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Find Carolyn's Individual Books and Audios Here:
You will find at least one promotion, writing or tech tip on every page on this site. Sometimes you'll find, two or three! Happy browsing and collecting!
Endorsement: The Frugal Editor: Don't let the title fool you. This book is for ANY writer. If you want to submit a professional, Polished piece, Carolyn's book is a must-have! I learned more in Frugal Editor than in four years fo advanced college English..."~ B.J. Bramblett, author of two horsy whodunits, Sliding Stop and Flying Change.
Please click on my Google Calendar
button to learn more about my upcoming UCLA Extension Writers' Program
classes, my Muse Online Writers' Conference and other conference and book fair appearances and more.
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The Joy of Writing and Sharing with Others One of my favorite blues artists, Billie Holiday (a fellow Aries), said, "If I'm going to sing like someone else then I don't need to sing at all." I think that this should be true of any voice -- whether writing or singing. It's about style, really. Here are onsite links to learn more about each of Carolyn Howard-Johnson's major published works.
Scroll down for Amazon-clicks for easy ordering.
Rey Ybarra and I chat at the Irwin Award ceremony.
Rey is host at
BSATV. He is also blogs at
www.bestsellingauthortv.blogspot.com.
The photo is by his director and camera person, Randy. What People Are Saying About Carolyn's Published Works This Is the Place “It is interesting to learn how others live especially when you are reading a well written book.” ~ Connie Martinson, TV Host of “Connie Martinson Talks Books” “…fascinating…I highly recommend it to everyone.” ~ Evie Grossfield, “Talk of the Town with Evie,” KTLA, Ventura, CA. Click Here for the study guide included in This Is the Place. Tracings, a chapbook of poetry, and Cherished Pulse, an e-chapbook of unconventional love poems
"I was already familiar with Howard-Johnson's
excellent nonfiction resources, chiefly
The Frugal Book Promoter, though her success in that discipline
actually made me skeptical about how good her literary work would turn
out. But this fear was ultimately unfounded. Howard-Johnson has crafted
her poetry with a confidence that is singly seductive, a considerable
accomplishment given that the subject matter to which she gives form
isn't often inherently sensual -- she makes it so. Among her knockout
punches are the metamorphic "An Apparition," the quietly painful
"Recognizing Denial," and the chagrined eros of "Raised in God's
Country." ~
Abel
Peña, reviewer I’ve long recommended John Kremer’s 1001 Ways to Market Your Books, but until now, I didn’t have many other “staples” to recommend to new authors looking for publicity. ~ Jenna Glatzer, author of Make a Real Living as a Freelance Writer editor of AbsoluteWriter.com The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success "Nothing demonstrates professionalism like a well-edited submission. Follow Carolyn Howard-Johnson's clear, step-by-step self-editing approach in The Frugal Editor and you'll submit like a pro." ~ Gregory A. Kompes, conference coordinator, Las Vegas Writer's Conference Head to Head Audio series Your audio class awoke a spark in me that had simmered down to a mere sizzle. Your audio, listening to your voices, made me feel a part of your own promotional gang and for this it is I who would like to thank you." ~ Lea Schizas, reviewer for The Muse Book Reviews and editor of Apollos Lyre.com Hooray! Books (including anthologies) by Carolyn Howard-Johnson to explore!   
First Person Essay Beating Time At Its Own Game By Carolyn Howard-Johnson Permission is given to reprint this essay providing the author is credited with byline and tagline. Contact the author for a shorter version or to make other edits. Sometimes the big barriers in life aren’t abject poverty, dreaded disease or death. Sometimes it’s the subtle ones set upon us by time and place. The ones that can’t be seen and can’t be acknowledged because we don’t know they are there. They creep up silently on padded feet and, if we sense them at all, we choose not to turn and face them. The decade of the 50s was a time when barriers like these faced those with dark skin, those who lived in closed religious communities, and those who were female. When I applied for a job as a writer for Good Housekeeping (Hearst Corporation) in New York in 1961 I was required to take a typing test. I was piqued because I wasn’t applying for the typing-pool, I was applying for a post as an editorial assistant. I was told, “No typing test, no interview.” I took the test and was offered a job in the ranks of those who could do 70-in-a-minute. I had to insist upon the interview I had been promised. I was only twenty and had no real skills in assertiveness. I am amazed I had the wherewithal to insist on anything. The essentials of this anecdote lie in the fact that I was putout for the wrong reasons. My irritation was a reflection of hubris. However, that pride was probably what goaded me into speaking up so I guess pride is not always a bad thing to have. It never occurred to me that this typing requirement was one that applied only to women, much less that I should be angry for the sake of my entire gender. Prejudice is sometimes like traveling on well-worn treads; you have no idea you’re in danger. It also feeds on the ignorance of its victims. They benignly accept their lot because they know no better. Something similar was at work when I married and had children. I happily took a new direction to accommodate my husband’s career and the life the winds of the times presented to me. I left my writing with hardly a backward look. Back then -- in the days before women had been made aware -- the possibilities were not an open book to be denied or accepted. I just did what was expected by the entire culture. Things are so much better now. I don’t think women younger than their mid-fifties have any idea of how ignorant most women were to their own possibilities. That there was a time when we didn’t even know we had choices is not fiction. I had always wanted to sit in a forest or an office or a newsroom with a pencil in my hand. I dreamed writing, lived writing and loved writing. I wanted to write the next Gone With The Wind only set in Utah instead of the South. (I figured enough had been written about the South and hardly anyone knew anything about the unique culture I was raised in.) That was my plan but it was soon gone with the wind. It was the 1950s and women in that time, and especially in that place, had a notion of who they should be, could be and, mostly, they got it from those around them because many of them couldn’t see the difference from society’s expectations and their own. “You can’t be a nurse,” my mother said. “Your ankles aren’t sturdy enough.” I also was told I couldn’t be a doctor because that wasn’t a woman’s vocation. “Be a teacher because you can be home the same hours as your children, but learn to type because every woman should be able to make a living somehow if their husband dies.” Writing was not a consideration. It didn’t fit any of the requirements. So when I gave it up, it didn’t feel like I was giving up much. When I began to put myself through college, I took the sound advice and studied education so I’d have a profession. I made 75 cents an hour (this was, after all, the 50s!) working as a staff writer at the Salt Lake Tribune. That I was making a living writing didn’t occur to me. I met a handsome young man and we were married. His career took precedence; that was simply how it was done back then. Then there were two children, carefully planned, because that was how it should be done. By the 70s we both yearned for careers with autonomy. We wanted spend time with our children and be in command of our own lives. My dream was a victim of the status quo. It never occurred to me to just strike out in my own direction when my husband and children needed me. The pain was there. I just didn’t recognize it so I could hardly address it and fix it. My husband and I built a business. We raised a lawyer and a mathematician, grew in joy with a grandson, lived through floods and moves, enjoyed travel. For forty years I didn’t write and, during that time, there were changes. Women had more choices but more than that they had become more aware. The equipment, gears and pulleys were in place for a different view on life. In midlife I became aware that there was an empty hole where my children had been but also that the hole was more vast than the space vacated by them. I knew I not only would be able to write, I would need to write. Then I read that, if those who live until they are fifty in these times may very likely see their hundredth year. That meant that I might have another entire lifetime before me -- plenty of time to do whatever I wanted. In fact, it’s my belief that women in their 50s might have more time for their second life because they won’t have to spend the first twenty years preparing for adulthood. One day I sat down and began to write the “Great Utah Novel.” I thought it would be a lot easier than it was. I had majored in English Lit. Writing a novel should be pretty much second nature. It wasn’t long before I realized that writing a novel wasn’t as easy as writing the news stories I had written as a young woman. There were certain skills I didn’t have. It was a discouraging time. I might not have to learn speech and motor skills and the ABCs but there sure was a lot I didn’t know about creative writing. Somewhere after writing about 400 pages (easily a year’s work), I knew something major was wrong. I took classes at UCLA in writing. I attended writers’ conferences. I read up on marketing. I updated computer skills that had been honed in the days of the Apple II. And all the while I wrote and revised and listened and revised again. This Is the Place finally emerged. It is about a young woman, Skylar Eccles, who is a half-breed. In Utah where she was born and raised, that meant that she was one-half Mormon and one-half any other religion. Skylar considers marrying a Mormon man in spite of her own internal longing for a career. By confronting her own history -- several generations of women who entered into mixed marriages -- and by experiencing a series of devastating events, she comes to see she must make her own way in the world, follow her own true north. Much of what I wrote about is my own story. If my novel were a tapestry, the warp would be real but the woof would be the stuff of imagination—real fiction. I think I bring a unique vision to my work. Utah has a beauty and wonder of its own. The Mormons are a mystery to many. I think I tell a story about Utah in the 50s that could only be told by someone who lived in that time and place and who was a part of the two cultures—the Mormon and the non-Mormon—that make it a whole. I am proud that I did write this book. I’m glad that I waited until I was sixty. I believe that forty years brought insight to the story in terms of the obstacles that women faced in those days and a gentler perspective of the culture in Utah. I also really like being proof that a new life can start late—or that it is never too late to revive a dream. --------------------------------- Carolyn Howard-Johnson's first novel, This Is the Place, and her creative nonfiction, Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered, are both award-winners. Her fiction, nonfiction and poems have appeared in national magazines, anthologies and review journals. She speaks on culture, tolerance, writing and promotion and has appeared on TV and hundreds of radio stations nationwide. She is an instructor for UCLA Extension's Writers' Program and has shared her expertise at venues like San Diego State's world renowned Writers' Conference and Call to Arts! EXPO. She was recently awarded Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment by the California Legislature and her city's Ethics award for her work on promoting tolerance. Her nitty-gritty how-to book, THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER won USA Book News' Best Professional Book 2004 and her chapbook of poetry, TRACINGS, won the Award of Excellence from the Military Writers' Society of America. She loves to travel and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, UK: Herzen University in St. Petersburg, RU; and Charles University in Prague.
A List of Publications Carolyn's Work Has Appeared In(Partial)PUBLICATIONS § Copperfield Review: Excerpt TITP summer, 2002; § Poem “Peril,” 2003. § Penumbra, Calif. State Univ. Stanislaus’ literary journal: Short story, “Helper,” 2003. § The Banyan Review: Short story “Grandfather Rock,” July, 2003. § Sparks Magazine, Subtle Tea: The Feminist Journal: Poem “Woman’s Day:” 2003. § Yarrow Brook Review: Poem “Where I Am,” 2002; Flash fiction, “Remembering Joe,” 2003. § Poetic Voices: Villanelle “Adaptation” Sept. 2003. § Lunarosity: Poem, “Pleading for Sylvia”, March 2004. § Mochila Review: Poem “Big Screen Snack,” May, 2004. § Long Story Short: Poems “Bon Sai,” Jan. 2004; “Woman’s Day,” March 2004; Short story “A Not-So-Stupid-Crook Story,” March, 2004; “Shopping on Robertson,” June 2004; Poem, “Children Today Don’t Have Enough Leisure Time,” Nov. 2004, “Musing Over a New Calendar,” and “New Year,” Jan. 2005. § Apollo’s Lyre: Poem “Deciphering Sound.” May, 2004. § The Pedestal Magazine: Poem “Olvera Street Tutorial.” April, 2004. § The Literary Mama: Short story “”Finding the Way.” May, 2004. § The Journal of the Image Warehouse: Poems, “The Dangerous Lizard of Gabon,” “Poetry by Damned,” and “Perfectly Flawed.” § Re)verb: Poem “Faith in LA,” spring, 2005. § Mindprints: Allan Hancock College, Santa Maria, CA., Poem “Bon Sai,” Annual 2005. § Edifice Wrecked: Literary Journal, fall 2004, poem “Shelf Life.” § Top 7 Business, Edited by Christopher M. Knight: § Sunspinner Magazine: Poem, “Olvera Street Tutorial,” 2005 § The Beat (Literary Magazine): Harkening Excerpt, “Neighbors,” Spring, 2005. § Mary, Mt. St. Mary's College Journal, Spring 2005. § Niederngasse, an international journal "Eavesdropping at the "Writers' Faire," July, 2005, www.neiderngasse.com. § Penwomanship, Poem, "Antigua's Hope," Aug. 2005. § Barricade, Edited by John Newmark, "Upon Safety, Illusion and a New Way to Think, December, 2005 § Travelers' Tales, Excerpt "Every Heard of Terezin?" 2006 § A-pos-tro-phe: Poem "The Lecture: Incomplete and Considerately Abridged." http://www.a-pos-tro-phe.com/v2n3/thelecture.html § Riley Dog: Excerpt from a poem "The Lecture: Incomplete and Considerately Abridged." June, 2006. § Subtle Tea, edited by D. Herrle, Poems, "Learning About Sex When All Else Fails" and "Another Day." Aug. 2006 § Under the Roc, Poem, "Shelf-Life," 2007 § Lunarosity, Short short story, "Artemis," February, 2007 § Muscadine Lines: A Southern Journal , "Dandilions in Autumn," fall 2008 § Coffee Press Journal, poem, "The Fragile Art of Warfare." Nov. 2007 § Life in the USA Magazine, edited by Elliot Essman. Short story, "A Not-So-Stupid-Crook Story." Nov. 2007. http://www.lifeintheusa.com/magazine/index.html COLUMNIST § Home Décor Buyer § MyShelf.com Formerly:
CONTRIBUTOR § Effort and Surrender by Eric Dinyer, Andrews McMeel Publishers: wrote the introduction. § Cooking by the Book: Intended to feed readers’ appetites for books as well as their tummies. § Musings: Authors Do It Write!: A Collection of essays from twelve international writers.
A ANTHOLOGIES § Pass Fail: Ed: Rose A. O. Kleidon. Kleidon Publishing. An anthology of stories about experiences in education. § Calliope’s Mousepad: “Humane Society:” By invitation. Ed: Sarah Mankowski. § Mothers of Writers: By invitation. Publish America, Fredericksburg, MD. § The Joy of Cancer: By invitation. Edited by Brenda Avakian, M.A. Published i2003. § Feminine Writes: By invitation. Edited by Sheri’ L. McConnell: founder, National Assoc. of Women Writers. § Artists for a Better World: Poem. “Peril.” § Paws and Whiskers: Short story, “Humane Society.”
PROFESSIONAL § UCLA Writer’s Program, instructor § Founder, Facilitator Critique Group, Glendale Library System § Yarrow Brook Literary Review: Editorial § G.A.P., publisher, advisory board § Maguire-Gisby Associates, publicists, advisory board § Poets & Writers: Listed in Directory of American Poets and Fiction Writers. OTHER Book, Movie and Theater Reviews:
RETAIL § Giftbeat § Home Décor Buyer § Gift and Decorative Accessories § CBC insert in trade magazines For essays published as So You'd Like Tos. . . on Amazon including one that connects the Elizabeth Smart case to tolerance (or the lack thereof) and another linked to the Warren Jeffs case go to my So You'd Like Tos. . . .
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Purchase THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER as a thick, full-size e-book priced to accommodate the budgets of starving students and authors at Star Publish. Purchase THE FRUGAL BOOK PROMOTER and THE FRUGAL EDITOR in trade paperback at Amazon. Purchase THIS IS THE PLACE, HARKENING and TRACINGS at Amazon. Purchase CHERISHED PULSE at the Compulsive Reader. Purchase and find all the audios for writers at Double Dragon Publishing.
This author is founder and a proud member of Authors' Coalition. (Directors: Joyce Faulkner and Pat Avery) This site is powered by Dianna Faulkner, carmelfaulkner@aol.com Studio photography by Uriah Carr Logo by Lloyd King
Future Plans for How To Do It Frugally Series:
Books and Audios on Writing Carolyn has Written, Edited or Contributed to:
Copyright ©2006 Carolyn Howard-Johnson
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