A summary of our February 2010 speaker, Tracy Sinclare
By Arlene Lidbergh-Jasper

Tracy Sinclare, best known locally as a weekend meteorologist with KTUU, began her presentation at Alaska Professional Communicators’ February luncheon with an ice-breaker. “It’s much easier to talk to a camera than to a room full of people,” she said. “At KTUU, it’s just me and the camera.” After we all laughed, she told us about yet another world not often exposed to the public: Her experiences with the local chapter of Romance Writers of America (RWA), and what she has learned about the art of writing romance novels.

Tracy’s family moved to Anchorage in 1972 when her father was transferred to Elmendorf Air Force Base. Her love for writing began at home and then developed during junior high school.

In Tracy’s family, all her siblings were readers except her; she preferred to listen to stories first. If she liked a story, then she would read the book. However, in 7th grade she read Victoria Holt novels, bodice rippers with deep dark heroes. Next, she read contemporary romance—even in geometry class. By 11th grade, she was writing romances during trigonometry classes. During her last year in high school, when the seniors dressed up as what they would be in 20 years, she showed up as a romance writer wearing a long gown and floppy hat with pen and paper in hand.

For about 16 years, Tracy said, she had great story ideas and read her work to her best friends. In 1992, she joined the Romance Writers of America (RWA) and finished her first book but never submitted it. In 2002, just before her 20th class reunion, she would publish Silver Dagger. Since then she has written 15 novels and eight short stories, each in the range of 50,000 to 80,000 words.

Tracy also pursued professional communication training by more traditional routes. She received her B.A. in English and Broadcasting from Gonzaga University in 1986, and her B.S. in Broadcast Meteorology from Mississippi University in 2007.

She has stories in her head all the time, Tracy says. She doesn’t write linearly but jumps around. Characters reappear from book to book, including in the dragon-themed romance novels she writes as a series, which she says sell really well. One such series is up to five books and another is up to seven. She has no agent, and explained that in the romance genre, it is common for a writer to sell his or her first book without an agent.

Romance novels are a $1.37 billion industry, she told us. It’s three times as popular as religion with eight billion. In 2008 there were 7,311 romance novels published, with total readership calculated at 748 million. Romance books hold more than 50 percent of the mass market in paperback fiction. Women are the book buyers 90 percent of the time. This is one genre that is written for women by women.

When people mention to Tracy Sinclare, “I never have read any of your books,” her response is usually “you are not my target.” Her target audience: 31 to 59 year-old women, who “like to read about relationships and how much care you put into them. And, of course, we need a hero and heroine.”

Tracy then mentioned an essay by Jennifer Crusie, “Let Us Now Praise Scribbling Women,” reprinted on Crusie’s blog, which gives its praise in particular to women who write romance. She paraphrased: The last line these women write is that the heroine lives happily ever after. As girls, they read Sleeping Beauty, who got everything she’d ever wanted because she looked really good unconscious. Then there was Snow White, who got everything she wanted because she looked really good unconscious. Or there was Cinderella, who should be given some credit for staying awake through her whole story, but who got everything she wanted because she had small feet. Girls have been taught to be more passive to get the “crown in the castle.” But in romance novels, women are active participants—and there is a hunky man. Romance books, Crusie concludes, create an “emotionally just universe.”

And then there are the “TSTLs, Too Stupid to Live Heroines,” added Tracy. “My stories are character-based, and I like happy endings.” But there must be a believable pace even in the happy-ending storyline, she said. In re-writing Silver Dagger, Tracy said, she realized that the heroine can’t take her clothes off too early in the book until the love is established. Tracy writes under a pen name and is not public about her works in her home state–but shared her time with us to encourage other romance writers.

She recited a list: “You might be a writer if, before you get on a plane, you make sure you have several books to read and pen and paper in case your computer battery dies; you might be a writer if you hold conversations with the voices in your head, but your friends aren’t recommending that you up your medication; you might be a writer if, when relaxing at a spa, you open the locker and think, I could stuff a body in there. OK, that makes you a writer—or a psychopath!” And finally, “You might be a writer if you understand when I say, ‘My characters won’t do what I want!’”

Tracy highly recommends belonging to a writing group. “Like the group MENSA for people with high IQs,” she said, “joining a writing group does give you support. You want a writers’ group that understands you,” she said. “It’s important to work with people who are working in the same genre.” A number of writing groups in town meet once a month. The romance writers meet at Jitters in Eagle River and schedule a craft talk once a month with the other three weeks given to the members’ critiques. She only attends the craft talk, which helps motivate her to want to write. Her self-evaluation: “I’m a good storyteller and an OK writer.” The Alaska chapter of the RWA is at www.akrwa.org.

A short Q&A period followed. Did she use a dedicated writing computer, i.e., one not connected to the Internet and used only for writing? “No,” she said. She writes on a normal computer in evenings and on days off, an hour a day with four pages an hour on average.

Tracy was then asked about Nora Roberts, a favorite of one woman’s mother and many others in the room. “What separates Nora from the pack?” Tracy answered. “I’ve met her at national conferences, and she is so popular that it’s hard to weave through the crowds of people, just to hear her. She is successful, writing for a number of years, has a fan base, and started when there were bodice rippers. She got in on the ground floor. Nora Roberts writes in different genres: romance, paranormal—and her toughest character is a female cop with a dark past. The In Death series is written under her pen name of J.D. Robb.”

A summary of our January 2010 speaker, Steve Lindbeck
By Kay Vreeland

Steve Lindbeck, President and General Manager of Alaska Public Telecommunications, Inc. (APTI), spoke to Alaska Professional Communicators Thursday, January 7, 2010, about his experience as “An Alaskan in the Media Revolution,” explaining the challenges faced by Alaska public broadcasting in today’s rapidly changing media landscape.

Lindbeck is responsible for leadership and oversight of APTI, a media organization that includes KAKM-TV, KSKA-FM and the Alaska Public Radio Network, and which reaches audiences throughout Alaska. Having moved into public broadcasting in 2007 after a 30-year career in journalism and public affairs, he sees links between the decline of print journalism in Alaska and the vigorous role of public broadcasting in the new media revolution.

However, he noted, nobody knows where the fast-paced changes are leading us.

Lindbeck started his career in newsrooms in 1971 as a cub local sports reporter at West High School. Information was scarce in Alaska because of reporters’ distance from the main sources. By the early 1980s there were two vibrant and competitive newspapers, whereas today there is only the slimmed-down Anchorage Daily News. Although there was the rise of Channel 2 as the dominant local news channel, there was no public broadcasting and no Alaska public radio network.

The dramatic changes in information delivery we have seen since that time are nothing like the change we’re going to see, said Lindbeck. A new digital way of life in media may be glimpsed today in politics in the revolution of the Obama campaign going online, which Lindbeck compared to the Kennedy campaign’s utilization of television.

A recent conference at Google headquarters named swift response to consumer preferences as the key to survival in the digital age; consumers reveal these preferences as they read, view, click, and comment. This is only one aspect of today’s media life. The iPhone has an “app” (short for “application”) to record and play back programs from NPR. Cloud computing, blog conversations, Twitter news delivery, Kindle, Wikipedia, the upcoming computer Tablet, and the “disintermediation” of social media are all showing that information is not scarce, but infinite. Media owners have less power, and audiences are more fragmented. Advertisers are changing allegiance, and many computer users seem to be content competitors against the 80 percent of original reporting that is found in daily newspapers.

As print journalism declines, online tools make news and information delivery richer than ever through access to source documents, interaction with readers, expansion of good writing on blogs, and Internet journalism. Among the good trends emerging are larger audiences and more people engaging with media. In which direction will all this go? And, how will the Internet generate revenue: non-profit and philanthropic models, or public broadcasting models?

Where does public broadcasting fit in? It has a strong brand identity. People value it. It operates with trust, quality and authenticity. There is a genuine affection and market for it. And, as distribution channels compete, public broadcasting provides local and community news and connections, said Lindbeck. As the world fragments, people are hungry for community involvement. The real question, said Lindbeck, is how public broadcasting can ride this wave.

In Alaska, KUAC in Fairbanks, APTI in Anchorage and KTOO in Juneau are working to combine and unify operations with community involvement, under a working title of “Alaska Public Media.” Calling the new unified statewide public broadcasting organization project a “transformation,” Lindbeck said that its vision statement sees it as the leader in news, education and public affairs, as well as a community builder in Alaska. Although based in the news and programming values of NPR and PBS, its central mission will lie in the Alaska content that it produces.

In conclusion, asking where all this is going, how to use the new tools and how not to be left behind, Lindbeck framed the changing broadcasting climate as an evolution analogy: We are in the position of the dinosaurs after the big asteroid hit the earth, he said. We’re going to have to figure out how to become mammals, or birds, in order to survive. That’ll take a lot of imagination, experimentation and the courage to change, but it is a very exciting time, Lindbeck concluded. It’s an adventure for everyone involved.

A summary of our December 2009 speaker, Bill Sherwonit
By Dianne O’Connell

At the monthly luncheon Thursday, December 3, held at the Alaska Housing Finance Corporation, nature writer Bill Sherwonit took Alaska Professional Communicators on a tour of some of the journeys–psychological, spiritual and natural–experienced during the writing of his most recent two books.

Speaker Sherwonit grew up in a strict Lutheran home located on the fringes of urban and rural Connecticut. Though he left behind the stern dogma of his youth, he said, a general spirituality and nature continue to inform his life and writing. His book, Changing Paths: Travels and Meditations in Alaska’s Arctic Wilderness, published by the University of Alaska Press (September 2009), chronicles his life and personal development along these lines. His book, Living with Wildness, (not “wilderness”), also by UAA Press (June 2008) focuses on the opportunities for living with the wild right here in the Anchorage bowl.

“Wilderness is a place or an idea,” he explained. “Wildness is a quality or a state of being – something within us. … It is only when we begin to get to know something that we can really begin to value it. The Coastal Wildlife Refuge in South Anchorage is so much more than treacherous mudflats, for instance. But you have to get out and experience it to understand it.”

“Writing requires me to pay attention to what is going on around me, promotes a kind of hyper-awareness. I’m going to be writing about this, so I have to keep alert.”

Sherwonit recalled an experience in the Chugach Mountains when a wolverine appeared and stayed close for about thirty minutes. “This was not the time to jump for my journal or camera,” he said, “but rather to just stay with the experience.”

“Absorb first, write second,” he suggested.

“I’m a very introspective, sensitive guy,” the writer told his audience. “I stand before you as a fallen Christian and a failed geologist,” venturing into a rambling, yet interesting, exchange regarding the human species, a bear’s right to act like a bear, and the bundle of contractions which represent humanity – from incredible compassion to horrific terrorism.

Sherwonit holds a Master’s degree in geology, as well as an impressive history as a journalist and writer of essays and narrative non-fiction works. He has called Alaska home since 1982, when he began work at The Anchorage Times. He’s been a fulltime freelance writer since 1992 and has contributed essays and articles to a wide variety of newspapers, magazines, journals, and anthologies. His essay “In the Company of Bears” was selected for The Best American Science and Nature Writing 2007.

Sherwonit is also the author of 12 books about Alaska. He lives in Anchorage’s Turnagain area, where he writes about the wildness to be found in Alaska’s urban center as well as in the state’s most remote wilderness areas.

Sherwonit is the December 2009 guest blogger at 49 Writers, a literary blog for and about Alaskan writers at 49writers.blogspot.com. You can also learn more about his books and life at Bill Sherwonit’s website, www.billsherwonit.alaskawriters.com.

The meeting was the first Alaska Professional Communicators luncheon to be held at the AHFC building. The location is, to date, a temporary meeting place until the Board has determined long-term options to replace the former Golden Lion arrangement, explained Board president Connie Huff. A member survey will be forthcoming to solicit membership input.

Members should take note of the location, as the January 7 meeting will be there as well. AHFC is located at 4300 Boniface Parkway, at Tudor Road (next to the Alaska Club). The catering company has also changed, with food provided by Dianne’s Restaurant, of downtown Anchorage.

A summary of our November 2009 speaker, Mr. Whitekeys
By Sonya Senkowsky

“Being a good communicator in Alaska—the bar isn’t all that high.”

With that and a smirk, on Thursday, November 5, 2009, Mr. Whitekeys launched his talk to the Alaska Professional Communicators, as well as a theme familiar to his fans: sharing a laugh over media bloopers from across the state.

From the Kodiak Daily Mirror: “Senate passes bill that would set up hunting season for children.” The ad from KFQD ad, which said: “Radio or TV experience required, but not necessary.” And from The Pulse, a local shopper: “Bring the world home. Hose a foreign exchange student.” This last headline-writer turned out to be in the audience; it was APC member Dianne Barske, who claimed authorship with a smile.

New media and technologies got some notice as well. Whitekeys found that his book Mr. Whitekeys’ Alaska Bizarre scored an Amazon.com rating of four and a half stars, while the classic Melville novel Moby Dick rated only four. The obvious conclusion, according to ‘Keys: “I am famous-er than Moby Dick, and there is technology to prove it.”

But the presentation was more than a cleverly customized recap of Whitekeys’ act. While continuing his trademark “can you believe this” banter, by citing a series of favorite quotes, the writer-entertainer and author of three books also shared a glimpse of his inspirations and the philosophies that have guided his career.

These included what he called “one of the best things ever said to me about writing,” a quote attributed to Mark Twain, passed along to ‘Keys by former Anchorage Daily News publisher Howard Weaver: “People love hearing stories about people.”

He quickly knocked that down a notch—adding, from Voltaire, this wisdom: “All books are too long.”

Since quitting his 26-year nightclub gig—a decision made because he no longer wanted to run a bar—the performer known to Alaska only as Mr. Whitekeys has been responsible for weekly Fly By Fridays commentaries on the KTUU Channel 2 Newshour as well as a monthly column in Alaska magazine. And he appears drawn to collecting comments on writing, including one by comedian Steven Wright, who didn’t understand why anyone would spend years writing a novel, “when you can buy one for a couple dollars.”

Despite the earlier posturing about his Melvillian accomplishments, Whitekeys still doesn’t take himself all that seriously. In one breath, he says, “I’m a journalist telling the story of Alaska.” In the other: “My job is to mouth off and make snotty comments.”

Both descriptions contain truth, but it’s the first that best answers the question “Where does he get his ideas?” When odd things happen to Whitekeys—and for whatever reason this happens with stunning regularity—he is the expert collector and curator of the moments they bring, filing them away for stories or songs.

There was the video shoot in Kodiak for his DVD, Mr. Whitekeys presents Alaska, the First 10,000 years, when he and four dancers set out in rain slickers to demonstrate the region’s typically gloomy weather. Except, the day of the shoot happened to be “the hottest, sunniest day of the year.” They arrange to have a hose replace the rain, but then find themselves with another problem: a rambunctious local who wanted only one thing: “I’m gonna spray those girls.” That was not allowed to happen (this is not that kind of act), but the story—well, it gets filed for sure under “Alaskans behaving badly.”

Then there was the day he was arrested for trespassing on railroad property in Seward while bird-watching. It was the officer who arrested him who ended up telling about a comic-book-like alert system once used to call out police in Palmer, using a red light mounted on a hotel chimney.

And, while the rest of the country was duking it out over health insurance, Mr. Whitekeys found himself musing over the debate in a different direction, and ended up writing the song, “We Want to be On the Death Panel.”

Shortly after this came his one-sentence lesson on movie-making and marketing: “You can’t say that, or else Wal Mart won’t carry it.”

In closing, Whitekeys told of a recent National Public Radio interview he’d heard with columnist Leonard Pitts, who said that in order to write about something, he had to care about it.

“I say that’s a bunch of crap,” said Keys. “I want a cheap laugh.”

Nonetheless, his parting quote still managed to be poignant. It came from Kurt Vonnegut, who said: “We are here on Earth to fart around.”

And if you are ‘Keys, to do it in style.

From a talk given October 2009
By Peter Dunlap Shohl

Not long after I was diagnosed in early 2002 with Parkinson’s Disease, an old friend paid me a visit. A person of warmth and intelligence, he predicted a fruitful, if difficult time, a prediction based on experience with others who had faced severe illness. I appreciated the comfort offered, but deep down, and for that matter, from right below the surface, I filed this under “Yeah, right.”

Seven years down the road my friend is looking clairvoyant. Since that diagnosis, I have been surfing my strongest creative roll, period.

This creative episode marked:

The end of my indifference to computers as graphics tools and the shameless embrace of Photoshop, iMovie, Audacity, and Flash animation;

The launch and maintenance one of the first interactive political cartoon caption contests anywhere, Name That ‘Toon;

The creation of both an ongoing blog on Parkinsons Disease (Off and On, The Alaska Parkinson’s Rag); and Frozen Grin; and

Extensive Collaboration with Dr. David Heydrick, a neurologist with Parkinson’s Disease on materials for his Web site and a DVD designed to help patients deal effectively with their disease.

All this while remembering to take my pills.

I had no road map for the journey. I just booted up the computer and lit out for the country.

But first, I had to slam into a wall. For a creative person, that’s as good a start as any. As Rollo May observed, creativity is actually driven by limits. If you have no problems, you need no solutions. Luckily for me, I had problems aplenty.

Discomfort in a literal sense began to hedge me in. Repetitive strain problems that I have no doubt were Parkinson’s driven arrived at the point where my resourceful and bright ergonomics doctor ran out of ideas that would keep me drawing.

This was a double blow, first because drawing has been a large part of my self identity since I was a second-grader. And second, it has always been my living. I wasn’t ready to give it up to Parkinson’s Disease.

I knew that there were electronic drawing pads that would enable me to approximate the correct posture of a typist while I was drawing. Using the pad, I can keep my elbows in a natural comfortable angle while holding my head level to look a computer screen, where drawings unfold in a way that is magical.

When I pitched this idea to my doctor, a look of relief crossed his face. He smiled, and replied that it would work. And so far, it does. And it did far more. It was almost like a time machine that transported me from the 19th Century into the 21st. Although it took me a while to realize that I should make the trip.

At the News, I was producing cartoons in the same way that Thomas Nast did back in the days of the Civil War: pen and ink. The lyric vitality of a spontaneously drawn line and its power to describe and suggest was what attracted me to drawing in the first place. I set about recreating that look with the electronic pad and stylus.

Drawing while watching the screen instead of your hands is no big trick. Art students are taught to draw while looking elsewhere. Mastering the program that allows you to draw on the screen (I use Photoshop) was a different story. But that is where I really got lucky. My wife is not only a Photoshop ace; she is also a patient teacher.

Eventually I arrived at my goal of being able to produce work on the computer that was indistinguishable from my pre-computer cartoons.

If you look closely at one of my old cartoons you will see that the gray tones are made up of fine lines. This is a technique that is called “hatching”. It is popular among newspaper cartoonists because the presses we have reproduce it well. That was the look I worked to recapture on the computer. After much floundering, I finally nailed it. When I arrived at that lofty peak, that desperately sought grail, that ultimate moment… (By the way, if some of you would start humming the theme from “Chariots of Fire” here it will add greatly to the impact.)… that ultimate moment dearly bought with toil and frustration, that apex of mastery when I finally was able to reproduce the old style, I was rewarded with a moment of clarity.

I realized that recreating my old look was a stupid idea.

Take a two thousand dollar machine, equip it with some of the most sophisticated software available, and turn it into a fifty cent pen. Brilliant, wouldn’t you agree? That’s when I decided it was time I left the 19th Century. Since then I have been on a full-scale creative bender, exploiting the color, texture and effects at the computer makes possible. I began exploring and picking up steam, incorporating graded tones, trying to work them in with my old style, progressing to a full marriage of old and new.

Where to go from there? With my cartoons now appearing on the Web, it was on to color.

Meanwhile I was kicking around the idea of animations. The Mac comes loaded with a movie program (iMovie, old version) that I realized I could turn into a primitive animation application, essentially by speeding up slide shows.

This led to a grandiose plan to webcast a weekly political satire program, which would involve contributions from all members of the opinion staff, only parts of which got off the ground.

Eventually the limitations of iMovie as an animation program pushed me to learning Flash. Flash can be daunting. It’s like one of those amazing pipe organs with multiple sets of pipes, keyboards and pedals. The buzz among my fellow Civil War-era cartoonists was about how complex and difficult to master it is. When I sat down with the first tutorial in which the object is to make a simple ball shape roll across the screen the ball just squatted immobile, passive aggressive to the max.

But by now I had a grounding that made the prospect of tangling with flash less daunting. First, my experience with Photoshop convinced me I could learn this stuff. And, by the way, if I can, you can.

Second, I was building a critical mass of familiarity with approaches and techniques that seem to recur in these programs, stuff like time lines and layers begins to look familiar, and in the case of flash and Photoshop, both are made by the same company and share many common features.

Third, and most important, what those cartoonists who had taken on Flash already didn’t mention was…( and if you’re taking notes, write this down in all caps and highlight it with your boldest color…)

It is a blast.

Flash puts more potential and control over more facets of your creativity than anything I can think of. You can make up your own stories, import your own music, draw your own images and bundle them all together.

And they come alive! (maniacal, sinister laughter here). After some practice and some time studying a few books, I learned enough of my little corner of that massive organ to play tunes I couldn’t even have imagined without this instrument.

This was what led me to this next piece for the paper’s Web site. It’s called “Susitna Story” The script is reincarnated from a We Alaskans project (think Charlie Daniels meets Robert Service in the Mat-Su area).

What liberated this eruption of creativity? I believe it was a combination of things. A feeling of exhilaration as my medications finally restored my old abilities, which the disease had been subtly and significantly stifling over a period of years. Along with that came a sense of urgency driven by my own circumstances and the crisis that was rapidly overtaking the media world. I was also intoxicated with the amazing potential that was now opened by the suite of programs that I had begun to use.

And did I mention fun?

Finally, there was the support of editors and the tradition of experimentation at the Daily News that goes back at least to the early 70’s when Publishers Kay and Larry Fanning set the swashbuckling tone that I found when I arrived at the paper in 1982.

Unfortunately, the reality of my progressing disease and the regressing newspaper industry forced me to bail out. But not to stop. On leaving the Daily News, I started my blog “Frozen Grin” where this next piece appeared.

So what is the moral of this story? I was forced by circumstance out of my comfort zone. But I’ll trade a certain of comfort for passion and excitement. Giving up the 19th Century to embrace the potential of the 21st made it possible to redefine myself from cartoonist to cartoonist/writer/musician/animator at a time when Parkinson’s Disease has been trying to define me as “disabled”.

Imagine what it can do for you.