A New Direction

This blog started out as a business idea, one that I hoped would help me build my social media portfolio and become my own independent business. My primary goal was to start and maintain a business I could manage from my home so that I could achieve the perfect home/work balance I sought. Unfortunately, my financial portfolio and backers didn't have the patience to wait for me to grow Red Cupboard Solutions into a bona fide business. And when I received a great offer to market for a software company part-time, I couldn't refuse. So the blog posts became less frequent.

Then I published my book and dedicated space on my blog for promoting Preacher Kid. Always, the posts are interspersed with completely unrelated topics on my thoughts or beliefs, as I navigate through life.

So I thank those of you who have subscribed and followed me on this journey. I am not retiring the blog but I am going to turn it very definitely in the direction of personal experience and opinion and life lessons. I'm sure I will still find myself blogging now and then about the challenges and successes of small businesses, because it is a topic dear to my heart. And I'm positive that my book will slip in here now and then as I move into my next writing project: an eBook for the 10- to 15-year-old girls in my life about a fictitious young girl growing up in early 20th Century Ohio, based on Esther Miller's story.

To my subscribers, I value your loyalty but respect that you may have come upon my blog for reasons other than hearing my personal views. And if you choose to unsubscribe, that is perfectly understandable! If you choose to stay, thank you! Staying may mean you will hear, with irregularity, about raising three teen males (who are quite sure they don't need any more raising), how I miss the Midwest, and the silly questions in my life such as should I replace my 100-year-old main staircase that has gotten progressively creakier. Oh, wait. Those are just my knees. Ah yes, that fun topic of aging and all of the retrospection, realization, and grounding it brings.

So if someone were to stumble newly upon my blog and peruse the archives, they would see a journey from small business social media maven (2012), then author promotion (2013 and a little in 2014), turning to life in general - which has been going on all along, in and around the marketing and promotion. Now, maybe as I see my years of direct parenting dwindling in front of me, it is what I should have been writing about all along. It is the best job I've ever had.

So the journey continues. And for those who have been following my more personal posts...My family traveled to the Grand Canyon this summer (in addition to 1,600 other miles of adventure)! Another check off my bucket list!

Always Adapting

We all have to adapt to survive. In fact, even though we don't like to admit it, we are in a constant state of adaptation. We like to believe that we are in control of our lives, as well the lives of the dependents in our care. And we can usually perpetuate the mirage of control, until one of life's larger forces rears its head - such as illness, accident, or death.

My grandma, Esther, mastered the art of adaptation, but I don't believe she purposefully schooled herself in adaptation. I think her ability to adapt came out of a deeper drive, lodged down in her soul, that placed survival above all else. Adaptation became a by-product of survival for her, as it does for many of us. Esther adapted to her nomadic life as a Preacher Kid, the chasm created in her family by her marriage to a Catholic, the sudden death of her 11 year-old son, the taking of her home by the state, and the deaths of her three spouses. Her story of adaptation in the face of adversity is an inspiration to people facing challenges of their own.

Whether it is a chronic illness, handicap or death of a child, depression or mental illness, relentless addiction, the premature death of a spouse or parent, a dooming medical diagnosis, a tragic accident, or a dramatic shift in life's course, we all have experienced tragedies or watched others navigate their own. But we adapt. We soldier through. We give support. We accept help. And what was once unthinkable or nightmarish, becomes the new normal. If it weren't for role models of resilience, we would be lost.

On this anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombing, I think about the Richard family who lost their little boy, Martin, in the blast. As Denise Richard surveys her surroundings through her one eye that she did not lose to the bomb fragments, she may see her husband's permanent scars and compensate for his hearing loss. She would see her daughter with her prosthetic leg and her surviving son with his lost innocence who saw more horror and loss in an hour than most Americans see in a lifetime. But she also would see the living room full of friends and supporters who sit down with her family to discuss and decide the best course on which to move forward to honor Martin's life. The Richards have chosen the shadows in which to learn to acclimate to their new normal. But today forces them into the limelight. And their presence and resilience is nothing less than heroic. I hope these days and weeks under the microscope are not too hard on them.

I have had the sad experience of feeling the shroud enveloping the community that lost a child. The heartache of everyday activities is soothed by the love of the community that understands the space the family must be given, but also the arm stretched out at just the right time and length to assure the family that they are not alone. One of the most poignant moments of my grandma's life was when a couple reached out to her family after the death of her son, when everyone else around them chose only distance.

I look to my grandma for inspiration when I am conscious that I must adapt. If I didn't have to adapt, I would be heading to Rocky River this July to visit my parents. But instead, I have the honor of presenting at the Rocky River Public Library. I am looking forward to the evening with great anticipation. It will be a genealogy discussion similar to the presentation I gave in Needham, MA in January. I am a bit overwhelmed - in a positive way - at the prospect of presenting my genealogy journey and my book at the library that helped foster my love of reading. If you are in the Rocky River area, I hope you will come! If you are busy that day, you will soon be able to check my book out from the library. And I hope my donated books will be given book plates in memory of Jack and Peg McCarthy, who will be at the presentation in their own, special way.

Author Visit: "Are You Ready to Find Your Family Story?" Wednesday, July 23rd, 7:00pm, Rocky River Public Library Community Room

If you would like to support the MIT community and survivors and families who lost loved ones in the Boston Marathon bombing, here are some great sites:

• MIT Strong : Support the whole team running this year's Boston Marathon or direct your donation to my friend, Dava Newman, by clicking her name in the right margin.
• One Fund Boston
• Kenny Chesney's Spread the Love Fund

Find Your Family Story

My Miller Roots: Esther on the Right

A big "thank you" to all who attended my talk at the Needham Public Library on January 26th. I loved every minute of it. But some of the best parts I couldn't have possibly anticipated.

Showtime was 2:00pm. I arrived at 1:15pm for an equipment check and I was not the first one to arrive. Besides the wonderful Friends members who were setting up, there were two guests who had arrived together early to take the extra time they needed to get good seats. They were followed closely by a handful of other early arrivals who came in pairs: a son and his elderly mother, some friends, and two sisters. One of the sisters offered me the speaking tip, as a former despiser of public speaking, to hold my pointer finger to my thumb as a stress diffuser. She and her sister also told me, with examples, how much they love people from the Midwest, so they won me over right out of the blocks. Actually, they had me at "We've been talking about this all week."

After the talk and questions, a number of people approached me with tales of their own genealogy research, one woman even carried a prized research document. From my friend who came here as a young woman from Ireland, who knows all about her ancestry, but is inspired to have her daughter sit with her mother and write down her stories the next time they go "home," to the retiree who asked me to sign my book for him as he explained how he recently buried his father and brought his mother to the event because they are interested in exploring their genealogy, it was a wonderful, heartwarming experience for me. There is strong interest in the subject of family genealogy and a sort of "strength in numbers" as people who work away at it on their own feel a collective boost from learning or knowing that others are doing the same. I think it makes what can be a somewhat solitary job feel less lonesome. Not to mention the boost given to those who have thought about beginning the journey and attended the talk to get started in the right direction.

I'm fortunate that my son and husband recorded my talk, even though I was at first skeptical about having my family in the front row! I've added a link to the recording (now a YouTube video: Are You Ready to Find Your Family Story?) here and as a permanent addition to my blog (the smaller screen seems to give the best resolution). It would have been silly to record the before and after conversations because it would have been impossible to capture my feelings or the sincerity of the people I met. But those are great personal memories I am now the better for having. 

If you missed the talk, I hope you have time to view the recording. My cameraman had to switch cameras with about 3 minutes left, so the last few minutes are not as clear. But you can get the general idea in the other 45 minutes. In case you can't make out the last few minutes, I closed with the story of my Uncle Max, previously blogged about here, and the following advice: The genealogy resources that are available to us are amazingly large in volume, many are free, most are readily accessible, and all will continue to grow, but the people who are alive today to tell their stories won't be here forever. Don't waste any time in listening to their stories.

I feel as though I reached my talk's goal to inspire at least one person in the crowd of 50 to find their family story. I hope I have the opportunity to give the talk many times again at other libraries and other venues. There are so many people thinking about beginning the journey to find their family story and I want to say to them again, don't wait!

Mixed Motivations

As I prepare for next month's talk at my local library, I am creating a short presentation to try to capture the DIY genealogical research journey I took to fill in the holes in Esther Miller's story. As I analyze how I went from 12 pages of hand-written memories to a published book, I realize the importance of the motivation of the journey.

There are at least five common motivations for embarking on a quest to document a person's history:

1. In homage to an influential person in your life
2. A partial story begging to be completed
3. Curiosity about specific, ancestral roots
4. The desire to preserve a story for future generations
5. The dream of finding a story worthy of publishing

There may be more, but at every point in my own journey, I was motivated by at least one of these, usually a combination of many. The degree to which each motivation guided me shifted constantly as I progressed. In the end, without all five of these motivators, I may not have finished the project.

Esther had been gone for over five years so I would miss the prize of showing her the story I had written. There are holes in her life story that I can never fill - and those who know me know how I have to find all of the pieces to a puzzle. This was a trait which made it hard to come to terms with the fact that I had found all I was going to find.

I developed a love of history of all kinds from my father - broad history but also personal history. So my curiosity in finding my Confederate South ancestry and my Irish ancestors' ports of entry kept me knocking on virtual door after door.

But my main driver was to preserve Esther's story for future generations. Even if I failed to find all of the pieces of the puzzle or identify the ports of entry or show Esther what I had done with her life story, I had enough to go on to create a gift for my children and nieces and nephews, and those who come after them. What I didn't realize was how much value the completed story would have to my family of my own generation, my parents' generation, and my family's friends.

The book has become a catalyst for reminiscing and discovering stories that had been forgotten. It has enabled some stories to be relayed that would have otherwise been too hard to tell. And there are few healthier pastimes I know of than sitting with a group, from two to many, of people you love, talking about people you love who have passed away, their antics and experiences, and the imprint they left upon us.

I can't write enough about the gratitude I feel from my sisters and aunt, so I won't even try. But a nice way to express it was a call I got Friday evening from one of my mom's childhood friends who lives in Colorado. We had a long conversation about my mom and Esther and she recounted some priceless stories that didn't make it into the book; stories of women and children whose younger lives I can only imagine, but whose souls I was privy to and whose memories make me laugh and cry. We talked about how reading the book made her relive some wonderful childhood memories, relish some teen secrets, and reignite old feelings. At the end of the call, my mom's friend said "I just wanted to thank you for writing it. That's all. That's why I called. Just to thank you for writing it."

It won't make broad distribution, as I admittedly had dreamt, in reference to point 5 above. But the story is all that it needs to be. And the gratitude is all mine. I'm not sure if the book is the end of the journey. But the journey to find my family story is one of the best trips I ever took.

If you are in the Needham area in late January, come help me fill the room on Sunday, January 26th at 2:00pm at the Needham Free Public Library. Or tell a friend who is interested in DIY family genealogy. The program is called "Are You Ready to Find Your Family Story?" The discussion will not be about the book. It will be about the journey.

Learning from the Pros

While I was working on the research and writing of my book, I tried to read as many memoirs, biographies, and collections as I could. This tactic introduced me to so many different writing styles and was my D-I-Y approach to learning how to tell a story. From that collection of books, emerged my short-list of wonderful guidebooks:

1. Growing Up, by Russell Baker: It still holds as my all-time favorite memoir. His gift of story-telling is unsurpassed. This should be read within the same 90 days as reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith.
2. Anything and everything by Anne Lamott, but especially Bird By Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. For any anxious, new, blocked, or expert writers, this is a gem like no other.
3. All Over But the Shoutin', by Rick Bragg. An unbelievable story told with incredible candor.
4. Living Out Loud, by Anna Quindlen: A great collection of columns and perfect bedside book.
5. The Glass Castle and Half Broke Horses, by Jeannette Walls. Thanks to Dennis, I have a signed copy of The Glass Castle with Ms. Walls' encouragement to me, "To Kathy, Good luck writing! Jeannette Walls"
6. God Never Blinks: 50 Lessons for Life's Little Detours, by Regina Brett.

From the list, you can see that I am genetically predisposed to enjoy works by columnists! Ellen Goodman is my other go-to gal for describing the human experience and how it affects the heart.

So with my lessons from the pros, I plowed ahead and tried to write a book from my folders of research. In fact, I wrote the first draft of what would become Preacher Kid, from cover to cover, as a detached reporter focused on getting the facts right. Then after some soul-searching and life detours, I rewrote the entire book from a personal perspective, recognizing that my voice added value to my grandma's story.

,

Preacher Kid on the Needham Library "New" shelf!

I think, over time, my voice may develop into something different, but will still retain a certain true core. When I write my next book (!), we will see if any evolution has taken place. One of my favorite voices to listen to is Anne Lamott. She has a freshness, intelligence, and liveliness found in her stream-of-consciousness writing that engages me as if she is sitting on my back porch, shooting the breeze with me. She writes with an abandonment I don't yet have. She possesses a window into my soul and much of what she writes articulates or uncovers true feelings I share. It is a fantastic combination.

And speaking of Anne Lamott, I won her latest book in a contest this week! When I saw that she was giving away copies of her soon-to-be-released book via Goodreads, I decided to click the button and enter.

I wrote about one of Anne's other books in a prior post. Her sequel to Help, Thank, Wow: The Three Essential Prayers was written in the aftermath of the December 2012 Newtown, CT tragedy. The book is titled, Stitches: A Handbook on Meaning, Hope and Repair. If you know me well, you can see the appropriateness, on many levels, of me winning Stitches.

Thank you to all of the professionals who have helped me so far!

Coming Home

As a teen in suburban Cleveland, I spent most summer nights sleeping on our second-floor, screened-in porch, on an aluminum cot with a thin foam mattress and a sheet - to escape the heat of my bedroom. My bedroom, which I shared with my older sister, would absorb the heat of the afternoon sun for 6 hours and hold and multiply it. No fan could dislodge the heat that hung in the air and air conditioning was not an option, so the porch became my summer bedroom. 

We lived about 100 yards from railroad tracks where freight trains rode day and night from Midwest loading docks to the East Coast and back, carrying cars, ore, grain, and steel. They weren't the polite commuter trains like the ones I now live near, with orderly schedules, 4 or 5 shock-absorbing cars, and an 11pm curfew. But thundering streams of 20 or more cars whose whistles you could hear coming in the distance, whose weight shook the ground as they road by. As monstrous and scary as they were in the daytime, they became the railway lullaby of lore in the night, lulling me to sleep with their muffled chu-chunk as each car passed over the rail seam.

I returned to that memory last week as I listened to the night trains from our summer cottage rental in Huron, OH. That annual vacation is always a "coming home" for me and the night trains are a revisited comfort I never would have anticipated in my teens.

I felt the same sense of "coming home" as I sat at my first book signing event last Thursday in Joseph-Beth Booksellers at the main Cleveland Clinic campus. It is hard to describe, but the warmth and interest people showed as I described my book reminded me of my own continued belonging to this city I left 27 years ago. The book signing was a great experience, with the store manager describing it as one of their most successful signings, inviting me to return for a repeat performance next time I'm in town. It was validation of the audience I have sought - finding readers who can relate not just to Esther Miller's story, but to the city that was the backdrop of her adult life. 

First book signing of Preacher Kid

The author table was set up at the entrance to the store, flanked by candles and aromatherapy products (and socks!) - providing a welcome calm to help me fend off the jitters. There was a pretty steady stream of customers in this store in a city-within-a-city: Some looking specifically for a book, some browsing to kill time at the Clinic, and others who hadn't considered buying a book until they noticed my table. It was a fun marketing experiment from which I learned a great deal and had the added benefits of my aunt by my side, my sisters and niece making a surprise appearance, and a cameo from my high school friend, Marcia, who can turn any ordinary event into a comedy routine.

I wish I had 20 more signings in Ohio! I'll have to work on that - all assistance welcome! But last week's event was a great kick-off to my slow motion book tour!

Slow Motion Book Tour

It has been about seven months since I published the first run of Preacher Kid and one thing that has not dissipated over those months is my nervousness over “putting myself out there.” I have always enjoyed being a behind-the-scenes worker, playing supportive roles, not seeking the spotlight. In my illustrious business career, I have developed decent presentation skills by accepting the requirement of a marketing manager who must present ideas, status, conclusions, strategic plans, and product demonstrations to audiences large and small. But that aspect of the job description has never been an area of great comfort for me. The best feeling I get out of presenting is the relief that rolls over me when I'm done.

From a certain angle, Preacher Kid is one long, continuous presentation – up to this point, made mostly behind the Internet's curtain of anonymity. Even so, I stress regularly at the thought that maybe my writing skills are not really worthy of publishing or at the fact that, stubbornly acting as my own editor, I missed many typos, having read the draft so many times that I could no longer see it. I really do know the difference between “where” and “were!” In fact, I currently get paid to copy/edit. My co-worker even gave me a coffee mug with a spelling rule emblazoned on it, in thanks for my respected grammar-girl role in the department.

But editing copy under a deadline of a few hours is very different than proofing the manuscript I developed as a labor of love for 7 years. Thank goodness for self-publishing, its on-demand printing, and the option to re-submit files with a 24-hour turn-around.

The curtain will open this month as I participate in my first book signing, which takes place on Thursday, July 25th at Joseph-Beth Booksellers in Cleveland (11:00am to 2:00pm). I imagined a modest book tour when I first published Preacher Kid – one involving a trip to each of the nine Ohio towns and cities lived in by Esther Miller. Unfortunately, I don’t have the time or resources to take that tour at this stage in my life. So my dream book tour will take place in slow motion, with a start this month and future stops to be determined! I contacted one independent book store in Cleveland (chosen because it had been my mom's favorite bookstore when it was located out on Cedar Road) and they said “yes.” Should I have contacted more? Yes. Do I think other bookstores would be interested? Yes. But I will have to test that theory some other time. Right now, I am only willing to give up one day of my family vacation in Ohio for the book!

So I will bring my box of books and my “favorite pens” (the bookstore's recommendation) with me to Ohio and step onto the tiny stage. Any book-signing advice you can offer me is most welcome. My crew at home has set me up with the advice to bring a crossword puzzle to work on! Thanks for the vote of confidence! If you are in the Cleveland area on July 25th, please come say hello between 11 and 2. I will be the one at the table with the pens and the nervous smile. And no crossword puzzle.

Target Practice

A forty-something year-old woman in casual business attire walks into a suburban salon/spa and the two women working the counter literally fall over themselves to get a brochure into her hands. What do you think they spotted first? The unchecked gray in her hair? Her un-manicured nails? Or the face lacking all traces of the scant make-up applied 8 hours earlier? She is exactly the customer they target.

Unfortunately for them, that woman was me. And all I was looking for was the single salon hair product I buy about once every 6 years because I use so little of it. But I was flattered, in a comical way! No one has fallen all over themselves to get to me since my boys were toddlers! The two times in my life I’ve gone to a beauty spa, I only went upon coercion from friends. It is awkward and uncomfortable to me and not something I seek out. But for every one of me, there are 50 other women who love the experience and keep the salon/spas in business. They correctly identified me on the surface. But I’m an outlier!

I think about that funny encounter as I research target companies in my day job and as I attempt to define my target reader audience for Preacher Kid. Sometimes the target market is so well defined and so recognizable that it walks right up to you and says “hello.” Other times, it takes more finesse, not to mention trial and error, to locate the company or person who will be receptive to the “brochure.”

I am excited to be invited to speak at my local library as part of their annual speaker series. The single reason they were receptive to my "brochure" is because I adjusted my target to highlight my journey of discovery. I am joining them not because my book is such a sensation. In New England, far from Esther Miller’s roots, the attraction to the book about a girl from Ohio lies more in the research process than the story. And I have to say, I am thrilled to present my research journey, especially if it demystifies the process or encourages others to start their own search. Of course I would love to talk about Esther, but it would probably feel like sharing my home movies with strangers! Not that that ever stopped my Grandpa McCarthy – invited by the Lakewood Library, on many occasions, to show his films from his globetrotting!

I discovered that my local library offers free use of Ancestry.com from their PCs. I think this is a common, yet often overlooked, benefit offered by many public libraries. I spent hours there, inputting ancestral names, deciphering cursive census entries from the 1800s, following a genealogical path down the decades until I lost the trail, and combing through birth, marriage, and death records trying to match names and dates to fill in the missing puzzle pieces. I found the whole task utterly captivating and was often startled out of my seat by the library bell notifying patrons of the impending close.

Some people put off the research because it seems overwhelming, they think it will be tedious, or they don’t realize how accessible old records have become. Not only is it accessible, it is free. I gathered many stories and memories from my living relatives, but that still left many holes in the story. Every bit of research to fill in those holes came from sitting at my computer or the library’s computers – with the important exceptions of my mom and sister, Megan’s, fact-finding mission to Asheville and my time, elbows-deep, in the archives at the Western Reserve Fire Museum in Cleveland. There is so much at our fingertips! It is simply amazing.

It is off in the distance a bit, but mark your calendars for January 26, 2014 and please come to the Needham Library for a fun little journey. Party at my house afterwards! Complete with home movies.

The Risk of Waiting Too Long

Max & Edna (1940-something)

One of the many side-stories of my Preacher Kid writing journey involves my great uncle, Uncle Max. He was my grandma’s youngest sibling, born in 1919, when Esther was 11 years old. 

Like most of his siblings, Max Miller lived a long life. He stayed sharp as a tack right up until he died at the age of 87. Which is why I sought him out when I was trying to put the pieces of my grandma’s life together. He would still have the childhood memories, the stories of making do with what they had, the color on his parents, and the dirt on Esther.

It had been years since I had seen Uncle Max. I probably last saw him when I was in high school. He had lived with his wife, Edna, in Columbus and we used to love to drive down there and motor around on his pontoon boat that he docked at the bottom of the hill that led to their house on a lake. Max and Edna never had any children, but they loved children. It was always great fun to visit them and get a chance to laugh with Aunt Louise, who was part of the Columbus package.

So as my thoughts were swirling and forming in 2006, I wrote a letter to Uncle Max who had for many years lived in Lakeland, FL. In the letter, I suggested taking a trip to Lakeland, spending a few days with him, and capturing his memories as well as spending some precious time together.

Do you sometimes calculate a letter’s journey? I do it fairly often. And I knew that it would take 2 days to get from Boston to Lakeland. Then I wanted to give him a few days to process the idea. Then I would give him a call.

The day before I planned to call Uncle Max, my mom called to tell me that Uncle Max had died earlier that day. He had had a long life. He died peacefully in his sleep, like the turning off of a switch. He had been a very small presence in my adult life but he was a link to my grandma that I had come so close to reconnecting. My husband jokingly blames me for Max’s death! But I’m grateful that perhaps Max opened my letter, felt love and appreciation from a distant source, pictured my sisters and I rolling and laughing down the hill in front of his house, thought about his long life and his family a bit, and smiled.

Many people’s reaction to reading Preacher Kid has been one of reinforcement that they should write the life story of a relative or other influential person in their life. I can’t tell you how many times I have heard, “I should write a book about my [fill in the blank].” Well, my advice to you is “do it.” And do it now, before it is too late! The book about my grandma’s life would have been exponentially richer if I had written it while she was alive and helping me. It would have been more colorfully illuminated had her brother, Max, had a hand in it. I think I did alright with the great help from my mom and aunt. But I wish I had written it sooner.

Do you have someone you want to write about? What are you waiting for?

Starting from My Own Beginning

If you planned to go to an author visit at your local library or book store and your two choices were to see:

(a) a local author, discussing her first book about a 20th century woman who spent most of her life in a distant state or 

(b) an author visiting her childhood city, discussing her first book about a 20th century woman who lived in your city, grew up in your state and had family connections throughout your region, 

I think most would choose the latter. With this in mind, I’m focusing my initial marketing efforts in the Cleveland area, with a parallel campaign in the markets near my current home.

Two Cleveland Plain Dealer (PD) columnists I enjoy reading are Connie Schultz and Regina Brett. So they have landed on the top of my target list. Ms. Brett was even nice enough, two years ago, to suggest a Cleveland publisher to me. That publisher is also on my list – I’m always open to allowing second chances! When I crafted my letters to these Clevelanders, I leaned heavily on my Grandpa Joe’s memory, even though I think they will find my grandma’s story compelling purely from their own personal vantage points.

Amazingly enough, the man at the PD who edited my grandma’s obituary and both of my parents’ obituaries knew my grandpa personally. There are still people at the Plain Dealer who were starting out as my grandpa was exiting, who remember him. Columnists for the Plain Dealer should recognize his name. If not, I would highly recommend that they set aside some quality reading time in the PD archives with some of Joseph F. Saunders’ columns, getting to know him and Cleveland in the mid-1900s.

Here is what I hope will pique these Clevelanders’ (and others’) interest:

• One of the book’s main characters is Joseph F. Saunders who was a reporter, editor and columnist for the PD from 1937-1968.
• Joe Saunders’ PD columns helped Carl Stokes win his election as the first African-American mayor of a major US city.
• Esther lived in Cleveland from 1932 to 1969 after escaping a life of near-poverty, moving around rural Ohio as a “Preacher Kid.” Esther married Joe Saunders and moved into the house where he was raised on W 74th Street, the heavily Irish area of Cleveland’s near-West Side.
• Joe was a graduate of John Carroll University and his father was a Cleveland firefighter who was killed in the line of duty when Joe was 2.
• Bernice Secrest Pyke (the first woman appointed as a delegate to the DNC – 1920) helped her niece, Esther, land a job in Depression-dimmed Cleveland in 1932. Esther’s job was with the newly-formed Federal Reserve Bank where she was paid in script.

I am hopeful that these writers, as well as the independent bookstores scattered around Cleveland, will be drawn to Esther’s story. My friend, Leslie, made the very true comment that people whose lives are mostly put down as “ordinary” by all accounts, are anything but. I hope others see that in Esther’s story.

One of my personal goals is to interest Rocky River Public Library in an author visit highlighting Preacher Kid. Not only did I spend hundreds of hours in that building in my pre-internet youth, but Esther was a patron as a Rocky River resident, it never stopped being one of my dad’s favorite places to explore, and my mom served on their Board of Trustees for a number of years. If I were given the opportunity to discuss Preacher Kid at the Rocky River Public Library, I would most certainly be visiting in my family’s honor.

The Cleveland area is my starting point. But I’m pulling out my map of Ohio again and charting my course to match my grandma’s journey. And figuring out who I can stay with along the way! Cleveland is all set – thanks Anne!

Best Birthday Ever

A number of amazing things have happened to me as a direct result of publishing Preacher Kid. The one that will stick with me the longest happened on my birthday. I have a Christmas season birthday so it generally gets absorbed into the holiday and is only acknowledged by a small but crucial few. This past birthday was the first time in 10 years I have not spent my birthday in a mini-van speeding across I-90 from Boston to Cleveland.

I had a real birthday: I woke up in the house of my destination, surrounded by people I love. And there was cake. But this year, I learned that my sister had given my book not just as a gift to her three children, but to my cousin, Jamie, whose name she had in our gift exchange. Our annual cousin Christmas party was on my birthday, so the “surrounded by people I love” element expanded exponentially.

I grew up in an environment where my cousins were my first friends. For as long as I can remember, but with a blur as to how frequently, we met at my paternal grandparents’ house on Sunday afternoons for dinner with our cousins. The house was about a mile away from my house, even closer to one set of cousins, and my East Side cousins made the much farther trek. There was KFC and Jell-O on the outside tables for the kids and the adults ate inside (brilliant!). We played simple games that always developed a distinct element of daredevil or insanity. We loved and tormented each other, depending on the personalities, and we always looked forward to the event, even though it carried with it a small edge of danger and unpredictability.

All these years later, I look over our group and realize how close we have all fallen from the tree that sprouted us. It is no wonder most of my sisters and cousins are in medical, education or counseling professions – coming from my grandfather (the doctor), from my aunts who were extraordinary nurses and teachers, and from my dad and his brother who were exceptional teachers. We represent an extremely wide array of personalities and those differences are noticeable in everyone’s approach to their own lives and loves. But there is a strong underlying current that is the same. Somewhere in the craziness of those Sunday afternoons, grew love and compassion, toward each other and aimed at the world around us. Now as adults, we celebrate each other’s achievements, small and large, we counsel and console each other about life's daily grind, and we catch each other when we fall. We know each other better than many others do, even though we only see each other twice a year. We understand our inner core and know we will always be accepted and loved in this mix. That is surely why we work so hard to get together – an extraordinary objective we gladly relish at Christmas and during the last week of every July.

So this past December, I found myself in my cousin, Anne’s, amazing century-old house with my family of 5, my three sisters and their families, spending the afternoon with many of my McCarthy cousins - bringing our total to 31. My cousin, Jamie, had started reading my book and gave it a glowing review, demanding an autograph of his copy when I see him this summer. Kelly (lover of all things vintage) admired the pictures and I could have talked to her all day about Esther's story. Jamie made a toast to me and of course there was cake. Dan, nearing 20, sweetly reminded me of our bond as December babies and I could so easily picture him making someone feel grounded and safe as the firefighter he is training to be. I could not have been in a better place. And the whole reason I began my grandma’s story was so that her story would not fade away. Here it was, being shared and gaining a following.

These are the kids I grew up with. They knew Esther, my maternal grandmother, but not the way I did. And they were genuinely excited to learn about the life of the woman they had known. They made me feel great about myself and my self-publishing. It now stands as the best birthday of my life – beating out my 16th when my parents threw a surprise party for me - where my mom watched guiltily as I almost had a heart attack in my own basement. That was a rather longstanding benchmark for birthdays. Who knows what else this book will bring.

One other amazing thing I want to share is that my son, Liam, converted the book to an iBook and it is now available from the iTunes Store. The iBook version is the best version, for the clearer, bigger pictures and a little 1970 video!

Publishing Preacher Kid

Front cover - More on back!

I took a month off from blogging to finally push my big writing project over the waterfall. So here I am, back again, ready to apply and expand my social media skills in the effort of marketing a self-published book. I fully expect that everything I learn about marketing a book via social media will have relevancy in the world of small business marketing. So I hope my followers will continue with me on this journey of developing social media skills! It should be interesting!

I’ve been writing this book for six years – ever since my parents sat in my family room six autumns ago and I commented to my mom that she should write a story about her mom. Her response was “Oh no. You should write it.” So I did. I had been wanting to try my hand at writing a book for some time but knew I really didn’t have the motivation to write a novel. My favorite genre is historical fiction. And I’m a research geek. My mom and her sister knew the story they lived with my grandma and there was the 12-page, handwritten account she wrote one year for my sister’s school project. But there were many holes in her childhood story and in her known ancestry. All of her descendants recognized the amazing qualities of her life and no one wanted the story to fade away over time. Writing the story of my maternal grandmother’s life was the perfect fit for me.

So the research and the writing was a long journey which I won’t go into here. The last piece, the publishing piece, was a learning experience all along the way. I wanted to, and was encouraged by some people “in the know,” to find a commercial publisher for the book. That is a very single-threaded task and covered the good part of a year and a half before I finally realized my book has very little mass appeal (now that admission is not good marketing!), but tremendous value to a certain audience. Although, honestly, I think a screenwriter could take the basics and make a terrific movie out of it! Hmmm. Project 342?!

I self-published with CreateSpace which is owned or partnered with Amazon.com. It was a great experience until it came to the formatting. But I’m going to throw Microsoft under the bus on that one. Translating it to Kindle is turning into another headache. But I will get it there eventually.
 
The best part about the self-publishing process was the cover design. The end product I designed is one I love. I spread a map of Ohio on my dining room table (a table which just so happens to have belonged to my grandma), put an old photo of my grandma on it, and walked around my house gathering an armful of items that once belonged to her. The end result is my cover: an antiqued photo of a framed St. Francis of Assisi prayer, a ring she wore, a sweater she knitted and wore, a fine bone china teacup and saucer from her collection, decorated with her favorite flower, violets, and a photograph of Esther Miller.

It made me wonder: After I’m gone, what armful of treasures will my granddaughter collect on a table to visualize her ties to me? Well, maybe the book, Preacher Kid: A Story from the Heartland, will be one of them. And probably the ring. And on it goes. Keep the connections. Preserve the stories.

If you are interested enough in my book to read it, I hope you will let me know how you like it! Here is where you can find it: 

• You can purchase the paperback version on Amazon.
• Preacher Kid is available as an iBook from the iTunes Store. This version includes a small video from 1970! 
• A Kindle version is also available from Amazon.