Rachel Barlow is something of a creative hero to me and others. For the past six or seven years, she has worked to build a creative career as a blogger, illustrator, painter and now, book author. She is contributing much joy and beauty and laughter to the world and is beginning to catch fire.
She is selling her paintings, sketches, and now, her books. One step at a time, Rachel never stops creating.
Today, she read from her new work, A Is For All Nighter, a funny and beautifully illustrated look at raising young children. This is a wonderful and inexpensive gift and any young or new parent. Rachel is the author and the illustrator.
I won’t dwell on it because she doesn’t, but Rachel has struggled mighitly for her place in the sun and earned it. She worked through bi-polar depression, the raising of two children, family health troubles and other struggles without complaint or resignation.
She never quit on herself or stopped experimenting or helping other people. You can see her varied work on her popular blog, My Sketchy Life. You can purchase her book via Battenkill Books (518 677 7136) or on Amazon.
A famous psychologist once wrote that if you wish to be generous, you must find generous people and be around them, if you wish to be resilient, you must be around resilient people, if you wish to be good, you must be with good people. In my town, there are lots of good people, we take community seriously, and we saw community in action at our local bookstore.
I had an author’s event unlike any other, and a way forward for writers seeking to present and sell their work.
Yesterday two writers – Rachel Barlow, an artist, illustrator and author, and myself – were scheduled to read from our works- Talking to Animals for me, A Is for All Nighter for Rachel – at the Battenkill Book Store, our much loved independent bookstore. It was supposed to me a kind of Meet and Great event to introduce our works at Christmas and to give Connie Brooks a chance to sell them. My book is out next May and can be pre-ordered, Rachel’s is up on Amazon and for sale through Battenkill (518 677-7136) Books.
Connie has created and operated this wonderful independent bookstore and made it work and then some during difficult times. She is passionate about community and our community is passionate about supporting her.
On my blog, I invited people to call in if they couldn’t come, I know that most of my blog readers are scattered all over the country.
Obviously, she couldn’t earn any money hosting that reading, she did it anyway. That is generosity.
This is Rachel’s first book, it is about the 25th of mine. When I learned that a winter storm was sweeping through our area from Saturday to Sunday, I understood (with grace, I think) what that means. We would have a quiet afternoon talking to ourselves.You cannot ask or expect people to come out in a snow and ice storm.
Perhaps a few might call or walk over. It is part of the literary thing, it happens all the time.
But an angel – Alex Dery Snider – appeared to transform the event into something exciting, innovative, and successful. She had this idea for the two of us to read live from our works on Connie Brook’s Facebook Page and she and Connie and Rachel gathered with their smart phones to get the live feed onto Facebook, and thus my blog and other blogs. She wanted to support Rachel and me.
Alex is a communications director at Bennington College, and a student of social media. She is a brilliant essayist as well, and I know this because she is a student in my writing class.
Alex is one of the most gifted I have encountered, and she is also committed to the idea of community and social conscience. I’ve known Rachel for some time and watching her grow and move forward had been one of the pleasures of my life.
At times, she struggled with depression and despair, she worked her way through that and is a successful landscape artist (check out her very beautiful and inexpensive paintings on her blog) and is now working on a series of illustrated children’s books. She is the writer and the illustrator.
No one asked Alex to help, we didn’t even think of broadcasting live. Alex stepped in and volunteered in support of Rachel and me. It was uplifting to see Connie, Alex and Rachel working their smartphones to set this up, I could not have done it by myself.
It was a very touching and hopeful thing, a harbinger of the good and meaningful struggles to come, I think. It was also startlingly effective. An event that would have become a private tea party sold a lot of books and helped launch Rachel’s engaging work, a funny and beautifully illustrated look at parenting.
Alex’s idea and Connie’s openness made Rachel’s debut a very clear success – she joked that she sold more books than she bought, she has already sold 200 copies by herself. This is the very thing publishers should be setting up everywhere, but mostly, are not.
Suddenly, we went national. We had our first readings, (and there were, in fact, a bunch of people in the store, about 15 at one point). Almost all of my writing class braved the storm to show up.
I also had a bunch of phone calls – California, Texas, Vermont, Montana, Washington State, California. While the snow and ice piled up outside the store, we had a warm and sweet and supportive time, and we called attention to our books and felt like hotshot writers. Red and Maria, my own small and powerful community, joined in. Red is stellar at book events.
I was very touched by the people – readers of the blog – who called, and I had the nicest talks with them, it is very meaningful to me to speak directly with people who read my books and my blog. And as always, people were delighted to talk to Maria. She means so much to all of this creative work.
The afternoon, which seemed potentially bleak, was an exercise in community – which lives in many different forms these days. If you wish to support independent bookstores, you can call Battenkill Books and order our books or anyone’s books. You can contact them online or by calling 518 677-2515. They are awfully nice and take Paypal and credit cards.
If you wish to support Rachel Barlow’s very fine new work, you can order it on her website or on Amazon.
If you wish to support my new book, you can do so by clicking here. I will sign and personalize any book you purchase there. One day soon, we will all be at the store in support of Alex, there are a lot of good books on the way from her.
And if you just want to hear us read from our work, check it out on Connie Brook’s Facebook Page here. Before I got home, more than 90 people had already shared it,they found it by themselves.
This is the good side of social media, it isn’t just about hateful arguments. People want to go good, given the chance. Thanks to Alex and Connie for making this work, and for affirming the power of community.
Well, I looked out the window and it was a mess out there, cold, windy, snowing. I put on my bathrobe and grabbed my camera and ran outside – we had to feed the animals anyway and I didn’t want to wait to get dressed. Maria was in the barn and grabbed her Iphone and decided to preserve this for posterity. Well, it is a pretty neat photo.
Even Red was looking at me as if I had lost it. Maybe so. For the love of the blog. The lens was covered in snow and the camera began to freeze up. Me too.
Around here, art reigns. Got to that out the camera, (and me) and see what we have. First, I’ll go back to bed.
