Update on various things

So far, this year has been a lot busier than I’d anticipated. Good, I suppose, except that I would have liked more of that busyness to be writing-related. Maybe that will be the second half of my year. *fingers crossed* Instead, I’ve been busy with day job stuff, family stuff and more fun (but still not writing-related) trip-to-Paris-planning stuff.

If I find inspiration for a new book while in Paris, can I claim the trip as a business expense? ;)

I admit I’m using blogging today as a tool to procrastinate. I’m in the middle of re-designing our website at the day job, and after spending all week slowly re-coding the old pages to the new layout, I needed a break. Tomorrow, I’m going to see the Hunger Games movie (woo!), so I feel a little guilty that I’m using my one free weekend day to slack off, but that’s what weekends are made for, right?

I do have a feel things of note to mention, but before I get to the actual updating, I felt this post needed a pretty picture. A few weeks back, I took a photography tour at one of my most favorite places, Big Cat Rescuse. It was a Christmas present (thanks, Mom & Dad!), and while the cats weren’t as active as I had hoped, I managed to get some nice shots. Everything, in my opinion, is made better with cats. Especially gorgeous ones like this cougar.

Now for the updates. The next few months are going to be busy for me. Not only will I be editing my next book and preparing for my Paris trip in May, but April is the 100th anniversary of the Titanic disaster. Because of this, I’m aiming to do some extra promotion for DESTINED, in the hopes that whatever interest the anniversary raises will trickle down to me in the form of new readers.

First bit of promotion: I’m donating a copy of DESTINED to Ruby’s Reads Birthday Giveaway Hop, which will be happening from April 12-24. When I have more details, I’ll be sure to post them here.

Second, I’m going to be doing my very own (and very first) blog tour. It’s a short one, due to the late notice (I only got the idea last week. Whoops!) and because it coincides with the Titanic anniversary, which is less than a week. The blog tour will run for 5 days, from April 10 – April 14. The wonderful Parajunkee is organizing it for me, and is currently finalizing the list of bloggers that will be involved. If this tour goes well, I’ll probably do a longer one for the release of my next book. (If I ever find enough time to get the damn thing edited!) Again, I’ll update here once I know more.

Third, I’m hoping to do a series of posts here that same week about the Titanic, as a kind of tribute to the ship’s maiden—and final—voyage. It will depend on if I have the time to write that many posts in advance, but my aim is to do something each day about that corresponding day of the voyage, along with a short spoiler-free snippet from DESTINED that goes along with the day featured.

In blog-related news, thanks to a post I stumbled across today over at Fiction VIxen’s blog, I discovered my own blog settings weren’t really optimal. I’ve remedied that, and now anyone can comment to my posts without having to log in or register somewhere first, and no one should have to use Captcha anymore. Hopefully these new settings won’t get me spammed to high heaven. I really want this blog to be user-friendly, and since I personally hate dealing with Captcha and don’t comment if I have to register first, it was pretty hypocritical to expect my own readers to deal with both roadblocks. I promise, it was never intentional. It must have been the default Blogger settings, and I never caught them before. So thank you to Fiction Vixen for inspiring me check it out!

Now that the updates are out of the way, I think I’m going to use the what’s left of my afternoon editing the still-untitled (I suck at titles) next book.

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Titanic Tuesday: Myths & Legends

The Titanic has always been a subject of interest for people, even before the movie in 1997 brought it back to the forefront of public attention. And now, with the 100th anniversary of the disaster approaching, I imagine it’s going to be popping up everywhere again. Books, movies, documentaries, you name it. I’m excited, because I can never get enough Titanic (though I doubt I will be seeing the 3D re-release of the film, despite it being my favorite movie. 3D gives me a headache, and it’s been my experience that movies converted into 3D after the fact aren’t very effective. I prefer to watch it in its original format. I don’t need the iceberg coming out of my screen at me, or Rose’s hand reaching out towards me during the cargo hold scene – and you know they won’t be able to resist doing that.).

But with all the renewed interest and publicity, many long-standing myths and legends are bound to pop up again. “Facts” that get told over and over despite being untrue, passed along because people hear it often enough, they assume it’s reality. After all, we no longer have any first-hand witnesses living to set us straight, and even if we did, not all of them were always 100% reliable. Eyewitness testimony is hardly infallible, after all. Some people insisted to their dying day that the ship went down intact, and we know that’s not the case now that the wreck has been found. Others have conflicting stories about gunshots, officer suicides, where Captain Smith was, and how/if the third class was trapped belowdecks. For most of these, we’ll never really know the truth, because unlike Apolline in Destined (shameless self-promotion shout-out!), we can’t go back and see it for ourselves.

There are, however, many facts about the ship we do know, and myths that have been busted, yet still linger on. So I thought I’d take the opportunity in today’s Titanic Tuesdays post to point some of them out.

• There was not a mummy in the cargo hold. I’m not sure where that myth started, but it pops up now and then, even today. Researchers have never found proof that such a thing existed on the ship. Some believe the story came about because one of the passengers, William T. Stead, told his dinner companions about the mummy, which was on display in London at the time, and after the disaster, memories became jumbled and his story about the mummy turned into a story that it was on board the ship (and due to a curse, the cause of the disaster).
• The Titanic was not the first ship to use S.O.S. as a distress call. While it is true that S.O.S. was relatively new at the time (up until then, the standard distress call was C.Q.D.), the signal was used first by Germans in 1905, then adopted as a the new worldwide standard in 1908. It took time to catch on, which is why most ships took a while to switch over from the CQD they were used to.
• The officers (or White Star Line) were not trying to make a speed record on Titanic’s maiden voyage. Her maximum speed, with all boilers lit, was only 21 knots, and there were already faster ships out there. However, all of her boilers were never lit, and she was following a longer, more southerly route in order to (irony alert) avoid icebergs. Also, if they had tried to get into port on Tuesday night, rather than Wednesday, as many rumors stated, it would have been a huge inconvenience to everyone on board. Just imagine the uproar from the elite in First Class at being brought to shore the night before they had made arrangements to be picked up or transferred to trains (not to mention all the hotel reservations starting on Wednesday)!
• J. Bruce Ismay, managing director of the White Star Line, was not quite the villain many believe. His biggest crime was surviving. He did not sneak onto a boat to save himself. He helped load the boats along with the other officers, and according to witnesses, entered a half-filled boat as it was being lowered only after being ordered to. It makes you think, really: many other men survived without being vilified for it, and many who perished tried to get on boats with little regard to the others around them. It’s a shame that Ismay had to live out the rest of his life under such a cloud when he did not really do anything wrong by getting on that boat. If it truly was already being lowered, the seat he took would have remained empty had he not boarded. If he had stayed on the ship, he would have died, but no one else would have survived in his place. Sadly, if he had stayed on board, he would probably be considered a hero today, right up there with Captain Smith and Thomas Andrews.
• Another common story about Ismay is that he was pressuring Captain Smith to go faster (again, the speed record myth). We’ll never know for sure if this was true, though some passengers claimed to have overheard him talking to the Captain about picking up speed. Still, Smith was too experienced a sailor to take direction from a businessman like Ismay. He would not have altered his course or speed just to please him.
• The Titanic was not felled by a 300-foot-long gash in her hull. While the damaged portion of the hull is still buried in sand, it has been determined that such a large gash is not likely. Instead, scientists say that the sinking was caused by the steel plates buckling under the force of the iceberg as it scraped along the side of the ship, popping off rivets as it went. Some believe the quality of the steel used in making the rivets was sub-par, and therefore caused them to fail. As the rivets popped off, seams were opened and water rushed in.
• No one ever claimed the Titanic was unsinkable. While the ship was described as “practically unsinkable” by Shipbuilder magazine, no one ever declared it as such. It was true that she was built so that she would be very difficult to sink, but as fate would have it, the iceberg struck in just the right way to remind everyone that something that large and heavy can, in fact, sink. Had Titanic hit the berg head-on, it is very possible she would have limped away damaged, but still seaworthy. The watertight compartments were designed so that the ship would stay afloat if any two were filled, and even if the four forward compartments were filled. Unfortunately, sideswiping the berg meant six compartments filled, sending more water into the ship than she could handle. And as anyone who has seen the movie knows, the bulkheads separating the watertight compartments only reached up to E Deck. Once the ship started going down at the bow, water flowed over the tops of the bulkheads and began filling more compartments. The compartment in the front of the ship, however, reached higher, and therefore might have kept water from flowing back into the ship had it been the only section of the hull compromised.

I was going to continue this with film-specific inaccuracies, but rather than get too long, I’ll leave that for another week.

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Titanic Tuesday: When hobbies collide

In addition to my obsession with all things Titanic, I am somewhat of an amateur genealogist. It’s something I discovered a couple of years ago (thanks to the NBC show, Who Do You Think You Are?, which I highly recommend), and got pretty addicted for a while. This past weekend, my mother (who was also bitten by the genealogy bug) brought something to my attention: we might have had an ancestor of the Titanic.

As it turns out, the man in question (John Coffey) is most likely not related to us, or at least not directly. But his story is an interesting one, and I thought it would be a good post topic. As we’re coming up to the centennial next month, I’m aiming to be more regular with these posts, so now is as good a time as any to get back into it.

Coffey is a name on my mother’s side of the family, and we’ve been able to trace our tree all the way back to an Edward Coffey, who came over to the US from Ireland in the 1600s. So while we do have some John Coffeys in our family tree, they were all born in the United States long before 1912, meaning the John Coffey on the Titanic would only be a very distant cousin, if he were even part of our family at all. Still, it’s a nifty connection, and the closest I’ve come so far to tracing my roots to the ship.

John Coffey was born in Queenstown (now Cobh), Ireland, in 1889. When he was 23, he was living in England after working on Titanic’s sister ship, the RMS Olympic. He then signed on to the Titanic as a fireman (or stoker) in Southampton, but did not remain on board for the full voyage. Instead, he snuck off the ship at Queenstown with the mail. Since the Queenstown dock was too small for the ship, Titanic docked offshore and smaller boats, or tenders, ferried passengers and mail on and off. RMS, after all, stands for Royal Mail Ship, and there was quite a bit of mail to be brought to shore. Coffey claimed to have hidden under the bags of mail on the final tender leaving the ship, and was soon reunited with his family. Most believe this was his reason for deserting the ship: to get a free trip back home. But after the tragedy, he often claimed that he slipped off due to a “bad feeling” about the ship’s fate.

Not much more seems to be known about him (that I can find online, at least), other than he supposedly signed on to the Mauretania after the Titanic sank, and that he eventually passed away in 1957. I did find an old forum comment at Ancestry.com from someone claiming to be his great grandson, but he didn’t offer any information publicly.

Another Irish passenger that has more information available, and connects more directly to my own book, is Eugene Daly. Daly was 29 years old when he boarded the Titanic in Queenstown, and was most known later for playing “Erin’s Lament” on his uilleann pipes (similar to bagpipes) while the ship left port. A third class passenger, he sat out on the bow and played, a somber farewell to his homeland. According to the Encyclopedia Titanica, his pipes went down with the ship, and he later filed a claim for them for $50. A set of pipes was salvaged from the wreck many years later that might have been his, but no one is certain.

Daly survived the sinking. He helped two women into a lifeboat (his cousin and her roommate) and boarded with them, only to be pulled out by an officer. (This from a letter he wrote to his sister) He later jumped overboard and swam to the overturned collapsible. He clung to it all night, as it was too crowded to get on, and later claimed he only survived due to the thick coat he wore. He was mentioned in many articles afterwards, testified in the hearings, and was one of the survivors to claim an officer shot two male passengers who were trying to board a lifeboat, then shot himself. There is a nice article written about him by his daughter here, if anyone is interested: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/eugene-daly-his-daughter.html

According to his daughter, he and his wife sailed back to Ireland in 1921 to tend to his sick mother, and the voyage had him in a panic. He vowed never to sail across the Atlantic again, and they remained in Ireland until the early 1960s, after the death of his wife. At this point, he was able to fly back to the US to live with his daughter, and therefore avoided having to get on another ship. Daly passed away in New York in 1965.

I have read accounts of many survivors who refused to get on another ship again, or who found themselves too nervous or panicked the next time they tried. I can’t really blame them for it. I’m not sure I’d be too keen of sailing again if I’d been there, either!

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Titanic Tuesdays; L’Amour de la Mer

I have been woefully lax in updating my blog lately. Frankly, I’ve been lax in most things related to writing. Work is busier, and I recently began planning a vacation, which seems to have overrun my brain. I’m treating myself to a week-long trip to Paris in May for the birthday. It’ll be my third trip there, but my first time traveling overseas by myself. Should be an adventure! Now that I’ve settled on and booked an apartment, I can take a step away and focus on other things for a little while. First order of business: dust off the blog.

In honor of Valentine’s Day, here’s a story I found that’s rather intriguing. A couple of Second Class passengers named Henry & Kate Marshall boarded at Southampton, only Marshall was not their real name. They were, in reality, Henry Morley and Kate Phillips, and were not married but rather eloping to the United States. Morley, nearly 40 years old, was already married, and had left his wife and daughter for his much younger mistress,19-year-old Kate, whom he met while she was working in one of his confectioner’s shops. He was a wealthy man, and gifted her with a beautiful sapphire necklace (sound familiar?) on board the ship. I have only found one photo of it online, and suspect there is copyright involved, so rather than post it here, I’ll link to it instead: L’Amour de la Mer (Love of the Sea).

As with most TItanic stories, this one ends in tragedy. Henry Morley was not allowed on the lifeboat with his mistress, and died in the sinking. Not long after that, Kate discovered she was pregnant. She gave birth to a daughter, Ellen, on January 11, 1913. Some like to say Ellen was conceived on board the ship, because it’s more romantic that way, but there’s no way to know for sure. It’s just as likely she was already a few weeks pregnant when the Titanic set sail. Some even say that her child might have been conceived after the sinking, but I find that less likely. Kate was a grief-stricken young woman, alone in an unfamiliar country in the early 1900s. When would she have the opportunity to start another love affair? She always insisted her child was Morley’s, and gave Ellen’s birth date and the fact that first pregnancies are said to stretch longer than 9 months (most people I know had their first children after their due dates), it stands to reason that Morley is the most likely paternal candidate.

The tragedy continues: according to Ellen herself, Kate Phillips never quite recovered from what happened to her. She was distant, abusive and self-destructive, and ended her life in a mental institution. Some reports say that Kate sold the sapphire necklace when she fell on hard times, while others say before she died, Kate gave the necklace (as well as the purse and cabin keys she had on her when put in the lifeboat) to Ellen. Ellen’s own granddaughter confirmed part of this, saying that she personally saw the cabin keys, but said that the necklace went down with the ship and was later recovered with other artifacts. It has popped up from time to time as part of Titanic artifact exhibitions.

Ellen’s paternity was never proven. Some say there was a DNA test done, but the results were never publicized. Ellen’s granddaughter as well as a member of Morley’s family have both said that DNA was never done, however, because the Morley family did not agree to it. So unless someone has kept some of Ellen’s hair, it may never be known for sure if she was the result of her mother’s Titanic elopement or not.

Some more links that might be of interest on this story:

Ellen’s story, in her own words: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/ellen_phillips_story.html
Kate’s biography, along with some photos: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/titanic-survivor/kate-phillips.html
The ET thread where both Ellen’s and Morley’s family weigh in: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5811/99997.html?1137698196
Another ET thread where Ellen’s granddaughter pops in: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5811/54465.html?1089621227
One more ET thread that discusses the DNA rumors further: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5811/50812.html?1190633087

And then it got stranger. While searching the forums for other posts on the subject, I found a topic from someone else claiming to be descended from Morley. What makes it so strange? They claim he was in Papua New Guinea in 1913-1914, where he married and had 5 children. A year or two after he supposedly died on the Titanic. Hm. Makes for a good story, at least: http://www.encyclopedia-titanica.org/discus/messages/5667/92353.html?1154695187

This blog started out as a romantic tale, but somehow it descended into weirdness. Still, it’s mysterious and intriguing (and the tale of Henry and Kate is still a romantic one, if you ignore the adultery), like many of the other mysteries that came out of the disaster. It’s no wonder I’ve been so fascinated by the ship for so long. I kind of wish I knew about Henry and Kate while I was still writing DESTINED. I could have given them a cameo. ;)

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Marketing and promotion

When I decided to self-publish, I knew it wasn't going to be easy, and I knew I wasn't going to be an overnight bestseller (or even ever a bestseller, unless I was incredibly lucky). And I knew that my biggest struggle was going to be promoting and marketing myself. Despite minoring in Marketing in college, it's not my forte. I think that's due to my introverted nature: I'm not good at asking people to buy my book.

An example: I was at dinner with my parents a week or so ago, and our waitress caught sight of the book I was reading on my phone (the Kindle app was on the cover image at the time) and got all excited because she recognized it: it was written by her aunt, Jeaniene Frost. Small world, huh? After that, my parents urged me to tell her about my book the next time she came back to the table. I felt uncomfortable doing so, partly because she said she doesn't usually read books. But even if she was a big reader, I'd have felt awkward pushing my book on her. I don't like when people hard sell to me, so I'm overly sensitive to doing it with others. In the end, my father did it for me, and she acted like she was interested in checking it out, though I really doubt she remembered my name five minutes later.

Promoting online is a little easier, but I find it difficult to find places to do so. The big places are too expensive, and many of the others are booked solid far in advance. I have one small promotion set to go at the beginning of February, so I hope that generates some interest, and I've done a few giveaways. I know some authors are having success with Amazon's KDP Select program, but I don't like the exclusivity requirement, and since Destined is my only book right now, it wouldn't benefit me in terms of generating interest in backlist. I had an ad on GoodReads that didn't really do much, and ads on Facebook that I turn on and off occasionally. They get me a lot of likes on my Facebook page, and seem to generate a few sales, but in the end, the cost of the ad ends up more than the royalties I get from the sales. Still, it's books I might not have sold otherwise, so I'll take what I can get. I have a bunch of requests out for book blog reviews, and while many said they were interested, only a few have read it yet. Those that have gave it 4-5 stars, so I keep hoping more will get to it soon. Reviews are key, and the more I can get, the better. I only wish more people would review on Amazon. I get a lot of ratings and reviews on GoodReads, but only have 8 on Amazon.

I know the best promotion is publishing more books, so that's what I'm trying to work on. I have one with a beta reader right now, another that's on hold so I can get some distance from it before editing some more, and a third I've recently dusted off. It still needs an ending, but it has one thing going for it the other two don't: it has a TITLE. (For me, this is a big thing. Titles stump me like nobody's business.) It's also kind of a dystopia, which is big right now, so I feel like it would be smart to take advantage of the trend while it's hot. I would never write specifically to fit a current trend, but since the book is already (mostly) written, I might as well make the most of it, right?

I just wish there was some magical, easy way to get people to see my book. But there isn't, so I will continue to slog on, and try to find more time to get a second book out there. If only I didn't need my day job, then I'd have all the time in the world.

Any other authors out there with advice on promotion that worked for them? Or readers who'd like to share how they find books? I know personally, most of my book discoveries come from GoodReads, with the occasional suggestion from Amazon's "also bought" lists or book blogs For those of you on GoodReads, how do you feel when an author sends you a message promoting his/her book? I'm leery of doing that, but it's an option I consider now and then.

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Because I’m feeling silly

I was playing around with the video camera on my new phone yesterday, and had to share this. This is one of my cats, Princess. She doesn’t drink like a normal cat most of the time. She prefers to either drink out of my water glass at night, while I’m reading in bed, or she sits patiently by the kitchen sink and waits for someone to turn on the faucet. Then she sticks her head under it and starts slurping. She also likes to climb into the shower after someone’s used it and tries to catch the drops that fall from the showerhead. She gets all wet, but she doesn’t seem to mind. She’s weird.

(hint: For both of these, if you click on the link below each video, it’ll bring up the vimeo page with the full-size videos.)

Princess drinking from Allison on Vimeo.

While I’m in my Vimeo account, might as well share my other video, which is Princess and Buffy as babies (the little black kittens – the orange ones are their brothers, who I adopted out when they were about 8 weeks old). They were awfully cute, weren’t they? The reason they’re in a cage in my bathroom is because they were born outside, to a feral mother, and I brought them in to socialize them. Since we had two other cats already, we had to keep them separated. It took them some time to warm up to me, especially Princess, who was the most skittish of the bunch, but they eventually did, thanks to lots of playing and bribery. (If anyone finds themselves in the position of socializing kittens, I have three words for you: Gerber baby food. The chicken flavor in particular – no onion – is like crack for kittens. You can see me giving it to them at the 4:27 mark.) This video was taken about a week after we caught the kittens and brought them inside. Even after only a week, they’d made massive improvement with me. They would even climb on me while playing, and let me touch them if they were distracted by a toy, each other, or the baby food. It was a slow process, but very rewarding in the end. That said, I’m not sure I’d do it again unless I was going to keep all the cats: giving those two boys up nearly killed me.

Aw, I’m getting all nostalgic, watching it again. *sniff*

Kittens from Allison on Vimeo.

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Titanic Tuesdays: Artifact auction

I’ve been somewhat slack on my Titanic Tuesdays posts, and I apologize for that. The holidays were crazy busy, both personally and at work, so I fell behind on most writing-related things. I’m hoping to get back in the swing soon. Since I haven’t yet had time to come up with a fully-researched topic this week, I’m going to talk quickly about a news item that came to my attention last week: Thousands of artifacts salvaged from the wreck are going up for auction.

This worries me. The artifacts are fascinating, and seeing them in person is truly awe-inspiring. I’ve seen many of these myself at exhibitions, so I’m praying that whoever buys them will continue to exhibit them to the public in a responsible and respectful manner. It looks like the auction winner will have to be vetted in some way to gain approval to purchase the lot, so I’m cautiously optimistic. It would be awful if they let some rich tycoon buy them and then hoard them away in a personal collection somewhere.

In regards to the artifacts themselves, I’ve always had mixed feelings. On the one hand, there’s something about seeing these items in person that really brings the story of the Titanic to life. It sparks the imagination, makes the people who lost their lives more real. On the other hand, it’s always bothered me that these expeditions are going down, landing on the wreck (which has seriously damaged the decks) and taking things from the ship to haul back out of the sea and put on display. How is that any different than stealing treasures from one of the pyramids? It isn’t, not really, except most pyramids only have one body inside. The Titanic is the grave of over 1500 people.

I’m less bothered by artifacts retrieved from the debris field, though I’m not sure why. Obviously, bodies fell there as well, as evidenced by the photos of leather boots (such as the one on the cover of DESTINED). Maybe it’s because those expeditions aren’t doing any harm to the ship itself? I don’t know. I guess I’m a little bit of a hypocrite all the way around, as I’ve attended many of the artifact exhibitions over the years and done my fair share of “ooh”ing and “ahhh”ing over everything. I may not completely approve of their means, but once the items are on dry land, I can’t resist looking at them. I’m just too fascinated by the ship to look away.

This one in particular, which is part of the lot going up for auction (along with the Big Piece, I believe), is something that has always stuck with me more than any other piece. I’m not really sure why. Maybe it’s because there’s a name on it? There’s a mystery surrounding it, as no one has been able to deduce for certain who it belonged to. Some believe it was Amy Jacobsohn, a 2nd Class passenger, while others believe it was Amy Stanley’s, despite her sailing in Third Class. Some say the bracelet was found in a leather bag that contained items from the 2nd Class Purser’s safe, while others say it was found with other steerage items in the debris field. If you read through some of the message board threads about the bracelet (such as the one on the Encyclopedia Titanica boards here), it’s hard to say who’s right. One person insists they saw an account from Amy Stanley herself that it was hers, yet later her own great granddaughter posts to say this isn’t true. For all we know, it belonged to none of them, and was being brought back to America as a gift for a loved one back home. If I had to speculate, I’d say Amy Jacobsohn makes the most sense. I just can’t imagine a Third Class passenger being able to afford a diamond bracelet.

Pretty, isn’t it? I’m oddly attached to this bracelet, so I hope whoever wins the auction has just as much respect for the items as the rest of us Titanic buffs do. It would be a crime if they faded into obscurity in a dusty storage shed somewhere.

If you’d like to see photos of other pieces in the auction, The Guardian has a slideshow up here.

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