Life and Times of the 1950s: Vintage Holidays by @JanetLynn4
December 3, 2017 by Janet Elizabeth Lynn and Will Zeilinger in category Partners in Crime by Janet Elizabeth Lynn & Will Zeilinger tagged as fashion, holidays, Life in the 1950s, research
Vintage Holidays
During the 1950s holiday parties happened all month long. They included everything from Company dinners and dancing, Club/organization award dinners, to neighborhood parties. If the evening wasn’t a Black tie affair, dress was “Cocktail” or “After Five”. A great deal of time was spent by both men and women in preparing their holiday outfit. Many women made their outfits for the occasion or re-designed old dresses. Suburbanites who had jobs in the city but lived in the “burbs” realized they didn’t need to travel to the city in order to enjoy the holiday season. Simple to lavish affairs were planned in neighborhoods and by organizations in their local area. Still, fashion was important, regardless of where they live
Men of the ’50s were polished head to toe with stylish hats, suits, handkerchiefs, coordinated ties, socks and Wingtip shoes. Suits were slim fitting and skinny ties were the1950s fashion. Men pulled out the jewelry: collar bars, lapel pins, cufflinks, tie clips and most important…a watch. Many wore some of it or all depending on the event.
Women also followed the trend of the day with dresses that were cinched at the waist and dramatic necklines. In an effort to look coordinated, parures (matching sets of jewelry) were popular. These pieces were designed to be worn as a set. The women wore matching earrings, necklaces, bracelets, pins and rings. They strived for the “coordinating” look.
(Note: My mother-in-law, who lived overseas, was a “fashionista” of her time, 40s, 50s, 60s. Her strategy was to make or buy an evening dress that was full and long. Each year (with the help of fashion magazines) she would re-shape the dress by making the skirt less full, changing the sleeve and the neckline. The original dress was reshaped up to five times and they were beautiful each time.
As a youth, I lived in Long Island, New York in the 1950s, and my mother and several neighbor women did the same thing with store-bought evening dresses to keep within the yearly budget. This is how important fashion was in the 1950s.)
Everyone paid a great deal of attention to the coats they wore when they arrived at parties. After all, that was the first thing people saw when you stepped through the door. Full swing coats were popular for women, depending on where you lived and the temperature. Men wore full length coats. And again, the coats, for both sexes, were accessorized, i.e., pins, corsages or boutonnieres of artificial flowers, gloves, hat, etc.
After all, the holidays were the time to pull out all the stops.
Janet Elizabeth Lynn
Website: www.janetlynnauthor.com
Blog: www.themarriedauthors.blogspot.com
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Helping Santa by @jannryan
December 2, 2017 by marianne h donley in category Jann says . . . tagged as critique groups, interviews, Jann Ryan
Jann says she’s off today helping Santa. But don’t worry she’ll be back on December 4th with a special interview featuring the members of the Writing Something Romantic critique group.
Mark your calendars because the group has something fun to share.
Jann Ryan grew up with the smell of orange blossoms in Orange County in sunny Southern California, where she has lived her entire life and dreamed up stories since she was a girl. Never an avid reader, she was in her thirties when she picked up her first romance quite by accident. She fell in love with happily ever after and has been reading romances ever since.
Wanting to put pen to paper, Jann joined of Romance Writers of America®. Currently, she is working on a romantic suspense series set in Stellar Bay, a fictitious town along the California central coast to fulfill her publishing dream.
December Featured Author: H.O. Charles
December 1, 2017 by marianne h donley in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as December Feature Author, HO Charles, The Fireblad Array
[tweetshare tweet=”@HOCharles December Featured Author on A Slice of Orange” username=”A_SliceofOrange”]
H.O. Charles is an Amazon Top 100 Sci-Fi and Fantasy author of The Fireblade Array – a #2 best-selling series across Kindle, iBooks and B&N Nook in the Sci-Fi and Fantasy categories (#1 would just be showing off, right?)
Okay, it did hit #1 in Epic Fantasy in all those places… BUT DON’T TELL ANYONE because no one likes a bragger.
Though born in Northern England, Charles now resides in a white house in Sussex and sounds like a southerner.
Charles has spent many years at various academic institutions, and cut short writing a PhD in favour of writing about swords and sorcery instead.
Hobbies include being in the sea, being by the sea and eating things that come out of the sea. Walks with a very naughty rough collie puppy also take up much of Charles’ time.
What Does The Extra Squeeze Team Think About SELF-e?
November 30, 2017 by The Extra Squeeze in category The Extra Squeeze by The Extra Squeeze Team tagged as Library Journal, Questions, Selfe-e, The Extra Squeeze Team
Question for the Extra Squeeze Team: I started to enroll to SELF-e to get my Ebooks into libraries. When I started to fill out the Agreement Form, I wondered if it’s a good idea. They want the right to copy, change, etc. material from the book. In lawyer’s terms, it states about preventing distribution of the books to libraries. I thought the idea of SELF-e was to get the Ebooks into libraries. Should I bow out or continue?
The article on SELF-e is in April 2017 Romantic Writers Report on page 18. It sounds good in the report. It says you can get out of it after you’re in SELF-e and says to write to the following address in the Agreement but then gives no address.
So, what does the Extra Squeeze Team think about SELF-e?
Rebecca Forster
USA Today Bestselling author of 35 books, including the Witness series and the new Finn O’Brien series.
I knew very little about Self-e until this question arose and now I’m very curious about it. I will probably submit some of my books.
I actually contacted my distributor because I was under the impression that OverDrive took care of distribution to libraries. I was advised that it is very difficult to find indie books on OverDrive (who knew) and that my best bet would be to visit all the libraries in a ten mile radius of my home and introduce myself.
I think a Self-e submission sounds a lot more efficient. So, while I can’t recommend it because I haven’t used the service, I am personally going to be looking into it because libraries remain an important fact of a writer’s life.
Robin Blakely
PR/Business Development coach for writers and artists; CEO, Creative Center of America; member, Forbes Coaches Council.
I think that the most important thing about Self-e to understand first is less about Self-e and more about your goals and aspirations as a business professional in the writing community.
- What financial goals have you set for yourself?
- How many books do you plan to sell this year, this month, this week?
- Is your book a product or is your book a marketing tool for you, the brand?
- How important is it to your strategic goals to gain access to the target market known as library patrons?
Self-e is one way to gain access to library patrons. This is an innovative way to elevate your brand through the library. Your particular strategy is what matters here. When you know what you want to do, you will know what will work for you. I love libraries and I am a big fan of the innovative services they offer.
However, I do not have any clients who have elected to used Self-e….yet.
[tweetshare tweet=”What are your goals and aspirations as a business professional in the writing community?” username=”A_SliceofOrange”]
H.O. Charles
Cover designer and author of the fantasy series, The Fireblade Array
I’ll preface this by saying it’s a bit unfair for me to comment, since I haven’t used Self-e and therefore cannot properly measure the impact of exposure on a platform like that (which seems to be their selling point, since they take all income for themselves).
What I CAN say is that library sales have never figured that prominently in the years I’ve been selling my books online. Almost all my sales occur via B&N, Apple and Amazon.
I distribute through Smashwords to the first two, and SW give me a 45% cut after sales to Overdrive, but the proportion of sales (in terms of units distributed) I get from libraries overall is teeny tiny compared to the major book retailers.
I’m happy to continue distributing to library services, as subscription model libraries may one day be the norm for readers, but until they occupy a larger block in my annual sales reports, I see no reason to feature the rest of my work for free (my first book is already free!) with something like Self-e .
Jenny Jensen
Developmental editor who has worked for twenty plus years with new and established authors of both fiction and non-fiction, traditional and indie.
My radically unqualified legal opinion: I don’t see anything in the agreement document of self-eLibraryJournal.com that signs over the right to change any material submitted. What I do see is that by agreeing to their terms the author grants self-eLibraryServices the royalty-free right to distribute your content to libraries, so you won’t be paid even if 500 libraries accept your book for their e-book list. I do see that by agreeing you grant them the right to copy bits to include an abstract, or description of the content. And they do provide an address you can write to, and your work will be taken off the system within 180 days of receipt.
Library Journal ATTN: LEGAL DEPT
7858 Industrial Parkway
Plain City, OH 43064
Library Journal is the leading publication in the library market and their e-book service – pretty new, it was beta tested in 2015 – provides a fantastic opportunity for indie writers. This is a curated program, so your work has to pass the smell test. But it provides a grand platform for an indie writer to grow their audience and fan base. How many authors have you first met at the library and then sought their work in the bookstore?
If your work meets the quality standards of Library Journal, then it receives distribution among participating libraries nationwide. If not, you have options:
Option 1 – hire a good developmental editor to bring the work to its most fragrant state and resubmit the improved version. (There is a reason the work didn’t pass muster, and you’ll do yourself a favor to find and correct that.)
Option 2 – use self -e.libraryjournal’s ability to put your book in your state’s participating library system which probably reaches a wide local audience. (Be mindful here of why Library Journal did not accept it for wider distribution.) It feels like a win-win to me.
[tweetshare tweet=”But Self-e provides a grand platform for an indie writer to grow their audience and fan base.” username=”A_SliceofOrange”]
Libraries pay for every book that isn’t a donation. LibraryJournal.com does not appear to compensate authors who have agreed to allow them to act as distributor. There may be no monetary profit, but the reward is exposure, and every indie writer knows that discoverability is huge – how else can you build a readership? I, for one, am so glad to see librarians pick up the gauntlet of the digital book world and begin to offer this invaluable, public service to the indie writing world. Library Journal is not the only forum. There are several sites that work with indie authors to distribute their work to libraries: ebooksareforever and Overdrive.
[tweetshare tweet=”Wonder what writing professionals think about issues that really impact your career? ” username=”A_SliceofOrange”]
Each month The Extra Squeeze features a fresh topic related to books and publishing.
Amazon mover and shaker Rebecca Forster and her handpicked team of book professionals offer frank responses from the POV of each of their specialties — Writing, Editing, PR/Biz Development, and Cover Design.
Send your questions to the Extra Squeeze Team
Sally Paradysz: November Featured Author
November 28, 2017 by marianne h donley in category Featured Author of the Month tagged as Featured author, In Memory, nature, Sally Paradysz
Sally Paradysz wrote from a book-lined cabin in the woods beside the home she built from scratch. She was an ordained minister of the Assembly of the Word, founded in 1975. For two decades, she provided spiritual counseling and ministerial assistance. Sal completed undergraduate and graduate courses in business and journalism. She took courses at NOVA, and served as a hotline, hospital, and police interview volunteer in Bucks County, PA. She was definitely owned by her two Maine Coon cats, Kiva and Kodi.
Sal is missed by all who knew her.
Please enjoy some of the many images Sal took around her Writing Cabin in the Woods. If you would like to read all of the column’s Sal posted on A Slice of Orange, please click here.
