APRIL HENRY, WRITER
  • Home
  • Past News
  • Bio
    • Goodbye, 2021
    • How my Apple watch saved my life
    • Masks for Covid-19
    • In the name of research
    • Why I write scary things
    • Roald Dahl Made Me a Writer
    • Fun Facts about April
    • Questions teachers often assign
    • 10 Reasons I Love Martial Arts
    • Learning to Fight Back
    • Dear Teen Me
    • My Parents >
      • My Dad, Hank Henry >
        • Witnessing Nat King Cole's Greatest Hit
      • My Mom, Nora Henry >
        • My Mom and the Round Rock
    • My great-grandfather, the killer
    • I come from a long line of criminals
  • Books
    • For Teens (and Adults) >
      • Future books
      • Girl Forgotten
      • Two Truths and a Lie
      • Eyes of the Forest
      • Playing with Fire
      • The Girl in the White Van
      • Run, Hide, Fight Back
      • The Lonely Dead
      • Count All Her Bones
      • The Girl I Used to Be
      • Blood Will Tell (2nd in the Point Last Seen series)
      • The Body in the Woods (1st in the Point Last Seen series)
      • The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die
      • The Night She Disappeared
      • Girl, Stolen
      • Torched
      • Shock Point
    • For Adults (and Teens) >
      • Lethal Beauty (3rd in the Mia Quinn series)
      • A Deadly Business (2nd in the Mia Quinn mystery series)
      • Matter of Trust (1st in Mia Quinn series)
      • Face of Betrayal (1st in the Triple Threat series)
      • Hand of Fate (2nd in the Triple Threat series)
      • Heart of Ice (3rd in the Triple Threat series)
      • Eyes of Justice (4th in the Triple Threat series)
      • Learning to Fly
      • Circles of Confusion (1st in Claire Montrose series)
      • Square in the Face (2nd in the Claire Montrose series)
      • Heart-Shaped Box (3rd in the Claire Montrose series)
      • Buried Diamonds (4th in the Claire Montrose series)
    • Foreign Covers
  • Events
    • Calendar
    • About My School Visits
    • A Sneak Peek at a School Visit
  • Fun
    • FAQ
    • Does Your Character Need a Job?
    • Girl, Stolen Alternative Covers
    • I Get Letters
    • Blob on the Side of the Filing Cabinet
    • Books I Like
    • JB's Cinnamon Rolls
    • Vanity Plates
    • Diary of My First Book Tour (From 2000)
    • 1999 Interview with James Lee Burke
    • 1997 Interview with Carol Shields
    • Oregon, the Writer's Toronto
    • Stealing From Myself to Create A Character
    • Panties in a Twist
    • Heteronyms
  • Write
    • How to get an agent
    • Videos with writing tips
    • Writers writing during Covid-19
    • Tips for writers
    • Story starters
    • Write what you know?
    • What if you get stuck?
    • More tips about writing
    • Need to create a fake social media profile?
    • How to start a new book
    • My daughter is 14 - how can she be published?
    • I'm a teen writer-can you give me feedback?
    • Student Writing
    • How to get it right
    • Questions about writing from two teens
    • Should I pay to be published?
  • Blog
  • Contact

Meet my sponsors!

4/21/2022

0 Comments

 
Picture
I am excited to be working with Elite Sports and Born Tough to try out their products! Elite Sports sent me a red gi - so fun to have a different color and I really like the way they fit.  They are good, inexpensive gis, and not too heavy, making them perfect for warmer months.

Meet the Sponsors:
Elite Sports
Born Tough
Viking Bags
Viking Cycle


0 Comments

Breakthrough Covid is no joke - but masks work

10/1/2021

0 Comments

 
Picture
​Masks work. I'm on my 10th day of breakthrough Covid Thursday, but all of my BJJ partners have tested negative. As mandated by our governor, we roll in masks, which we have complained about, but now I'm so glad we did.

As for me, breakthrough Covid is no joke. I got it from my husband, who has no idea who he got it from, but he has had beers outside with vaccinated friends. My first symptoms were a sore throat at night and a greatly elevated heart rate, which I noticed by chance when I was bored and playing with my Apple Watch (95 after sitting for an hour). Later symptoms included: body aches, temperature over 101, hacking cough, headache, severe congestion, losing my sense of smell, and muddled, slow thinking. Also note that I had a negative PCR test the day my husband learned his positive results, and then tested positive two days later.

I was really worried about my atrial fibrillation coming back, as Covid does seem to do that. I wanted monoclonal antibodies. Friday late afternoon is not a good time to figure that out. I qualified, but finding someone to give them to me was impossible. Because they are in short supply, they are being somewhat rationed. On my third day of Covid, I found a doctor who would give them if I paid $450 out of pocket. For me, the peace of mind was worth it. Regeneron isn't a cure, but it does reduce symptoms and cuts by 70% the chances you will end up in the hospital.

Despite being vaccinated with Moderna and getting Regeneron, this is still hitting me hard. I usually accomplish a lot every day, but now just reading my email is a challenge.  I don't feel that bright.  Yesterday I spent a couple of hours looking at $100 leggings - so many colors! pockets or not? - when I finally came to my senses and remembered I get my leggings at Costco. 

0 Comments

2021: the year of focus

1/1/2021

0 Comments

 
Like everyone else, I had a crazy year. I was in 11 states in the first 11 weeks of 2020. Since the pandemic started, I've only used a tank and a half of gas. The farthest I've driven since mid-March was to my heart surgeon's. I got diagnosed with atrial fibrillation and the surgery to fix it got pushed back due to Covid. I gained weight and a little bit of patience. I lost income and had to put my beloved Brazilian jiu jitsu on hold. But basically I am so, so lucky. 

I long ago gave up long lists of New Year's resolutions that I never kept. For the last few years I've chosen a short mantra. Some worked better than others. RISK got me to do Brazilian jiu jitsu in the fist place.  Another good one was MORE OR LESS.  On the other hand, FLEXIBLE and PRECIOUS (because time is short and I should act like that) did not really guide me.

I got so distracted over the last four years, and especially in 2020, when I would frantically jump from NY Times to Washington Post to CNN to Facebook to Twitter and then start all over again. (I finally put time limits on Twitter and Facebook, which helped.)  

​For 2021, my word is FOCUS.
Picture
0 Comments

My cousin, my self

10/29/2019

0 Comments

 
Picture

Yesterday I was scrolling through FB when I saw a posting on my cousin Julie's wall. Only she hadn't written it. It was her son, trying to spread the word that Julie had unexpectedly collapsed and died the night before. He couldn't get into her phone, and it was only by chance that her computer was logged into FB.
​
Julie and I were born only a few months apart, and as a result, we were always compared with each other. Who was taller? (She was, but not by much.) Who had better grades? (We ended up at the same middle school and taking the same self-paced science class, only in different periods. I used to cheat and look at her answers in the notebooks we all stored in the classroom. I don't think I ever admitted that to her.) Who told better stories? (One story she had about a night of babysitting that went terribly wrong—the sink that fell off the wall, the hamster and then the child who went missing—was so funny that I have often repeated it, sometimes even pretending it happened to me.)

Like most families, you had to come from mine to truly understand it, good and bad. Our shared history meant that I could go months without hearing from her and still consider her a friend.

On her birthday last December, Julie posted she was the happiest she had been in a long time. Her last email to me was full of concern for someone else.

Life is short. Tell people you love them. (And let someone else know the passwords so that if there's an emergency, they'll have a way to communicate.)

0 Comments

When is a bestseller not a bestseller? When it's bought and paid for

3/9/2019

0 Comments

 
Traditionally, a bestseller was a book that was selling lots of copies in many bookstores.  

Things got complicated with ebooks.

Every ebook has an Amazon best-sellers rank. Number 1 is the current best-selling ebook on Amazon Kindle and number 5,000,000 or something is the worst-selling book. Amazon updates their sales rankings every hour based on an algorithm.  It's harder to manipulate these overall rankings, although I assume it could be done because it's a much more limited universe than a lot of bookstores.  

But Amazon has created numerous subcategories of bestsellers. My latest book, The Lonely Dead, was ranked an Amazon bestseller in various subcategories numerous times. The rankings weren't manipulated, but it doesn't take many sales to make an ebook number one in a limited category (Children's Illness??)  for one day or even one hour.  
Picture
Picture
Picture
This week, I was leafing through Oprah magazine and saw an ad for a company that variously called itself a marketing company or a publisher. "With the AUTHORity Package, it's all done for you, and we can turn around a finished product-from interview to bestseller-in as little as 30 days. Our process overall is what I call a modern approach to publishing; we function in a manner that's considerably different-and less formal- than the traditional publishing houses....Every book has been a best-seller. Our success rate is 100 percent."

When I looked up some of the books featured in the ad, some had rankings around 4,000,000.  So they clearly weren't really bestsellers for any length of time. I would assume they were "bestsellers" for a day or two. 

How much does all this "success" cost?  There's a stripped down program that involves three webinars and you doing all the work yourself.  And that costs $1800!  I can only imagine what the full program costs. When someone wants you to pay a lot of money for something, be skeptical and do lots of research. 

In traditional publishing, money flows to the author. Personally, I like traditional publishing.  I have experts who edit my book, design the interior, design the cover, market it, get it into libraries and bookstores, sell foreign rights, etc.  

​If you want to self publish, you should control things yourself, not pay someone thousands of dollars to do a (not very good, judging by the clip art covers I saw in the ad) for you.  

Here are some ideas on how to do it yourself:  https://www.janefriedman.com/self-publish-your-book/

Picture
0 Comments

My very first book signing

10/17/2018

9 Comments

 
PictureFirst publicity photo, circa 1998.
A few weeks ago, I attended the Pacific Northwest Booksellers Association event to sign advanced copies of my 22nd book (or is it 23rd?), The Lonely Dead. Twenty years ago, I did my very first signing at PNBA in Eugene for my first book, Circles of Confusion (and signed it for JB of Seattle Mystery Books, which is sadly gone now).

Eugene is just 90 minutes from Portland, but at that time both my car and my husband's car were so old and crappy that we actually had an argument over whose car was worse. He said his was in better shape, and I should take it. It was a Subaru wagon that was old enough to vote and had what had once been a super cool "digital dash." Only most of it had stopped working. My husband's mechanic had installed an analog gauge for engine temperature by the handbrake. Right before I left, my husband insisted I take his cell phone (also a fairly new thing) because it came with a free service called "Mr Rescue." He also told me I should keep an eye on the analog gauge, as he thought the car might be overheating.

I promptly forgot that part. When I was 38 miles from Eugene (I only knew because I kept thinking how long it would be before I could hit the restroom) the car began to slow down even though I had my foot on the accelerator.

You guessed it (especially if you ever owned an older Subaru). I had blown the head gasket. I called Mr. Rescue, which turned out to be some lady in a room in Florida with maybe some phone books and maps. She did not understand "38 miles from Eugene." She wanted the name of a town. Finally she dispatched a tow truck driver on speed who had been up for three days straight. I remembering trying to bond with him in the hopes he wouldn't kill me. He did not, and dropped me off at a truck stop.

I called my husband, who buckled our toddler in my old car, drove down, rescued me, and took me to the signing - and I was not even all that late! And he never, ever said one bad word about me not watching his precious car (he loved it so much he would paint tiny scratches on the bumper with model paint) or the thousands of dollars it cost to get it fixed. ​

Picture
9 Comments

Five years ago: the fall I walked through hell

8/30/2018

3 Comments

 
Picture
Five years ago was the fall I walked through hell.

The accident
We were driving to dinner. September 1, 2013. I had my hand on my husband's knee and we were smiling and talking about nothing.

Suddenly past his shoulder: a black lab. Appearing so out of nowhere it's like magic. Running flat out toward us. Pink tongue streaming behind. Black leash streaming behind.

It looks totally happy. Happy and clueless.

No time to scream. No time to brake. No time to react.

A second later, the dog and car meet just past the driver's side front bumper.

And then we are screaming.

We pull over in the gravel, still screaming. It has to be dead. It has to be. Oh my god. It seems like we are a long ways away, blocks and blocks, but later I see it's not even half a block.

I get out. It's worse than I thought.

Not one dog, but two. Two dogs lying on their backs in the street, paws in the air.

I've never seen dogs lying like that. Cars are already stacking up. A young man kneels by one, a young woman by the other. Screaming, crying, begging. What will these people think of us? We killed their dogs.

As I get closer, I can see they are street kids. The girl with red-gold dreads and pants made of patches. The guy with red-gold hair and a black T-shirt. They carry their dogs to the side of the road. The guy is begging. "Aldo! Aldo!" The black lab is moving a little. And then it dies.

The little dog is still alive and whining.

I try to look up Dove Lewis, the emergency animal hospital, on my phone. I keep typing the wrong letters, and the harder I try the worse I get. The lady who answers says to bring the dogs in. I tell my husband to get our Subaru.

These two kids are wailing. Stumbling from one dog to the other, shaking, weeping so hard that snot runs down their faces.

The guy lifts the lab into the back - even though we all know it must be dead - and then climbs in beside it. The girl sits in the back with the little dog in her lap. I pick up their two huge packs (they were setting down their packs when they lost control of the dogs) and bag of groceries and somehow manage to shove them all in the car.

And then we drive. I keep telling my husband to be careful, that the guy is just loose back there.

Otherwise, the car is mostly quiet. The guy is curled over the dog, weeping soundlessly. The girl is trying to reassure the little black and white dog, named Karate Kid. Neither of these two are that much older than our daughter. But somehow they've gone from being someone's precious babies to two kids living on the street with their dogs.

At the vet hospital, a tech in blue scrubs comes out to the parking lot, puts her hand to the lab's neck and shakes her head. She's a tall girl, broad-shouldered, and she manages to carry his body in by herself. Three hours later, we are looking at X-rays of the smaller dog. (It turned out that another car actually hit him.) The ball on one hip joint has been turned into paste. Everything has been pushed to one side.

And after they say goodbye to both dogs, both kids stagger back out into the waiting room. Eyes nearly swollen shut with weeping. We were strangers thrown together, sharing a nightmare.

Becoming an orphan
Eleven days later, I drove down to my home town on a few hours sleep. I had gotten back from a business trip the night before. My mom had declared that September 12 was when she was going on hospice. She had congestive heart failure and interstitial lung disease and had been put on oxygen a few months before.

I think she had hoped that the magic of going on hospice would cause her to die right away. But then the hospice nurse said she might live for months. My mom and I exchanged horrified glances while the nurse prattled on, oblivious. It took her a long time to figure out that Mom wanted to die, and soon.

For years, my mom has been dying on the installment plan. She was ready to die. There was nothing unsettled, nothing unsaid. She thought it was funny when, after she had decided she would go on hospice, her fortune said, "You are soon going to change your present line of work." She firmly believed in God and and afterlife, although she had no preconceived ideas about what it would be like.

The nurse only took her off a couple of her meds. On her own, Mom decided to go off the others. She stopped her oxygen. Then she stopped eating. Then she - sort of - stopped drinking.

It was a very strange three weeks. Good conversations. Watching a lot of old movies and documentaries. Being bored. Wondering when/ hoping/being afraid she would die. Weeping in the laundry room and biting my hand so she wouldn't hear me. Being scared. Laughing. Telling her to stop apologizing for my being there. Trying to write a little. Eating my way through so much junk food.

I was getting an award October 5, and was going to cancel. Mom told me not to, that God told her it would be okay, and then died quietly October 1, a few hours after the hospice nurse said she would live for at least a week, maybe longer. Of course, I was flat out useless at the awards. I basically stood at the podium and wept. It got so bad that one of presenters gave me her already used Kleenex.

The leg
Doctors have a saying. "When you hear hoofbeats, don't look for zebras." In other words, it's probably a cold, not a rare fatal virus.

Or in my case, just before Christmas 2013 when my leg turned red and started swelling up, they thought it was probably cellulitis. And when it didn't respond to three different antibiotics, they decided it was MRSA cellulitis, and I ended up in the hospital for three days. In case I was contagious and might pose a danger to people who were already physically sick, they put me on the psych unit. Let's just say, that was interesting. Then I had a rare reaction to IV Vancomycin called hand-foot syndrome. First my hands and feet felt like they were on fire. Then eventually all the skin peeled off. Oh, and somewhere in there, the doctor thought I had a blood clot in my heart that was throwing off bits. It was another month or so of suck.

I did a LOT of lying on my back, staring at white acoustical ceilings, and crying. And wondering whether I would lose my leg or die. I actually came out okay (except a scar from a biopsy). It turns out that an errant kung fu shin clash probably led to something called traumatic panniculitis (dermatologist's theory) or a crush injury (orthopedic doc's theory).

Five years on, it's my mom's death that still resonates. I wish I could talk to her, hear her laugh, get her advice.
Picture
3 Comments

A murder of crows

8/12/2018

1 Comment

 
In June, I was in the middle of a four-mile run when I saw something ahead of me on the edge of the road.  A small black garbage bag?  A black rubber glove?
Picture
It was a crow. 

And it was alive.  

Every now and then it would try to move, but failed.  Eventually its legs ended up behind it.  

My gut feeling was that it wasn't going to live.  And that seemed cruel, to let it suffer and die.  But I didn't know what to do.  I thought about picking it up and twisting its neck, which is how I've heard you kill chickens.  But I didn't feel capable of doing it.  

A older man was walking toward me. Together, we regarded the crow.  "Birds live precarious lives," he said with a German accent.  

A woman driving her car stopped. She rolled down her window. "Is it still there? Is it still alive?"  She had spotted it a few hours earlier.  

When we said yes, she said she couldn't stand to think of it suffering. Her plan was to run over it several times. I asked her to wait until I had run down the hill. When I looked back over my shoulder, the older man had walked on and the woman was trying to line up her tire.  I ran faster.

A minute later she passed me and slowed down again.  "I couldn't do it," she admitted.

When I got home, I called the Audubon society. They thought it was possibly a fledgling crow.  And they said that fledgling crows often end up on the ground but are fine. They have blue eyes, but otherwise are hard to tell apart from full-grown crows.  In fact, they are not much smaller.  

So was my crow a fledgling?  I don't think so. And even the Audubon said it was a very bad sign that it could not get its feet under it.  

I still wonder if one of us should have killed the crow. And if we had, would it have been a mercy or a murder. 

1 Comment

The year that was, the year to come

1/1/2018

3 Comments

 
Picture


This survey pretty much accurately reflects my personal 2017. 

- I spent about 15% of my time this year worried about our country, something I spent maybe 1% on before. 
- I also got to see a lot of the country: California, Nebraska, Idaho, Texas, Arkansas, New York, Missouri, and Oklahoma. And we went to Iceland! 
- I discovered that my great-great-great grandfather was murdered - and that my great-great grandfather took revenge. 
- Book-wise, I worked on two great books: Run, Hide, Fight Back (2018) and The Lonely Dead (2019). 
- In my personal life, there have been challenges, but those have also led me to a great support group and more of a spiritual practice than I have had in years. 
- In the middle of the year and hours from home, my car broke down, which cost thousands of dollars and stranded me at my brother's house for a week. But that meant I got to spend more time with him and his family than I have in decades. 
- And a recap of the best and worst of 2017 wouldn't be complete without mentioning Brazilian jiujitsu. It doesn't make any sense that I love it, but I do.

As for the first day of 2018, I always like to start off the New Year the way I want I want it to go. So today I will run, write and pay attention. I've decided "Pay attention" is my phrase for 2018.


3 Comments

How Would you like to make $48,000 a month?

12/25/2017

1 Comment

 
Would you like to make $48,000 a month?  

It's easy!  All you need to do is run a cheesy literary award competition and charge $19.95 an entry for each of 12 categories - and then make it seem like it's a select group because there are "only" 200 entries per category.  

Be sure to make your award appear more "real" by adding quotes, with the insinuation that they are about your "award."  Take one from the New York Times, which is really from a 1992 article about the importance of the Caldecott and the Pulitzer. Throw in another quote from a guy who was once an editor at Dutton - only he died at the age of 86 in 1983.  And there's a quote from agent "Julie Pickering" - only her name is Juliet and her agency is in London.  And this quote: 

“Wow! I’m so honored; thank you!! I’m deeply grateful… Thank you so much for the recognition! This means a LOT.” – Kathryn Le Veque, NY Times Bestselling Author.

Only she's not a NYT bestselling author, but a USA Today bestselling author (which are different nuts to crack). 

While alll of the quotes appear to be real, almost all of them seem to be about COMPLETELY DIFFERENT AWARDS.  Other clues: Grammatical mistakes. Calling something a "fiction novel." Art work that seems to have been hijacked from the 1980s.  

Remember that money should flow to the author. Don't tell yourself that it's "only" $19.95 - they are counting on 2.400 people to tell themselves that, month after month.  
Picture
1 Comment
<<Previous

    Author

    I kill people, but only on paper

    Archives

    April 2022
    October 2021
    January 2021
    October 2019
    March 2019
    October 2018
    August 2018
    January 2018
    December 2017
    November 2017
    October 2017
    September 2017
    August 2017
    July 2017

    Categories

    All

    Old Journal

    aprilhenry.livejournal.com
Powered by Create your own unique website with customizable templates.
  • Home
  • Past News
  • Bio
    • Goodbye, 2021
    • How my Apple watch saved my life
    • Masks for Covid-19
    • In the name of research
    • Why I write scary things
    • Roald Dahl Made Me a Writer
    • Fun Facts about April
    • Questions teachers often assign
    • 10 Reasons I Love Martial Arts
    • Learning to Fight Back
    • Dear Teen Me
    • My Parents >
      • My Dad, Hank Henry >
        • Witnessing Nat King Cole's Greatest Hit
      • My Mom, Nora Henry >
        • My Mom and the Round Rock
    • My great-grandfather, the killer
    • I come from a long line of criminals
  • Books
    • For Teens (and Adults) >
      • Future books
      • Girl Forgotten
      • Two Truths and a Lie
      • Eyes of the Forest
      • Playing with Fire
      • The Girl in the White Van
      • Run, Hide, Fight Back
      • The Lonely Dead
      • Count All Her Bones
      • The Girl I Used to Be
      • Blood Will Tell (2nd in the Point Last Seen series)
      • The Body in the Woods (1st in the Point Last Seen series)
      • The Girl Who Was Supposed to Die
      • The Night She Disappeared
      • Girl, Stolen
      • Torched
      • Shock Point
    • For Adults (and Teens) >
      • Lethal Beauty (3rd in the Mia Quinn series)
      • A Deadly Business (2nd in the Mia Quinn mystery series)
      • Matter of Trust (1st in Mia Quinn series)
      • Face of Betrayal (1st in the Triple Threat series)
      • Hand of Fate (2nd in the Triple Threat series)
      • Heart of Ice (3rd in the Triple Threat series)
      • Eyes of Justice (4th in the Triple Threat series)
      • Learning to Fly
      • Circles of Confusion (1st in Claire Montrose series)
      • Square in the Face (2nd in the Claire Montrose series)
      • Heart-Shaped Box (3rd in the Claire Montrose series)
      • Buried Diamonds (4th in the Claire Montrose series)
    • Foreign Covers
  • Events
    • Calendar
    • About My School Visits
    • A Sneak Peek at a School Visit
  • Fun
    • FAQ
    • Does Your Character Need a Job?
    • Girl, Stolen Alternative Covers
    • I Get Letters
    • Blob on the Side of the Filing Cabinet
    • Books I Like
    • JB's Cinnamon Rolls
    • Vanity Plates
    • Diary of My First Book Tour (From 2000)
    • 1999 Interview with James Lee Burke
    • 1997 Interview with Carol Shields
    • Oregon, the Writer's Toronto
    • Stealing From Myself to Create A Character
    • Panties in a Twist
    • Heteronyms
  • Write
    • How to get an agent
    • Videos with writing tips
    • Writers writing during Covid-19
    • Tips for writers
    • Story starters
    • Write what you know?
    • What if you get stuck?
    • More tips about writing
    • Need to create a fake social media profile?
    • How to start a new book
    • My daughter is 14 - how can she be published?
    • I'm a teen writer-can you give me feedback?
    • Student Writing
    • How to get it right
    • Questions about writing from two teens
    • Should I pay to be published?
  • Blog
  • Contact