Introducing the Mailstrom Writing Clinic

For nine years, I taught the online novel writing classes for mediabistro, including developing curriculum for an advanced class. When that company sold a few years ago, my time ended. I've wanted since then to start up my own classes, and that is happening now.

A maelstrom is a vortex or a powerful whirlpool, so I'm playing on my name with the class title of Mailstrom Writing Clinic. I enter the confusion and turmoil of a novel in progress to cheerlead students on, while also...you guessed it... cracking the whip.

Several of my students have gone on to find traditional publication: Lian Dolan, Lisa Beazley Kling, Jenny D. Williams, Lisa Takeuchi Cullen, and Barbara Barnett (there may be others; pardon me if I am missing you! And let me know so I can add your name). My class was featured in an article at Books Make A Difference; I love working with writers to spur them on to keep working on their book, to love it harder, to make the pages flow.

I'm opening up a small class, limited to eight writers, in March. If all goes well, I'll offer this class on a rotating basis, starting up in May when this one ends, and every three months henceforth. Here are the details for this upcoming class.

Welcome to the Mailstrom Writing Clinic

a vortex of cheerleading with a whip

These classes are intended for people who are already underway on a novel, who don't need help getting started but do need it to push forward to a final draft.

We meet online for 10 weeks, which includes:

• Ten downloadable lectures aimed at craft issues and motivating you onward
• The chance to share up to six double-spaced pages every week for peer and instructor critique
• The opportunity to learn from others' work, by reading closely and offering up fair critique
• A live, one-hour text chat on Wednesdays 5 p.m.PST/8 p.m. EST, which is fun and encouraging
• Camaraderie with other writers on the same exciting journey
• Accountability! Everyone loves a deadline, right?
• An intimate environment (classes cap at eight students) to share your work privately
• A cheerleader with a whip (me!) who loves inciting writers to productivity

Erika Mailman is the author of six traditionally-published novels (Random House, Kensington, and others) under her own name and the pen name Lynn Carthage. She has been a Bram Stoker finalist, a Yaddo fellow, and winner of several awards, including the IPPY gold medal for historical fiction. Her historical novel The Witch's Trinity was a San Francisco Chronicle Notable Book and appeared on Entertainment Weekly's list of "Wickedly Great Books about Witches." She holds an MFA in poetry and taught mediabistro's online novel writing classes for nine years, as well as teaching community college English and leading workshops at many national writing conferences, including the Writers Digest Novel Writing Conference. www.erikamailman.com and www.lynncarthage.com

Our first session is March 11-May 26, with a break April 15-21. The first chat is Wednesday, March 13, and the last is May 22.

The charge is $400, which must be prepaid by PayPal by March 8.

Financial details: If you are unsatisfied and wish to withdraw after our second chat, I will refund half the class amount. After that point, I cannot provide a refund. Please be aware that since the class is capped at eight, you may be taking a slot that cannot later be filled.

For more details or to register, contact me via email at erika {\\at\\} erikamailman.com.

Wa-kiiiiiiish!

UPDATE: WE'RE NOW on our second session of the class, which ends in late August 2019. We'll start another one in September. Stay tuned, or email me at myfirstname AT myfirstnamemylastname.com to learn more (remember, I'm spelled with a K!)

. . . .

IPPY Awards win!

Note that cool yellow thing in the upper right. It's new!

I found out last week that The Murderer's Maid: A Lizzie Borden Novel won a gold medal in historical fiction from the IPPY Awards. This award series is for independent publishing: small presses like Bonhomie/Yellow Pear Press (who published my novel), university presses and self-publishing. It's truly an honor and it was really exciting to actually win something!

And I note that there is a really nice space near the title where the gold medallion fits in so nicely.

Thanks to the IPPY folks, and to Yellow Pear Press for entering my book.

We went out to dinner to celebrate and I forgot to order a margarita! Ah well...my Arnold Palmer was very satisfactory. ;)

I have a good handful of upcoming events to share. Some free, some not. Some for readers, some for writers. Most in California, but ONE IN MASSACHUSETTS... in fact, in Fall River, where Lizzie Borden lived. If you're an east coaster, clear your calendar for June 7.

Upcoming events:


Saturday, April 28, 2018: Two presentations at Butte College’s WordSpring Creative Writing Conference: “From Murder to Manuscript” and a session on writing young adult fiction. All day event in Oroville with many workshops includes light breakfast and buffet lunch, $75 ($45 for Butte College students). Space still available; visit https://buttewordspring.org/

Saturday, April 28, 2018: Walnut Creek Library Association’s Wonderland Author’s Gala: Cocktail party and dinner with many authors. Tickets go on sale in March; visit http://www.wclibrary.org/gala/

May 4-6, 2018: Gold Rush Writers Conference, Mokelumne Hill, CA. I’ll be presenting on theme in the novel and moderating a panel on publishing. This weekend-long event is stocked with workshops, wonderful food, friendly writers. If you can’t spend the entire weekend ($195), you can come up for the dinner and keynote speech by Booker Award finalist Karen Joy Fowler, $35. You can also dip into individual presentations for $35 each. For details, visit http://www.goldrushwriters.com/

9-11 a.m., June 1, 2018: Presentation to the California Writers Club on how to balance social media time with writing time, Coco’s Restaurant, 7887 Madison Blvd (at Sunrise Boulevard)., Citrus Heights, CA. Free event and open to public; attendees buy their own breakfast. http://www.cwcsacramentowriters.org/monthly-meetings/

7 p.m., June 7, 2018: Presentation at the Fall River Public Library, 104 N. Main St., Fall River, Massachusetts. Free. I’ll present on Lizzie Borden, Bridget Sullivan and my novel. Pretty excited to do an event in the city where the murders took place; this knowledgeable crowd will keep me on my toes. http://fallriverlibrary.org/






. . .

Frankenstein's Maker

Two hundred years ago, the novel Frankenstein was published.

Its author was Mary Shelley, at the time living under the shadow of her famous poet husband Percy Bysshe Shelley. She was also the child of the forerunner of the women's liberation movement, Mary Wollstonecraft, who wrote A Vindication of the Rights of Women, published in 1792 (it is said Jane Austen read this and it influenced her portrayal of strong female characters).

Mary Shelley's life was almost impossibly dramatic and tragic, the kind that makes you say the truth is stranger than fiction. She married Shelley after his first wife committed suicide, he turned his extramarital attentions to her half-sister, she suffered incredible losses with her children and then Shelley.

As immortalized in the 1986 movie Gothic, Mary was part of a literary ghost-telling evening with her husband and Byron. Her nightmare that night led to the first pages of Frankenstein.

My intent in writing this blog post is to talk about a historical novel that tells Mary's story, from her girlhood to the end. From making love on her mother's grave to her husband's drowning death to her own burial with the exhumed bodies of her parents, this novel covers it all in beautiful prose and with an empathetic heart for Mary's brilliance throughout her woes. The book is New York Times bestselling author Antoinette May's The Determined Heart.

I absolutely loved this book and highly recommend it. Now's the perfect time to read it and contemplate the life of this extraordinary author of 200 years ago, Mary Shelley.

Fun fact: It is only through Antoinette that I know Bysshe is pronounced "bish." Looks more posh than it sounds.

Antoinette is the founder of a writing conference now going into its 13th year, the Gold Rush Writers Conference. There are still spots available; one of the keynote speakers this year is Karen Joy Fowler, author of the Booker finalist We Are All Completely Besides Ourselves and the popular Jane Austen Book Club (see? I got to mention Jane twice in this post! Happy me). The other keynote speaker is Ace Antonio Hall.

The conference takes place May 4, 5 and 6 in Mokelumne Hill, California, truly Gold Rush country. I'll be presenting on "Balancing Plot and Theme: How to Make a Novel Resonate." This conference is focused only on the craft of writing in all forms (poetry, screenwriting, nonfiction, fiction) without the sometimes stressful addition of agents and editors. If you want to truly write, meet other friendly folks and relax (as much as one can relax in a haunted hotel), this is the conference for you. Visit this site for more information.

And don't forget to check out The Determined Heart!


. . . .

SummerWords...a writers' feast in May/June

I’m delighted to announce that I’ll be a presenter at the SummerWords Writing Colloqium, where T.C. Boyle (pictured) will be the keynote speaker. There is an impressive roster of writers presenting and teaching at this event, held at the American River College May 30-June 2 in Sacramento, and I hope to see as many of the sessions as I can.

I’ll be teaching a workshop on historical fiction 11:30-12:45 on June 1 

called “Delving into the Past” (come prepared to wrestle an idea into 

submission and build a loose outline for a novel) and later that day 

from 1 to 2 I’ll be giving a Shop Talk where I’ll read a bit of my work 

and discuss it.

A few highlights at SummerWords to look out for:

* “An Evening with T.C. Boyle” on May 31

* The release of Michael Spurgeon’s novel Let the Water Hold Me 

Down (each attendee will be given a copy!) Michael and I both 

attended the same small college in Maine—Colby—and the same 

graduate program at UA Tucson. Now we both live in the greater 

Sacramento area. Uncanny coincidences, and it was wonderful to 

meet with him a few months ago and share anecdotes from these 

shared academic experiences, although we hadn’t known each other 

at the time. I’m a little…cough…older than him.

* An incredible, diverse array of poets and novelists and even a 

literary agent! Names that may ring a bell are Anthony Swofford, 

whose book Jarhead I used as a text when teaching Critical Thinking 

at Bay Area community colleges, his wife Christa Parravani whose 

memoir Her was just released this month and is receiving a lot of 

buzz, and Christian Kiefer, whose novel The Infinite Tides has also 

received a lot of attention. I’m excited to meet the other incredible 

sounding writers I see listed on the colloquium’s website.

It sounds like the attention will be on workshops for this sessions, 

so writers should definitely check it out. And for readers, there will 

be shop talks and plenty of opportunities to hear wonderful work.

Tickets are only $95 for four days of “panels, workshops, readings 

and talks with writers and poets of regional and national prestige.”

To learn more and purchase tickets, please visit http://www.arc.

losrios.edu/Programs_of_Study/English/SummerWords_

ARC_Writing_Colloquium.htm

. . . . .

Serotonin

Here's one of the reasons I love teaching. The other day I walked into the classroom and confessed to my students that I was in a really good mood, for no apparent reason. One student nodded knowingly and said, "It's the serotonin."

I teach community college English as an adjunct (adjunct="temporary" instructor who may teach up to 25 years without benefits and the security of a contract. I'm at four years and counting.) It's a complex job. While I love what a colleague once called the "performance aspect of teaching," I can't stand the outside-the-classroom stuff: grading zillions of essays, calculating grades, holding office hours and hearing the pitiful stories of students who just HAVE TO PASS the class despite the fact that they stopped coming, never turned in essays, failed all the quizzes, etc. I also don't like confronting students about plagiarism, which is a rampant problem administration doesn't always seem to care about.

What I do like is introducing students to things they might not have read otherwise (my two English 1A classes are right now reading Me Talk Pretty One Day), getting them interested in history and literature, breaking them into groups to work together and hopefully make friends (sad to say, it seems like unless if you're at a residential college with dorms, it's hard for students to develop those friendships that are really what college is about...) Some of my happiest moments have been hearing students talk about going over to each other's houses and knowing that that contact arose because I put them together to do a task. A colleague once told me that those friendships also increase retention -- a problem where once the semester gets underway and essays are actually due, people begin to drop out.

I think my main underlying philosophy of teaching is that if I can make reading fun, and make students want to continue reading after my class is over, then I've done my job.

Because let's be honest. I can't undo the decade or so of teachers shrugging and promoting students to the next grade even though they can't write a complete sentence and don't know how to make their subject and verb agree. I can't, in a three-month semester, make students understand the nuances of irony (one of my saddest days was using The Best American Nonrequired Reading 2003 and seeing the students not "get" the Onion article anthologized in it.) I can't turn their chunky, nonparallel sentences into paragons of eloquence with our twice-weekly classroom time. What I can do is turn them on to reading by selecting real books that I read and enjoy -- with the hope that they will continue to ferret out reading and by pure exposure pick up the writing tools that I and my peers picked up by the same method.

I can't tell you how many times students have said to me, "I never read an entire book before."
!!!!
This is from community college students, who (hopefully but not necessarily) graduated from high school! The one book that has most often elicited the tacked-on postscript to that startling statement -- "until I read this one!"-- is Kindred by Octavia Butler.

And speaking of school, I now have to go there.