Now I’d rather be

sliding down a waterfall,

no cactus landing.

~Char Siu

Living the shadow of a volcano, there were many nights when I imagined lava pouring down Haleakala’s mountain sides and pooling in the hall outside my bedroom door. My sister and I even had a game where the floor was white-hot lava and you had to leap to safety chair by coffee table by couch.

Our mother was not amused.

Like Californians and earthquakes, mid-westerners and tornadoes, Big Island residents know that someday Pele’s fires will dance again, a ticking time bomb on a geological time scale of a minute or millennia.

Developers and bankers want to think a hundred years or more. My grandfather was in the insurance biz when developers in the 1970s and ’80s wanted to build on lava flows. He refused.

“There’s a reason it’s a lava flow, Lehua. Never build on a lava flow or a dry river bed.”

Probably come of the best advice he ever gave me.

If you scratched Kiana Davenport, beneath her sophisticated, erudite veneer I think you’d find the heartbeat of a no-nonsense Waimanalo titah, a contradiction makes her work a delight to read.

I just finished Opium Dreams, volume three in her Pacific Stories collection, and like in her previous volumes Cannibal Nights and House of Skin, I found myself slipping into the skins of the narrators. You don’t read her stories so much as breathe them along with her characters. Her eye for the small telling detail that reveals epic amounts of information is exquisite and her deft handling of imagery often makes the prose sing like poetry.

Da titah can write. Period.

I’ve admired Kiana’s work for a long time. Her main characters are often mixed-raced Polynesian women trying to make a life for themselves on the margins of western culture. The women in her stories survive abuse, make poor choices, bow under the burdens  of history and culture, and fall to the whims of turn-on-a-dime fate. They also seize life and triumph in ways large and small. They are spectacularly flawed, raw, and real. Kiana has the knack of taking something alien to most western experiences and making it universal.

In Opium Dreams, her stories are about anger and revenge, self-destruction,  the inevitable consequences of action vs. inaction, and the grace of forgiveness. In Kiana’s worlds, family is who you chose, and that choice is everything.

Opium Dreams by Kiana Davenport is available as an eBook through Amazon and is her first foray into self-publishing.  It’s a steal at 99 cents. Be sure to check out her other titles: House of Skin, Cannibal Nights, Shark Dialogues, House of Many Gods, Song of the Exile, and The Spy Lover. I guarantee you’ll be haunted by these characters’ lives for years.

Connect with Kiana Davenport

Blog: http://kianadavenportdialogues.blogspot.com/

Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/kiana.davenport

Twitter: https://twitter.com/BRAXTONRO

(sah-SHEE-mee) (n) Japanese for thinly sliced raw fish. Often confused with sushi on the mainland.

Example

‘When Kalei’s head broke the surface of the large saltwater pool at Piko Point, all he was thinking about was thinly sliced sashimi fanned on a bed of green cabbage and the hot wasabi paste he would mix with shoyu to make a dipping sauce.’ ~ One Shark, No Swim

Note: ‘Ōlelo is a Hawaiian word meaning language, speech, word, etc.  To see the current list of words, definitions, and usage please click on ‘Ōlelo Archive.

A bikini smiles

sunlight on golden tan, the

whispered promise sure.

~Jay

I’m buying a new rug for the downstairs bath. I dashed in there this morning, nose running, scrambling for a wad of toilet paper for what I insist are allergies, but fear is really a cold. Maybe strep. I don’t have time for a doctor. It’s spring hay fever, I’m sure.

Too bad I can’t swallow. That’s normal, right?

Anyway, I should’ve turned the light on, but I was in a hurry, stepping hard and fast across the tile, reaching along the vanity, down near the commode, when it squished.

I flicked on the light real fast.

There it was in the middle of the cutest blue rag rug you ever saw: a dead robin.

Well, part of one.

Did I mention I was barefoot?

I’m getting a new rug.

I wish the cats loved me less.

Pono is a complex Hawaiian word with connotations of righteousness, balance, and propriety. It’s one of the themes I try to develop in the Niuhi Shark Saga as characters make choices that place them in or out of being pono.

Ho‘o means to do or make; so ho‘o pono describes a way of being, of living one’s life in harmony with correct principles. As a student at The Kamehameha Schools, our Hawaiian culture teacher once told us that if there was only one thing we could remember from our time with her, she wanted it to be the concept of ho‘o pono. While I can’t remember all the place names we memorized, which fish were kapu during which seasons, or the number of voyages to Tahiti and back, I do remember her words about ho‘o pono.

So it was with great interest that I picked up Pali Jae Lee’s book Ho‘o pono: The Hawaiian Way to Put Things Back into Balance. Part oral history, part memoir, the book shares some of the family traditions and stories handed down from Ka‘ili‘ohe and Makaweliweli descendants from Molokai.

One of the central stories is really a parable about ho‘o pono. All children are born with an upright bowl of Light that grows with them and allows them to know and understand all things. But when a child is resentful or envious, he drops a stone into his bowl and a little of the Light goes out. If enough stones fill his bowl, the child becomes like stone, unable to move or grow. By turning his bowl over, the stones fall away and Light comes back.

It’s a simple, beautiful, and elegant metaphor for all the baggage we carry—no matter the era. These and other parables help give a voice to the past in ways that resonate with the future.

There was a time in Hawaiian families when nothing sacred or significant was shared with outsiders because only family would understand and respect the deeper truths. Looking at Hollywood’s version of Hawaiian culture, it’s not a big stretch to say what is often portrayed as Hawaiian has been misinterpreted, twisted, or fabricated out of whole cloth. But times are changing, and as more families are coming forward with their histories that challenge common perceptions, a clearer, truer picture of Hawaiian culture is emerging.

May all your bowls be filled with Light.

Ho‘o pono: The Hawaiian Way to Put Things Back into Balance by Pali Jae Lee is published by I.M. Publishing, Ltd. and is available as an eBook, hardcover, and trade paperback from Amazon.

haumāna

(how-MAH-nah) Hawaiian word for student.

Example

“Okay, haumāna, sit down. We begin with the first lua ‘ai I ever learned.” ~Uncle Kahana

Note: ‘Ōlelo is a Hawaiian word meaning language, speech, word, etc.  To see the current list of words, definitions, and usage please click on ‘Ōlelo Archive.

For the price of a comic book, anyone can buy thousands of new fan page likes or followers on social media services like Facebook or Twitter. Most of these likes and followers are not real people; they exist only as ones and zeros in computer code. But to the casual observer, it’s tough to tell the difference.

As an author if you’re happy writing what you’re writing for the audience that finds you, the idea of  paying for fake followers doesn’t make sense. Most likely, you find the idea offensive because it smacks of cheating–kinda like jumping to the head of a really long line to win a fabulous prize. You feel your best strategy is to slowly build a following by word of mouth, hoping to catch that lightning in bottle that eludes most authors, but are totally okay if you don’t.

God bless you; you are the Hufflepuffs of the world and we need you.

But while at first blush the idea of authors paying for social media followers seems like nerdy kids bribing the cool kids with cookies, the truth is much more complicated. There are some sound reasons why Slytherin and Ravenclaw authors might consider a more Machiavellian approach.

(Gryffindors, of course, are the outliers, the one in a million social media phenomenons, the exceptions that prove the rule. We all want to believe we’re Gryffindors, but the world’s sorting hat begs to differ.)

In the past I’ve compared social media marketing to a stadium full of people shouting at each other and to popularity contests in high school where the cool kids are identified by the attendant herd of wannabees. Now I’m combining these two analogies to make a different point.

Relax. It’s story time. Cue the typewriter sound effects and bring down the house lights.

Dateline: Smallberg , America. Joe Football is Smallberg High’s biggest star, the brightest since his cousin Bob Football took the team to their only division championship in 1997. Smallberg High’s season record is hot and word is that Big State is sending a recruiter to take a look. We all know how Joe plays in the next game can determine whether he gets a dream scholarship to Big State U or enrolls in Smallberg JC next fall.

What we don’t know is that Big State’s recruiter isn’t just watching the field, he’s watching the fans. Are the bleachers full? Are people excited when Joe makes a big play? How many are wearing his number, rocking it with the cheerleaders, and waving Smallberg High banners? How many fans are going to follow Joe’s career to college and how many season ticket holders is he likely to inspire to pony up for next year’s roster?

As much as Joe Football thinks it’s all about his rapid-fire passes and nimble footwork, the Big State recruiter’s looking at a much bigger picture.

Game day, the weather’s glorious, but the stands are unusually empty because most of the townsfolk are at the Kiwanis Club, crossing their fingers, rubbing their lucky charms, and hoping they hold the golden ticket for the shiny new car about to be raffled in the club’s annual fundraiser. When the Big State recruiter enters the stands, finding a seat isn’t a problem.

The coaches sigh. They know that the bar for Joe’s scholarship just got set higher, as in every-play-has-to-make-a-highlight-reel higher. After all, Joe can’t be all that if no one’s watching.

Let’s take a step back. What if Joe Football’s father asked the Kiwanis Club president to announce the winning ticket at half-time? Now when the recruiter arrives not only is most of the town at the stadium, people are spilling out into the parking lot. It’s standing room only.

Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

But like a late night tv ad for Ginsu knives, wait! There’s more.

What if Bigger State keeps tabs on who Big State recruiters watch?

What if most Bigger State players go pro?

How silly does Joe’s father look now?

In our analytic-metric-statistic-loving-bean-counting world, this is the conventional wisdom and logic that drives a lot of really amazing writers to buy likes and followers. Their work is good, but at a certain professional point all the writing’s good. Smallberg authors think Big State agents and publishers want to sign the popular player whose number of fan page likes and followers are trending up. Way up. We believe it because publishers and agents tell us so.

Publishers want authors to engage people through social media because they believe it boosts visibility in the marketplace which leads to book sales. It’s the holy grail of free advertising. Everyone can point to a Gryffindor for whom this worked fantastically. After all, someone always wins the lotto, right?

In the world of social media and viral marketing, if everybody’s liking chocolate peanut butter ice cream this week, it’s easier for other people to like it, too.  Pretty soon other bits of computer code recognize a trend and start helpfully telling real people how wonderful chocolate peanut butter ice cream is. Before you know it, you’re standing in front of the 7-11 cooler in your fuzzy pink house slippers and sweatpants unable to find a pint when you really need one at midnight.

It’s a problem ice cream makers dream about and most authors chase.

Here’s what I think, unvarnished and liable to annoy some people I probably shouldn’t.

As an author, you need to have a social media platform that’s a vehicle for true fans to connect with and explore. Make it real, make it entertaining, make it engaging—in marketing speak, add value.

Contrary to what we want to believe, likes and followers do not sell books. No matter how often you say it, it doesn’t make it true. Belief made Tinkerbell fly; it still doesn’t make this true.

However, book sales do drive social media followers. More social media followers attract bigger publishers and agents. Bigger publishers spend more marketing dollars and have more clout with distribution channels, which improves the odds of a buyer opening his wallet, which pushes books sales, which increases social media followers…

Now if  Ravenclaws or Sytherins are publishing in Smallberg, it’s not a giant leap of genius for them to realize they can gain an edge by simply buying likes and followers. It’s bait to attract Big State and beyond. They’re going to fill the stadium with all the hot dog giveaways and Mr. Roboto followers they can. It won’t sell their current work, but it can make a larger publisher or higher profile agent sit up and notice.

But realize dangling bait is one thing, getting the fish to bite and reeling him in is a completely different skill set. It’s imperative that when your numbers hook the attention of a bigger fish, you’re ready to win because if you can’t score a touchdown when it counts, it doesn’t matter how many people are watching. People will eat your free hot dogs and go home to American Idol reruns. Fans for hire are fickle that way.

As much as I hate to admit it, I’m probably a Hufflepuff. Maybe Sytherin or Ravenclaw-lite. Right now, I’m comfortable where I am. But I absolutely get why some authors play the numbers game. Could be Machiavelli was right. And someday for the price of a burger and fries I may want to find out.

_________

To keep me from going to the dark side, you can like my Facebook author page or follow me on Twitter. Just so you’ll know what you’re getting into, I think re-posting inspiring quotes with photos of cats is not adding value unless you are Hallmark or marketing to a target audience who loves greeting cards, affirmations, and cats. I find too many authors think they are writing for this audience, but that’s another blog post.

As a mail carrier in Kaneohe, Hawaii, Louise Golden brings a little aloha to the people along her route. When elderly Conchita Santos doesn’t meet her at the mailbox for the first time in two years, Louise goes looking. The house is unlocked, Pipsqueak the dog is unfed, and Mrs. Santo’s purse is still inside. Fearing the worst, Louise files a missing persons report and begins her own investigation, an investigation that leads to murder, a movie set, new shoes, a French manicure, and a hand-carved tiki with a secret.

Not your everyday week in paradise no matter how stellar the weather.

Almost Paradise, a Louise Golden Mystery by Laurie Hanan is a breezy afternoon beach read, an entertaining escape to sunny Hawaii. The protagonist, Louise Golden, is unmoored, drifting through life after a devastating loss. Nothing seems very permanent in Louise’s life. Through routines that include folk dance groups, piano sing along dates, Scrabble games, and peanut butter sandwiches Louise connects to the world through the family she creates. It’s busy, but not really fulfilling until she reaches out of her comfort zone and begins to grow. I’ve got the feeling that learning to make plumeria leis is just the start.

Almost Paradise, a Louise Golden Mystery by Laurie Hanan is published by Savant Books and Publications, LLC and is available in paperback and eBook from Amazon and Barnes & Noble. Be sure to look for book two, How Far is Heaven.

Connect with Laurie Hanan

Amazon: http://www.amazon.com/Almost-Paradise-Laurie-Hanan/dp/0983286132

Blog: http://westoftheequator.wordpress.com/

Twitter: https://twitter.com/LaurieHanan

Goodreads: http://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5246648.Laurie_Hanan