A Week to Remember

In honor of my upcoming seventy-fifth (yes, 75!) birthday, I have ventured into a new style of publishing, Kindle Vella. Actually, Vellas aren't new. They are stories that are released in episodes on a serial basis, a publishing technique used by Charles Dickens years ago, and more recently by Jan Karon, and even more recently by a gaggle of authors, including my Foothills Writers friends. My earlier Vella, Prompt and Circumstances, was my first dabbling into this platform. 

Let me introduce my newest Vella - The Great Donora Smog and Other Grand Stories: A Memoir of Sorts. It's the story of my hometown, Donora, Pennsylvania, framed around my perspective. A tragedy happened the week before I was born. I missed it all, but I've heard about it since I was a young child. I've also researched it for years and now I am ready to share my story with you, one episode at a time.

Like print books and ebooks, a vella has a cover. I chose a photograph I took of my daughter walking behind my husband through the fog.

Okay, so this picture was taken far from Pennsylvania at a favorite spot of mine, Max Patch, in the mountains of western North Carolina, but it conveys an aura around fuzzy images in the distance. The reality of the day I took the picture was that I really, really wanted my daughter to see the spectacular view from the top of this mountain on the Appalachian Trail. Unfortunately, the fog had set in and the view was not even ten feet, much less ten miles. She didn't see anything!

Toward the end of the Donora Smog incident in 1948, people couldn't even see their hands in front of their eyes. The fog they walked through, however, was a smoggy mixture of evil chemicals that killed over a dozen residents before it lifted. Therein is my vella. That and related family stories involving my greats and grands, and how I came to be born in a city in the Monongahela River Valley, and how I came to be raised in North Carolina. 

Add to that picture the title. Voila! The cover:

 

I included the phrase, A Memoir of Sorts, because it is and it isn't my memoir, not in the traditional sense. It's sort of my memoir. I've mixed in various snippings of my life that I actually remember, but much is from life stories of my ancestors told to me over and over, or memories of those who told me about living through the tragedy in my interview with them, or from research I found published by accomplished scientists and journalists. The week I wrote about in my vella was so significant that the Weather Channel featured it in an episode of "When Weather Changed History." It changed my history, of that I am sure. I can't wait for you to read my episodes and see how!

In order to access them, you must have an account with Amazon.com. It's that simple. Click on the link here and it should take you directly to episode one, which is free to all. So are episodes two and three, which you can access through your account. At the end of each episode is a thumbs up. I would appreciate your clicking on it so Amazon/Kindle knows I have readers. Also please click on "follow." That would be so kind!

When you end episode three (the one about my father's side of the family) you will reach a gate that must be unlocked, and to do that you need tokens. You will be able to purchase tokens there on the spot. Follow the directions; it's that simple. Each new episode charges a number of tokens based on the number of words, a token per hundred words, rounded down. 622 words takes six tokens. So does 698. The cool thing is that each token costs a penny. A penny!!! So if unlocking the upcoming episode costs six tokens, that means six cents. Best entertainment ever for the cost! Fifteen tokens, fifteen cents. 

You purchase in lumps of $1.99 for two hundred tokens, so you'll have plenty to use on this vella. You will be able to finish it entirely with tokens left over to browse other vellas.

The best element of the Vellaverse is that authors and readers have a means to interact with each other. At the end of each episode is a comment section for you to talk to me, visit with me, ask questions, tell me your experiences. Please do!

Just in case, here's the link again, The Great Donora Smog and Other Grand Stories: A Memoir of Sorts. Do drop in!

Catch of the day,

Gretchen