Kelly K Ferguson | My Life as Laura

All Things Laura and Other Things

04/16 Publication! New England Review

Vol. 33/No. 4

So THIS arrived in the mail with my short story The Texas Project inside. The publication of this story means a great deal to me, because the first draft was no less than a turning point in my writing life. I’d spent a semester of crashing and burning in Kevin Canty’s fiction workshop at the University of Montana, spending hours tossing and turning awake at night wondering how I would ever write in a way that meant something. I dug in, terrified to the bone, and wrote the beginnings of this story.

I knew I’d done it when I arrived at workshop (keeping my hands under the table so no one could see them shaking) and everyone turned around and stared at me—with shock, to tell the truth—that I was capable of this.

I’d been obsessing on Lorrie Moore’s Birds of America during that time. Moore was first writer I read who helped me see a way to be humorous without being jokey—my writing Achilles Heel. I was, actually, sleeping with a copy of her short stories under my pillow. (Yes, I know. Desperate.) I named the protagonist “Lora” in Moore’s honor and for another literary character I might seem to admire just a wee bit.

Six years, countless revisions, and 22 submissions later, here we are! That this story would eventually find a home in no publication less than the New England Review is another pivotal moment.

Before I go, I can’t log off before saying the story Less Awful by David Heronry, which appears right before mine, might just have saved my life. I was flipping around to see what caught my eye and there was April, my new best friend. (Yes, April, you ARE making friends). Yep, Less Awful is that level of knockout story. Go find it.

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04/08 Ingalls Homestead, De Smet, South Dakota

It’s a bit terrifying to realize I took these pictures SIX years ago. But I was going through old pics and figured I might post a few. These were taken at the Ingalls Homestead in De Smet, which is located on the original Ingalls claim. Here is where you take your kids when you want to braid hay and grind wheat for bread. I write about the experience in My Life as Laura. but here’s a few more visuals.

An overview of the replica claim shanty. Looks as imagined, no?

I thought this rectangle was the view from the shanty, but now I believe this picture was taken as I looked out from the replica sod house. Apparently, I was also prone on the replica bed.

This china shepherdess has definitely been leaving her bonnet off.

An organ such as Mary would have played! Apparently, moving organs around the prairie wasn’t as uncommon as one might think. I have moved a piano cross country once and wouldn’t again, but Laura lived in Victorian times and an organ was a hallmark of civilized life. If Laura’s Ma was anything like mine, music lessons meant one had arrived to the middle class.

Here is the Laura I met working the claim that summer. She was very kind. Aren’t Lauras always? I imagine her now as a National Park Ranger saving bears and such.

Me sweeping. No, really. Here the action has been captured on film, so it must be true. Since I was my own photographer on the trip, I have many beheaded shots of myself.

I remember a woman taking this picture as we rode in the wagon to the schoolhouse. Apparently, hair stylists do not exist on the prairie. We’ll call this look, “Windswept.”

Pet and Patty, the wild mustangs, er, Palominos. Whatever. Horses!

I met many Lauras and Marys. These girls must be in junior high now. Probably bugging their parents for namecards and whacking off their bangs to create a lunatic fringe.

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02/24 My Life as Laura Ingalls Wilder: An Overwrought Acceptance Speech

For an Oscars party tonight, I'm baking Southern white cake, just so I can offer "White cake?" over and over in drawl.

For an Oscars party tonight, I’m baking a white cake, just so I can offer “White cake?” over and over in a drawl.

Fine, so I haven’t won any awards. But with the Oscar’s on tonight, it seems time to revisit my thanks for everyone who has supported My Life as Laura since publication. That no one really wants to hear the acceptance speeches is a given. I know. They are boring and come across as pretentious, but I understand now how much other people go into helping you achieve any level of success. You can’t do it alone.

Gratitude can be an overwrought word, but I am grateful to Kevin Morgan Watson of Press 53 for allowing the book to be in the world, and for everyone who has supported it from Bradin Farnsworth at the Missoula Public Library, to Eleanor Inge who wrote a review for The Mobile Register, to Debbie Young of England (England!) who retweets me and makes me feel clever.

I’m grateful to Cindy Owens (whoever you are!) who wrote a five star Amazon review six days ago. If you read the review posted before, you’ll see why.

And basically, if you go to my author page, I would like to thank everyone who interviewed and reviewed me. Publicity is hard for an unknown author on a small press.

I beginning to feel like Bob Hope here, for anyone who remember his drawn out renditions of “Thanks for the Memories” at the end of his television specials.

So quickly before the orchestra kicks in and I’m dragged off by supermodel—

The book that consumed five years of my life might not be in every airport of American, but it has been read by people other than my Mom and did not drop to a Amazon #2,356,962 sales ranking a week after its release (my fear). That the book has found people I don’t personally know, has been pretty thrilling.

Thank you.

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02/06 Mary Ingalls Goes Viral Meningoencephalitis

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I have to admit, that the actual diagnosis of Mary Ingalls would be of so much interest fascinates me. From CNN to NPR to The Huffington Post to People the media has been all over a two page journal article written by two doctors on how Mary did not go blind from Scarlet Fever, but, we’ll say it again—viral meningoencephalitis. As a grad student I have access, technically, to the two page article published in Pediatrics magazine. In reality, the database is only up to date until January and then I’ll have to order a copy through the library. Probably the more popular accounts are all I would only understand, anyway.

According to the Times, Dr. Beth A. Tarini became curious when she noticed young patients turning wide-eyed at the mention of Scarlet Fever. She knew that Scarlet Fever couldn’t really cause blindness, and, I’m gathering, felt that the diagnosis was inspiring more fear than the diagnosis warranted. Two more surprises here: 1) I’m glad to know that kids are still reading the Little House books enough that they would fear Scarlet Fever (I sure did). I mean, not that I want kids to be afraid or contract any sort of disease no matter the name, but I’m glad they are reading. 2) I really didn’t know that kids were still contracting Scarlet Fever. I suppose, naively, that I thought that had gone out with smallpox.

It’s good to know the truth, although I don’t know that the diagnosis of viral meningoencephalitis provides much in the way of comfort to any parent or child. And I really don’t recommend any rewrites to On the Shores of Silver Lake. Laura scholars have already long known that the best the doctors could really do at the time was diagnose Mary’s illness as “brain fever,” (closer than they knew!) but in writing the Books Rose and Laura went with what seemed a more accurate (and let’s admit it, a more literary) diagnosis.

One final thought: Given the comment threads I’ve seen criticizing one of My Favorite Authors for her inaccuracy, let’s recite together, once more with feeling, that while the Books are based on true life events, they have always been published as fiction, and thus Laura had full license to Cock-a-Doodle-Doo.

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01/18 Talking Laura Ingalls and Laurapalooza on Author Feast

Here’s a link to my most recent interview on Author Feast, “an online show where writers of diverse backgrounds and writing styles talk about their work and the publishing industry.” My host, Luke Abaffy was most congenial. He lives in Brooklyn but he also knows what it is to live in a Midwestern town. We admitted that while the city is grand, there’s something about a small town, isn’t there, Laurafans?

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01/14 Blood Meridian Drinking Game: Fun for the Whole Hellmouth

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Although a week has passed, I’m still working through my Blood Meridian PTSD. For those unfamiliar with Cormac McCarthy’s Apocalyptic Anti-Western—let’s just say that if unless you are stone, the book will flatten you. Whatever Laura Ingalls and the Little House books are, “the kid” and Blood Meridian are not. The Ingalls family goes west to reinvent themselves, as does the Glanton gang—as they ride deeper into the final concentric circle of The Inferno.

Which is not to say everyone shouldn’t read McCarthy’s novel, because everyone probably should. But stock up on chocolate or whatever helps you face the eternal damnation that is existence.

To help me cope, I began marking sentences “D” (Depressing), “G” (Gross), and “V” (Violent), the idea being I would have a Top Ten by the end. Often sentences were hybrids (DG or DV) and by the end every other sentence was simply DGV. The extremity bordered on a Quentin Tarentino reality, which created a sort of dark humor. Sort of.

Admittedly, I had a top ten by Chapter Two, but here’s a sample of sentences lifted:

(Need I add TW—Trigger Warning—in effect?)

(Spoiler Alert! Violence.)

Oh, and the Drinking Game: Take a shot of Old Crow every time you read the word “and.”

10. Only nature can enslave man and only when the existence of each last entity is rooted out and made to stand naked before him will he be properly suzerain of the earth.

9. The bodies of the dead were stripped and their uniforms and weapons burned along with the saddles and their uniforms and weapons burned along with the saddles and other gear and the Americans dug a pit in the rod and buried them in a common grave, the naked bodies with their wounds like victims of a surgical experimentation lying in the pit gaping sightlessly at the desert sky as the dirt was pushed over them.

8. Out of that whirlwind no voice spoke and the pilgrim lying in his broken bones may cry out and in his anguish he may rage, but rage at what?

7. A fistsized hole erupted out of the far side of the woman’s head in a great vomit of gore and she pitched over and lay slain in her blood without remedy.

6. The way narrowed through rocks and by and by they came to a bush that was hung with dead babies.

5. Then he died.

4. For each fire is all fires, the first fire and the last to ever be.

3. Brown halted his mount and got down and retrieved the sack of coins and took the boy’s knife and took his rifle and his powderflask and his coat and he cut the ears from the boy’s head and strung them onto his scapular and then he mounted up and rode on.

Actually, I’m done here. I can’t take anymore but if you made this far, congrats! You are drunk.

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01/07 Being My Own Book Publicist: In Review

When My Life as Laura came out in October, 2011, I wrote an essay for Hunger Mountain about how I planned to promote the book, though I be but a wee grad student on a small press. The book had only been out three weeks, so I was basing my post on articles I had read, conversations with other writers, observation, and sheer conjecture.

Here’s a reflection now that time has passed.

Contact Any Contacts You Have

This tactic has definitely been my most successful.

The party I wrote about in New York City never happened, but my home state of Alabama came through. And say what you want about “to MFA or not MFA,” the University of Montana lead to a reading at the Festival of the Book, and participation in the NEA’s Big Read Program at the public library. That’s TWO free trips to Montana, y’all. I was even interviewed by the local NPR program. In those early tender weeks of release, my writer friends bought, read, and wrote my first blurbs on Amazon and Goodreads, so my page didn’t resemble a Cormac McCarthy landscape. Ditto for Ohio University, where I’m working on my PhD. My advisor, Dinty W. Moore, and all the faculty have been super supportive. The department helped me with a launch party, and friends and colleagues lined up, yes, lined up to purchase my book! OU has featured me on their publications, their websites, etc. AND friends taught my book to their classes.

At What Events Did You Sell the Most Books?

Laurapalooza (46)

Montana Festival of the Book (41)

The Least Books?

Conferences where I presented a craft talk, and readings where the attendees were other writers. (0)

What About “Internet Presence”? Do I Really Have to Do All That?
Welcome to the 21st Century. Even so, it’s hard to know if someone buys your book because of a 5 star Tweet or not. It’s murky out there. Let’s break this situation down:

Blogging

Here I am blogging, but I don’t know that a blog necessarily (unless it is Stuff White People Like) translates into sales. My biggest keyword searches are “Eliza Jane Wilder” and “Buffalo v. Bison.” (Also, “Michael Landon freeballing,” you pervs! Which I did NOT even write about). My original idea was that people searching for Laura Ingalls Wilder and related info would find my website and then maybe buy my book. My exit links tell me that never happened. People just wanted to read about Eliza Jane Wilder and freeballing. People did use my exit link to Press 53 and Amazon sometimes. But only when they Googled my name or the book’s name.

Takeaway: A professional looking website with links to buy, obviously a must. But blog only if you like it. Otherwise, work on your work.

Twitter

At this point I have a tremendous 121 followers. I asked Wendy McClure, author of The Wilder Life, if she thought her 10,000 plus followers (under the handle Half-Pint Ingalls) actually translated into book sales. She wasn’t sure. I’m not either. How would anyone know? My idea is that just because a person thinks you are entertaining doesn’t mean they are a buyer of books.

But I still Tweet. Leetle-leet.

Facebook

Sorry, those of you weary of cats and food porn. I get your ennui, but FB keeps you fresh. Luckily, I’m naturally social and nosey. I’ll say, though, it’s really hard to wean people to the fan page. They want to be friends with you, not your book. My approach is to post here and there, and then I’ll Facebrag if something important happens in my Writerlife that I think my FB friends might actually want to know about.

Goodreads

You are reaching people who buy and read books, and geeky enough to want to post about it online. The Giveaway was useful. And I usually get a Twitter follower or two every time I post a book review.

The “web” metaphor makes more and more sense the deeper I get into this post.

Guest Blogging

Again, yes. Although these “posts” are really articles which take a great deal of time. But I’m in this writer gig for the long haul, and I consider guest blogging to fall under the category of literary citizenship.

Final Internet Promotion Thoughts

I don’t know exactly how all this cyberverse promotion works, but I do see where helping people remember you exist matters. And it probably does take some crazy convergence of multiple sources. And a great deal of consistency and energy.
Bookstores

At this time, My Life as Laura clings to a tiny foothold in real bookstores. I was thrilled to see the esteemed Prairie Lights Bookstore in Iowa City on my invoice. I mean, I didn’t even ask! I still love real bookstores and support them. On the downside, it’s hard to get in there as a small press book. I began to feel like a Jehovah’s Witness. So I couldn’t take it (I am, after all, a person with limited ego) and gave up asking.

Amazon

I know local bookstores hate it, but as a small press author, Amazon has by far been how I’ve reached Laurafans. People who love the Little House books as I do are my obvious target audience. The trick has been to FIND them. When people buy other LIW books, Amazon helpfully suggests they might enjoy my book. Amazon also enjoys a healthy Google profile.

Kindle

A surprising amount of downloads here. For which I say, yay! I’m excited that anyone is reading my book ever.

Surprises

Readers have found my book, liked it, written up reviews, and promoted it on their websites and journals. That’s been the best part—people who get the book. Thanks, people. There was even a book club who met and wore prairie garb. Pretty much a career highlight so far.

If you like an author, especially a small press author, know that an online blurb means a great deal. Go ahead. Give the gift of blurb.

Something I Did Right

I labored over my book, to the point of obsession, so that I knew it was the best book I could write. That carried me through the disappointments and the rough patches. There’s still errors—my apologies to that Goodreads reviewer who fell asleep— but I know, as Pa would say, that I worked hard and gave the book my sincerest effort. Laura, was, is, and will continue to be my guide in this ethic.

What I Could Have Done More Of

Find more Laura websites/blogs and comment. Learn to fly a skywriter.

Six Months

I saw a woman speak on book promotion, and her advice was that your book deserves six months. That’s pretty much what I did. Writing emails. Setting up readings. Working on that ever-elusive internet presence. And yeah, my own writing didn’t exist during that time. I was exhausted of words. Finally, this past fall, I began writing again for me.

Starting Anew

Yet another life lesson from the Ingalls family. (Yes, I really am serious about this Laura Ingalls Wilder business.) Here I am, looking at that untilled field all over again.

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11/28 Essay Published in Witness

Also included in this essay: My prepubescent debut as Macduff, Loyal Thane of Fife.

I began Experiments in Living Chemistry while I was an MFA student at the University of Montana, so it’s nice to see this one find a home at Witness, the magazine of UNLV’s Black Mountain Institute. For those who enjoyed the sections in My Life as Laura where I tell the sordid stories of my growing pains, here’s even more schadenfreude for your guilty pleasure.

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11/19 Book Review

My Life as Laura is reviewed in the current Los Angeles Review:

“Maybe it’s that she’s a fellow book lover and disparager of mayonnaise, and that she too favored the song “Undercover Angel” in fourth grade. In any case, I feel as if the author was speaking to me. As a reader, I was there with her, belly-laughing throughout this case of stunt writing gone right.”

Thanks so much for the kind words. It’s always nice to know the book is making its way west. And that other people hate mayonnaise.

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10/24 Back in Missoula!

“Everyone loves Missoula,” said the woman next to me, as our plane descended between the snow-capped mountains to land.

I had to admit defeat on this one. For one, everyone around me was reading on the plane. As in, a real book with pages. My traveling companion held an anthology that included John Wesley Powell and Wallace Stegner. No 50 Shades or iPad drone games for this crowd. Most of the time when I’m flying I feel as though I’m sitting next to some business-cyborg as he plugs and unplugs various bits of machinery from his head.

This is my second return to Missoula, since I came last year to read for the Montana Festival of the Book and present for the Western Literature Association conference. This time, the Holiday Inn feels about as home as my old apartment on 427. E. Pine Street. A few more businesses have changed hands downtown. But yesterday I slowly chewed my fish taco from Taco Del Sol as I walked by the blacked out windows of Charlie B’s, and this morning I have my Le Petit Outre latte in hand. The walk over Higgins Bridge, the whitewater splashing over Brennan’s wave, and the mist over Mr. Sentinel still give me that lifty, lofty feeling.

I do still have friends here, scattered here and there, although I can’t help but miss my posse. I keep staring into faces expecting to see old friends, irritated when the faces turn out to be someone else.

I think I’m feeling how Laura felt when she left Walnut Grove. All smooshy. But tonight at the reading, I have no doubt that I’ll soon be fortified tonight by old friends and the Union bartender (land of the double).

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