Today’s blog entry is an interview with one of my author friends, Tyler Tichelaar, the person who introduced me to the UPPAA group last fall. Since meeting Tyler, I’ve read and enjoyed all of his fictional books set in Marquette: The Marquette Trilogy (a historical family saga), Narrow Lives, and The Only Thing That Lasts. A multi-dimensional author, Tyler has also delved into the nonfiction world with My Marquette, which is essentially a walking tour of the town in book format, as well as King Arthur’s Children: A Study in Fiction and Tradition. He is a seventh-generation Marquette resident, and his love for the town and the U.P. shines through in his writing.

Tyler is also the founder of Marquette Fiction and Superior Book Promotions, a professional book review, editing, and proofreading service, and he is the regular guest host on the Author’s Access Internet radio program. He’s always willing to talk to other writers about his experiences, and I thought that my readers would find his thoughts on writing interesting as well.

Tyler will have his books on display and for sale at the TV6 Christmas Craft Show the weekend of December 2 – 4 at the Superior Dome in Marquette, so if our discussion sparks your interest, you can meet him and check out his books there.

Jenifer: Welcome, Tyler. First, I’m curious to know how much and what sort of research goes into writing historical novels?

Tyler: Thanks for the interview, Jenifer. I’m not surprised your first question is about my research—I get asked that a lot. Only, I don’t know that my answer is all that standard—I didn’t spend hours in libraries or museums doing research—I did some of that but it was very little—largely because I was living downstate when I wrote most of The Marquette Trilogy so I didn’t have access to U.P. libraries and the Internet wasn’t available to me back then. The truth is that my main characters are loosely based on a lot of my ancestors who were early settlers in Marquette, and I had done a lot of genealogy research previously, so I drafted out my family tree, changed names, and then used family events to shape the storyline. In my non-fiction book My Marquette, I reveal some of the historical stories from my family behind the characters. That said, I made a lot up to fill in parts of their stories I didn’t know about or just for fun or to make the stories more interesting. I didn’t set out to do research for the historical parts of the novels. It wasn’t like I decided, “I’m going to write a historical novel set in Marquette so let’s research Marquette history.” It was more like I had grown up in Marquette, heard stories of Marquette history for years and years, heard stories from my grandparents and great-aunts and uncles, and gossip about old Marquette residents, and for years, had been collecting historical articles from the Mining Journal, the Marquette Monthly, and other publications, and all these facts and this information were in my head, so I kind of just knew all this stuff, and when I wrote the books, I mostly just had to go back and check dates. The stories from history just sort of flowed into the story. Two of my favorite historical novelists and big influences on my writing, Margaret Mitchell who wrote Gone with the Wind and Helen Hooven Santmyer who wrote …And Ladies of the Club, both wrote about their own hometowns in history and have said fairly the same thing about their research.

That may not be the conventional research answer, but I will say that I care a great deal about being accurate about the details to the point where I will map out the events using a calendar from the year I’m writing about—I don’t know that it snowed on a specific day in 1884 although I’ll say in my novels it did, but if I had had access at the time to the weather reports for that year, I would have made them match up. I do make sure my dates for Easter are correct, or I’ll find out, when it matters, what day of the week Christmas was on in 1912 or whatever year the story takes place. I’m sure there are small errors here and there, but I only know of one a person pointed out to me—that there isn’t a telephone line at the Huron Mountain Club—although I have a character in The Queen City make a phone call from there. Oh well, no one is perfect.

Jenifer: One thing I really like about your books is that, even though you provide a rich and detailed view of history, you never lecture your readers. You always show what is happening in history through characters’ feelings about current events or political conversations they have or even something as simple as what they hear on the radio. Some of the most famous writers of historical family sagas spin fantastic tales, and then all of a sudden go on for five dull pages about Abraham Lincoln’s presidency, completely stalling the action and boring their non-history buff readers to death. I admit that I usually end up skimming in those cases and don’t get much out of those passages. But you don’t do that as a writer. How difficult do you find it to sprinkle those bits of history in and still give an accurate picture of the times? Do you purposely plan your scenes around historical things you want to talk about or do you fit the history in around the characters and plot?

Iron Pioneers, Book 1 of The Marquette Trilogy

Tyler: That’s a great question, Jenifer. When I was younger, I was a very dedicated reader. I read all of Les Miserables in high school. A few years ago, I tried to read it again and couldn’t because Victor Hugo would insert whole chapters of descriptive history. It was just boring. I’ve tried not to do that. When I was writing The Marquette Trilogy, I spent a lot of time reading about the history of iron ore and the process of mining and shipping, and I found it boring, so I realized, if I was bored with it, my readers would be too. I did write some boring things I trimmed out, and I resorted to “broad brush strokes” when it came to describing historical details. I also had a friend who pointed out to me that books were more interesting when things were not told by the narrator but through character’s eyes, so for instance, rather than say in the 1970s that efforts were made for U.P. Statehood, I had the characters slip in mentions of it in their conversations. I also wanted to show that what today we might accept as right or wrong or a good idea wasn’t accepted that way back then, so I would have characters who were not happy with Roosevelt’s policies or who argued about a war being right or wrong. I inserted these political things for historical flavor and to provide the thoughts of the characters without trying to preach any specific belief. If I felt it was important to the history of the area, then I tried to include at least a passing mention to it in conversation somewhere.

As for lecturing the reader on things other than history, my character, Roy Whitman, is an interesting example because he goes through a stage where he’s an atheist. I had a reader at a talk I gave actually quote back passages from my book and ask me if those were things I believed. I could only reply, “Those are things Roy believes.” I heard an author one time say something like, “We have a word for people who think what our characters think is what we think. We call those people, ‘stupid.’” When I first wrote my books I was surprised by how many people thought my main characters were real historical people I was writing about. At first I wondered how smart some of them were, but then I realized it was a compliment to how realistic I had made my historical fiction, so I think I did do a good job of not making the books boring, but hopefully, a bit of a time travel adventure for readers.

Jenifer: I must admit that while reading The Marquette Trilogy I thought your character author Robert O’Neill was a real historical person instead of a fictional character. I think it’s because you’ve done such an excellent job of blending history with the stories you create. Part of that has to do with putting in all the research effort so that the two naturally flow together. I know that you’ve done quite a bit of research into many different time periods. Is there any period of time in which you wished you lived or think it would be fun to be a part of?

The Queen City, Book 2 of The Marquette Trilogy

Tyler: I’ve always felt like I was born about 100 years too late, which means I should have been born in 1871. I think that would have been a good time because a lot of modern innovations like the phonograph, the telephone, and electricity came along not long after that, so I wouldn’t have been completely a pioneer. All the great Victorian novels had been or would be written, so I wouldn’t be missing those, and it was the age of the great operettas and in my old age, probably the 1940s or so, I could still enjoy all the great musicals being written that I love and listen to all the time. As a side note, I think a lot of what I know about writing I learned from the great Broadway musicals like Showboat, and Oklahoma. Right now I’m listening to Carousel. And almost all my favorite writers were dead by World War II. Somehow 1950 and thereafter just doesn’t seem that attractive to me.

Jenifer: Many of your novels encompass the same world and cast of characters. What is it about these characters that keep drawing you back to them? Do you have plans for future novels about some of these characters?

Tyler: It wasn’t initially intentional that the same characters kept showing up in my books. I wrote The Only Thing That Lasts first. Then I started writing The Marquette Trilogy years later with no intention of connecting the books, but it just seemed to happen. When my books take place in the same town and at the same time, it’s hard not to envision the characters from one book going to the same church, or passing each other on the street, and wondering how all those characters’ lives overlap. If my books were set in New York City or Chicago or London, I probably wouldn’t have done that because the population is bigger and their lives wouldn’t be so connected.

I also like to play “intertextual” games with the characters, and I was heavily influenced by Anthony Trollope’s Barchester and Palliser novels, which I was reading at the time I was writing The Marquette Trilogy. Trollope kept reintroducing his characters as minor characters in other novels. Plantagenet Palliser only briefly appears in a Barchester novel, but then Trollope decided to write a whole series surrounding him. Robert O’Neill, the main character of The Only Thing That Lasts, was my first main character, and since he’s an author himself, even in books I haven’t published that I’ve written and that aren’t set in Marquette, I will tend to have a character reading one of Robert O’Neill’s books, or he’ll visit characters in another state. It’s just fun to envision these characters as real people. They are real people to me considering how many hours I’ve spent with all of them. They talk to me all the time, arguing with me and telling me I better get their stories right. My next novel Spirit of the North, which I’ll publish next spring, will reintroduce a few of the characters from Iron Pioneers, notably Ben and Karl Bergmann, the loggers, and the Whitman family, although the story centers around two main characters who will be new to readers, and I definitely have plans for more novels with new stories tying in old characters. I try to make each book readable solely by itself so people can enter my world from any book they want, but also to please my longtime readers who keep coming back to find out what happened to my characters.

Jenifer: Do you have a sneak peak or excerpt from Spirit of the North that you would be willing to share for those of us who have been waiting to read more about some of our favorite Marquette Trilogy characters? And along those lines, do you share your work and ask for input from various editors or friends prior to publication or do you wait until official publication to share your books with anybody?

Spirit of the North, coming Spring 2012

Tyler: I’ll answer the sharing question first. I share with just a few people before I publish, asking for input—we have a group that meets in Marquette called Writers Ink where we read passages from our work so I’ve been doing that, and I have a few friends I email chapters of my book to for feedback while they are in the process of being developed, but that is a recent development. I was always a closet writer until I published the first novel. A lot of people had no idea I’d been writing novels for nearly twenty years because I was afraid of negative feedback so I didn’t show them to anyone. As for editing, I do my own editing and proofreading, but—and it may be contradictory sounding—only because I had some editorial evaluations done for my first couple of novels and I felt that while the readers made some good suggestions, overall, I was a better editor than they were when it came to grammar and punctuation, and as an editor myself, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve had authors come to me with books they claimed were edited that were just terrible, filled with errors that would have made the author look downright illiterate if the book had been published that way. I cannot stress the importance of finding a qualified editor for your books. Always get a few editing samples done of a few pages and compare them. Make sure you find someone who knows what he or she is doing. A lot of people claim to be editors, but a lot of them are really not qualified to do so. Just because you were an English major does not mean you are a book editor. Now I’ll get off my soapbox and answer your other question.

I won’t share a passage from the novel, but I will say that Spirit of the North has a “Gothic” feel to it, not in the horror sense, but in the spiritual sense and in its format. It contains stories within stories and begins with the discovery of a manuscript written decades before that claims to have been composed through an automated writing process where the person who wrote it channeled the message from someone beyond the grave, and some of the stories in the main story have appearances by ghosts. That said, it is not at all a scary book, but I hope a life affirming one. The “Spirit” of the title refers to the resilience of the characters’ spirits as well as supernatural spirits. As for old friends, as I said readers will meet the Whitmans and Karl and Ben again, all from Iron Pioneers, and yes, Sophia Henning, the woman everyone loves to hate, makes a cameo appearance as does Molly Montoni. But my main characters, Barbara and Adele Traugott are completely new. Oh, and my dedicated readers will remember in Iron Pioneers that a little girl named Annabella Stonegate died, and later in The Queen City, a ghost story is told about her. Well, her true story will be revealed in Spirit of the North, and interestingly enough, Annabella Stonegate was the main character in a short story I wrote in eighth grade called “The Ghost of Stonegate Woods,” my very first story set in the U.P. and written in 1985, so you can see, she has been haunting me for a long time to get her correct story told.

Jenifer: Besides Spirit of the North, do you have any other projects in the works?

Tyler: Yes, next year I’ll also be publishing The Gothic Wanderer, a non-fiction work that began as my doctoral dissertation. It is a study of nineteenth century Gothic novels, but it’s more than that. It’s about being human, about wandering through life searching for meaning, about guilt and redemption, and our relationship with God and with ourselves, about self-esteem and how we have played with all those concepts for the last two centuries. The main character in Spirit of the North, Barbara Traugott, might be considered a Gothic wanderer herself, and that novel was definitely influenced by the more positive aspects of the Gothic tradition. In The Gothic Wanderer, I talk about many well-known Gothic novels like Frankenstein and Dracula, but also some authors who introduce Gothic elements into their books who taught me a lot about what a great novel is, including Charles Dickens, Ann Radcliffe, Bram Stoker, and Fanny Burney. The Gothic Wanderer is hopefully more than a book for academics and lovers of literature, but also a book for anyone who wants a deeper look at what it means to be human.

Jenifer: I know you don’t define yourself as a Christian writer, but I’ve noticed many elements of faith in your books. Religion is obviously very important to many of your characters, and even some of the conflict in your Marquette Trilogy arises from newcomers to the central family being from different Christian denominations. What role would you say Christianity and faith have in your books?

Tyler: Well, I’d want to distinguish between faith and religion first. Religion is often a divider in my novels, such as Catholics and Protestants not getting along in The Marquette Trilogy, and how two characters, Henry and Beth, marry despite Henry being Baptist and Beth Catholic. Henry and Beth were based on my grandparents, who were the happiest married couple I probably ever knew, and they had to have loved each other because they went together eight years before they finally decided they weren’t going to let religion or their families stand in the way of their love. I’ve always admired them for that and felt telling their story was important, even if I fictionalized it some. My grandparents were brave back in the 1930s to do what they’ve done. I’ve never bought into religions that say they are the only way and that divide people as a result—probably because my grandparents’ story struck a chord in me at a young age that made me question religion, while I was nevertheless very religious, very Catholic—read the Bible, prayed the rosary, wanted to be a priest, at least got as far as being an altar boy. I aspired to sainthood but then realized that if you wanted to be a saint, you probably weren’t saint material.

Superior Heritage, Book 3 of The Marquette Trilogy

But beyond religion, Faith I believe to be vitally important. I am skeptical when people are super religious. Like I’ve heard you say in creating your characters, I don’t want to read about perfect Christians. I want to read about people who struggle with their faith, who doubt, but strive to believe, who try to do the right thing against all odds and hope God is there guiding them. Roy Whitman in Superior Heritage is probably the best example. Roy has some experiences—unrequited love and experiencing the horrors of World War II—that make him reject God. He is basically an atheist for twenty-plus years. When he does return to God, it’s not through human words or religion but through an experience in Nature that makes him turn back. I think God is in the silent stillness of our hearts, always there willing to speak to us if we will listen. It is only when Roy is in a state where he quits worrying, quits fighting with God, and has his defenses down that God is able to enter his heart.

So yes, religion and Faith are important to me for various reasons. I am not a Christian novelist per se, but there is another scene in Superior Heritage where John decides at Bible Camp to give his life to God—he thinks of being a priest or missionary—later he realizes he can bring people to God through writing books. I’m more like John than any of my other characters, and I like to think in some way I am doing God’s work through my books. I do know that we can never know the full extent of the influence we have on people. I am far from perfect and my characters are far from perfect, but I hope my books give people a reason to carry on with hope in God that in the end, it will all be made right.

Jenifer: I love many of your characters and have a few I consider my personal favorites. I know that every book and character is special to its author, but do you have a favorite book or character that you’ve written?

Tyler: I’m always curious which characters are people’s favorites, so please tell me which ones are yours. When I published The Marquette Trilogy, most of my women readers either liked Molly or Clara the best, and they all loved to hate Sophia, but I think my overall favorite character in the books I’ve published so far is Margaret Dalrymple because she’s the real link in the trilogy, the only character who appears in all three books. She doesn’t start out as being very mature—a young girl with fantasies about marrying someone rich, which falls through for her—but over the course of the novels, she grows and changes. She has prejudices she overcomes, and in the end, I think she’s very endearing and realistic for readers.

Lately, I think my favorite character is John Vandelaare. He’s the main character at the end of Superior Heritage and the one most based on me. He ends up getting married at the end of Superior Heritage which ends in 1999. Lately I’ve been working on another novel told from my character Lyla Hopewell’s point of view set in 2005 and John is a minor character in that book—by this time he’s been married a few years and has kids—he’s kind of like my version of “What my life would have been like if I had gotten married and had kids.” I decided years ago I didn’t want children, and I still haven’t decided that I want to be married, but there’s always the “what if” question out there. I’m sure lots of married people wonder what life would have been like if they didn’t marry and have children. So I’m curious about making up this alternate life for myself and exploring who John, the married man and father, would be like—whom I might have been like if I’d gone down that road.

I will say I love all my characters and there’s a little bit of me in each one, except Lysander Blackmore in Narrow Lives. He’s one character I don’t understand; he’s definitely the most villainous of my characters and one I don’t think I ever completely wrapped my mind around; that’s partly why in that book where several characters tell their stories, he is never allowed a voice. I think the book is more interesting by showing how no one could understand him, but also, I think I was afraid to let him speak and see what he would say.

Jenifer: Something I loved about Narrow Lives is that you get to know more about many characters that aren’t explored as in depth in The Marquette Trilogy. It made me want to go back and reread the trilogy to see what I’d pick up on now having the “inside story” about some of the characters that I didn’t realize before. Something that I found interesting is that your Marquette Trilogy is written from a third person perspective, but The Only Thing That Lasts and Narrow Lives are first person perspectives. How is the writing process different with these two styles, and do you prefer one over the other?

The Only Thing That Lasts

Tyler: I think it depends on the kind of story a person wants to tell. When I wrote The Only Thing That Lasts, I decided to write it from Robert’s point-of-view, but I remember one day wanting to follow Grandma or Aunt Louisa May into the kitchen, but I couldn’t because Robert didn’t go in the kitchen. That might be why I switched to third person in writing my trilogy, along with the fact that the book covers seven generations of several different families, so first person would have been more difficult I think. Third person allowed me to step back and not get as involved in the characters emotionally so I didn’t come off being preachy or lecturing the reader—in the early versions of The Only Thing That Lasts, Robert was preachy, ranting about what was wrong with money, for example, scenes I later chopped out as I matured as a writer. I kept more distance by writing in third person. Narrow Lives, however, I chose to write in first person from several characters’ points of view because the characters are seedier and more colorful, and I thought letting them tell their own stories would make that come across better. I also think of The Marquette Trilogy as being more about history, while Narrow Lives and The Only Thing That Lasts is more about the characters. I think I’m more comfortable writing in first person, but I don’t have a real preference either way and I’ll often go back and forth between first and third person when I’m in the early stages of writing a book before I settle on the voice that will feel right for the book.

Jenifer: In My Marquette, you hit pretty much every noteworthy Marquette location, and in your novels, you often show your characters going to special/memorable places in town. What are a few of your favorite Marquette locations?

My Marquette

Tyler: Finally, an easy question. Or is it? The easy answers are yes, the Peter White Public Library and Presque Isle Park are my favorite places. Those are the two that first come to mind. The library is such a beautiful building and so full of great content and a place I’ve regularly visited since I was a kid. The same with Presque Isle Park—I remember feeding the deer at the Shiras Zoo with dandelion leaves as a kid and having family picnics and birthday parties there. But as I got older, Marquette was changing and as it changed, a lot of things got better, like the development in the Lower Harbor, but some things got worse, like the beautiful Marquette Mall becoming largely deserted, or the Bavarian Inn being torn down. Some of my favorite places in Marquette are no longer there anymore—they exist only in old photographs and in my memories. And then there are places like the Longyear Mansion and the Hotel Superior that were gone decades before I was born—but how I would have loved to have seen them—they are favorite “Old Marquette” places.

Jenifer: You’re always willing to help a fellow writer out or give advice when asked. What is one thing that you know now as a seasoned author that you wished you had known when you were publishing your first book?

Tyler: Don’t be shy. You’ll have to take some criticism but it’s okay—you will grow and be a stronger writer for that. Find one or two fellow writers you respect and trust and can learn from and help each other by reading and commenting on each other’s work to make it stronger. The biggest mistakes I made in my writing career probably centered around being afraid to tell people I was a writer. I remember—and this was at a Bible camp, Jenifer!—this one woman who every year at camp would ask me what I wanted to be when I grew up and I told her I wanted to be a writer and she said, “Oh, writing is really hard to get into.” Because of her, I was determined, but also afraid to tell people I wrote. Only a very few people knew I was writing novels until I finally decided to publish them. I never let anyone read my books—I sent them to publishers and tried to get published and figured when the publisher decided the books were good enough to be published, then I would let friends and family read them. In some ways, that was the wrong approach. I wish I had had more writer friends and resources when I was younger because I think I’d be a better writer now, but in those days there weren’t the communication advantages or technology that there is now, so even if you live in a small town and don’t know anyone else who writes you can go online and find writer friends—today I have friends in the publishing business all over the world whom I’ve never met in person.

But that answer seems more about writing and you asked about publishing my first book—still, it’s the same answer. I made some mistakes in terms of self-publishing in relation to the company I hired that did print-on-demand books. If I had joined the U.P. Publishers and Authors Association (www.uppaa.org) and talked to other writers before I published the book, I could have done a better quality job, had more idea about how to market the book, and printed my books at a less expensive cost.

Narrow Lives

So overall my advice is, don’t be afraid to tell people you are a writer or are publishing a book. Tell lots of people—the ones who dismiss you, ignore. The ones who criticize you, use common sense to see where they are right and wrong—and the ones who offer to help you, do everything you can to forge strong relationships with them. Don’t let anyone tell you that you can’t do it. Some people may be better writers than others, but no one is more qualified than you to tell your own story. And don’t view other writers as your competition; they are your biggest allies in this business. We can all help each other to promote our books, just like you and I are doing now by interviewing each other. We both write books set in the U.P. If someone likes my books, they’ll go looking for other U.P. books and discover yours and vice-versa.

Jenifer: I can relate to that because when I wrote my first book, I didn’t want anybody to see any part of it until it was finished and published. Unfortunately, it’s hard to be your own editor, and I think the book would have been stronger had I shared it with others prior to publication. I was just too shy to do so. Now I have several beta readers for each book, and I announce to pretty much everyone that I’m a writer. One important way to let the world know about you as an author and your books is a website. Will you tell us about your websites and what other information we can find there about your books?

Tyler: Sure, I have three websites, two of which include blogs. First there’s www.SuperiorBookPromotions.com which I use for my editing and proofreading and book review services. Then there’s www.MarquetteFiction.com which is for my Marquette books—it includes some neat things like a Timeline of Marquette History, a page showing the family trees of all the major characters in my novels, a page of links to other U.P. authors’ websites, a video for My Marquette, and of course, the ability to purchase my novels, and a link to my blog on all things Marquette and U.P. related. Then there’s www.ChildrenofArthur.com for my interest in the King Arthur legend, a blog on the Arthurian legend, photos of Arthurian places I’ve visited, Arthurian family trees, and information about my non-fiction book King Arthur’s Children, and my upcoming novel, hopefully novel series, King Arthur’s Legacy.

Jenifer: Thank you for taking the time to talk with me about your writing. I’m looking forward to catching up with you in the Superior Dome. Hope it’s a great weekend.

Tyler: Thanks for the interview, Jenifer. It’s been a real pleasure. I always enjoy going to the TV6 Craft Show at the Superior Dome and any other event I do. I love talking to my readers, not just when they say they like my books, but because they always have their own stories to share with me. I hope you and everyone has a wonderful holiday season!

Today is one of those days when I wish I had a “real” job because writing is hard! It’s hard because it’s such an emotional thing, and when you’re feeling low, it’s hard to find the motivation to plug along with getting your pages written or revised or working on your web site or cover.

I woke up really excited for this time of day. My son’s afternoon nap is writing time. And I had big plans for this afternoon. I’ve been excited about my projects and ready to go.

But then this morning I got an email in which…

This girl just totally ripped my book to shreds in a review that I got as part of a book contest. I guess that’s not totally true. She said a couple of complimentary things and ended with a statement that it was interesting and she is looking forward to reading more of my novels. Well, then, I’d love to ask her why her review was filled with more negative, stab-me-in-the-heart statements than positive remarks. I guess it’s safe to assume after reading what she had to say that Buddy Check won’t be in the running to win that contest.

It does make me want to know more about the reviewer. I wish I could get inside her head and know what books she does like and what her background is. Is she a camp person? Or has she never gone to camp before? What kind of a person is she? What qualities does she value in a friend, in the world, in a book? Because sometimes it’s actually helpful to know who doesn’t like your books to be able to define your target audience better. I will just keep repeating to myself something the keynote speaker at a writing conference I attended said–not everyone will like your book. You have to find your niche audience.

I know that rejection is a huge part of writing. Everybody gets some less-than-perfect reviews and everyone gets rejected a bazillion times. That’s part of writing. But it doesn’t make it hurt any less. And it doesn’t make it any easier to stop drowning your sorrows in throwback Mountain Dew and chocolate cookies while looking up your favorite books on Amazon.com and checking out the 1-star reviews to assure yourself that, yes, it happens to everyone (Sidenote–did you know the following: 77 crazy people gave a 1-star to the first Harry Potter book, some guy dared to write “No character development” on a Rick Riordan book—uh, dude, have you even read Rick Riordan or did you just randomly write that on the first book whose link you clicked on???—, and someone “gave up” on a Meg Cabot book because she was “plagiarizing herself” and her “voice got old.” Uh, not likely, chica…)

So I feel a little better now. But rejection of any kind in this business can really bring you down, especially those of us without those thick skins you know you’re supposed to have but don’t. Reviews like that make you question yourself (well, maybe not if you’re JK Rowling, Rick Riordan, or Meg Cabot–in that case you probably don’t read your reviews and if you do, you probably laugh when people say things like that because 2,000 other people are singing your praises).

It makes you wonder if you’re just wasting your (very little) disposable household income on an endeavor that you’re not so good at after all when you could be spending it instead on new clothes for the kids or a family trip to Myrtle Beach or that new Rick Riordan book you wanted but couldn’t bring yourself to spend $14 on at Walmart last weekend (which I’m sure has very good character development, despite one reader’s opinion).

And it makes it hard to pick up that pen or sit at that keyboard.

But you just have to do it. So I guess I’ll click that X on the amazon.com tab I have open and try to get some work done…

It’s funny how one kind word about your writing can make you feel ready to conquer the literary world and one negative review can make you question everything and want to give up. Why is it such an emotional thing? Do other types of artists feel this way? Or does everyone else just deal with disappointment better?

Hmm…don’t know, and I guess it’s time to try to salvage some progress out of this block of writing time.

http://www.cbs.com/shows/survivor/photos/70998/season-23-episode-5/70991

It was during one of his interviews, and Ozzy was going on and on about immunity idols and voting people off, and all I could think was, “Dude, you have Cord Newman hair!!!!!!”

It is seriously the way I always pictured my book series character’s awesome hair. A touch darker maybe, but pretty darn close.

Years ago, a family friend told my mom that while waiting to get a hair cut, she was flipping through a magazine with examples of different styles you could get, and she saw Julie. She had just read Super Counselors, so the characters were fresh in her mind. She turned the page and saw a model who was exactly the way she had pictured Julie. I wished then (and still do today) that I could see the magazine because I want to know what she looks like to other people.

I always wonder what images people have of my characters. I know what they look like to me, but what do they look like to other people?

When I saw the first Harry Potter movie, I was struck that the main characters looked just the way I had pictured them, but the setting (Hogwarts Castle) was very, very different. I wonder what J.K. Rowling thinks of the casting.

It’s so much fun as an author to stumble upon a visual of something you’ve seen in your head over and over.

I’d been encouraged to do this specific show by my friend, Annette, a fellow writer. As a homeschool mom, Annette had gone to this particular book show (which was part of a weekend-long homeschool fair) several times. “The place is always packed,” she promised. “The parents will love your books. You’ll sell a ton.”

I spent the weeks leading up to the show creating a curriculum CD-ROM to compliment the books (since Annette mentioned that something like that would go over fantastically with the parents), creating and printing bookmarks and business cards, and working on an attractive table display full of pictures related to my books’ setting: Christian summer camp.

The day of the show arrived, and I was pumped! After years of sluggish sales and marketing schemes that had bombed, this was the thing that was going to kick off my transformation from unknown author who made sales to her mom’s friends to wildly popular, regionally-known writer-in-demand. Kids would be begging for the books, and adults would read the back cover copy and say, “Hmm. We need the whole series.” My table was going to be sooooooo busy that I wouldn’t even have time to go to the bathroom (which was a valid concern, seeing as I was five months pregnant with my son at the time). My only problem would be what to do when I ran out of the couple hundred books I had brought with me.

I set up my table, and it looked good, if I do say so myself. The books were displayed in an inviting manner, and my picture display had turned out fun and colorful. I stood behind my table, put on my best “Can I help you?” smile, and waited.

And waited . . .

And waited . . .

As all the parents walked by without much of a glance in my direction. Oh, sure, they oohed and ahhed and spent hours in the used book section (they had it curtained off, but my table was right next door, so I could peek between the black drapes and see the mountains of books people carried away from that section). Some of the parents even showed great interest in booths like the guy who was selling history books and the family with the homemade science workbooks.

But nobody wanted a book series about a girl at Christian camp. Not even one that came with a curriculum CD, tailored to this group of people, with fun activities, worksheets, and quizzes that took me months and months to make. Well, that’s not entirely true. Four somebodies wanted books. And, sure, one of those somebodies was Annette, who had waited for the fair to buy my latest book so she could loudly exclaim, “This looks like a great book!” as a pack of parents walked by. (Thanks for trying, Annette…)

Between the previous year’s homeschool fair (in which, according to Annette, the seminars were standing-room-only and the book show was packed) and my debut as a booth owner, the economy had tanked. People didn’t even want to buy the books they needed for their kids’ required subjects, much less an unnecessary fiction book (even one that came with an awesome curriculum CD with lessons such as “Create Your Own Camp” and “Learning About Time Zones”).

I felt like a total and utter failure. I stood there for two days and talked to hundreds of people about my books (and didn’t even get to eat every two hours like a five-month pregnant lady wants), and in the end I didn’t even make back the cost of the booth.

Dejected, I helped my husband pack up my things and brought them out to the car where we started the hour and a half drive home, and I immediately burst into tears (although, to be fair, that could have been partly due to being pregnant). That whole ordeal had been humiliating. What kind of real author stands there for hours and only sells four books (one to her friend)? If I were any good, the line would have snaked all the way out the gymnasium. Heck, if I were any good, I wouldn’t have to go to book shows. People would just search my name at Amazon.com and have countdowns to my next book’s release on their own fan websites.

There was no way I was going through that again. The weeks of work leading up to it. Standing there bored when nobody wanted to talk to me and having to talk up my books without looking egotistical when they did want to talk to me. The wasted weekend. The cost of gas and entry fee and taking our friends out to dinner to say thank you for letting us stay overnight at their house, which was near the event location (although they did introduce us to Golden Corral, which is an amazing buffet so I wasn’t that broken up about that).

I was done. There was no point to this whole writing endeavor anyway. What’s the point in pouring your heart and soul into something if nobody’s going to read it?

A year and a half later, another book show opportunity came up that was too good to pass on, despite my vow to never do another fair again. This time, it was a well-attended craft show on a college campus in the town my parents lived in. I’d have a five-minute drive from their house to the location and Grandma as a free baby-sitter.

So reluctantly, I sent in my registration form and money. I went to this fair determined not to get too excited, the memory of my last attempt’s failure still pretty fresh. The show started, people began to trickle into the room, and I, again, put on my best smile.

And this time, things went well. I’d like to think that people stopped by my booth because my books sounded intriguing in the booklet given out at the door, but it was probably more due to the fact that my table was next to the guy handing out free lightbulbs to anybody with a Michigan driver’s license. But whatever the reason, I spoke with many friendly faces, sold a ton of books (okay, so it wasn’t a ton, but it was a ton in my book), and gave away several business cards.

More importantly, at that show I made many promising contacts, including Tyler, another author who I now consider a writing friend. He introduced me to UPPAA, a fantastic group of fellow writers, based in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula, who are helpful and supportive and whose members have, in the past year, taught me things I had no clue I needed to know and opened doors for me that I didn’t even know were there.

I also found, through talking to other writers in the group, that selling four books at a homeschool fair, or any fair for that matter, isn’t that uncommon for a regional writer. After telling my tale of woe at the first meeting I attended, several people chimed in with their own, similar stories. Not having many other author friends until I found UPPAA, I had no idea that other authors struggled with this. I had only seen bits on TV featuring JK Rowling or Stephenie Meyer and the panning of crowds of thousands waiting at their local Barnes and Noble to meet them.

Having other writers to commiserate with and bounce ideas off of has been invaluable to my growth as a writer, and UPPAA is full of kind-hearted people with both experience and ingenuity who are always willing to give advice and/or encouragement and go the extra mile to help a fellow writer out. Even if I hadn’t sold any books at that show, discovering this group would have been well worth the time and money I spent (plus, hearing about the finer points of lightbulbs over and over and over was fascinating as well . . . okay, not).

My second stab at book vendor life gave me way more than just sales. If I hadn’t sucked it up and taken another try at this venue, I’d have missed out not only on sales and new fans, but friends who have greatly influenced me over the past year. I look forward to getting to know and becoming friends with more members in the future.

As writers, a lot of things we do to market our books will fail, just as many of the sentences we write won’t make the final draft. But we have to pick ourselves up, reach into that creative brain, and try again. You never know what will come of that next attempt.

Throughout 97% of this book, I couldn’t wait to get to the end, to see what happened, to see how all the threads the author had dangled in front of me would be woven together into a satisfying conclusion. I read instead of cleaning the kitchen. I tried to sneak paragraphs in while my son was running back and forth from his room to the living room, looking for new toys to bring out. I even read it during dinner, something I generally make a point not to do. I was also itching to hop on Amazon.com and write a glowing, 5-star review and my library site to put on reserve several of this arthor’s other books. It was great. It captured camp. It socks a Camp Addict like mein the gut and cries out, “I understand you!” better than most books about camp.

Sure, it wasn’t a Christian book, and there were a lot of worldly things in it, things that I would hope my campers would never do at camp or home from camp, and I didn’t agree with all of the content (which is partly why I write young adult books about camp myself–so there’s another example out there for kids and teens that says you can have an absolute blast in a camp setting without drinking, sneaking into town, and going “all the way” with your camp romance) but on a literary level, this book was fantastic.

Until I got three chapters from the end. The book was full of intriguing characters, three equally fascinating narrators, an exciting plot, some great internal revelations, and a general hopeful tone, despite some of the complications the characters had to face. Then, at the very end of the book, after I had flipped 400-plus pages, eagerly anticipating an ending that would leave me glowing with “I love camp!” the demise of the poor characters was so awful and out of the blue that I felt sick.

Two of the narrator characters got kicked out of camp (one deserved it, the other totally did not) and the third decided she couldn’t hack it on her own and went willingly with the other two. Talk about a horrible end to a wonderful time spent lost in this world.

The plot was still thick with all kinds of possibilities, but nope–theyall just went home right in the middle of the summer, which forced me to “go home” right in the middle of the action. I felt so sad for these characters. I almost felt like crying myself.

Which, actually, in all fairness, is a sign of excellent writing. I was beginning to see them as real people. I was rooting for all three narrators and was crushed when they were crushed.

But it was just such an unsatisfying ending. I wanted closure, but instead I felt ripped out of the action. I still feel totally gypped.

I hope that a book I write never makes someone feel the same way.

I know that not all stories end with rainbows and unicorns and flowers. Life happens. Life can suck. Not all my books end totally happily. People die in my books. Their camp romances fall apart. They get a crappy co-counselor that, despite their best efforts, they never manage to win over. Changes happen at my fictional camp that characters don’t know if they can cope with or not.

But I hope that in the end there is some kind of hope or closure. Or that when bad things happen to good people that it evolves in such a way that readers won’t feel deflated. That it’s a natural and acceptable end, even if it’s not the way a reader hoped things would turn out.

As I’m writing, I think it’s awesome. Brilliant. A literary masterpiece! I think, This will be the book that puts all the other ones I’ve written to shame. It’s so funny yet poignant . . . and it captures camp to a tee. As my fingers are flying across the keyboard, trying to get out hilarious dialogue, touching camper/counselor moments that are sure to bring tears to readers’ eyes, and a few BAM! That is SO camp! moments that will resonate with only the most die-hard camp bums, I know it’s good. It’s more than good. It’s award-winning stuff. People will read this book and want to make movies out of it, but they won’t be able to because it’s so good that it won’t ever be able to translate to the big screen in the same way it does the page.

I check off scenes on my outline one by one, and finally all 200 pages are done. Then I sit back, completely satisfied with the months of work. I hit print, stack all the pages together, and set them in my “done” box to wait a few weeks so I can read them with a fresh editing mind. Each time, I’m sure this is IT. The fabled Great American Novel. This will be the manuscript that I (like one of my writing heroes, Meg Cabot) barely put a spot of red on as I edit. It practically flowed out of my brain and through my fingers into a rough draft, and I’ll be done in no time, way ahead of schedule. Then I can move on to the next book.

Then I read it.

And the panic sets in.

Because what I’ve written is most definitely not the Great American Novel. Or even a good novel. Or even a novel that someone who loves camp and is in deep camp withdrawal mode would finish more than two or three chapters of.

Compared to all the books that came before it, this book stinks! That great piece of hilariously witty dialogue? Yeah, it’s okay, but there are no tags and no descriptions between the blabbing of characters. The touching camper/counselor moment will not bring tears to anybody’s eyes unless they are tears of pain because it’s so corny. And the inside joke for my fellow camp bums is so obviously something lifted from my real life that unless I change it in a major way, I am going to risk ticking the real person off.

Now my thoughts are, This is the absolute worst thing I’ve ever written in my life, including the sequel to the North and South trilogy that I wrote my sophomore year of high school that’s full of teenage drama and you can totally tell came from my Young and the Restless-watching days. There is no possible way this can be salvaged. This is the one. The book that will be known as the downfall of the series. The Harry Potter Book 5 of the bunch that will bring reviews like, “Edit much, lady?” and “Twenty-seven adverbs on one page! Are you kidding me?”

This happened to me just last week when I started going through the 5th volume of my Abby’s Camp Days series. Partly it was the dreaded first read-through of a rough draft that has gotten me during every book I’ve ever written. Part of it was that I had just finished my second edition of Buddy Check, which is told through the eyes of a high school graduate who happens to be artsy, introspective, and awesome at ACT vocabulary. It was hard to go back to the style of a 13-year-old, witty camper and not find it completely juvenile in comparison.

And I almost gave into that panic. I almost resigned myself to the fact that this book just wasn’t going to be as rad as the others (sorry–another hazard of coming off of writing a book set in 1997–the ’90s lingo).

But two things helped me: knowing deep down that this is my MO. The way I always feel about my own work-in-progress. After 6 books, even though my inner critic was cringing, the cheerleader sitting on my shoulder was yelling, “Don’t worry! This always happens! Just keep working hard, and it’ll shape up! Remember Camp Expert.” (Because Camp Expert, AKA Abby Volume 1 was a total mess for years until I finally managed to fix it and start the series off with a bang.)

The other thing that helped me was in the middle of all this stress and depression, I read an article by an author friend of mine, Mevia Gappa. Her whole awesome article is here but the part that resonated with me at a time when I needed it most was this:

“Writers create words with care and consideration. We take our time. We want the best words—not necessarily the fastest to come to mind—for the thoughts we often struggle to say out loud. We don’t want points; we want readers. Devoted ones.”

She was talking about playing word board games. In my situation, I substituted “sales” for “points” (in the game) and it hit me that I didn’t have to have this book perfect in one draft. That would be like the infuriating “timed” word games Mevia wrote about in her article, those games in which you have to come up with a word, any old word quickly. I have weeks to polish this, months to add description and find better words, many drafts to tweak. It’s a marathon, not a sprint with a novel.

That reminded me of what was formerly (until I read Mevia’s article) my favorite writing quote. “Some days, we all write beautifully. Some days, we all write crap. Give yourself permission to write crap.  Next day, revise it. It will still be crappy, but it will be a little less crappy. Next day, revise it once more. It will be even less crappy. Keep on doing this. If you do this long enough, eventually it will be good. Congratulations!”–Dan Greenburg, June 2004, The Writer Magazine

I printed that out on pretty paper and stuck it above my computer monitor long ago, and for good reason.

This afternoon, I spent two hours going through my manuscript. And throughout each crappy passage, I took a deep breath and remembered Mevia’s revelation. Take my time. Try to find the best words. And I replaced those that had been the fastest to come to mind when I was getting the story out in rough form with good words. Descriptive words. Words that might actually, a few revisions from now, lead to other words that will bring that Bam! That is so camp! sock in the gut.

Do I have that Great American Novel right now? Um, no. But I’ll keep plugging away, and evenutally it will be worthy to be called Abby’s Camp Days.

But this series of articles has inspired me to write my own. Thus, I give you 21 Things Your Camp Dean Won’t Tell You. (You, being the Counselors)

Counselor Recruiting

1. When I ask you if you can counsel, and you say, “Maybe,” it’s really not helpful at all. You might think that maybe trumps no, because I will be crossing my fingers and hoping beyond hope that you can come, but actually all maybe means is that you will string me along for another two months and probably tell me no eventually, usually two weeks before camp, so then I’ll be scrambling to find someone at the last minute. A no right off the bat is much more helpful than a maybe.

2. Yes, I think that all the paperwork you have to fill out to be certified to be a counselor is stupid, too, but we all have to do it, so I wish you would do so in a timely manner and just get it over with so I don’t have to harp on you every week to make sure it gets done.

3. The worst possible time to email me and say that you can’t counsel after all, even though you told me you could in April, is June 17, a week before camp starts. Actually, the worst possible time is June 17, a week before camp starts and 2 hours after someone else cancelled and the registrar just called to say 12 more kids signed up.

4. Sure, I’ll be a reference for you so you can get a job at another camp, and I will say awesome things about you (if they truly apply) but you realize that this means I will have to replace you at my event which doesn’t exactly thrill me.

5. When you make a request for a certain cabin, co-counselor, or camper to be in your group (or an anti-request), it makes my job of assigning groups about 50% harder. Each subsequent request by you or a co-counselor makes it even harder.

6. It’s awesome when you tell me that your boyfriend or girlfriend wants to be a counselor this summer and has already filled out the required paperwork and asked his or her boss for the week off, but chances are, you will break up over the course of the year and not tell me . Then I will have to replace the boyfriend/girlfriend on incredibly short notice. So I honestly don’t count that person in my tally of confirmed counselors unless it’s Saturday night and you and they are on camp premises.

At Camp

7. When the camp manager pounds on my cabin door at 1 am to tell me that you and your buddies were night swimming but she kicked you out of the lake, I will, of course, give you a stern and crabby-sounding lecture about how awful that was to do. But really I’m more annoyed about getting woken up at 1 am when the camp manager could have told me about the situation at 7 am.

8. I think some of the rules are stupid, too. But I’m the one the camp director complains to when you break them or let your campers break them, so I’m going to encourage you to follow them.

9. S’more night scares the crap out of me because of all the 9-year-olds running around with flaming sticks. I’m surprised every year that nobody catches on fire or gets their eye poked out, and only after everybody’s faces are covered in chocolate can I rest easy.

10. Sometimes, when you are hiking, swimming, or playing kickball with your campers, I go back to my cabin and take a nap. I only get up because someone has to ring the bell, and that someone is me. If I can pawn off the job on someone else, I will keep sleeping.

11. I didn’t fill out the part on the certification to be able to drive campers to and from events because I knew my co-deans did, so now when your camper rips her finger off in a bathroom stall lock, I can’t technically be the person who drives you two to the hospital so she can get four stitches.

12. My dream is for each group to turn out perfectly even, for every cabin and group to have two counselors who each have 4 campers of the same ages. I will try for hours to get this to work out, but in the end, no amount of color coding and creative swapping of this camper for that camper will make it work. This will bug me until next summer when I have another chance to make it all balance out evenly. It won’t. And that will bother me for the next camping season. Yes, I have OCD. But I’d like to see you try to figure out all those requests.

13. Despite the admission that, yes, I do occasionally take a nap while you are at an activity, it is more likely that after breakfast when you left and had to, in order, 1) listen to the pastor dean speak in chapel, 2) clean your cabin, 3) sit on the dock while the lifeguards watch your campers, and 4) sit in the craft cabin while the craft lady leads your campers in a sand art project, I have actually 1) swept up all the dirt that your camper hoppers left behind, 2) led a frantic search for my co-dean, the pastor, as it was five minutes until chapel and he could not be found, 3) finally found said pastor in the woods, communing with nature 4) convinced him that he had to get to chapel 5) found the songbooks which your campers put away in the wrong place, 6) took a phone call from a concerned parent who has to pick up his kid Friday night instead of Saturday morning, 7) found the camper’s pick-up form and noted the change, 8 ) quickly typed a cabin report on my laptop for the camp newsletter 9) ran to the boys’ cabins to do clean cabin inspection, 10) brought a bed-wetted sleeping bag up to the dining hall to be washed, 11) got my ear talked off by the cook about the awesome dessert she was making for dinner, 12) ran to the girls’ cabins to do clean cabin inspection, 13) searched for the maintenance man to tell him that one cabin’s light bulb was burned out, 14) talked a homesick kid out of going home, 15) typed another cabin report for the newsletter, 16) tracked down one of the counselors from the cabin who hadn’t turned in their report yet and gently reminded her that I needed that pretty soon, 17) got talked to by a staff member because some of the counselors were letting the campers jump off the bell stand, which is considered highly dangerous, 18) ran the bed-wetted sleeping bag back to the cabin so the poor kid’s secret would be safe, 19) sorted all the mail so you and your campers can get your letters from your boyfriend or care packages from mom and dad, 20) helped get your table hopped because you and your campers were late getting to the dining hall from swim time, 21) asked 5 people before one agreed to be in charge of after-meal songs, and 22) sat down in the seat I was sitting in when you left breakfast to sit in chapel, clean your cabin, go swimming, and go to craft time. So when you come up to me and say, with a slight smile on your face, “I had a long morning. How about you?” I know that that look in your eye says that you think I’ve sat at this table, looking out the window and admiring the view with my cup of coffee. And I don’t really appreciate it.

Parents

14. Sometimes parents think it’s a good thing to take their kids off their ADD medication for the week they are at camp. They think that the activities and fresh air will be enough to counter the hyperactivity. Well, people, I’m here to tell you that that is so not a good idea. Why? Just trust me.

15. When a parent writes on their kids’ forms “sisters — please put in separate cabins” but then you show up with kids in tow and only one suitcase for them to share, it’s sort of a problem. Especially when that causes me to have to move kids and thus upset the perfectly even groups that I just spent hours perfecting.

16. When your very busy kid has to leave Monday night for a soccer game, Tuesday morning for band practice, Wednesday afternoon for big sister’s gymnastics meet, Thursday at lunch for a soccer party, and then for good Friday evening (right in the middle of communion service) because their aunt is getting married in Ann Arbor the next day and you have to “get on the road,” I will find your child’s sign-out form and be waiting for you at the dining hall (no matter what else I was supposed to do at that moment) so you can come and go as you please (and I will be waiting with a smile, mind you) but really, maybe your kid is too busy this week to be at camp.

17. You really don’t need to give me that look that you give me in the registration line when I tell you that your kid is in the cabin on the top of the hill. I know it’s steep. I’ve been in that cabin myself many times. Someone has to be in it, and if it wasn’t your kid, then some other kid’s parent would be giving me the evil eye right now.

18. Yes, I do love your kid. And every camper is special. But, to be honest, the reason I know your kid’s name is that when I was waiting for the parent in front of you to move through the line, I read the “name” line upsidown on the form you are holding.

19. It’s not that I I’m not excited to register your child for the week of camp. It’s just that the letter that got sent to you said registration starts at 2:00 pm, and it’s 8:36 am right now.

After Camp

20. When I spend hours of my time 1) vouching that even though you are young, you will be a great counselor, 2) training you, 3) reminding you that you have to turn your paperwork in, 4) leading you through your first week as a counselor and helping you work out the kinks in this whole counseling thing, and 5) helping you actually get that certification card by finding out what never got to the certifying office . . . and then the next year when I ask if you’ll be returning as an elementary camp counselor, but you say, “Nah. I’m going to junior high this year. I think it’s more fun,” I’m not going to lie, it hurts. I understand that, yes, it is more fun for a 17-year-old counselor to have evening programs like a dance rather than a puppet show, but come on!!! I got you a certification card!!!

21. Ditto to the campers who stand up on the last day of junior high camp and say, “I had an awesome time this summer. Junior high camp is so much better than elementary camp.” Um, thanks.

Bonus Things Your Camp Dean Won’t Tell You (AKA As I was proofreading my post, I thought of some additional things, but I didn’t want to renumber the part I already wrote):

1) Acceptable reasons to cancel from counseling at the last minute:

1) Death in the family, 2) You lost your job and had to get a new one so that your family doesn’t have to live in a cardboard box, 3) yourself or a loved one is very ill, 4) You have a communicable disease that, trust you, we don’t want to catch

Unacceptable reasons to cancel from counseling at the last minute:

1) You forgot to ask your boss for the time off until three days before camp, and he said no, 2) “I think I’d rather go shopping in Green Bay instead,” 3) At high school camp you started dating one of the girls who will also be counseling for me, but you broke up last week, and it would be awkward (better yet, don’t tell me that, just don’t show up and make me pry that information out of your ex-girlfriend when I’m trying to figure out why you ditched out on camp)

2) I don’t care that you had to sit through the same clown evening program last year and that it’s aimed at 9-year-olds instead of 19-year-olds. I’m 32, and I’ve seen the same clown program the last 6 years in a row. And I’m not  fan of clowns to begin with. Or grasshead craft projects. Or people dressed in mascot costumes.

3) When I ask you to do something (or not to do something) and you then don’t do it (or do it) but I know for a fact that you would never, ever, ever consider doing so (or not doing so) for one of the 50-year-old male deans, it doesn’t make me want to ask you back next year.

And there you have it. 21 Things Your Camp Dean Won’t Tell You (plus some bonus ones). Now you know what your dean is thinking!

I got to spend a week in my favorite cabin (the one on the hill with the awesome porch and great view) with a bunch of fabulous junior high aged girls and a great co-counselor, Bridget. There were many new counselors this year, so it was a true camp experience with Bridget and some of the others—making friends and clicking right off the bat and becoming close after just a week.

It was extra special for me because it was the first time in six (yep, six!) years that I was at camp for a whole week not pregnant and without a child under 3 in tow. It was just me. No responsibilities (except for those 9 girls, of course but they were so fantastic that it was a piece of cake).

Camp is still different than when I was a camper/early counselor. My husband isn’t the cook anymore, and therefore, his double chocolate banquet cake does not make appearances anymore. But the UDC was good (although they listed it on the menu board as UDC Casserole, which is technically saying Uncle Don’s Casserole Casserole, just like it’s redundant to say ATM Machine; but the name isn’t what’s important, the taste is, and the taste was yummy!). No tacos, but maybe that’s a good thing, given how much some of those teenage boys will eat when given the chance.

And the Wigwam is gone . . . I would put a frowny face, but that doesn’t even begin to cover it (Dan Peters, I don’t need a cabin to remember you or your influence, but it sure made me feel your lingering presence every time I stepped on that porch and saw your memorial sign).

But camp goes on, and it was a blast.

I had almost forgotten what it was like to spend the week with junior high girls. The dance night drama, the “cutest boy in camp” conversations, the Thursday night heart-to-heart talk about God and self-worth, and yes, the debate over when to set the alarm clock so everyone could get in a shower without having to use the boys’ side that is missing one crucial component to modesty–the curtain.

I returned excited to write Abby’s Camp Days: Volume 6 and ready to finish the Buddy Check second edition. Buddy Check  is *this close* and then it’s on to editing Abby 5 and writing Abby 6.

Oh, and planning Fall Retreat. Time to slip out of counselor mode and in to dean mode. On that note, anybody wanna counsel?