Meet master-networker, Sonia Marsh

I'm delighted to host Sonia Marsh, author of Freeways to Flip-Flops, today. I got the opportunity to ask her several questions about her writing and publishing experience.  As you'll read from Sonia's answers, she is a master networker. I have learned an immense amount from her. Plus Sonia is very generous about imparting her wisdom. If you are thinking about self-publishing, and even if you have a publisher, take some tips from Sonia about how to market your book. 

I believe you formed your own publishing company for the release of your book. Why did you decide to do that rather than go the traditional publishing route?

Like most writers. I was hoping to get a traditional publisher; in fact a small traditional publisher loved the premise of my story and kept asking me to show my manuscript. I knew it wasn’t ready, but after her third request, I finally e-mailed it to her. She agreed it needed more work, and a year later, she asked to see it again.

It still wasn’t quite ready, but I let her read it a second time. She then rejected my manuscript and said the story was not what she had hoped for. I was focusing on my son’s defiance, rather than on the adventure of moving to Belize.

With indie-publishing becoming more popular, I finally got the courage to “listen” to the advice I’d received from various agents and editors, and ended up with a story I felt was commercial.

Prior to your book release in September, how did you prepare? What marketing tools did you set up?

I read several books, including: Get Known Before the Book Deal, by Christina Katz, as well as PR and marketing articles online.

I read that it’s important to have short-term and long-term goals and to have a marketing plan, and I tried that, but that’s not the way I work. I’m far more spontaneous, and less organized than most of my author friends. I’m more of a people person, a networker who likes to chat and get to know others.

Several years before my book was ready, I followed a couple of local journalists, and purchased their books at their events. I always told them that I was writing a book and was fortunate that they were interested in my story about chucking it all, and uprooting my family to live in a hut in Belize.

Then I stayed in touch with them, on Facebook, commenting etc. I would ask them for help when my book came out. Would they please review it, or let me know who might be interested in reading it, and interviewing me.

I think I enjoy planting seeds all over the place, and after a while, those seeds sprout and people start contacting me.

What are you doing now to promote your book?

I’m booking as many events as I can at:

Indie book stores

Coffee shops

Book clubs

Libraries

Speaking engagements

Women’s groups 

I also network weekly with other bloggers, authors, coaches, and women’s groups, and ask them for ideas as to where I can speak.

Tell us a little about your writing life and your decision to write a book about your life in Belize? Did you write while you were there or after you came back to California?

When I first told a couple of close friends that we might move to Belize with our kids, they said, “Wow, Sonia, that’s pretty “gutsy,” you should write a book about that.

I’d never written before, although during high school, I had thought about becoming a journalist. So I started a journal about a year before we left so I could capture all the events, including my kids’ comments, my emotions at the time, and real dialogue to make it read and sound authentic.

When I returned to California, I thought it would be easy to turn my journal into a memoir, and had no clue about structuring a memoir. I never realized how much work it would take, which is probably a good thing, looking back on it.

What kind of support (editing, graphic design, proof reading, etc. ) did you get while creating and publishing your book?

Like many first time writers, I thought my memoir was ready after my first couple of drafts. In fact, I revised the first three chapters about five times, the next ten chapters, about three times, and the remaining 50% of the memoir was still in journal format, when I hired my first editor.

I then realized how much work I still had to do, to create a commercial memoir. The editor did give me one positive piece of news, “You’re a very likable narrator, which is not something you see in many memoirs today.” I thought that was a strange comment, but I was flattered anyway.

After attending several writers’ conferences, classes and critique groups, I rewrote several times and then hired another editor who specializes in story structure. After rewriting several more times, I then hired a copy editor, and finally a proof reader. So that’s four editors in total.

As far as formatting and cover design, I wanted it to look professional, so I did my research and ended up with 1106 Design, that specializes in book design.

What has been the world’s response to your book so far? Are sales going well? Have you gotten good reviews?

I sent out 100 ARC’s (Advance Reader Copies) to bloggers, journalists, potential endorsers, before my book release date and was fortunate to get 33 positive reviews (only one negative) and we all know that one grumpy person who isn’t happy with his/her life. I also managed to get some articles in the local press, and the front cover of the Orange County Register.

I’m not keeping track of sales on a daily basis as I focus more on booking events and spreading the news about my book. Sales will follow. I did receive my first royalty payment from Amazon and I also sell books at my weekly events.

Tell us about your next writing project if you have one.

I am putting together an anthology of the “My Gutsy Story” series on my blog and plan to host an event inviting all those who submitted to attend. I would like to make it special, and have a famous “Gutsy” person attend.

As far as writing another memoir, I’d love to join the Peace Corps, and write about other people and what I experience in Africa. I speak fluent French, and would like to be sent to another third world country and focus on the lives of the locals.

About Sonia: I can definitely attest to Sonia being a gutsy woman. And I relate to her life in Belize since our family lived on a Pacific Island for a year and a half. I'm just sorry I never wrote a book about it.

Sonia Marsh is a “Gutsy” woman who can pack her carry-on and move to another country in one day. She’s a motivational speaker who inspires her audiences to get out of their comfort zone and take a risk. She says everyone has a “My Gutsy Story”; some just need a little help to uncover theirs. Her story, told in her travel memoir Freeways to Flip-Flops: A Family’s Year of Gutsy Living on a Tropical Island, is about chucking it all and uprooting her family to reconnect on an island in Belize.

Sonia has lived in many countries – Denmark, Nigeria, France, England, the U.S. and Belize – Sonia Marsh considers herself a citizen of the world. She holds a degree in environmental science from the University of East Anglia, U.K., and now lives in Southern California with her husband, Duke.

Sonia welcomes new friends, bloggers, writers and readers at Soniamarsh.com (http://soniamarsh.com) Contact her at: sonia@soniamarsh.com www.facebook.com/GutsyLiving or Twitter.com@GutsyLiving

Introducing Sonia Marsh

I met face to face with Sonia Marsh for the first time yesterday after a long virtual friendship and a lot of win-win networking.

She is the author of the newly released memoir Freeways to Flip-Flops (available at Amazon.com in both paperback and Kindle, as well as Barnes and Noble) and the Gutsy Living blog. I posted my gutsy story there in June, and I’m pleased to say, I won for the gutsiest story of the month. Please go over to Gutsy Living to receive a special gift. Just scroll down and look for the red starfish.

So Sonia and I talked nonstop – mostly about how to go about the business of selling a book. We shared websites, conference information, how to get on panel discussions, what organizations we belong to. I urged her to join our Greater Los Angeles Writers Society. Although Sonia lives in Orange County, GLAWS has members who come to meetings and events all the way from Arizona.

Yesterday’s highlight was meeting with one of the proprietors of my local indie bookstore: Pages in Manhattan Beach. Pages: A Bookstore held a wonderfully successful launch event for my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, in May 2011, and now Sonia will also have a book signing and reading there as well. 

Please look for more information about Sonia here at Choices. She’ll be my guest in September answering questions about her book, and I’ll post a review just as soon as I finish it.

Her topic – living on a tropical island for a year with her husband and three boys – is very reminiscent of the 19 months my family lived on a tiny island in the South Pacific back in the mid 1970s. 

My Gutsy Story won!

I am thrilled that My Gutsy Story won first place for the month of June. I heartfully thank Sonia Marsh for accepting my story application and posting it for her monthly contest. Also, so many people made very insightful and wonderful comments about my story. 


One in particular was just posted this morning. And I have to share it with you. It is from my friend and fellow poet and cell-phone photographer, Keith Alan Hamilton. Ever since I joined Keith's Poets, Writers, Photographers, Musicians, Artists - Networking Group on Facebook, he and I have had a special bond. And I was fortunate to meet him and his girlfriend personally when my husband and I were in Boston in May. Keith has also created 


The Hamilton Gallery   ~   Online: an Artist Collaborative of Words, Images and more.....

Online publisher
providing the creative spirit
greater distribution & readership
over the internet
free of charge.

Keith has honored me by showcasing my poetry and material about my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On, at The Hamilton Gallery. His wonderful words this morning just took the breath out of me:

What follows is my review of Madeline’s book…. Madeline Tasky Sharples is a world class human being and I am blessed to call her one of my dearest friends. As far as I am concerned the word gutsy only touches on how magnificent Madeline truly is….. 

~Keith Alan Hamilton~ 

Review is from: Leaving the Hall Light On (Hardcover)

This memoir with poems by Madeline Sharples, I hope will have a positive effect on the reader’s intellect and values beyond the awareness of a mother’s tremendous courage as a human being to cope with and talk about the loss of her son. Way beyond her gifted abilities to write so openly and poetically about her son’s life experience, his all-out struggle with a condition not fully understood and still felt as not normal by others. Way, way beyond the heart wrenching trauma underwent by a family who had a beloved member commit the ill thought of and unspeakable act, the taking of his own life. Madeline’s forthright and insightful words, whether intentional or not, will present an introspective opportunity to the reader. Where the reader is unexpectedly provided the chance to self-reflect and wrestle with their own preconceived biases and inhibitions on this matter. Those socially embedded judgments, which sadly cause a state of disease, a lack of discernment concerning two separate but often associated components within the trials and tribulations of day-to-day living. Publically chosen and accepted labels, shadowed by the stigma of disease, mental illness and defect, called bipolar disorder and suicide.

In Leaving the Hall Light On, Madeline Sharples has graciously given forth the experience of her son’s journey through life as a precious gift. Her son’s life and how he lived it, holds out tremendous value to those who care to listen. Beneath the pain and stigma, is a cherished life, no matter if perceived as being tragically cut short, in the end was well worth every moment it was humanly lived. A life of a son, portrayed honestly without embarrassment or regret by the loving words of his mother. The writing of this memoir with poems by Madeline Sharples may have been at times hard for her to say or bear; and yet, her heartfelt words keep alive the spirit of purpose and positive effect her son’s life experience will have on others, even after he chose to walk into the release of death. Her son’s life and death offers us all the opportunity to learn and then personally grow as a human being ourselves.

Thank you Madeline Sharples for helping to let the memory, the spirit and the value of Paul’s life, get the chance to breathe fully within the beat of time. 

My Gutsy Story contest - redux

I take it all back. So many people came through for me and voted that I have no complaints at all. Please forgive my last rant.

As of today with just over two days to go I am leading by fifty-one votes. Though I don't want to rest on my laurels, and I know how easy it is to surge ahead like I did with your support, I'm feeling very good about my chances now.


I'd also like to share My Gutsy Story here. I hope piece about what I did to survive my son's death will help others going through their own tragedies. Some of the material here is also in my memoir, Leaving the Hall Light On. 

Sonia Marsh - Founder of The Gutsy Story contest

My Gutsy Story

When my older son Paul died by suicide in 1999 after a seven-year battle with bipolar disorder, I knew I had to find ways to keep myself busy and productive or else I would wallow away in my grief. At the time of his death I was writing grant proposals for a homeless shelter, but I found too many reminders working from my home office. The solution, I thought, was to work outside my home.

After two false starts at part-time jobs outside – writing grant proposals for our local free clinic and managing capital campaigns as a fundraising consultant – I decided the way for me to live with the death of my older son was to get rehired by the aerospace company I retired from in the mid-1990s where I had worked off and on since the mid 1960s. When a job opening came up in January 2003, I jumped at it and was hired.

My job was to help my company produce proposals, a huge document or set of documents, meant to persuade the government to hire us to do their needed work. The job was challenging, meaningful, and very stressful – all necessary to keeping my mind so occupied with other things I would have no time to grieve. Each proposal project had a defined beginning, middle, and end so it gave me the opportunity to work with ever-changing proposal teams. I thrived on that socialization, the respect others had for my work, and the challenges of training engineers how to write in English.

Meeting stringent deadlines made me stronger, and keeping my mind on the job stopped me from dwelling on my loss. Plus, I gained skills in setting goals, organizing work and the people I worked with, and managing to a deadline – all skills necessary to my writing career now.

But I kept feeling the draw of creative writing. I had studied journalism in high school and college, I had taken many writing classes and workshops, and by 2009, I was already shopping a memoir I had written (in my “spare” time) about the death of our son and how our family survived. So I started to think about retiring from my day job again. Except I kept hesitating. I was afraid to take that step. I was afraid I would fall apart without my full-time job crutch.

Even though I asked myself: why was I doing my company’s work – of taking men and women back to the moon? Why should I do this work instead of working on my own writing projects? Why was I sabotaging my creativity and healing? I rationalized that I needed the structure, the socialization, and the money. I rationalized that I wouldn’t do well working from home again – alone. But it was none of those. I just plain refused to find out if I could live and survive on my own and as the full-time writer I so longed to be.

Well, I finally did retire, but it took me until April 2010, to do it. When I look back at all those years of indecision, I realize I just couldn’t make the final decision until I was good and ready. Until I felt comfortable enough with myself. Until I stopped carrying around the grief and sorrow.

And the timing was perfect.

Two months after I retired I got a publishing contract for my memoir Leaving the Hall Light On: A Mother’s Memoir of Living with Her Son’s Bipolar Disorder and Surviving His Suicide that I had been pitching for over two years. Almost immediately I was knee-deep in revising my book and getting it ready for publication and getting more and more involved with the social networking necessary to publicize my book. Best of all, after my book was published, I was able to move on to the career I’ve wanted to have since I was a teenager: as a journalist and creative writer.

I like to think that Paul’s death gave me the gift of this new career and a new mission in life. I created a book with the goal of helping others who have experienced a loss like mine; I am working as a web journalist for several online sites that deal with survival, healthy living, and being a vibrant over 60-year old; I’m busy writing a novel, and I discovered my most important work of all: helping to erase the stigma of mental illness and prevent suicide with the hope of saving lives. If my writing helps attain that mission, it will all be worth it.

Another rant - this must be my rant week

So I’m frustrated. I am in the running for a prize at the My Gutsy Story contest site. Up until yesterday another contender and I kept taking the lead back and forth, but now I’m seven votes behind.

I’ve sent out two group emails, posted the contest info all over the place on Facebook, tweeted about it, other folks have tweeted about it, and just today created an event to ask people to over there to vote. And out of all that I have forty-five votes. I need seven right now just to tie the first place guy. And I would think that wouldn’t be so hard to do.

Don’t people respond to requests like this anymore? Is this going to make me lose some of my FB friends and make me seem like a pest?

It really isn’t pesty, I don’t think. Just a simple request:

Click on a link, look on the right sidebar, find the Polling place, and click on my name. Should be a piece of cake. I can’t even get my family to do it.

So now I’m at a loss as to how to draw folks in and to click where I’ve asked (practically pleaded with) them to click. And I wonder if this kind of response is typical in everyone’s experience.

I’ve questioned before about the reasoning behind Facebook fan pages and getting lots of Likes, all the tweets, the LinkedIn messages, the Facebook friends and posts. Sure I’ve made a lot of friends, but most don’t chime in. I’ve also had a few books sell as a result, but not that many for how much work I do

That’s why I’m frustrated. It doesn’t look like all my work and all my contacts are making any difference what-so-ever. It’s really too bad. What does it take for a thought or a piece of writing to go viral? Plus, what does that mean anyway? Is that just in terms of sharing something around or does it also mean sharing and taking some kind of action?

Well, folks, please take some action here:

Click on this Link

Read the story

Look on the right sidebar

Find the Polling place

And click on my name

Thanks for reading, forgive the rant, and please vote before July 11.

OOH, I take some of this back. A couple of votes just came in as a result of the FB event. Yay, something is working. Thanks so much.