Tag Archives: The Bump Under the Bed

It made such sounds from A to Z…but most of all it BUMPED

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*TRUMPETS PLAY*

 

“The Bump Under the Bed” has officially made it onto my Amazon page, where you can buy it for $10.99. Also, after downloading a plugin for this website that helps to compress images and clear up some space in my media file storage, I tried to upload my marketing video again only to discover that I have poor reading comprehension. The site won’t allow me to upload any files larger than a certain size, so it doesn’t matter how much space I clear out of my media storage. Three minutes and sixteen seconds is simply too long. However, if you’re just dying to watch me make faces while I read, you can go here:

Amazon page for "The Bump Under the Bed" can be found here:https://www.amazon.com/Bump-Under-Bed-Andrea-Schultz/dp/1974068927/ref=la_B06Y4DCPS1_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503589464&sr=1-3Hopefully that links properly. If you're interested in my amazon author page (which has all three of my available products for sale in one handy place – oh boy!), you can go to:amazon.com/author/alschultz

Posted by The Storyfolder on Thursday, August 24, 2017

 

Oh my goodness, I had no idea I could actually link this video right onto my page. Apparently I’ve accidentally discovered a method for sharing my videos on my website without eating too much space. In related news, that is a really goofy screen capture my video decided to use as my cover image.

Finally, if you’re either my brother, sister, or parents that automatically qualifies your family unit for one free copy of “The Bump Under the Bed,” though I’m having difficulty figuring out how to get it to you. My Createspace account wants to send it to the address here in Montana, but it won’t make it before I move, unless I spend exorbitant amounts of money to expedite the shipping. If you are my brother*, sister, or parents, you know we don’t spend exorbitant amounts of money for convenience’s sake. Back to the drawing board.

*Insignificant note here: on my fifth editing read-through before posting, I finally noticed that I’d written “bother, sister, or parents” (italics added for emphasis), which is actually not a bad interpretation of that particular family role.

A little bit of this, a little bit of that

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I wasn’t sure how to categorize this post (besides under the label “late”) because I have a lot of little bit of nothing to say about everything. I’m also simultaneously watching/listening to Fatboy Slim’s “Weapon of Choice” (the one with Christopher Walken sitting/dancing with his hands in his pockets/flying) because I thought the chorus went “Little bit of this, little bit of that, little bit of this, little bit of that.” Apparently, it is actually:

You can go with this
Or you can go with that
You can go with this
Or you can go with that
You can go with this
Or you can go with that
Or you can throw with us*

Who knew?

So let’s do this in order:

  1. I know, I know: Monday updates. Even better, the only person to bug me about the missing post wasn’t either of my two (related) watchers, but a third unrelated watcher. Good heavens, I’m moving up in the world.
  2. My excuse: I was packing. Whether or not the delay was also motivated by a distinct lack of motivation is up for debate.**
  3. The second proof for “The Bump Under the Bed” showed up on my font porch this morning. We are almost up and running, folks! I’ll have an advertisement video out later this week, though possibly only on Facebook depending on the amount of media file storage space I have left on this website. While you can certainly run out and buy a copy through Createspace — the company that actually prints the physical copies of the book — right this second, the approval process for Amazon will take another 3 – 5 business days.
  4. And finally, Part 2 of “December/Christmas 1995,” in as short of hand as I can manage:

My conscience ate at me. Every night after bedtime prayers I’d lay awake while the sin of both writing the note and letting Sean take the blame for it grew to nightmarish proportions, assuring myself over and over again that by the time I was in fourth grade the guilt would have faded. I couldn’t bear the thought of anyone knowing I had done such an evil thing. If I could last out the guilt, surely it would stop bothering me. No one would ever have to know.

Months of this went by before I broke down. I could forget about it during the day, but every night it was there with me, filling the silence of nighttime with the awful weight of I know what I’ve done even if no one else does. I made no plans, just got out of bed one night, crept quietly up behind Mom and Dad (either sitting in the living room or watching television downstairs) and confessed all. I couldn’t live with it anymore.

I wasn’t there when they told Mrs. Anderson what I had done. Afterwards, when I asked how she responded, they simply said, “She was surprised it was you.”

And that was it. She chose not to tell either Ostrich Boy or my scapegoat, undoubtedly because it had been, you know, months since it happened. The enormous burden was not only gone, it had been long forgotten by everyone involved. The only real consequence came at the end of that month, during prize time. Mrs. Anderson had a number of prize boxes for her third graders; the more stickers you earned on your chart by the end of the month, the better quality prize you got to choose. She drew our names at random to determine who would go first, and that month my name was pulled from the box last. I’ll never know for certain whether that was purposeful, though it seems a good guess. At the very least, it was a relief to receive some sort of punishment. It felt wrong to choose a prize from the grade-A quality pile anyways, but I did so, though I couldn’t look at her when I walked past. I hid the small toy at the bottom of my backpack, ashamed for her to see me play with it.

As for me, for the next couple of years I became a confession junkie. Between Luther’s Evening Prayer and the Choosing of The Stuffed Animal (I was afraid of showing favoritism towards my stuffed animals — and thereby inadvertently making them feel bad — so I asked Mom or Dad to pick the one who got to sleep with me at night, sidestepping the emotionally scarring experience by using the arbitrary hand of a higher authority), I’d run through every sinful act I could remember from that day, unburdening my soul. I’d learned how good the sweet relief felt.

Years later I found out that, before starting the reformation, Martin Luther did much the same to his own confessor, Johann von Staupitz. He’d confess for hours, running through every sin he could think of, afraid of missing any his own mind had tried to hide from himself. From the 2003 movie “Luther:”

JOHANN VON STAUPITZ: You know, in two years I’ve never heard you confess anything remotely interesting.

Poor Mom and Dad. No wonder I’m a Lutheran.

*Or alternately “You can blow wit’ this/Or you can blow wit’ that” depending on which lyric site you’re perusing.

**It was.

BTW (Or: For the sibs)

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This afternoon I had just about the most fun a girl can have trying to create a marketing spiel for “The Bump Under the Bed,” and ended up with about twenty minutes of unusable footage documenting my increasing frustration. I trimmed it down to a thirty-two second video, which you can find by popping over to my Facebook business page:

https://www.facebook.com/thestoryfolder

The page is public and — therefore — accessible to the public, even if they don’t have Facebook (like the antisocial Schultzes that they are). FB is usually just my backup to thestoryfolder.com, where I repeat what I’ve said here but in fewer characters, but someone’s disk space usage is fast approaching capacity. Still haven’t cleaned up that back closet full of skeletons and stored images.

Proof Positive of…something

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The proof copy of “The Bump Under the Bed” came in the mail today, and between the eight hundred takes of my advertisement video and a sudden realization that the title of my picture book is off center, this is the closest I have to new content for today’s update:

My dad, ladies and gentleman.

Here’s something else to keep you coming back here on my update days: a follow-up to the previous entry (Once Upon a Time I was a Nursing Student) from my nursing practicum journal.

Last week, my patient had his leg chopped off by a man with a soldering iron.

This week, my patient slept.

A lot.

I’m getting that vague “nursing isn’t all glamor and heroics” vibe that has me shuddering and bunkering down with a pathophysiology book. By Mosby, if there isn’t more going on in my medication handbook than there is in my patient’s room. Arlo and I kill an hour by looking up the hundred and one medications our patients are on and snickering over some of the more amusing symptoms. Which strikes me as vaguely inappropriate, but I’ve done quite a bit worse that giggle over the word “impotence.” I’m really far too old for that to be funny, but then I’ll probably never really grow up.

I lurk around my patient’s door waiting for her to blink, or shift even, prepared to swoop in and take advantage of the consciousness presented me. But she proves very nearly as stubborn as Mr. I’m-Sleeping-I-Swear from two weeks ago, but with the added obstacle that she’s not faking it. Curse her, because she’s friendly when I talk to her, which makes badgering her about her current sexual activity something I actually have to use tact on.

She’s fortunate enough to fall asleep before I get to that particular question. I’ve never been very delicate in wording, and my personal strategies tend to run along the lines of “umm…so…uh….you used to be married, yeah? But you’re not anymore? So, uh, are you…um…sexually active?”

I’ve only gotten one “yes” so far, and I’m pretty sure my patient was quite gleefully waiting for me to ask.

Though I may not be full of tact, I’m full of sympathy, and the keen ability to sense when it’s time to throw in the towel. She’s tired, struggling to keep her eyes open, and tomorrow is another day to keep trying. I’ll be successful. I’m determined to, which accounts for more in my life than I can say.

6:30am the next day I peak my head in the door, just to check in on her. I have to look twice, because the kind, fifty- year-old black woman from yesterday has somehow turned into a large white man who badly needs to readjust his hospital gown.

I flick through the chart as though it will explain how Renown has mastered transmogrification, then remember that my patient was hopefully going to be transferred to telemetry ASAP to monitor her heart. I remember, because I’d been counting on transfer to be their normally punctual selves.

The word I think in my head is not nice, nor appropriate, for my clinical instructor to read.

It evens out in the end. Amputation guy, for taking as long as another clinical day, has earned me a day off. I take it, pretending to sulk because my patient has left with few of my questions answered.

I’m whistling “Springtime for Hitler” by time I hit the elevators.

The train will be leaving Platform 9¾ on 1 September at 11 o’clock in the morning

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As often as I manage to talk about myself on this blog, I tend not to actually say much. I’m not shy about the minutiae of my life (small details are where all the best jokes hide), but today I’ll add a major development in my life to the mix: this morning I accepted a job offer to Fort Wayne, IN, to begin September 1st. The official title going on any business cards is “Marketing Specialist,” but what it means is that I get to write for the Concordia Theological Seminary in Fort Wayne, which is a pretty fantastic way to use my skills for the Church.

But what does this mean?* As my four watchers know, I took off the summer to work on my writing projects. It’s allowed me to work on my second picture book, the novel that’s still barely started, and my website — but even better, it’s helped me establish some good writing habits. Jumping back into a forty hour work week will take a significant bite out of all that time I wasn’t making money, but I already know I’ll be able to keep up with my picture book schedule, though novel writing will continue to creep forward at a snail’s pace**.

The only change anyone around here should notice is a slowdown on blog updates. I’m going to drop from two posts a week down to one, with updates probably going up on Monday. As short as I keep some of these blog posts, they still take a significant amount of time. I can write an update in half an hour, but the length of time that goes into each of these is closer to two hours. I’d like to save that time for other projects.

The other train leaving the platform on September 1st is”The BUMP Under the Bed.” I’m actually ahead of schedule, as I should be putting in an order for my first proof copy tomorrow. It’ll take a couple of weeks to get here, which gives me time for one more proof copy if I need to make any changes.

There was a boy named Hardy Hugh
Who heard such sounds at night,
Loud thumps and BUMPS beneath the bed
Once Mom turned off the light.
Until the night he looked below
To see what it could be…
And do you know what Hardy found?
Well. Look inside and see.

*See what I did there?

**So…no difference, basically.

And I would’ve gotten away with it too if it wasn’t for you meddling kids

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I nearly managed to skip today’s post, but if you’re in Mountain Time I’m coming in right under the wire for my Thursday update. I blame meddling kids entirely, because my sister’s got three of them and they’re all here visiting. Add my brother’s daughter (they live here so we get to see them everyday too), and that’s four kids four and under. Yea, verily, that’s also four excuses not to get around to my blog post today. I decided to get around to it anyways.

Unfortunately, I have very little to say. Fortunately, a picture is worth a thousand words:

Marker coloring is officially done for “The Bump Under the Bed” (though you can actually see a tree I missed in the bottom right corner of one of the pages – though that’s officially rectified at this point). Since this picture was taken I’ve hunted down a paper cutter at the public library, chopped off the borders, cut these in half for easier scanning and editing, and scanned them into my computer. Next step is to use my art program to clean up any mistakes and fill in the grays of the background. Most of this book takes place in the dark, and I decided to try and save ink, money, and time by using Clip Studio to do the boring shades. I hope to have all the text placed by the end of the month as well, with the book ready to go to the printers for the first draft proof copy by the first week of August. But once more with feeling:

MEDDLING KIDS.

I say this with love, if in all capitals. The good news is that I’m a week ahead of schedule, which gives me a few extra days to fritter away. I may even skip Monday’s update and just wait until I have at least the title page ready to show off. Like zoinks.

King Friday Speaks

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Montana in July, anyone? Oofta, I’m tired of it being 80 degrees by ten in the morning. I can hear my relatives in Arizona laughing at me from here, but to a Montanan this is the closest thing we have to a death sentence. We’re used to the temperature dropping back into the 50s at night, which it has not been. Worse, because it’s so hot so early in the summer, there’s a good chance we’ll spend the next three months or so on fire – or at least under a heavy pall of smoke. Hopefully rain will break the heatwave soon.

(We actually did have a little hail earlier today, but it didn’t last long enough. There’s still an unholy haze sitting along the horizon, but it doesn’t look near promising enough.)

And now, an announcement from a higher authority:

Doo-doo-da-doodaduhdoooo:

Sketches and inks for “The Bump Under the Bed” are done! Huzzah! This is an artful representation of what my work space looks like when I’m trying to set up promo shots of all the work I’ve done:

I’m officially taking a break from illustrating for a day, but I’ll be hitting up ye olde Prismacolor markers tomorrow. Yesterday at lunch I actually put together a list for the order in which I plan to color things – beginning with skin tone, then moving on to hair, clothes, bed sheets, and on through the bedroom carpet – because there’s nothing like illustrating assembly-line style to really take the emotional thrill out of coloring. Boy oh boy, I love my job.

Bada bing, Bada boom

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Happy New Year! I have nothing of real interest to post, but I’m posting anyways because I’ve been neglecting my short story, as you may have noticed. In other news, I really was kicked where it counted when it came to my illness over the Christmas/New Year break (a cold on top of influenza, if I’ve categorized my symptoms properly; I felt miserable, if that garners me any sympathy), but I’m finally on the mend and back to thinking about what tops my priority list for projects. Here’s a quick rundown, for those curious about my plans:

  • Chapter 4 of “Small Town Super Nobody.” Did I change my mind about the reorganization of this story? Like a woman, I changed my mind, but more on that later. I haven’t re-posted chapter 3 yet because that would take actual effort and you know me: I’m more about putting off actual effort, rather than putting it in. We all have our talents.
  • I’m looking into self-publishing one of my children’s books. I’m tired of waiting for the almighty hand of subjective interest/opinion to swing in my favor, and instead of throwing more query letters at uninterested parties I’m going to make my own chances. With the print-on-demand options available out there there isn’t a significant amount of monetary risk attached to this, which is good as I do not have a lot of monetary resources to, you know, risk. I currently only have dummy sketches for the book, so the next step is to illustrate a professional looking product. I’ll be getting on that very shortly, and will also likely illustrate a promotional version of “The Bump Under the Bed” to share online.
  • Since I’ll be working on and self-promoting my picture books, I may do a little bit of reorganization to the site. It’ll probably be nothing more significant than adding another tab to the top of my homepage, but I have to decide whether I want a spot specifically set aside for picture books, whether I should add one for an art portfolio (to collect my illustrations and any sketch samples in one place), and…well, so on and so forth. I don’t want to clutter the navigation bar, but on the other hand this is supposedly the Story Folder, which entitles me to slap as many tab dividers up as I want and treat it as such. I’ll deal with it as I come to it.
  • I’m also working on my novel, as always. Which novel – I won’t tell you. Mostly because it changes day-to-day. I really should learn how to focus.

And since I feel bad about giving you pretty much nothing with this post, here’s a sample of my illustration style for “The Bump Under the Bed.” I will not be using this page in the final product as it was sized incorrectly and colored using a batch of very expensive markers (oh, how I love and hate thee, Michaels). I’m going to attempt to illustrate the entire project digitally instead, which will be its own kind of fun. Still, it gives me something to soothe the masses wondering where I’ve been the past couple of weeks, so here it is:

And again: Happy New Year! Hello to anyone that was directed here by the Annual Schultz Family Christmas Letter! You are welcome, and gladly.