My Life According to The Rolling Stones

Sometimes Facebook inspires me. Grace Wagner posted the following:  "Using only song names from ONE ARTIST, cleverly answer these questions. Pass it on to 15 people you like and include me. You can't use the band I used. Try not to repeat a song title. It's a lot harder than you think! Repost as "my life according to (band name.)"

If you decide to do this, too, I suggest picking an artist or band that's been around for a while and covered everybody in the business. Plus choose someone who just makes you happy.

I'm not including all the questions. Lord knows I've spent most of the morning on YouTube revisiting these songs. I've put links to the songs I do name here just in case you want to spend too much time with Mick and the Boys. So here goes.

Pick your Artist:  Well, duh – The Rolling Stones
The closest I've ever come to them was many years ago, driving west on US 66, yeah the famous one. It was late at night and The Stones were playing in Norman, Oklahoma, less than 50 miles south of the little town I was driving through. I knew they were there and I was listening to them on the car radio, just cruisin' and groovin'. And then, and then, there were flashing lights in my rear view mirror. Yep, I was being stopped by the only police officer on duty in that very small town. Speeding.

Back to the Facebook questionnaire.

Are you a male or female:  Honky Tonk Women
This video is from 1969 when Charlie Watts still had dark hair.

Describe yourself:  She’s a Rainbow

How do you feel:  Just My Imagination

Describe where you currently live:  Under the Boardwalk

If you could go anywhere, where would you go:  Down the Road a Piece
This video is from 1965 on the TV show Shindig! back when Mick and I were just babies. This is what we watched instead of American Ninja Warriors. Shindig! was probably lower budget, but then it was in black and white.

Your favorite form of transportation:  Driving Too Fast
Another one of those rockin' songs that could get me in trouble on the highway. That's why they call that electronic device in a motor vehicle cruise control and I should always use it.

Your best friend is:  Midnight Rambler
OMG! What Mick lacks in rhythm, he makes up for playing the harmonica. And Charlie Watts with white hair. Can't sit still while this is goin’ on?

What's the weather like:  Gimme Shelter
Reminds me of the Whoopi Goldberg movie, Jumpin' Jack Flash -- I can't understand what he's saying on this one either. But, who cares, it's rock n roll!

Favorite time of day:  The Moon Is Up

If your life was a TV show, what would it be called:  Out of Control
What can I say? Keith has finally gotten as old as he's always looked, and Mick and I aren't babies any more.

What is life to you:  Silver Train

Your relationship:  You Got Me Rocking
My husband keeps me rocking and I don't mean in a chair.

Your fear:  Ventilator Blues

What is the best advice you have to give:  You Can’t Always Get What You Want (but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.)

Last year this song was in the news because the 'rump campaign used it. The Stones to tweeted “The Rolling Stones do not endorse Donald Trump. 'You Can’t Always Get What You Want’ was used without the band’s permission.” In this instance I didn't get what I wanted or needed. I just hope we all survive it.

The Floods of Felsenthal -- a poem by Grace Wagner

Grace Wagner

The Floods of Floods of Felsenthal

Every November, so says my father, the floods follow the ducks to
Felsenthal:
blue-wing teals, mallards, black ducks and gadwalls,
They gather in covens and bring the rain
which soaks the shallow roots of the loblollys
who stand evergreen over the pine-needle stratum; the rain
which gluts the earth till it brims and breaks, flooding
until it fills the basin of itself; the rain
which gives new roads to the fish, crawpie and walleye, largemouth bass
basking beneath the pine-filtered light of dawn.

As the water follows the birds, so my father follows the water.
He takes me out on its face, breaking
the water's waiting tension with the prow of our canoe.
Here two months ago my grandfather stayed, camped close.
But the flood takes it all, swallowing campsites and parking lots, slow
Southern apocalypse meandering in oxbows and bottom lands,
gathering itself in sloughs and buttonbush swamps.

Now the loblolly pines grow from water.
A small hill rises artificially high, bearing the weight of man-
made brick and mortar, restrooms for the campgrounds
when the ground was still visible.
My father sits in front of me, back to the trees,
rowing us through their shining corridors.
We say nothing and the nothing echoes
back to us across the water.

I look over the edge but cannot see
the ground only three feet below me.
The water shows me the sky and pine-lace.
I look up and see the same vision, sky and trees,
a perfect mirror of the water.
The light ripples as I move
beneath it, concentric circles radiating
from the centermost point of my eyes;
mandala in pine and sky.

The ducks watch us, augurs with webbed feet
sculling beneath the polished surface,
their buoyant bodies swiveling
to watch us pass.
They know we are not here for them.
They know the rain will soak and sink 
into the land, damp leaves left like carpet
after a hurricane.
They know my father will die
some day and that I will follow him.

A tackle box sits at my feet, but my father does not
open it. Does not pull out the assemblage of jigs,
of spinners and spoons and flies.
The buzzbaits sit unsummoned, sullen
in their rubber skirts.
Today my father does not pull out the rod
or the reel.

He rows
in silence through the trees,
knowing as I know
that nothing
needs to be said.

This is one of nine poems by Grace Wagner published in the Spring 2017 issue of Skidmore College's Literary Journal, Salmagundi Magazine

With or Without Eyebrows

 without eyebrows and with

Photos by Bowtie Photography

    First of all let me just say the photos were taken by my everything-daughter Grace's boyfriend Bob O'Daniel. You can find examples of his work on deviantart.com under bowtiephotography. He was in no way responsible for my makeup.

   I wanted to write a book and have it on the shelves in the Edmond Public Library. A fairly simple want, don't you think?

   I attended classes with an excellent writing teacher, William Bernhardt. I wrote and wrote and wrote until I had what I thought was a pretty good book. I hired an editor, Grace Wagner (gfmwagner@gmail.com. She edits for other writers, too. Not just her mother. I'm lucky to have her in-house.) and enlisted Beta readers including authors, a retired police detective, a retired librarian, some analytical readers, and some recreational readers. Then rewrote and rewrote and rewrote. I understand this is necessary even if you get accepted by an agent and one of the Big Five publishing houses.

   I pitched Murder on Ceres and submitted it to agents and editors, all to no avail. I've listened to other authors tell horror stories about submitting manuscripts and never hearing back. About getting and losing agents and getting agents who didn't seem to push their books. The writing community is rife with bad news about the traditional publishing world. Publishing houses downsizing and struggling even with their legacy writers. Ebooks are taking an ever greater share of the market and the old vanity presses are being replaced by legitimate small publishing houses and self-publishing. All of which seems to be throwing the New York publishers into more of a muddle.

I am obviously (look at my photos) no longer in my 20's or 30's or, for that matter, my 50's. I don't have all the time in the world to get discovered amid all this chaos. So I self-published with Amazon's Create Space.

   Murder on Ceres is a beautiful book. It's listed on Amazon, available in both print and Kindle editions. Among many thousands of other books. To catch readers' attention, I must promote it myself. Which brings us to those two pictures. Our purpose the evening that Bob came was to make a photo for business cards.

   My hairdresser had advised me to wear makeup which I don't ordinarily do. Eye-liner, the whole nine yards. I bought makeup. Now keep in mind that during my single days and working-in-the-public days, my eyebrows were still dark enough to show up without using eyebrow pencil. They're almost as pale as my hair now. I stood in the makeup aisle quite a while trying to decide what color eyebrow pencil I should buy. Have you looked at makeup recently? Not only are there seemingly millions of brands, but each brand has twenty-eleven different colors of everything -- foundation, mascara, eye shadow, lipstick, eyebrow pencil. I chose the slate eyebrow pencil thinking slate is gray. Right?

   Now the only other time I'd used an eyebrow pencil was for my mother after she died. I had watched her apply her eyebrows many times and I did a pretty good job for her for that last time.

   I thought about my own eyebrows. They had always been fuller than Mother's, so it made sense to me that I should make mine rather full.

    By the bye, slate is very dark gray.

   Bob was setting up his equipment -- lights, those umbrella things, a matte black backdrop -- while I did my makeup. Pretty soon my husband came to see what was taking me so long. He stepped to the bathroom door. I was facing the mirror. When I turned to face him, he got such a look of startlement (Is there such a word?) that it scared me.

   He quickly recovered and, being of sound mind and sensibly cautious, he allowed as how he wasn't used to seeing me in makeup. Bob, also being of sound mind, didn't even stutter-step. He just told me where to stand, adjusted the lighting, and took the pictures.

   As he left, Bob asked if he could come back the next evening if Grace didn't like any of the pictures he'd taken.

   The next morning, bright and early, Grace called. "What were you thinking? Did you look in the mirror?"

   "I didn't think they looked that bad," said I.

   "No, Mother," she said in that tone. "They look fine for a stand-up comedian. Groucho-Marx-ish."

    Grace may be of sound mind, but when it comes to her mother she's never been sensibly cautious or even vaguely tactful. But she loves me.

   "Bob and I will be there this evening after I get off work. Do NOT put makeup on before I get there," she said. 

    I think she was right.

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It's a Book with a Cover

I finished the first draft of Murder on Ceres the week after Easter while luxuriating in the hospital. From my mood, you’d never have guessed I was NPO and hooked up to fluids. I felt like I could conquer the world. I had conquered the world! Everything was all caps and exclamation points!

Now to publish!

I’d seen vanity press published books. They didn’t stand up against the traditionally published works but I couldn’t afford that kind of capital outlay anyway. It was DIY publishing for me.

I used my money to hire an editor. My editor is Grace Wagner, my daughter. I would caution that not everyone has a family member that is actually competent to take on the task. The rule I followed is if the family member can’t command that kind of pay from nonfamily, then hire someone who can. $2000 is not out-of-line for this work. If you can’t afford it, wait and save your money until you can. This is not a step that can be scrimped on if you’re serious about your work.

A month after finishing the first draft, a month of diligent work, I finished the rewrites and shipped it to people who had agreed to be beta readers. And that’s important. They were people I could trust to tell me when something wasn’t working, a character was behaving uncharacteristically, the chronology was off, the science was just flat wrong, anything that threw them out of the story. People who would be wowed by my imagination, or didn’t want to make me mad, or wanted me to say nice things about their work would not do.

Beta readers are so important. They don’t know everything the writer knows about the story so they can’t fill in the inevitable gaps. The writer knows the main character’s father’s name is Charles. The beta reader should have no idea who Charles is until they’ve read the manuscript.

Rewrite! Rewrite! And each time, the rewrite is less extensive, more focused. Easier. No longer adding or deleting whole scenes. A sentence here. An attribution for dialogue there.

Now it’s a good, sound story. A clean manuscript.

Print on demand is available. No need to pitch anything. Ooooh. It sounds so straight forward. It costs nothing to upload a book for Kindle or Nook. And for a print book, you pay for how many books you can afford – fifty, a hundred, ten. They do, however, offer choices. You can actually do it yourself or you can pay for their services.

Services? I have access to the talent and the know-how. I can follow directions. I'm not afraid of work. And, best of all, I may not have the time to wait for an agent to discover me, but I have the time for this. I'm doing it myself.

Okay, I have the book. But no cover. That same editor daughter of mine is a really good artist. But she says “No.” Not even for the money. She says she’s not good enough on Photoshop yet to do a professional job and my book should have a professional-looking cover. She says, “If you’re serious about this, it has to be a professional job.” She’s right. Hand crafted is good. Homemade is not. Unless it’s a cherry pie.

I start checking out art websites. My personal favorite is www.Deviantart.com. Their name is a bit off-putting but their artists run the gamut from uninspired amateurish to highly polished, original, and professional.

I had an idea what I wanted. Murder on Ceres is a Sci-Fi/Murder Mystery. So I wanted a cover with a representation of the dwarf planet Ceres with the infinity of Space behind it. And maybe a noir image of my police detective hero, ala Dashiell Hammett’s Sam Spade. I know, I know. Spade was a private detective with a fedora and he looked like Humphrey Bogart. Not right for my book. But you know what I mean.

So, how to choose an artist. Directly contact the artists whose work I especially like and pitch my story to them, see if they’d be interested? Run a contest with the winning entry getting the assignment and the pay? Announce what I’m doing and what I want and let them come to me?

Before I did any of that, Grace decided she could handle the job.

We talked about what I thought I wanted. She tamped my enthusiasms down. The dwarf planet and space – okay. Sam Spade – not so much. A representation of the cylindrical Ceres Colony floating around the planet – no. She explained that the cover has to look good as a thumbnail, because that’s how most readers will see it on whatever website they’re shopping. And intricate does not a good thumbnail make.

She did the design, choosing the colors based on what does well in the marketplace. Did I know anything about that? But she does. And the thumbnail needs to look good full-sized sitting on a shelf.

Grace chose the fonts. The font for the title is a little 30’s noir, Ever After (free from the designer Michael A. Hernandez Jr.) For the author’s name the futuristic Bocemina by Erion Dyrmishi. (For this one I needed permission to use it commercially. An email to the designer got a quick response with the permission.)

So, I have a book. I have a book cover. Now to get everything ready to upload to Amazon’s createspace.com for the print book and kdp.amazon.com for the Kindle edition. More about that later.