Cameron's Blog Magick

One must imagine Sisyphus happy. -- Albert Camus   I've noticed, over the two and three-quarter years since my mother died, that I have not been noticeably more social or Original True History book cover. This book once had its own website! Well. Still does, but the pictures all disappeared in some hosting company atrocity and now it's just sad. outgoing than I was in the years before she died, when I was geographically isolated from close friends, sad, and sometimes depressed. ...

Like most people, I open Facebook too much as it is. This afternoon, I opened it to read -- Bruce It is with a broken heart that I write here that my dad - Bruce Cady - passed away unexpectedly yesterday. Level 1: incomprehension. I looked to see who had made the post. I didn't recognize the name. Then the small voice, God let it be some other poor Bruce Cady. But it was in my feed. I was seeing this ...

So I've been absorbing information like a black hole for the last six months, as I've turned my attention to how to publish and I collect and collect like this chipmunk with a mouthful of nuts This is a Columbine. One of about 9 plants and trees I can identify without an app. I've realized just how inefficient shaving really is. None of these photos is really relevant to this post. market my book. I’ve thought of sharing what I’m ...

Reading Jane Friedman’s publishing column the other day made me wonder if it could be harder to get a publisher than I think without a much bigger platform than I have now. Then I read some literary agent's tweets about the importance of platform even for memoir writers. Later, the thought hit me: If I’m going to build a platform, I need to enlist the help of my network now, and start growing it now. That means reaching out and ...

On this Mother's Day, my third without my mother, I thought it appropriate to share this excerpt from the Epilogue to Ordinary Magic: Now in Silke’s living room she’s alive and she's singing “Hänschen Klein,” as she had on the Camino. It’s like one of those dreams. I’m watching my mother sing, among the people she loves, and she’s happy. She mimes the story, beginning with Little Hans’ declaration that he’s leaving home to get some peace. In the modern version ...

Can you help me make a good story great? A few months ago, I set myself a deadline of today to get a draft of the manuscript for Ordinary Magic to willing readers. Nothing like a deadline to concentrate the mind! But with three days to go, I began wholesale reconstruction of Part II of the manuscript - integrating about 20,000 words of content into another document of over 44,000 words. So I thought it would be best to begin with Part I, ...