Probably less than you should. But this isn’t really about you…
Click here or on the graphic to listen.
Mondays Mean Neurotic Self-Reflection
Last week while I was away at camp, episode two of Your Face Is Crooked released.
This morning episode three dropped.
They will continue to post on Monday mornings, early enough for your morning routine or commute. Click on the graphics above to be taken to the podcast. You can also subscribe on iTunes or drop the RSS feed into your favorite podcast app. I hope you enjoy them! If you do, please consider leaving a review on iTunes.
Your Face Is Crooked: Episode 1
The first episode of my new weekly podcast, Your Face Is Crooked, is up!
You can listen by clicking on the graphic above or by subscribing at my Podbean site. Or you can add the RSS feed to your preferred podcast platform. I don’t believe it has shown up on iTunes yet, but it is under review and, barring any issues, should show up there sometime this week. New episodes will be added every Monday morning and are generally less than five minutes long — perfect to listen to as you brew your coffee, brush your teeth, or stand in line at the post office.
Happy listening!
UPDATE: You can find Your Face Is Crooked on iTunes here.
Houston, We Have a Cover!
If you receive my email newsletter, this is old news to you. If you don’t, you should! Those folks all got entered in a drawing to win an Advance Reader Copy of the book months before it actually comes out. (Don’t worry. There will be more opportunities to enter giveaways. But if you’re on my newsletter list, you are automatically entered into every giveaway I do.)
ANYWAY, what I really want to tell you is that we have a cover!
AND the book is already available for pre-order from Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Indiebound, and CBD. Pre-ordering is an excellent way to support a new author. It helps a book gain visibility in an online marketplace of millions of titles. And it shows retailers that there is an audience waiting for your book, which encourages them to take a chance on stocking a book from an unproven author.
When you pre-order, you will not be charged until the book is shipped. It may feel silly ordering a book six months before you can actually read it! But if you know you’re going to check it out anyway, it’s a simple way to lend your support.
Here is what the book is about:
When Detroit Free Press reporter Elizabeth Balsam meets James Rich, his strange request—that she look up a relative she didn’t know she had in order to deliver an old camera and a box of photos—seems like it isn’t worth her time. But when she loses her job after a botched investigation, she suddenly finds herself with nothing but time.
At her great-aunt’s 150-year-old farmhouse, Elizabeth uncovers a series of mysterious items, locked doors, and hidden graves. As she searches for answers to the riddles around her, the remarkable stories of two women who lived in this very house emerge as testaments to love, resilience, and courage in the face of war, racism, and misunderstanding. And as Elizabeth soon discovers, the past is never as past as we might like to think.
Take an emotional journey through time—from the volatile streets of 1960s Detroit to the Underground Railroad during the Civil War—to uncover the past, confront the seeds of hatred, and discover where love goes to hide.
Here’s what a couple bestselling authors have said about it:
“We Hope for Better Things has it all: fabulous storytelling, an emotional impact that lingers long after you turn the last page, and a setting that immerses you. I haven’t read such a powerful, moving story since I read To Kill a Mockingbird in high school. This book will change how you look at the world we live in. Highly recommended!”—Colleen Coble, USA TODAY bestselling author of the Rock Harbor series and The View From Rainshadow Bay
“A timely exploration of race in America, We Hope for Better Things is an exercise of empathy that will shape many a soul. Erin Bartels navigates this sensitive topic with compassion as she shifts her readers back and forth between past and present, nudging us to examine the secrets we keep, the grudges we hold, and the prejudices we may help create even without intention.”—Julie Cantrell, New York Times and USA TODAY bestselling author of Perennials
Remember, you can pre-order through Amazon, Barnes&Noble, Indiebound, or CBD.
I can’t thank you enough for your support!
Shed That Skin
Some mornings, if you’re paying attention, you see something magical right outside your front door.
This little leafhopper, less than a half-inch long, still hasn’t unfurled his wings after molting. It was nice of him to let me take his picture anyway.
This little creature reminds me that when I’m feeling constricted in that old skin (or in his case, that old exoskeleton) all I have to do to feel a bit better is break out of it.
You’re not bound to the way you’ve done things in the past if they aren’t working. You’ve got a bright new you inside, waiting to get out. Make a change. Stretch your wings. And hop on forward.
Prepping for the Porkies
This week, my sister, Alison, and I are preparing to walk about 26 miles of some of the most beautiful and remote wilderness Michigan has to offer. We’re buying food and stuffing packs and gassing up cars.
Our path will take us up and down gentle mountains, along and across two rivers, past seven waterfalls, along the shore of the largest freshwater lake in the world, beneath old growth forests, and past abandoned copper mines. We will sleep the shortest nights of the year (just seven hours from twilight to twilight) to the sound of running water and waves and wind. We will be off the grid the entire time.
We will pay for this privilege with sore muscles and dirty hair.
Such a small price for utter bliss.
Fixing a Painting that Was Almost Right
Sometime last year I painted this picture of an August sunrise in mid-Michigan.
It was almost right. I loved the sky, the mist, the clouds.
But I hated, hated, hated how the big trees turned out. It was not what I had in mind.
That’s the trouble with learning an art. So often we can picture or imagine what the finished product — be it painting or novel or what have you — ought to be, but we lack the skills to bring our vision to fruition.
Well, I’ve been painting a lot lately, and reading books about painting. And something clicked in my brain about those trees. So I got the painting back on the easel and worked on it for about twenty minutes or so. And this is what I came away with.
I fixed the trees! I made them darker, since they are in silhouette, made the edges more defined, and added sky holes where you can see what is behind it peaking through spots with fewer leaves. Now they look so much more like what I had in mind.
While I was at it, I darkened the top of the clouds a bit and added some foreground detail.
I used to be disappointed in this painting. Now I love it. And it’s satisfying to see my technique improve as I practice.
What have you been practicing lately?
An Indulgent Weekend
I probably should have been doing all the laundry this weekend. Instead, I painted.
I painted this…
…and this…
…and this.
Because that’s what I really wanted to do.
I also decided that one wall of my office could double as a drying rack / storage area for paintings until they found new homes.
I’m even hanging some blank canvases in spots until I fill them up.
And that gold-framed mirror over on the left wall? That’s there for when I want to start trying my hand at painting faces. I guess I’ll start with mine.
Spring Fever, Satisfied
We are reveling in spring here in Michigan.
It feels like such a blessing after a very long winter that reached its grasping, scraping fingernails into April and was reluctant to let go.
But now, our spring flowers are in bloom.
Our foliage is stretching out to greet the sun.
And our feeders are being visited by exciting birds I rarely get to see, like orioles…
…and rose-breasted grosbeaks.
Along with our more common visitors: cardinals, blue jays, sparrows, house finches, chickadees, downy woodpeckers, and goldfinches.
We even get to see quite a lot of the neighborhood turkey, who likes hanging out in our back yard and our neighbor’s in the morning.
The poor thing is rather frightened of my little chihuahua mix (all seven pounds of her) and seems utterly dumbfounded by fences.
The view out of my upstairs office window is improving day by day as the trees leaf out.
Even the rainy days are rather warm. The daffodils and scilla and crocuses are all gone now, but tulips and grape hyacinth are hanging on, and the flowering trees are just past peak. Rivers and creeks are running high with much rain. My thoughts turn outward, toward summer travel plans, as they always do this time of year.
In about five weeks or so, my sister and I will be hiking the Porcupine Mountains, one of the stops my son and I made on our epic UP Road Trip last June. Our chosen path will take us along rushing rivers, past seven waterfalls, along the shore of Lake Superior, along escarpments, and through forests that will be weeks behind in terms of new growth (which means we’ll get to experience this marvelous spring a second time). Our campsites will have us sleeping alongside the Little Carp River, on Lake Superior at the mouth of Toledo Creek, and up on the escarpment not far from the Lake of the Clouds.
Rocks and rivers, woods and waterfalls. 60,000 acres of wilderness. Time to reflect, to rest our minds and busy our feet. Alison and I look forward to our hiking trip each year. We’ve been lots of places. Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore, Grand Sable Dunes, Tahquamenon Falls, the Manistee River, the Jordan River Valley.
The Porkies have been on our Someday List. It takes a long time to drive there (nearly 9 hours drive time from my house in the state capital, plus time for rest stops and meals) so you need two extra days built in just to get there and back. Thankfully, timing seems to have worked out in our favor this year.
I guess after this, we may have to start saving our money to fly to more trails further away!
Hear Me Bloviate on Publishing!
You may or may not know that my husband, also a writer, is a podcast fiend, both as a listener and as a podcaster himself. He is currently hosting three podcasts (The Gut Check Podcast, Clinch: A Podcast of Fiction and Not-Fiction, and These Go to Eleven) and his sermons are available online as well.
I’ve appeared here and there on the Gut Check Podcast, mostly as a bystander or an interrupter-of-proceedings, though occasionally I am asked direct questions or serve as a reader for Gut Check Literacy Month (which has lasted, oh, I’d say maybe two years). And I bet you can hear my laugh in some of those sermon recordings. But this week Zach actually interviewed me for the not-fiction portion of Clinch.
If you’re curious about what I do in publishing, how annoying I think I will be as an author to the people on my publishing team, or you just want to listen to us talk about Zach getting lost in the woods outside of Owosso, actor Kevin Sorbo, and whether or not we should have closed the drapes to keep our dog from barking during the recording, you should definitely give it a listen.
Also, you should go back to episode one and binge it, both for the fiction portion, where Zach reads his current work in serial fashion, and the not-fiction portion, which gives you an inside look into the highs and lows of publishing, both traditionally and independently, from Zach’s own rollercoaster experience and interviews with other authors. It’s one of the most honest assessments you’ll get of what it’s like to be a writer trying to make a mark in the book world today.
Erin Bartels 
You must be logged in to post a comment.