2019 Events where Phyl Campbell Can be Found

Look. I'm not Waldo. I look terrible in stripes -- ask me about racist laundry one day though, because there's a story there -- but really what I mean is that for a hermit, I'm relatively easy to find. Once I decided I needed to get out and do events in 2019 so I'd know what to attend and what to pass over in 2020 when all three Mermaid's Revenge series books are available, there was no end to the ways I could spend my weekends in the hot hot sun.

A few events took pity on me and moved events indoors. I have much gratitude for these event organizers. So much gratitude.

But without further ado:

Groups and Events

Rustic Cup Critique Group Leader, alternating Saturdays by invitation only -- but everyone can and should go to Rustic Cup and get a coffee shake or something. Seriously. Kris Kelley is the bomb diggity, making brews like a wiccan warlock.

2nd Saturdays @ Sonnewald Aug, Sept, Nov, 1516 Lefever Lane, Spring Grove, PA

I'm trying out lots of different kids' activities at this event, since I can expect to see the same kids monthly and don't want them bored. Come play!!

Equality Fest Vendor, August 4, Penn Park, 100 W College Ave, York, PA

NC Mer-Mania 2019, August 16-18, Double Tree, Greensboro, NC

DCBA Hafla Event, Vendor and Performer, September 15, Delta Hotels Marriott, 245 Shawan Road, Hunt Valley, MD
I got to attend the DCBA Convention earlier in the summer and connected with many amazing performers and friendly fellow vendors. I'm looking forward to the reunion. 

Vegfest Vendor, September 21, Cousler Park, 1060 Church Road, York PA
I have not turned Vegan on anyone -- ask me about Vegan Sandwichmaker, there's a story there, too. But it's a kid event and my Mer are vegan when not attacking men. So it's all good.

Save Against Fear Demonstrator, Mermaid's Revenge Game, Oct 11-13, Harrisburg Mall, Harrisburg, PA

I'm going to be doing this event with my son. 

HOPE Holiday Gift Expo, October 19, New Freedom Community CTR,150 E Main, New Freedom, PA
HOPE is a special group that wants to kick cancer's ass, so definitely come spend some time here.

CHI FEST, October 27, Details TBD.
This event is going to have epic levels of WOO surrounded by levels of skepticism about WOO. 

Shippensburg Book Festival, November 3, The Thought Lot, 37 E Garfield St, Shippensburg, PA

Shippensburg Creators and Makers Pop Up Market, November 17, The Thought Lot

NYC, NY and Lessons on Life

Sunday my family and I went to NYC, NY to meet some friends.

Like a lot of best made plans, the HOPE was that we would meet them, and for more than five minutes between subways. Unlike many of those plans, we actually DID manage to meet and even share a meal together.

Before we met our friends, my family toured NYC via ferry. If you want to see a lot of the city while ignoring people, do it by boat. I liked our tour guide, but wished I could have turned down his volume. And I definitely felt like the video and the audio did not match, because I could never see the things he was pointing out to us (except for the bridges).



The big deal for me on this ferry tour was seeing the Brooklyn Bridge, which for nearly twenty years had been my symbol of all things big city and fashion over function. Things I was over. Things I was not. And even though I saw it from behind the windows of a ferry, and maybe it would have felt different if I had been walking across it, I don't know, but it was right there and I still wasn't impressed.

The piece I wrote about it as an undergrad,  Lecture Notes: the Brooklyn Bridge is not something I have published or that has been widely read, even among my peers and BETA readers. Despite that, it is the essay that has meant the most to me, defined me, and been my mission statement (of sorts) over all this time. A little over a year ago, when my husband's job opportunities might have landed him in the five boroughs instead of Athens, Georgia, I had a massive panic attack. In Pennsylvania, three short hours from NYC, I have not recovered. There are too many things from Lecture Notes that I don't feel I have lived up to. And I hate disappointing anyone.

So I was having this experience that was not easy for me to explain or understand. The lack of awe-struck experience with an old bridge was almost as breath-stealing as a profound experience might have been. I can't help but think of the bridge architect as someone who built a casino for you-know-who and thought he was going to get paid without being screwed. He knew better. I might have warned him, had I known him. But he thought his outcome would be different.

What would move me, on the other hand, would be stories of all the workers who died because their literal choices were between working to death or starving to death. Still I wonder why they collectively could not have picked up the blasted architect and tossed him over his damn bridge. People would get to that point. Labor unions and better working conditions and women's suffrage -- all hard fought battles people lived and died to obtain. And I sit in the AC -- breathless, helpless -- thinking about how far we have and have not been able to come.

I had always believed that a college degree would assure my comfortable life. I don't know why. My parents both had college degrees and were both overworked, underpaid individuals. Their lack of financial success in no small way provided the complete funding of my undergraduate degree. So to look from my parent's experience to that of my college professors who gave the class from which Lecture Notes was born, I just figured it had to be something my parents did wrong. How could a student who wasn't even 20 recognize the boatloads of privilege that separated her professors from her parents? I would learn a lot that year about privilege. Nothing compared to what I know now, which will be nothing compared to what I will know in the next five, ten, or twenty years down the road.

Since I left Arkansas, I have really been thinking about privilege. How one side has used it. How one side can't group together to overcome it. How easy it is to get stuck in one place, unsure whether that place is a safe landing or merely a ledge gripped with sweaty fingers.

New York has many things going for it. Tons of tourism opportunities. Lots of museums. Plenty of offices and skyscrapers. But for my money, I want to do one of two things upon my return. One, I have more friends in Brooklyn and Queens. They know the lay of the land and I would learn a lot from them about their experiences as city dwellers. Two, I would just hop from taxi to taxi, going wherever the drivers took me, learning their histories and making sure they got their daily quota of fares.

Where have your travels taken you? Or where has lack of privilege prevented you from visiting?

Non Linear Writing

UPCOMING ADULT FICTION WRITING CLASS DATES:
MONDAY 9/12 6-8 Classroom at Ann Peden Jewelry and Artist Marketplace
MONDAY 9/26 6-8 Classroom at Ann Peden Jewelry and Artist Marketplace
Contact Ann to register:

Ann Peden Jewelry

1431 Capital Ave
Suite 109
Watkinsville, GA 30677
706-769-2656
store@annpedenjewelry.com

Many people write the same way they travel. They have to gas the car, travel each mile, and then arrive at their destination. They rely on an outline, and then can write chapter after chapter in perfectly logical order.

But no one HAS to think that way. And no one MUST write that way.

Everyone can be non-linear.

If I say to you "Paris, France," you immediately have an image in your head, whether it's this one:

Or not. Depending on who you are, you might think of Ratatouille or Little Mermaid or Beauty and the Beast. You might think of Les Miserables. You might think about french painters or french cuisine. Perhaps an image pops into your mind of Napoleon, the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile, or the Eiffel Tower. What you thought of doesn't really matter. My point is, you did not have to get on a plane or open a book to imagine immediately something directly related to Paris. Non linear writers get that.

Everything we write comes from imagination or memory. In the same way, every person has a slightly different view of Paris based on their experiences. And non-linear writers use those experiences to tell the stories they are most excited about telling. Here's the difference:

When you get home from a trip and tell your best friend all about it, you might tell about what happened out of order. This is called Stream of Consciousness. You remember things as they come to you, and sometimes your friend interjects, and that reminds you of something else, and sometimes you lose your train of thought. You can read non linear writing in flashbacks and foreshadowing and dreams and memories, even from linear writers.

But in non-linear writing, the goal is (usually) a linear plot. And depending on whether your story is plot driven or character driven, you will feel compelled to write major scenes of your story. It's almost a compulsion -- it's the dream you don't want to forget or this historic moment that you are chronicling for posterity. You MUST write this scene if you are a non-linear writer, in the same way that you MUST tell your friend about certain aspects of your vacation.

So plotting when you are non-linear still happens, just in a different way that linear people plot. Non-linear writers might make a list of five things that they expect to happen in their book. Or, they may write each scene not knowing where or how it fits, without making any sort of list. When a few of these scenes have been written, whether you are listening to characters or stopping along a roadside or kicking the bad guy's ass, you'll start to see where you want to go and what you need to do to tie those pivotal scenes together.

Imagine it like this:

You have a list of errands you need to accomplish. Meet a friend for lunch, get a deli tray for work, drop books off at the library, buy stamps at the Post Office, and buy flowers for your mother. You may write all these things down, and then you might place them in a logical order so you can save gas and flow with traffic. But the library and post office have specific opening and closing times, "lunch" with your friend should be midday, and you shouldn't leave a deli tray (or a floral arrangement) in your car any longer than you have to. If you're like me, you have noble intentions of hitting the library and post office before lunch, but since they weren't open before 8, when you left the house to take the kid to school, you putter around your house until five minutes AFTER you should have left to meet your friend, spend longer catching up than you intended (which you are not at all upset about) and then have to get everything else done in a rush before picking the kid up from school. 

So long as everything on your list gets done by the end of the day, you can count it a success. And if you were constantly blocked from your intended plan by obstacles, then you have the means for a great story that will make your readers do this:

And isn't that what we all want from our readers?

So to practice, comment with the events of your day, in some crazy harried style. Or, write about a journey from your imagination. Anything is possible for Authors, Mothers -- or not, and Dreamers!

Phyl Campbell is Author, Mother, Dreamer. She writes on a variety of topics: Education, Women/Feminism/Equality, Book Reviews, and Writing. Her books are available on Amazon. If you'd like to see her speak at an upcoming function, contact her via her website or Facebook page.