Meet Author Helena Harper
Helena Harper grew up in England, the daughter of a British father and a German mother. From an early age she loved to read and write, particularly fantasy stories, and later she enjoyed studying foreign languages.
Helena is a private tutor and translator. She continues write children’s stories, and illustrations for her first children’s picture book are now being done.
For new readers, what can they expect when they read your books? I hope they will find something to make them smile or cry or think. I hope they will be able to take something positive from what they’ve read.
What would you like your readers to know about you and your writing? My poetry books have been drawn from my professional and personal life, but my children’s stories are pure fantasy. The latter give me a wonderful chance to escape so-called ‘reality’.
What writer most inspires you – why? As far as fiction is concerned, I very much admire Jane Austen’s style of writing, it’s so clever, subtle and amusing, and she’s a wonderful storyteller. But there are non-fiction authors whom I also find inspirational, such as Neale Donald Walsch and Michael Talbot.
When did you know you wanted to be a writer? What was the first story or article you remember writing? I’ve always loved writing. Even before I went to school and could write, I sat at a desk and wrote line after squiggly line on blank sheets of paper. The first story I remember writing was a story about pots and pans and other kitchen appliances who were having a competition to see who could be the cleanest. I really enjoyed writing that story.
You have a degree in modern languages and are a qualified teacher. Has this helped your writing? And if so, in what way? Yes, definitely. My language studies have helped me appreciate the sound, rhythm and meaning of words and my teaching has taught me a great deal about what makes people tick.
What is your writing process like? Do you write every day? I fit my writing round my other commitments and write whenever I have the opportunity to write, which could be any time of the day or night.
What is your most precious memory? My most precious memory? That’s really difficult – I have so many. Any of the memories I have of my father, perhaps, who is no longer alive. He was a truly remarkable person.
What is your most embarrassing memory? When I was at primary school, holding onto a door handle to prevent my friends from coming into the classroom (this was a game we were playing during the lunch break), only to find out that it wasn’t any of my friends who were wanting to come into the classroom, but a teacher!
If you weren’t a writer, what would you be doing with your life? Well, I still teach languages and give private tuition. If I weren’t doing that? Hard to say – something where I could be creative and that would be stimulating and challenging.
Is there anything else you’d like to add? Yes – if you want to write, just give it a go! You have to be willing to step into the unknown, but if you don’t try, you’ll never know and you may end up regretting that. All you need is an idea. It doesn’t have to be fully developed, just sit down and start writing something and it will develop as you go along. You never know, it may be the best thing you ever do!
Contact details/more info.
Email: webmaster@helenaharper.com
My author’s website: http://www.helenaharper.com
My authorsden website: http://www.authorsden.com/helenaharper
My blog: http://helenaharpersblog.blogspot.com
Follow me on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/helenaharper
Helena’s Books
‘It’s a Teacher’s Life…! A Collection of Poems Set in a Girls’ Private School’
No doubt you remember your life at school as a pupil – the long lessons, stringent rules and chaotic classrooms – but what was it like from the teacher’s perspective? Did they savour the experience of setting and marking our homework? Did they get a kick out of writing our reports? And, most intriguingly, what did they get up to in the staffroom?
If you’ve never been there yourself, you need to follow Helena Harper into this alternative world of coffee addiction, frantic marking, lesson-planning and inspections. She answers all of your questions and more, and her insightful, evocative and often sardonic descriptions leave you more appreciative of the trials and tribulations (and the occasional pleasures) of being the dragon in front of the whiteboard.
Available in paperback from all major online retailers. Can be ordered through any bookstore. Stocked by Haslemere Bookshop and Weybridge Books in the UK.
http://www.amazon.ca/Teachers-Collection-Poems-Private-School/dp/1847481825/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1239391752&sr=8-2
http://search.barnesandnoble.com/Its-a-Teachers-Life-a-Collection-of-Poems-Set-in-a-Girls-Private-School/Helena-Harper/e/9781847481825/?itm=1
Family and More is a poignant poetic memoir, in which the author examines the lives of family members and other people, who have touched her own life and taught her some valuable lessons. As the daughter of a German mother and English father, who were on opposite sides during the Second World War, Helena Harper’s poetic themes are informed by notions of national and emotional boundaries, the horrors of war, self-discovery, love, and the infinite power of the human spirit.
Available at present as an ebook from:
http://www.eloquentbooks.com/Familyandmore.html
Due to be published as a paperback by Pen Press Publishers in the first half of 2010.
Check out my interview on Vivian Zabel’s blog
My Guest is Carolyn Howard-Johnson
With Carolyn’s (and Erica’s) permission, I’m reproducing some of their article on the joys of journaling. Read down and you’ll see that Carolyn asks Erica about organizing journals.
This is especially interesting to me as I have quite a number of journals from at least fifteen years ago. I wrote these journals at a tumultuous time in my life, and I haven’t gone back to read the or mine them for writing material. There are several reasons for this:
.The organizational problem is daunting
. My handwriting is really, really terrible.
However, after reading this article, I’m encouraged to think that organizing them MIGHT be possible.
I’ve started journaling again, and I’m making an effort to write more legibly, and to date them.
Meanwhile, read on
P.S. Tour with VBT-Writers on the Move through February. New and famous authors, plus useful information. http://tinyurl. com/yhkt7v8
Empowering Women to Change Their World…
The Joys of Journaling:
A Dialogue
©2005 Erica Miner, Carolyn Howard-Johnson and QueenPower.com. All rights reserved.
By
Erica Miner, Journaling Queen
website http://www.ericaminer.com
and
Carolyn Howard-Johnson, Queen of Frugal Promotions
website is: http://carolynhowardjohnson.com.
The Joys of Journaling:
From Carolyn: I am pleased that the Queen of Journaling for
QueenPower.com can find the time to help. One of
my problems is that I’ve been writing stuff down for
so long it is impossible to find anything. Do you have
any ideas for me?
From Erica: In order to help you organize your journals I’d need
to know more about what your processes might be.
What format do you journal in? How many journals
do you have? How much is written in each of them?
Enlighten me so can better respond to your journaling
needs.
From Carolyn: Oh, my gosh. You’re going to hate me. I have journals
cum scrapbooks from vacations, diaries from high
school, loose letters I wrote to my husband when I
was furious and never gave them to him, ideas for
poems I stuff in my bra for lack of a better place and
then put open a journal and stuff the old crinkled
paper under the cover…you get the idea.
I maybe have 150 different books. They are all
different sizes and thicknesses and some of them
bulge so they can’t be stacked. And, of course, unlike
computers, none of them has a “find” function. That
means the only way to glean information from them
is to spend hours browsing. That is the only technique
I use. If I look for something specific I get frustrated
and give up. Quite unqueenly!
From Erica: You present a number of issues I usually address in
separate stages of my lectures and I want to give it
some thought before I plunge in. I will give you a
point-by-point response. Promise!
I’ve thought of something else I need to know in order to
help you. How did you transform your journals to your
creative, published work?
From Carolyn: I conceived of THIS IS THE PLACE when I was in high
school in the 50s. I still have the diary. (I don’t think
anyone ever heard of a journal in the sense that we use it
today and “journal” certainly wasn’t ever used as a
verb!). The diary was lime green leather with gold
lettering. It had a little brass lock with a key on it. My
aunts (both of whom were only a little older than I) gave
it to me for Christmas.
Anyway, in it I dreamed that one day I would write the
next GONE WITH THE WIND but this one would be set
in Utah rather than the South. From that day on I
thought about the book (untitled, of course!) when I
wrote about events in my diaries, especially those about
our family history. The entries were cursory at first, but
even at that they worked well many years later to jog my
memory some four decades after I made those entries!
By the way, HARKENING: A COLLECTION OF
STORIES REMEMBERED is a collection of related stories
that didn’t fit in THIS IS THE PLACE. The stories are all
connected; the reader will see some characters again and
again and by the end will see that it is the story of
family’s trek from Michigan, through a now defunct
railroad town in New Mexico, into Utah and then on to
the golden state of California where people tend to be
more open, more accepting of people different from
themselves.
I know, way more info than you needed, but it’s a start.
From Erica: We have so many parallels. I am mining my own high
school journals for my ‘labor of love’ – a novel series
based on my own experiences in the 60s — in
Michigan, by the way! Those diaries have been lost,
but because I journaled faithfully all those years my
recall is so vivid that I can write the stories as if they
happened yesterday. The series will follow the
journey of four young best friends. Show how their
paths diverge and come back together over the years,
eventually focusing the protagonist. It ends up as one
woman’s trek, but she still ends up in California. See
what I mean by parallels! And by the way, I think a
lime-green journal with gold lettering sounds
awesome!
From Carolyn: Your story illustrates how the universe puts people
together, leads people away from some things,
toward others. It seems as if events that I thought
were the most awful things that could happen to a
person (cancer, as an example) turned out to be
blessings. The trick is to look at experiences and ask,
“What was my part in that — both pro and con?” and
“How can I make what I am learning here work for
the betterment of all including me.
The other thing — and you alluded to it — is that
journaling helps us see/remember/mold events so
that they might be analyzed and seen in a different
way. Some people wouldn’t recognize opportunity if
it came up and snoozed in their lap. Journaling can
help them see what the universe is trying to
communicate to them.
From Erica: I agree. There’s a reason for everything, but we don’t
usually find out what it is until much later. When we
do, however, it is always a revelation. Journaling
helps us look learn from those experiences. It’s all
about the insights, both from the Universe and from
within us.
From Carolyn: I’m curious .Do you know of any journaling techniques that help
us do that — specifically? You know, see patterns or underlying
meanings we might otherwise miss?
From Erica: Great Question!
I have a number of these; my favorite is what I call Journaling
Meditation. You quiet your mind and go back to a time when
you felt at peace. Try to reproduce that feeling and when you’re
‘in the zone’ then start writing. Describe where you where, how
you felt at that time.
You then distill some calming phrases from your words which
you can turn into affirmations, or a mantra. Use this mantra to
connect with your Higher Self and thus empower your insights.
You can even record these on a tape and use them as your selfguided
meditation. You may want to look up the works of Ira
Progoff at your library for more on this subject.
And on the subject of Meditation, I’d like to add the following:
I think as women our hearts are definitely connected. And with
that collective energy, great inspirational benefits can come.
When I think of my heart being connected to other ’soul sisters’, I
feel a great meditative connection to my higher self. That
meditative state is a powerful conduit in my journaling practice,
and I like to bring this into my journaling workshops. I’ve done
many of these workshops and seminars in my Southern
California and would like to expand into other parts of the
country.
From Carolyn: Not to nag you but back to that question about organizing my
journals. Did you sleep on it?
From Erica: Oh, yeah. Guess we got off the track, huh. We’ve been having so
much fun. This is a huge topic, Carolyn! 150 journals! In any
case, here goes:
I think a ‘boot camp getting organized’ solution might suit your
needs. Before you even think about organizing these into vastly
different categories you need to do a left-brain exercise. Here’s
what I would suggest:
1. Schedule yourself a chunk of time – literally, write it in
your date book – for going through your various journals.
Clear away a space in which you will arrange all of them–
a large shelf if possible–just for your journals.
2. Pull out a few at a time, sit on the floor and organize them
according to type (diaries, letters, scrapbooks, etc.), then
size. (For the ‘bulging’ ones you may need a separate
box.).
3. Do this for as long as you have patience; when you can’t
deal with it anymore, put them on the allocated shelf in
order of size (I know this sounds silly, but it will give you
a visual advantage when you want to search for
something.) If you need another day, another hour, allow
for that; but try to do it all in one week, an hour a day
perhaps, until you have sorted everything.
4. Then put them in chronological order. This is probably the
most important step, but you can’t get to it, dear Frugal
Promoter Queen, until you’ve done the above left-brain
organization.
5. This is where your computer will come in. Once you’ve
got everything organized according to category and
chronology, you can start a new file on your computer – I
suggest Word or an Excel spreadsheet – that will keep
track of what, where, when, etc. THEN you will be able to
keep track of all your writing and look up what you need
when you need it and not ‘get frustrated and give up.’
It sounds like a lot of work, but it will be worth it in the end,
especially when it comes time to refer to these when writing
your next novel(s)!
By the way, thanks for bringing up the subject of ‘unsent letters.’
I have a whole mini-lecture on that, which I will address in my
next monthly e-mail newsletter, so stay tuned!
I hope I’ve given you a bit of help with your question. Take
courage, and if you need more motivation, don’t hesitate to
contact me.
From Carolyn: I think you put your finger on it. I shouldn’t expect too much,
but there is a lot I can do with that messy pile of papers and
books. Once done, I’m sure I shall have more stories to tell,
maybe even another novel ready to knead into something
special.
And do check out Carolyn’s page on Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/Carolyn-Howard-Johnson/e/B001JS28BQ/ref=sr_tc_2_0?qid=1265494516&sr=1-2-ent
Article and E-book Reprint Strategy By Karen Cioffi
Article and E-book Reprint Strategy
By Karen Cioffi
While it seems most writers don’t allow their articles/posts to be reprinted by others, I have come across a couple of writers/marketers who generously do allow this practice. They allow their posts to be reprinted by other writers to be used on their blogs or in their FREE newsletter. Obviously, anything being offered to reprint should never be reprinted in something you are selling, such as an e-book or report.
I’m surprised that more writers don’t take advantage of this reprint strategy. The benefits seem obvious – let’s look at four of them.
Four Benefits of Allowing Reprints
1.You have written something that someone else views as valuable.
2.You increase your visibility.
3.You increase traffic back to your site.
4.You never know who will see that article/post or where it will end up.
What About Giving Your E-books Away?
I have also seen this reprint practice utilized with e-books, and it peaked my interest. These informational e-books plainly state, in the beginning of the content, that readers may freely pass it along. This technique generates additional visibility and is a great promotional tool and marketing opportunity.
In fact, I recently started taking advantage of this practice with one of my e-books. All the writer needs to do is request permission to offer my e-book as a freebie on their site.
Yes, at present I require permission, but that may change as I begin to write more e-books.
Word of Caution Here
Please remember, it’s essential, when taking advantage of a writer’s reprint offer, to always keep the article or e-book intact. Be sure to use the author’s byline and any other text and links that they have as part of the bargain. It’s a win-win situation: the author increases his visibility and you get an article to use on your blog or in your newsletter, or you get a free e-book to offer on your site.
Drawback to Using Reprints or Offering Them
Obviously, there are a couple of circumstances in which offering or using reprints isn’t advisable, such as: you wrote the article specifically for a magazine or ezine and publishing elsewhere is restricted, or you may not want to use an article with a byline that will send your reader to a site that offers the same services you do (a competitor’s site). But, all-in-all, this is a practical marketing plan.
Why not utilize this practice. It will be a supplemental tool to be used along with your ezine article marketing. These two strategies combined will certainly generate and increase visibility and traffic back to your site.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Karen is the co-author of Day’s End Lullaby, a children’s bedtime picture book that includes the sheet music to the original lullaby. Check out a great video review at: http://daysendlullaby.blogspot.com
Day’s End Lullaby:
http://www.amazon.com/Days-End-Lullaby-Karen-Cioffi/dp/1419691570/ref=sr_11_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1220900352&sr=11-1
Karen’s e-books:
The Self-Publisher’s Guide
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/the-self-publishers-guide-2nd-edition/7893477
From Writing Your Book, to Self-Publishing Options, to Creating a Website, to Promotion – it’s all included in this handy guide. Topics include: learning to write, critique groups, being ready for publishing, choosing a publishing company, creating visibility through promotional strategies, bringing traffic to your site, resources, tools, and much more.
Writing, Publishing, and Marketing – You Can Do It!
http://www.lulu.com/content/e-book/writing-publishing-and-marketing—you-can-do-it-2nd-edition/8218845
What are the steps needed to write a book, find a publisher, and market that book effectively?
Writing, Publishing, and Marketing – You Can Do It! answers that question. It provides a step-by-step guide to help you over the hurdles. You might say it’s a GPS system to help get writers where they want to be – published and selling books.
For more information on writing and marketing visit Karen and Robyn Writing for Children (http://karenandrobyn.blogspot.com). And, for a wide range of writing services, stop by DKV Writing 4 U (http://dkvwriting4u.com).
Both sites offer a FREE e-book about writing and marketing along with a free monthly newsletter.
Good News about my book
My chapter book, “The Angry Little Boy,” is going to be published by 4RV publishing. Here’s a link to their website:
http://www.4rvpublishingllc.com/
. I’m thrilled!! It’s my first book. I only started writing fiction in 2006, after I hooked up with Linda Barnett Johnson at the first Muse online writing conference.
Here’s a link to Linda’s website:
www.lindabarnett-johnson.com/
And here’s one to the Muse Online Conference. Do sign up for the 2010 conference, to take place in October. It’s fabulous, it’s online, and it’s free.
www.themuseonlinewritersconference.com/
At the time I had no intention of ever writing fiction, but Linda’s policy was that you joined both the fiction and poetry forums or you joined neither. And so I started writing fiction.
The first version of this story was about 5000 words and I wrote it in a weekend. The present version is just over 11,000 and is probably the third major revision.
Finally — My New Year’s Resolutions
New Year’s Writers Resolutions
1. Read poetry. This was one of my resolutions last year — and I did well with it. I haven’t read as much over the holidays — time to get reading again.
Trite but true — one of the best ways to improve one’s own poetry is to read lots of other people’s.
2. Write poetry. Write or revise something every day. This is not a problem. What is a problem is remembering to vacuum the house and empty the dishwasher..
3. Finish the draft of my second MG novel. I stopped working on this one when I broke my wrist — but now that my wrist is out of its cast I have no excuse.
3. Submit the math poetry collection to more places — I have some more publishers to check out.
4. Submit more poetry. I did start organizing my poetry — pretty overwhelming. I’ve got hundreds and hundreds of poems. Even though I keep them online in Google documents, the sheer number of poems I want to work on — and want to reorganize — has my head spinning.
Happy New Year
My cast is off, so no more excuses for not working on my new MG novel. I’ve accumulated lots of emails from D who kindly copied me on the email she sends to her band students, and I need to go over them for plot points. Have more ideas on how to continue story. Also, of course, need to read over what I’ve got so far. Lots to do there.
Also have to finish going over the publishers I want to send my collection of math poems to. I’ve sent to two so far. Have about six more I want to check out for suitability. After that need to go over list of publishers again to see if I can find any more. No excuses now that I’ve set up my new printer, with some help from my boys — C. had to help me find the USB port on my computer, and M. had to tell me to reboot to get the print queue activated. It’s the little things that get you every time.
More Math Poems
Check out the new issue of Cyclamens and Swords which has five of my math poems.
http://www.cyclamensandswords.com/main/page_ticklish_3.html
Update
Merry Christmas, everyone. My after-Christmas present will be to get my cast off next Wednesday. Then I’ll have no excuse for not getting back to my latest MG novel.
Have finished putting together my chapbook for Robert Lee Brewer’s November PAD chapbook challenge. I plan to read it over again and then send it off.
Cast is fraying and ends are giving me blisters — ugh! Have tried padding end with a cut up sock. Let’s hope it helps.
PS: My sister says I forget to tell her I broke my wrist and she had to find out by reading my blog. Oy!
November PAD challenge
I’m participating in the November PAD challenge http://www.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/
Though I’m not posting to the blog, as I don’t want my poems to be previously published, I’m sharing my poems with some friends, and I am planning on putting together a chapbook to submit. I’ve now got my theme solidified and am not just keeping up, but keeping to my theme. Hot diggety!!
Do consider participating — it’s loads of fun.
