Susie Kinslow Adams' second edition of My
Mother My Child includes a lively discussion guide at the end of each
chapter suitable for individual or group study. Susie has written a very
personal account of caring for her mother through eight challenging years.
Susie is a very busy mother and
grandmother, pastor's wife, ministry assistant, and freelance writer. Writing
is a large part of her daily life; inspiration for award-winning articles is
gleaned from their rural Ozark home and life experiences.
Find out more on Amazon.
Questionnaire:
Thanks for letting us interrogate
you! Can you give us a go-for-the-gut
answer as to why you wanted to be an author?
I have a wealth of ideas and experiences
to share with others. It's exciting to be able to hand someone a book with my
name on it. I want my books to be entertaining as well as an encouragement.
Tell us (we won’t tell promise!) is it all
it’s cracked up to be? I mean what are the
perks and what are the demands?
Writing is definitely not a 9-5 job. Often
my deepest thoughts awaken me in the middle of the night. To say a project is
finished may mean it's ready for another read through. The payoff is in holding
the final product with your name across the cover and knowing it will be a help
and encouragement to the reader.
Which route did you take – traditional or
self-published – and can you give us the nitty gritty low down on what’s that
like?
Working with a traditional publisher on
the first edition was complicated at times. The growing publishing company was
continually promoting their staff leaving the authors with new people to work
with periodically. This was difficult for me because I did not know what to
expect and what my options were. The book did get published in a timely manner
and was relatively successful in sales. I would recommend a more established
publisher for those choosing that route.
I chose to go through CreateSpace with the
second edition and enlisted help with the entire process. Working through Write
By The Sea Press and Summer Bay Press, I had the help I needed and I am very
pleased with the beautiful results. For
those like me who are not tech savvy, I recommend getting help with the
technical aspect. Make sure you work with someone who will communicate with you
regularly and give you the freedom to make the changes you desire.
Tell us for real what your family feels
about you spending so much time getting your book written, polished, edited,
formatted, published, what have you?
It was a struggle for me to protect some
family time when my manuscript needed revising. This was especially true in the
beginning as I was trying to assemble all my little notes and journals into
chapters. My husband was a great support
of the project over all but I do not think he believed it should take so long
to bring it to completion. A large part of the struggle was in the time I spent
on the computer. He does not even turn one on so he had no understanding of the
learning process for every step along the way.
Are your plants actually still alive?
Do you know how long plants can
go without water? I have very few plants, they did suffer! On my list of things
to do besides work on my book, caring for plants was a long way from the top.
In writing your book, how did you deal
with the phone ringing, your family needing dinner or your boss calling you
saying you’re late? When I was writing the book, it was a process of simply
journaling events as they happened. Often I would grab a napkin or old piece of
mail and scribble notes as Mother's actions needed recorded. As I began to
piece all the notes together it became more difficult to stop and make dinner,
answer the phone or take care of the normal routine of running a household.
There came a point when I had to carve out a definite period of time in each
day to work on the book and then put it away.
How about the social networks? Which ones do you believe help and which ones
do you wish you could avoid?
I am in the learning process on the social
networks. (Why did someone not tell me graduation from school meant the
beginning of learning, not the end!) I am very active in Facebook and found it
to be a friend. One great help is encouraging others to share your posts about
your book on their pages. I announce each new blog entry on Facebook as well as
any speaking engagements.
I am learning to tweet more and looking
forward to engaging in other social networks.
Book sales. Don’t you just love them (or lack of?)? How are you making the sales happen for you?
Word of mouth has always been my preferred
way to sell my books. I have ink pens with my website on them to give to sales
clerks and such. This opens up a conversation about my book and has resulted in
several sales. Most of my sales come from speaking and signing events. I am
looking forward to getting more sales from the internet as I become more
proficient in using it.
What is one thing you’d like to jump on
the rooftop and scream about?
My Mother My Child is a great, great book and will be a help to every reader in
some way. I believe it it! If you need encouragement or know someone who does,
you must have a copy of this book. God asked me to write it, He put some good
stuff in there!
Okay, too much sugar for you today! Here’s a nice cup of Chamomile tea and come
on over and sit under the cabana and watch the waves roll in. Now…can you tell us what you love about being
a published author and how all those things above doesn’t matter because it’s
all part of the whole scheme of things and you wouldn’t have it any other way?
You said it quite well in your question; I
liken it to birthing a child; the pain may seem unbearable; the wait intense;
however, holding that child erases all the bad and more.
Personally, I love knowing I finally
completed something worth the ink to print it! The feeling of accomplishment,
of being an author, is overwhelming at times.
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