I had actually been researching information for a post that is formulating about the increase of Middle School anxiety and why, when my attention was caught by a post on Facebook exhibiting some of the exact reasons why anxiety has been increased over the past few years. The original post was an image highlighting the inconsistency of media reporting these days. Which is true. I don’t care which side of the political spectrum you support, the media coverage of any and everything has a schizophrenic quality to it, and extreme bias is shown when the media is supposed to be impartial purveyors of facts. And on that post was an escalating exchange between a father and daughter (both adults).

Mom and Dad

Let me be clear … my parents raised me to have my own opinions and to be fiercely independent — which was definitely NOT an easy task for either one of them. And I’ll be candid … my dad and I butted heads — regularly. But that head-butting always took place privately and never in a public forum. The major reason for that is that along with teaching me to form my own opinions, and to be independent, I was also raised to respect others — even when whole-heartedly disagreeing with them and the things they believed.

Unfortunately, all you have to do is pull up social media these days to find it dripping with peremptory dogma, malice, and often hatred. And what we don’t realize is the major impact that malice and hatred are having … not on the people who we are expressing it against, but to ourselves. I have established a routine of being on social media as little as possible simply because the seething anger is damaging to me and causes me stress, which I need to avoid for my own health benefit. I cannot imagine what it must be like walking around with all that hatred boiling all the time — we are killing ourselves.

Back to my point. Whenever I see families, in particular, taking such sides and expressing feelings that are ultimately damaging to the relationship, it brings my dad to mind and how much animosity I carried at some points in my life toward him. And every single time I have that thought, it is followed by how THANKFUL I am that we had resolved those issues prior to his passing. Had he died when my last memories of him would be the anger I held? I shudder to think of it. My mental health would have taken a huge nose dive and who knows when or IF I would have pulled out of it. Grieving for him was hard enough, without extra heapings of guilt for not having resolved our issues.

Those issues were not resolved by agreeing with every word he uttered. Again, that’s not how I was raised, but by letting go of the animosity, by letting go of the emotional intensity surrounding the issues, and understanding that while we may not agree, he always thought things through and probably had good reasons for holding his opinions as I did for holding mine.

Why didn’t I jump into the thread and say these things, instead of coming to my blog to express it? There are none so blind as those who refuse to see; and none so deaf as those who refuse to hear … a quote probably stemming from the 1713 ‘Works of Thomas Chalkley’ which have roots back to the Bible.

What I would like to say is “How will you feel if your dad was gone tomorrow? Will you have a clear conscience with which to grieve for him?” However, that is extremely personal, and I recognize how close that would have cut to the bone.

We are coming up on 28 years since my father passed, and while somethings are easier with time, others are not. For example, the big things that hit me are the things that never can be. Like winning an award for writing — something my dad never understood because he wanted me to have financial safety and security on my own. And right there is one of the points of contention I had with him. He wanted me to have a safe existence and the ability to support myself.

He couldn’t see writing novels as a potential life career because he wanted what was best for me. He didn’t see that writing for me is an essential part of my life, even if I were not to ever sell a single word, and at that time, I saw his lack of support as thinking I couldn’t do it, and didn’t recognize his fear of my being rejected (which is part of the publishing industry). I saw his attitude as a lack of support, a lack of love (something he had an extremely difficult time expressing), but fortunately figured out his reasoning prior to his death. I know, without any doubt whatsoever, that were he living today, he’d be bursting with pride over my accomplishments, and would be bragging about me more than I would like. I get emotionally overwrought because he isn’t here and I can’t share my successes with him. He may not have understood how important writing was to me, but he would have been one of my biggest supporters.

So in this long, rambling post, my point is to always treat (at the very least) family and friends with respect, realizing they are far more important than any political agenda, and it is not worth carrying around the animosity — because you never know when you’ll be facing the memory of them instead of the person. Will you be able to do so without guilt clouding your sorrow that they are gone?

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The awards ceremony was held in Nashville this evening, and I wasn’t able to attend, so waited patiently for the announcement to be posted online. The categories 7th Grade Revolution finaled in weren’t being announced at the ceremony, so I would have been awaiting the online announcement anyway. I felt a little like Alice in Through the Looking Glass when my publisher contacted me with the results. Lewis Carroll said it best:

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax—
Of cabbages—and kings—And why the sea is boiling hot—
And whether pigs have wings.”

And the answer to the question about the pigs is YES, they do have wings and were flying around Nashville tonight because 7th Grade Revolution WON in the category of Best Use of Social Medial in Book Marketing. I don’t know about book marketing, but I do like the way Twitter, or as it is in the book QuackerMe, is used in the story. Without the use of social media, the book would have been significantly different. But I cannot claim all the credit for the award.

Without the use of social media in the Exploris Middle School classroom experience, first of all, I wouldn’t have had a book because I would never have heard about the exercise in the first place. But also, the teachers used Twitter in the guise of being reporters/the media to broadcast the events of the classroom to the world. I knew from the very beginning that had to be a part of the conclusion of the story … how social media is now the more immediate news source. So thank you, Karen Rectanus and Exploris Middle School for broadcasting the events via Twitter. It helped shape the book in many ways.

Here is just a part of what Digital Book World had to say about the awards this year:

“Digital Book World is honored to recognize best-in-class achievement across the wide world of publishing, and we’re thrilled to celebrate these distinguished award winners with the publishing and technology community,” said Digital Book World Executive Producer Bradley Metrock. “Congratulations to all of the award winners – we’re proud to showcase your work.”

Click the image below to go to the full article and winners list

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When writing, authors need to be cautious about using brand name items or corporations in their work. Especially anything which has a registered trademark. When a trademark has been registered, the party who holds the registration gets to say how it can be used. Trademarks can extend from logos to words and can specify things from color to spacing, etc. For example, the following is in the Brand Guidelines for Twitter:

The Twitter marks include, but are not limited to, the Twitter name, Twitter logo, the term “Tweet” and any word, phrase, image, or other designation that identifies the source or origin of any Twitter product. Always capitalize the T in “Twitter,” as well as all noun and verb versions of “Tweet” and “Retweet.”

While I am currently able to use Twitter in a book, as long as I don’t disparage Twitter or cause harm to its brand recognition, I chose to create a social media platform for the book itself. Why wouldn’t I use Twitter? Two primary reasons. The first reason is that Twitter can change their brand policy at any time and they could choose to not allow the use of the word Twitter or Tweet without express permission from the company. The second reason is found in their Brand Guidelines: You must display the following statement in materials that display the Twitter trademarks: “TWITTER, TWEET, RETWEET and the Twitter logo are trademarks of Twitter, Inc. or its affiliates.”

So my agent, Italia Gandolfo, and I put our heads together to come up with a suitable replacement. After trying several other options, and getting discouraged because everything I thought of was already a social media platform, we came up with QuackerMe and it blossomed. The posts would be Quacks, reposting would be Honks, ducks would be given for praise, eggs would splat for dislike, and Italia is still lobbying to be able to tar and feather posts. By the time we were done talking about how the site would function, we both wanted someone to develop it. *sigh* Maybe one day I’ll be able to egg a post.

Pre-Orders now available:
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