the story. The challenge will be writing Christopher in a realistic and sympathetic way. He’s a complicated character whose idiosyncrasies will require a ton of research. I will need to handle him delicately.

Since this story is written in a male, first person POV (as is Uncharted) and deals a lot with family dysfunction (like Uncharted) it seems that it would be a good follow-up novel to publish after Uncharted, as opposed to my GIRL RUNNING novels, which have a very different feel.

A while back, I even came up with a cover idea—it may be a bit busy and I might have to scratch it, but it at least provides a pretty picture for this post! I'm also hoping that the title brings to mind the old saying,  “No use crying over .... ”