Sue Katz: Consenting Adult

When You Send a Fancy Email to your Entire List: Stats and Conclusions

If you’re interested in numbers, you might be interested in the statistical results of my email burst about my new book, Lillian’s Last Affair. After spending a couple of days stumbling around trying to figure out the free version of MailChimp, a service that allows you to send out semi-fancy emails to bunches of your friends, I hurled an announcement of Lillian’s publication to almost my entire email list on Friday, May 8.

But here’s the thing: MailChimp’s list software immediately recognized that my list was “stale” – a splendid and accurate adjective. That list has been accruing for all these years that I’ve been on email. I have three or five email addresses for many folks, those who have changed their service, their identity, or their country of residence. I often added on their new address without getting rid of the old, as one does when one doesn’t have an order disorder – like the American OCD (or the British OBE). When one tends towards the administratively chaotic, “stale” lists can result.

MailChimp is only following the law, apparently, which is there to guard against spam. Surprisingly, it seems that most of my emails did get through. According to their stats I started with a list of 1,036 addresses of which 833 were delivered (80%) and 203 (20%) bounced. “Delivered” includes all those emails that got conveyed into accounts that, while not cancelled, haven’t been checked for years.
 “Delivered” does not mean “opened” – and opened doesn’t necessarily even mean read. However, according to MailChimp, 357 (43%) have been opened. Not too shabby at all, since their “industry average” is under 20%.

My main discomfort came when, despite my best efforts to weed out inappropriate folks from the list, at least a couple were mistakenly sent to contacts I should have removed from the original list. Who would be inappropriate? In a general sense it would be anyone who wishes I had not sent the email. More specifically, I tried to eliminate any professional contact with whom I do not have any other relationship and who never “signed up” to receive my news. Ex-friends who harbor a grudge don’t want my happy announcements. People who receive it against their will may be bemoaning the fact that one can’t “unfriend” an email contact as easily as a Facebook “friend.” Six did “unsubscribe” from my MailChimp list, so if there are any more emails from that source, they won’t get them.

One more stat may be of interest: the click-throughs. How many actually clicked one of the links that took them to a place where they could buy the book? 48 (13% of those opened). Of course that doesn’t indicate how many then actually bought the book, but it all explains why “they” say that you need a huge platform, tens of thousands, to sell more than a handful of books. I’m a reasonably friendly, communicative, well-connected person, and even my stale list, accumulating all my cyber-life, is paltry.

For that reason, I am dependent on the kindness of friends and other generous folks. I would be so grateful if you bounced that email on to your own selection of friends who might like short stories that have been described by my betters as “beautifully written” and “touching, shining, tawdry, and sometimes hilarious.“

Lillian's Second Book Party is Sexier

I had my second book party for Lillian’s Last Affair last night and seventeen fascinating folks attended. Several had already read the book and brought their copies for me to sign. Charles Coe – poet, friend, union comrade – generously held the party for me at his home. Mutual friends from the National Writers Union were there along with other avid readers.

This time the crowd demanded that I read from the sexy bits. (At the senior center book launch, I had been asked by the staff not to do so.)

A book party is a groovy opportunity for me. As a writer trying on my own to let people know about my labor of love, it’s one of the only means of engaging with readers about the book face-to-face. I have a couple of other fabulous friends who are talking about having a book party for me, opening up their own Rolodex to bring Lillian new readers.

I’m longing to read at salons, events, birthday parties, literary fairs, bat mitzvahs, sex ed conferences, senior housing, short story orgies – you name it. So if you want me – call me. Meanwhile, thank you Charles and all those who popped by.

Lillian’s Launch

Since I taught senior fitness there for over a decade, it’s natural that I hold Lillian’s launch at the Senior Center. These students are my peeps, my primary community. When I published Thanks But No Thanks: The Voter’s Guide to Sarah Palin a month after Palin had been selected as a VP candidate, they held my first book party.

I had been warned by J, the lovely head-honcho of Activities, not to choose reading selections with a lot of swearing or sex talk. “Your students know you, but we’re advertising it widely, so some people might come and feel offended.” This puts a crimp in my options.  I know she’s right when the first two (strangers) to seat themselves (front row) ask me, “Which film is being shown today?”

Somehow my departure from home to the Launch is a mess. I’m using my old fashioned travel wheels, that metal device that you used to load your suitcases on before suitcases had wheels. It’s served me over the years in multiple capacities, including transporting to my flat furniture I found on the London streets. I load my big box of books – always the optimist – and other necessities and go down to the car. I undo the box from the wheelie device, and stash everything in my trunk, get in the car and start to pull out of the garage.

My phone! It’s upstairs charging. I return to my space and grab the elevator up for the phone and take a pee, what the hell. I’m back down seven flights into the car and off down the street. Three blocks later: Oh shit, I’ve forgotten my jacket, all ironed and on its hanger. I do a U-ie and go back. I live on a four-lane main road. There’s a spot in front of the building so I do another U-ie but then someone slips into that spot ahead of me so I do a third U-ie and park it across from the building. I rush up and down with the jacket. I do a U-ie and 30 minutes later arrive at the Senior Center at my original intended time, 12:30. Okay, except that I’m semi-drenched in sweat.

I’ve arrived early to set up. There are already about 10 of my students waiting. Hugs, kisses, and moving chairs with J into a nice semi-circle. The hall fills up. I’ve asked Bella to introduce me. She is the wife of a Rabbi and has great pipes. But as soon as I unpack some books to put on the table, a big line of people waving tenners forms. (My book costs only $9.99.) I start signing their books with personal messages, but then it is time to start. Bella gives me a brilliant introduction and I take center stage. Well, center floor, there’s no stage.

I start. “I hear there are rumors going around the Senior Center that I’m going to be reading pornographic material. I do apologize, but I will not be reading porn, so all those who came for that reason and who therefore want to leave, feel free to do so now.” Some people are amused and some are looking with discomfort at their neighbors.

I read from three different pieces, chatting in the middle, and it is congenial. I’m surprised at how few questions there are – just 3 or 4 – and I suspect it is because everyone knows that Doreen, one of our favorites, has baked a huge selection of her famous cookies. They are lingering untouched in the back of the room and mere literature is scarcely a sufficient competitor for her lemon shortbreads and chocolate chocolate chips.

Afterwards, I continue signing. My friend Gail, the math genius, takes the money and keeps the records, and more than one of my seniors complements me on my ability to remember their names. I wish I could remember who first pointed this out to me.

With 36 books sold, I’m a rich woman so afterwards I go directly to the famous Jewish bakery for a bag of day-old bagels and then on to my favorite used clothing store. A writer at the dizzying heights of selling 36 books all at once must have new t-shirts. Four or five in a range of hues are now in my possession, the most expensive $2.99, and I’m ready to get decked out for the upcoming book party my dear friend Charles is having for me on Sunday.

I do have a slight concern that when those 36 get home and settle into the story with the very explicitly kinky sex or the one featuring lube and dildos, that they will demand their money back and I’ve already spent like $11.00 at the charity shop.


Thanks to Barry Hock for documenting my book launch with these fine photos.

What I Saw on Eurovision

When I lived in London I had a Eurovision party every year. For you Americans who don’t know, the Eurovision Song Contest is a cheesy pop music competition that takes up a lot of oxygen each year. Its most famous winners were Abba in 1974 (for Sweden). Their “Waterloo” really was the quintessential Eurovision finger-snapper. Julio Iglesias (Spain) and Celine Dion (Switzerland) were the other two names that are still remembered. Last night I was able to follow it via livestream.

This year featured a mighty cold-war battle between good and evil and I was cheering for the good. Austria’s entry was Conchita Wurst, a queer bearded beauty in a ball gown. She sang “Rise Like a Phoenix” with some strong and appealing pipes and, on every level, gave the best performance. She also represented the forces of progress, saying after accepting the trophy, “I felt like tonight Europe showed that we are a community of respect and tolerance.” People around the world knitted and wore beards in solidarity, including the official representative from Austria. Here’s Conchita's performance.
 

And here’s an interview with her in which she discusses her sense of identification – not as a trans person, as many assumed, but as a drag artist:
 

Hungary’s singer, András Kállay-Saunders, on the other hand, wrote a song about child abuse and domestic violence, with a couple of dancers acting out the violence behind him as he sang. Eurovision was a truly unsettling setting for such a thing. It should have come with a trigger warning for all the women trying to have their usual Eurovision night of silly ironic cheer. It was disturbing. I’ll skip the video, even though he meant well.

The evil I referred to earlier was Russia. Every time their strange act got some points (the voting is largely political and each country awards the big points to their patrons and allies), there was an uncharacteristic but massive booing from the crowd. Russia was represented by twin sisters Anastasia and Maria Tolmachevy, former Junior Eurovision winners. At 17, one can’t really blame them for the bizarre staging. They started out attached by pony-tail hairpieces, then sprung free only to land on either side of a see-saw. Pathetic, yes. But clearly the audience wasn’t pissed off at them, but rather at Putin. Eurovision is Europe’s campest annual event and there were apparently a lot of gay audience members feeling out of sorts with Russia. Here's their video, but I wouldn't bother.
 

Finally, in order not to end on a downer, my honorable mention goes to Denmark’s Basim, whose danceable “Cliché Love Song” was all very Bruno Mars, without Bruno or his choreography.
 

Mother’s Day? Bah Humbug!

I don’t actually know what “humbug” means, but I want to reach out to all those people who had crappy mothers. I suspect it may be a smaller group than those who had crappy fathers, but let’s save that for another Hallmark holiday.

I had a crappy mother. She was a liar, she was violent, and she was very, very mean. She mistreated me whenever she could – and did wrong to my dad as well. She made him feel that she had married below herself, because she had a high school diploma and he did not. She was unhappy about the closeness between my dad and me. I must have been about five years old when she screamed at me, “Get your own! He’s mine!”

I can say two good things about her: She managed to put on a face to the outside world that netted her some very fine lifelong friends. And she was a model for the character Catherine in my story “We Don’t Say Such Things Out Loud,” in my book, Lillian’s Last Affair.

So to all those who had no luck on the maternal side of things, do not feel guilty for not giving a toss about Mother’s Day. Just be glad you are a grown up and free of the prison of a poisonous nuclear family. And to the rest to you, party hearty, whatever.

Writing Process Blog Tour

How does the Blog Tour Work?

This far-reaching blog tour about the writing process is part essay-writing and part writerly chain letter. Each blogger chooses two other writers who follow her in the Tour. I got involved when one of my favorite contemporary writers, Elizabeth Woodcraft, bestowed one of her two invites on me. I lived in the UK throughout the 90s, so when Elizabeth placed the action in her popular Frankie Richmond books in my own London neighborhood of Stoke Newington, I was psyched. Good Bad Woman and Babyface made a major splash and many of us are just waiting for the release of the third novel, Crazy Arms, featuring this barrister.

However, I must admit that as a short story freak – I love to write them, I love to read them – I keep a special place in my fave list for her most recent book, A Sense of Occasion. These interconnected stories take place in Chelmsford in the 1960s. Captivating, hilarious, and beautifully written, don’t miss these revelations about the inner and social life of Mod teenagers.

And, check out Elizabeth’s own Writing Process Blog Tour contribution, which is here. I also look forward to seeing the posting of novelist VG Lee, the other writer/blogger chosen by Elizabeth.

Comments are welcome on Twitter at #writingprocessblogtour.

So here are the four questions:

What am I working on?

I have just brought out my collection of short stories, Lillian’s Last Affair, about the love lives of elders. As an indie publisher, I’m now facing those aspects of writing and publishing that authors usually like least: publicity and marketing. I worked on the Lillian stories over several years and I’m so crazy about them that I didn’t even give them to my dear agent to read – I just decided to get them out. I couldn’t bear the thought of them dragging through the traditional publishing morass until I was as old as my protagonists.

I’m working on more short stories. Lately I’ve been writing flash fiction – defined variously as under 100 words, 500 words, or 1,000 words. Apparently the magazines and journals just make it up.

My next big project is a memoir covering the period from 1965 through 1977: those revolutionary days of the movement against the VietNam War, the birth of the women’s movement and gay liberation, life in communes and collectives, and my martial arts training experience. Throughout this memoir I’ll be revealing the dirty details about my sexual evolution. Well, maybe not the details.

How does my work differ from others of its genre?

The short stories in Lillian’s Last Affair are about the love lives of elders. Ruby has a run-in with a waterbed and Catherine tokes her first joint in the bathtub with Victor. Elegant Anna’s introduction to kinky sex is bittersweet. And then there’s the neighbor with the strange attachment to the grocery cart. I think that as we Boomers age, there will be more and more literature about old people and about senior sexuality, but right now what there is of it is still condescending and vanilla.

Why do I write what I do?

Writing combines recreation and revolution, for me. It is both my favorite activity and a form of political action. My views are strongly held and I like getting them out there. I blog, I review dance, I rant about the occupation of Palestine and the glorification of rape culture and the everyday slog through what corporations ironically term “customer service.” I write short stories and novels (still unpublished), as well as journalism and essays. Because I see the world as encumbered by racist, sexist, greedy systems, I live in a state of rage. Writing is my happy place, where I can find ways to expose this crap while making people laugh.

How does my writing process work?

The truth is that I am rarely more cheerful than when I have the space and time to work on books. Short work, like blog postings and journalism, I can usually do at home, but not books. I’ve never dreamed of writing Great Literature. I always wanted to produce writing that people could take with them to the bathroom. I want my work to be easy to read and to relate to. But shaping a book requires uninterrupted time and enough space to physically lay out all the chapters.

Since I don’t have a cottage in the woods, a studio in the (non-existent) yard, or a sea-side cabin, I housesit for those who do. Sometimes I get a week away, sometimes three weeks. It is during periods when I am inaccessible to those who need or want me in daily life that I get gobs of writing done. (Psst, call me if you want me to look after your place.)

When I’m home inside my crowded life, I can usually squeeze in an hour or two of writing – but again, rarely on books. When I am away in someone’s lovely digs – too far to run over with a pot of chicken soup for a sick friend – I work up to 8 or 10 hours a day at my computer, albeit with copious Facebook  - https://www.facebook.com/sue.katz - and email breaks.

I’m a big rewriter as well. I love reworking, restyling, clarifying, and shining my sentences and chapters. At the point at which I prepare to submit them or publish them, I am somehow able to stop and leave them to settle permanently into their own shape and weight. I never set a daily word or page goal because, unless I’m away, my days are not standardized. I’ll do that when my pretend relative leaves me a trust fund so that all I have to do is slip into my author’s pod and write.

 

And now I turn over the Writing Process Blog Tour to two writers whose work is very special and unusual.

Leslie Brunetta (www.lesliebrunetta.com) is co-author with Catherine L. Craig (www.cpali.org) of Spider Silk: Evolution and 400 Million Years of Spinning, Waiting, Snagging, and Mating (Yale University Press), published in the U.S., U.K, Australia, and Japan. Leslie’s articles and essays have appeared in Technology Review, the Sewanee Review, various newspapers and alumni magazines and on National Public Radio’s Morning Edition and All Things Considered. She has recently written about her experience with breast cancer and about the role the theory of evolution has played in the treatment of cancer. 

Author/editor Ken Wachsberger’s four-volume Voices from the Underground Series is a landmark collection of anti-Vietnam War underground press histories. He wrote his first ebook, Your Partner Has Breast Cancer, while a support person for his wife. His upcoming biography, Never Be Afraid: A Belgian Jew in the French Resistance (formerly subtitled A Jew in the Maquis), will be out by Summer 2014.