Betsy Miller
Author of The Parents' Guide to Clubfoot
http://russellsfeet.com/
betsymillerbooks.com |
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For my readers with an interest in clubfoot, ring, Shane won the HALO SleepSack giveway at the clubfoot blog Russell's Feet. Congratulations, Shane! You can read the announcement at Russell's Feet.
Betsy Miller Author of The Parents' Guide to Clubfoot http://russellsfeet.com/
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If you’re interested in clubfoot, check out my guest post Sleep Issues and Your Clubfoot Baby at Russell’s Feet. Russell's Feet is a clubfoot blog run by a mom whose son is in treatment for clubfoot. My latest short story "Mixology" is in the anthology Year's End: 14 Tales of Holiday Horror, available now at the Untreed Reads Store and at Amazon. Coming soon to most e-book venues. The countdown has begun, but the only thing striking at midnight will be terror... New Year's Eve isn't all champagne and confetti. For some, it's filled with regrets, the changing of the day dragging them kicking and screaming into a year for which they aren't prepared. This year, some people will be screaming, but they may not make it to the New Year at all. Mixology Exceprt: Tonight’s signature drink is Midnight Ice. Nancy decides to try one, though event-based drinks are usually awful. In moments, Alyssa has whipped up a concoction made of Blue Curacao, Black Haus, and two kinds of gin with crushed goji berries and a basil leaf, finished with a squeeze of key lime over ice. “Stars?” she asks. I'm happy to announce that my new short story "Mixology" will be published in the upcoming Year's End anthology from Untreed Reads. I'll post more about Year's End when it is available. (It's coming soon.)
IHDI booth at the AAP Conference 2012 I recently had the opportunity to volunteer at the International Hip Dysplasia Institute (IHDI) booth at an Academy of American Pediatrics (AAP) annual conference. The IHDI is a nonprofit organization that promotes awareness about hip dysplasia, best practices in treatment, and medical research into hip dysplasia. Because pediatricians screen for hip dysplasia, especially in babies, events like this are a good way to provide information to doctors, nurses, and other healthcare professionals who work with babies and children. I had never been to an AAP conference and I had never been to New Orleans, so this was a very interesting experience for me. With Susan Pappas from the IHDI to set up the booth and show me the ropes, we were soon chatting with all kinds of people who stopped by the booth. There was a lot of interest the topic of hip-healthy swaddling. People were picking up an AAP paper on the topic, brochures, and a Hip-Healthy Swaddling video that the IHDI created. When swaddling a baby, it is important to leave enough room for their legs to move naturally. Swaddling babies so that their legs are straight and close together increases the incidence of hip dysplasia. Smoking Time Jazz Club New Orleans is very much a tourist town. It's a wonderful city for walking around, but I wouldn't want to try to drive with all the pedestrians. We were staying in the French Quarter, so for dinner we went to the Red Fish Grill the first night, which was very good. I had the red fish and the double chocolate bread pudding, which I couldn't finish. The next night, we went to Frenchmen's Street and stopped in at The Maison to listen to some live music. Smoking Time Jazz Club was playing. The music was great and there were swing dancers just in front of the stage who were a lot of fun to watch. One morning when I had some free time, I walked around the French Quarter and stopped in at a used bookstore. The last afternoon before I left, I also fit in a swamp tour outside of New Orleans near a town called Jean Lafitte (named after the pirate). The boat tour involved cruising through canals and bayous, while the captain talked about the swamp and wildlife. All in all it was a nice trip. I'd like to go again someday. Free coloring pages from The Parents' Guide to Clubfoot are available on my author site. These are great for kids with clubfoot and also for siblings. The art is based on "Straight, Strong, and Stretchy," the children's story included in The Parents' Guide to Clubfoot. Here's the link: Parents' Guide to Clubfoot Coloring Pages. This is just a quick blog post for readers who like literary fiction. My short story "Bees" is online in the current edition of Obsession Literary Magazine. You can read the story for free at this link: Bees by Betsy Miller. I hope you enjoy it!
It's been some time since I updated my blog. I was on hiatus over the summer because I was working on the manuscript for a new, expanded edition of my book The Parents' Guide to Hip Dysplasia. My publisher Hunter House needed the finished manuscript by August 31 because they will be publishing it in spring 2013. I'm very happy with how the manuscript turned out, but it was a fast deadline, so I had to take a break from optional writing tasks like blogging so that I could stay on track.
For those of you who are curious about how this process works for nonfiction books (the process is different for fiction), here's how things went for me. I don't have an agent. I work directly with Hunter House. They had already published my book The Parents' Guide to Clubfoot, and had told me they would be interested in similar books. I self-published the current edition of The Parents' Guide to Hip Dysplasia in 2008, and wanted to update and expand it. So I sent a book proposal to Hunter House. A book proposal includes sample chapters, a table of contents, and some information about potential readers and similar books. It is common for nonfiction authors to send book proposals to publishers before the book is finished. This allows the author to schedule time to work on the book with the knowledge that it will get published. Hunter House said yes to the proposal, and asked if I could quickly update the current edition. I said yes, and got to work. I do a lot of correspondence for my nonfiction books. I like to connect with parents to find out which issues are most important to them. I also include a lot of images, and needed to get permission for some new art that I was adding to the book. I really enjoy the correspondence part, which is why I am a volunteer moderator for an online hip dysplasia facebook group. The only problem in this case was that people were sending me comments and suggestions and really good medical information until the last minute. It was exciting, but also challenging. In the end I was able to deliver my manuscript and all of its images (each image file is separate, not pasted into the manuscript) on time. I'm very grateful to everyone in the online hip dysplasia community who shared their knowledge and experiences with me. The next stop for my manuscript on its journey to become a book is the Hunter House editorial department. When all editorial changes are done, then it will go to desktop publishing, where a book designer will format it and position all the images. Next, it will go to an indexer, and when all of the parts are completed, it will be sent to a printing company so it can be printed. I'll blog about some of these milestones as they happen, but for now I'm glad to have a little down time. I write both nonfiction and fiction, and have found that each can have a role in offering support to readers. Here’s an example of how both nonfiction and fiction centered on the same topic can be useful. I wrote a nonfiction book The Parents Guide to Hip Dysplasia, and I also volunteer for the International Hip Dysplasia Institute (IHDI). Hip dysplasia is a condition in which the ball at the top of the thigh bone is not in the correct position inside the hip joint. I have hip dysplasia, which is how I became interested in this topic. Full disclosure, I’m on the IHDI Advisory Board. I don’t get paid to be on the board, but the IHDI did fly me out to Orlando, Florida once so that I could meet members of the Medical Board and learn more about the organization. In a few instances they have hired me to write specific topics for their website, but mostly I volunteer. Between my book and my volunteer work with the IHDI, I correspond with lots of people about hip dysplasia. I’ve chatted with parents of children in treatment, with adults who have hip dysplasia, and even with some teenagers. When Fiction Is Easier to Follow Here’s where the role of fiction comes in. Teens who need treatment for hip dysplasia go through major hip surgery. They’re old enough to understand a lot, but not many want to read a nonfiction book about hip dysplasia. I got to wondering, what would be the best way to offer teens support—to help them get through this surgery? I gave it some thought and came up with the idea of a young adult novel about a teen who loves to dance and undergoes hip surgery. I wanted to write a book that would appeal to teens in general, but also offer extra support to teens who have hip dysplasia. The novel would be based on the emotional journey that real teens experience, and the medical details would all be fact-based. I floated the idea to my online teen friends, and was met with a resounding “yes, please write the novel,” type of response. (In one sense, the previous sentence is fiction because they didn’t use those exact words, but it’s also true that they loved the idea of this book.) Why Not Give It a Try? Figuring nothing ventured, nothing gained, I decided to go ahead and write a novel —in my spare time, mainly on evenings and weekends, working around my technical writing contract work. I didn’t know if I could do it or not. I’d written short stories before, and some had been published, but I’d never written a novel. Well, I did make it to the end of my novel last November. Since then I’ve gone through it several times, making revisions. The working title is Dance, Interrupted. I’m not sure of the timing because of my other writing commitments, but I hope to start the process of finding a literary agent this year. Hunter House, the publisher who handles my nonfiction books, does not publish fiction, so this is uncharted territory for me. I’ll let you know how things go in future posts. Book trailers have emerged in the past few years as a new way to advertise novels. They’re like movie trailers, but they only seem to be online, not on TV.
The first book trailer I watched was for Meg Waite Clayton’s book The Wednesday Sisters, which we read in my book club. Initially, I thought I was watching a movie trailer, and that this book was being made into a movie. Then I started to discover more book trailers. Some are very creative and clever. The Moby Awards honored the best and worst book trailers of 2011. How Did You Get This Number won for Book Trailer As a Standalone Art Object. I have to agree with that. It does stand alone. I like that trailer a lot. I don't know how the book will be. I'm going to check it out at the library. So I guess in this case, the trailer worked. If you want to watch some trailers for young adult novels, try the Novel Novice website. They are specifically geared toward young adult fiction. I recently came across a website where an author named Elle LaPraim picked out 10 of her favorite book trailers and wrote a little blurb about why she likes each of them. (You have to scroll down at that site to see the trailers.) Do you like book trailers too? Add a comment with a link to your favorite. |
Betsy Miller
I write books about children's health. |