Jeffe Kennedy Blog

I took this picture in a roadside stand in Hatch, New Mexico on our way from Santa Fe to Tucson. My mom needed a new ristra – the name for these bundles of dried chile peppers – and I texted this to see if she liked this variation with the dried corn husk pieces. It ended up being such a cool image, I thought I’d use it here. One of the things I love about living in New Mexico is the variations on what have been traditional Christmas themes for me. I’ll try to keep posting local color holiday photos throughout the month.

Every once in a while, an author will succumb to the temptation to write a post about how readers can help their careers.

If you’ve been around the internet communities of readers and writers, you’ve seen them before. Or heard about them. The latter occurs because word tends to travel among people annoyed by such things. Which a lot of people are.

Now, let me go on record here as saying I’m a big believer in asking for help.

Every one of us needs help at some time or another and it’s usually a big mistake not to ask for it. Pride can get in the way, with people not wanting others to know their weaknesses and need for help. Many of us were also raised with the idea that asking for something from other people is akin to begging and not working for what you want.

Amanda Palmer addresses this idea beautifully in her Ted talk on The Art of Asking. If you haven’t listened to it, I highly recommend you do.

There’s a fine balance in the commerce among human beings between giving and receiving vs. selling and buying. The transactions are the same in essence, yes? In both cases, we exchange something, usually of value. The sticking point is whether we exchange something back again, to compensate the other. Arguably, there is always a “price” on a gift – whether it’s the expectation of gratitude, or later recompense or a trade of some other kind.

Only an anonymous gift is truly free of all strings.

But that’s a side argument because we’re talking about selling and buying. Between writers and readers, there is an expectation that readers will buy our books. (Yes, I’m leaving out fan fiction, free stories, etc. – for a person who earns their living as a writer, selling books is how it happens.) In that sense, we’ve already made the request. I might be standing on the street corner, with my cup full of matches and a stranger gives me a penny for one. Presumably that person wanted the match enough to pay a penny for it, but I asked first. I stood out there and made the proposition.

Just as I do with my stories.