AUGUST/SEPTEMBER

Summer is streaming away, and I’m 2 months behind on my BLOG.  Ay yi yi!!  At least they’ve been two fun-filled, enjoyable months.  Trips to San Diego, Florida and South Carolina, a week visit from our 12 year old granddaughter, a presentation at the Historical Novel Society Convention, where we met some great writers and made new friends, and adding the final touches to Water To My Soul: The Story of Eliza Lucas Pinckney: my new historical novel  soon to be launched, just took up more time than I expected! 

As all writers know, the birthing of a book is a very traumatic experience.  Is it good enough?   Will people like it as much as my other titles?  Are there any mistakes that my various editors missed?  And finally, did I do the best job I could to tell my protagonist’s story?

Yet once we hold our new baby in our hands, we breathe a sigh of relief and the joy returns.  Water To My Soul is my ninth baby, and we’re ready for her arrival! 

Eliza Lucas Pinckney was an incredible Renaissance woman who lived in South Carolina during the colonial period.  She was born in the West Indies, schooled in finishing schools in London, and then brought by her military father to Charles Town, South Carolina when she was just fifteen, where they settled on one of the three plantations her father had inherited.  After only  two years, he was called back to military service to fight against the Spanish.  Leaving Eliza to care for her invalid mother, younger sister and to run the three plantations, he impressed on her the need to find a cash crop to cultivate in order to help out Mother England as well as free their lands from mortgage. 

She chose indigo: against all odds.  She was told it would never grow in the New World.  Yet with true grit and strong will she proved everyone wrong.  This book tells the story of how she made a better future for herself, her family, her society and our fledgling democracy.

My good friend Buddy Sullivan, an award winning Coastal Georgia Historian, penned these words for me as his endorsement.

“Once again, with keenness of insight and perception previously unrevealed in historical novels of this period, Pamela Bauer Mueller provides us with an enlightening glimpse into the world of an exceptional woman in colonial America. Eliza Lucas Pinckney’s story offers an illuminating awareness of the unique culture of indigo planting, while also presenting an intimate perspective of everyday life in colonial Charles Town and its low country environs. Not only is this an educational story of a remarkable 18th century woman with extraordinary courage, skill and grit, but it is also an absolute delight to read!”

I think with that, dear readers, you will be excited and eager to delve into this new historical novel, which we are expecting to make its appearance around the end of the year.  Stay tuned! 

Pamela

APRIL 2011

Oh my!  Reading over my last BLOG, I discover it’s been three months since I’ve written!  My excuse is that this has been a busy time of writing and travel. 

After finishing the first draft of “Water To My Soul,” I escaped all work involving writing/marketing for a Girls’ Weekend (with 20 of my closest friends who shared life with me in Mexico) to Cuernavaca, Mexico: a beautiful weekend resort an hour from Mexico City.  Mimi Mulligan and I met in TX, flew to Acapulco together for a 4 day rest, and joined the others in Cuernavaca for a long weekend, at the hacienda of my dear friend Oliver Araiz.  I hadn’t seen some of these ladies in 25 years!  But we picked right back up as if it were yesterday.  Friendships are so precious!

“Splendid Isolation” has garnered another accolade: it is a finalist in the 2010 ForeWord Reviews Book of the Year Finalist in the Fiction-Historical category.  The results will be announced in May at the ALA/BEA convention.  Keeping our fingers crossed… 

 

The new manuscript is in the hands of my New York editor.  Soon I will know what and how many changes she recommends.  I find that the more suggestions of hers that I follow, the better the book.  Amazing, eh?  She truly knows her business.

Michael and I will travel a great deal in the upcoming months for conventions, art shows, and presentations.  One of the highly anticipated events is the 2011 Historical Novel Society Conference  in San Diego, CA on June 17-19, 2011, where I’ll be a speaker and panelist.  The best news is that my daughter, Cassandra Coveney, and her family live there, so we’ll spend extra days with the grand kids!

You can follow our comings and goings on www.pinatapub.com.  My husband is such an integral part of our publishing business, and I thank God for his love and willing partnership every day.

Stay tuned!  Hopefully, we’ll chat before three more months evaporate!

Blessings,

Pamela

HAPPY NEW YEAR: 2011!

New opportunities, new challenges!  I love the beginning of each year!  Ours started out in Cartagena, Colombia, where Mike and I were traveling with my brother and his wife.  We spent two wonderful weeks in Colombia, accompanied most of the time by a local young lady and her family!  Paola Leon had lived in Oregon for a year with my brother Jack as an exchange student, and was now sharing her amazing country with us.  What a perfect way to begin our new year!

Work on the next novel, tentatively titled Water to my Soul, is coming along well.  I feel I’m three-fourths through the initial writing.  I’ve booked six days away for my “hermit” break at an undisclosed location to write 8-10 hours a day, after which I expect to bring home a nearly-finished “first draft.”  I feel another trip to Charleston, S.C. may be helpful to answer any questions I may have.  After the first draft comes the cosmetic surgery on the novel! 

Sales of Splendid Isolation continue to amaze us, for which we give thanks to the Lord.  Kindle sales of the book are rising rapidly, as well as Book Nook purchases.  We understand this is the way of the future, and we embrace it but still love to hold our books in our hands.  I haven’t even been tempted yet to buy an e-book reader.  Let’s see how long that lasts.   

    

Splendid Isolation has picked up two national awards so far: runner-up in the Wild Card category in the New England Book Festival and a finalist in the 2010 U.S.A. Best Books awards contest in the Biography/History division.  We have entered the book in several other award contests, and are keeping our fingers crossed.  Stay tuned.

Our events have led us to so many interesting places!  The most exciting part of marketing our books is the people we meet.  Please visit our website: www.pinatapub.com to see where we’ll be in the upcoming months.  Let us know if we are in your area and we’ll try to meet you.

Be blessed, and enjoy your 2011,

Pamela

November-December News

Where has summer/early autumn gone?  It’s almost November and there are so many upcoming activities that it’s hard to concentrate on my writing.  For the next 7 weekends, we’re participating in art shows, literary conferences or book signings.  And then there’s a major election just 3 days away!  Ay Yi Yi!

Piñata Publishing now has a strong E-pub presence.  Mike has placed our titles on Kindle and also on the Barnes & Noble Nook.  We’re very pleased about customer sales through that medium.  I, personally, have still not gone that route, but certainly understand why others do.  I just love the feel and smell of physical books.

I’m rolling now on the writing of the Eliza Pinckney story, as yet untitled.  I think perhaps I’ve written close to one-third of the book.  Of course I’ll be re-writing, editing, writing again, etc. but it feels good to finally be inside her head.  I’d love to have more time to spend on just writing, and know that it will come.

Our last title, “Splendid Isolation” was selected as a finalist for the 2010 USA Book News’ Best Book Awards in the Biography: Historical division.  We are so happy about being chosen for this award.  It’s a national honor where we competed against traditional publishers as well as independents and small presses.  Mike and I are always delighted when small and independent publishers are award winners.  We strongly support them, as we support independent films and bookstores.  

A lot of traveling in our imminent future.  Please check out our Event Calendar on www.pinatapub.com to follow our journeys.  We’d love to visit with you in the venues near your homes. 

Enjoy your fall season and the start of winter.  Be safe in your travels.  And have a very blessed holiday season!

Warm wishes,

Pamela

   

SEPTEMBER/OCTOBER UPDATE

It’s September 1, and I’m writing my BLOG on time! I think this may be a first! Summer is fading into a cooler fall here in coastal Georgia and we’re so ready for that! Wonderful things have taken place during the summer months as our business and book sales grew proportionately. Three of our books are now being distributed in France by an American/European press. We feel so grateful for our many blessings!

We’re also grateful to be living on Jekyll Island. Found a wonderful song/slideshow  that expresses what we feel. See what we mean and enjoy!

Mr. Richard Freeland from Suite 101 wrote an interesting review on Splendid Isolation coining a word I particularly liked in describing the writing style.

“Splendid Isolation weaves a spell centered around the Jekyll Island of the late 1800's and early 1900's. You could call it "faction", a historical novel told from the perspective of the Jekyll Island Club employees, and how they perceived their employers - men like Rockefeller, Goodyear, Pulitzer and Morgan, who met on Jekyll Island every year for some down time from their empires. Their actions while on the island were instrumental in creating history - notably the Federal Reserve. A great read that will open your eyes to how actions from the past impact the future. One of the best Jekyll Island books on the list.”

So would you say a “faction” is historical fiction with action? Or factual historical events? Either way, I like it.

I spent about two weeks over the summer in Charleston, S.C. researching my next book on Eliza Lucas Pinckney. The South Carolina Historical Museum has an amazing library with wonderful people eager to help me find what I needed. I also visited the home where Eliza lived at the end of her life: Hampton Plantation. It was there that she and her daughter Harriott Horry entertained President George Washington for breakfast in 1791. How fascinating to actually stand on the porch where he stood! It gave me goose bumps! I shall include photos of this house in the book.

Next step: begin the writing process. Most of the organization is done, so I’ll take a deep breath and plunge in. This is always a leap of faith for authors. We tend to deliberate too long, rationalize why we are not ready to go but we’re really just scared to get the ball rolling. Since it IS my birthday month, I’ve decided to go for it.

Wish me well and stay tuned,

Pamela

JULY/AUGUST NEWS

WHOA, Nelly! Who ever heard of an independent publisher ordering a second book print three months after the “second” first print??? What? Like you, we find this hard to wrap our brains around. Nevertheless, the Lord has blessed Piñata Publishing with our new book! We’re ready to print 5,000 more copies of Splendid Isolation! This has never happened with any of our previous seven books, so we are joyfully giving Him ALL the glory! Much to our delight, this book has been a local favorite since it launched January 2010. We don’t really understand it, but we’ll gratefully take it! It seems the tourists on Jekyll Island truly have a hunger to read about the history of this island through the novel form, and we’ve been the fortunate ones to offer it to them!

Book signings, school visits, and conferences have kept us very busy up to the summer months, and now we’re finally taking a necessary break to travel and enjoy our time together. Family is extremely important to us, and Mom’s 90^th Birthday Party in July is a much-anticipated celebration. We’ll join the rest of her five kids, all of her grandkids, and most of the great-grandkids on the west coast for this cherished event! By the way, Mom, thank you for being one of my greatest book critics and customers!

I know I said I would be “resting” and “marketing” this year, and would NOT be entertaining ideas for my next book project. However, fate has intervened. My dear friend Betty Smith of Jekyll Island suggested what she thought my next subject should be. And she was correct! Once she told me about Eliza Lucas Pinckney, I was hooked. So I’ve already begun research on her (an 18^th century very independent South Carolinian woman) and am very excited to eventually tell her story. Stay tuned for more details on her life, and thank you Betty!

Stay cool, keep reading, and enjoy your summer! All too soon it will be winter!!! That will be a GOOD THING!

Blessings,

Pamela

May/June

Whew! Once again the days are rushing by in a whirlwind of activities. It’s all good! (our slogan on Jekyll Island) and we’re giving thanks for all our blessings! Besides our book business--writing and marketing--we wear another smaller business hat. We started renting out the loft above our home: ALOFT and now that Spring is here and Summer’s on its way, we find ourselves busy with book keeping, cleaning and meeting new guests. If you’re interested, visit www.vrbo.com and type in 259282.

We have all our books as ebooks with Kindle, with the exception of The Kiska Trilogy. We’ve also put Splendid Isolation on Smashwords and other ebook formats. I encourage my author friends to get your books into digital formats: the growing trend in publishing.

Splendid Isolation continues to astound us with amazing sales and great reviews. Right out of the gate its sales and interest have certainly surpassed the other seven books I’ve written. We’ve re-printed 3,000 books for the “first print,” and if it continues selling at this rate, we’ll be printing the second print by Fall. It is featured this week on www.authorsroundthesouth.com, a Southern Independent Booksellers Alliance affiliation, as “Her Ladyship’s Pick of the Week.” A great deal of its success is due to the independent bookstores and their wonderful employees who hand sell it. Thank you so much to each one of you!!!

The month of May will wrap up school author visits for me with a three-day presentation at Corner Lake Middle School in Orlando, FL. June, July and August will fill up with book signings at both independent and large bookstores. We are booked in South Carolina, Georgia, and Florida at this time, and will look into several signings in North Carolina as well. Mike and I love to travel, so this is a great way to combine business with exploration of new areas!

No, I’m not yet researching the next book. I really am taking this year off from researching and writing. The primary activity for Piñata Publishing this year is Marketing. You writers know how important that is, and you know that you are the best one to market your work, so we’re following the advice we give you. But yes, I will begin to read more stories of the south, so that by next year, I’ll have a better idea of what area I want to explore in my next novel. There are so many stories out there, and I’m looking forward to becoming passionate about someone else and his/her life journeys.

Have a blessed Summer,

Pamela