Tag Archives: western

Release Party for Zerelda Glanton

Posted on by under Announcements

Ingvild Eiring and yours truly are throwing a belated release party for our Polaroid photobook All the Things a Woman Oughtn’t Do – The Ballad of Zerelda Glanton. The release party will take place at Fuglen in Oslo on Friday August 21st. We’ll be there from 18:00 with books you can buy and get signed.

Find the event on Facebook here.

Blurb:

All the Things a Woman Oughtn’t Do – The Ballad of Zerelda Glanton is a photographic journey in hardship and badassery by photographer Julie Loen and model Ingvild Eiring.

Two years in the making and shot entirely on Polaroid film in snow, rain, sunshine and dusty interiors – capturing the seasons and a myriad of locations – the fleeting figure of Zerelda Glanton comes to life as a gun-toting, horse-riding, anvil-banging, booze-swigging cowgirl, whore and lady.

If you’re partial to undraped ladies and shooting irons, and take kindly to the grittier side of photography, this ought to be right up your alley.

Preview of the book can be viewed at Blurb, and a selection of images from the book can be seen at my website julieloen.com.

All the Things a Woman Oughtn’t Do – The Ballad of Zerelda Glanton is Out Now!

Posted on by under Announcements, Photography

She’s finally here! I know a lot of you have been pining for her a very long time… and we (Ingvild and I) have been teasing you since our first Zerelda shoot in 2013 – never showing you more than a glimpse of what we’ve been up to. Well, the wait is over. The 108 page Polaroid photobook is available in three different versions:

Get the glorious big hardcover book (12x12in/30x30cm) directly from Blurb for $124.99 here

or

The no less spectacular, but a lot cheaper, small softcover book (7x7in/18x18cm) from Amazon for $54.99 here

or

The E-book (epub) for only $9.99 here

Preview of the book can be viewed at Blurb. And a selection of images from the book can be seen at my website julieloen.com.

Embers at Dawn is Perma Free!

Posted on by under Announcements

Embers at Dawn (e-book) is perma-free and available everywhere! …or at least here: Smashwords, Barnes & Noble/Nook, iBooks, Google Books and Ebok.no

Amazon is a bit tardy about taking the hint – they’re still selling it for $0.99, but you can get the mobi file (for Kindle) at Smashwords for free too.

I have received my first Smashwords review. It is short and sweet: “Loved this book! The imagery is amazing and the mix between total crass and intelligence is just awesome! Great characters.” – Debby Rubino, Smashwords

The Last Shoot

Posted on by under Announcements, Photography

Ingvild Eiring and I did the final shoot for the cowgirl photo project yesterday. We’ve been working on the project since summer 2013, doing most shoots in Lommedalen – the valley I live in.We’ve shot about 300 polaroids and captured the fleeting figure of Zerelda Glanton throughout the seasons. There are still words to be written and work to be done, but the end result, the photo book All the Things a Woman Oughtn’t Do – The Ballad of Zerelda Glanton, is drawing near.

Happy New Year!

Posted on by under Announcements
DrunkSinceDodge

Cropped image of Ingvild Eiring from our upcoming photo book All the Things a Woman Oughtn’t Do – The Ballad of Zerelda Glanton

2014 has been an exciting year. I published my debut novel in December 2013, so 2014 has been the first year I’ve received feedback from strangers on my work – an experience that has been mostly thrilling. It’s hard to describe the profound feeling of pride and joy when reading a positive review of one’s own work – it is no less than exhilarating.

To sum up 2014 short: I’ve written the first draft of the third book in my western series, begun writing the fourth and spent a lot of time editing the second. All the Things a Woman Oughtn’t Do – The Ballad of Zerelda Glanton, the polaroid photo book I’m making with Ingvild Eiring, is coming along nicely. We’ve done several shoots throughout the year, and I’ve written the folk song style ballad that will accompany the photos. A nice bonus at the end of the year was to have a photo featured in Hank 3’s Hellbetty 2015 calendar.

2014 has been filled with a lot of work, but not a whole lot to show for. I am very excited to step into the new year and finally reveal several projects that have been in the making for a long while. Here’s my plan for 2015:

  • Publish Embers at Dawn on more e-book platforms via Smashwords
  • Publish An Obelus Wheeze, the follow-up to Embers at Dawn
  • Do the final shoot for All the Things a Woman Oughtn’t Do and publish it
  • Launch new designs in my print-on-demand merchandise stores. There’s also something unique and handmade in the works that I won’t reveal yet.
  • Maybe publish the third book in my western series, if time allows it it might be completed in the latter half of the year
  • I’m considering putting together an anthology of self-portraits. Self-portraits were “my thing” for several years before I turned my camera toward models and (almost) never looked back.
  • And last, but not least: I’m going to the US with Ingvild! No details have been planned yet, but I can assure you there will be pictures to prove our shenanigans.

With all of this ahead of me, I trust that 2015 will indeed be a very happy year. Have a good one y’all!

Beta Readers are Wizards

Posted on by under A Wordslinger's Ramblings

Something magical happens when I send a draft to a beta reader. I’m not talking about the feedback I will receive once the beta reader has read it, or how useful it can be to let the text rest for a while before going over it again – I mean the very instant that mail is sent or that envelope is posted. It’s like waving a wand and abracadabra: New eyes! Typos pop up from the text like mutated gophers. Purple prose wash onto a beach of shame like so much flotsam and jetsam. Paper doll characters bloat and explode upon the page – setting themselves up for execution or refurbishing. Stilted dialog sticks  out like thorns, and logical flaws make themselves known in deafening roars.

It’s hard to explain, but knowing that your words are being read by others makes a difference in how you read them yourself. I’m not saying that I’ll spot every little flaw myself before the wizards get a chance to point them out, but the knowledge of those eyes makes a remarkable difference.

An Obelus Wheeze is in its third round of being read by new eyes – the final round before I make the finishing touches and send it off to proofreading. Each round is different and serves a purpose in the editing process.

  • Round one: I send the first draft to a trusted friend who is also a writer. I almost feel sorry for her for doing this – the first draft is the text in a fetus stage, not something that is ready for the world. But because of the magic of beta readers it serves its purpose, and I am grateful for early feedback if there should be any major plot holes to see about.
  • Round two: A revised draft is sent to another trusted friend who has an eye like a magnifying glass. It is almost annoying how good she is at pointing out anything awry – from characters acting out of character to displaced descriptions of nature. She makes me feel dumb as shit, and I love her for it.
  • Round three: After implementing changes based on feedback from round two, I send the text to a bigger selection of beta readers – six people (this time), to be precise. At this stage, I pretty much consider the book done, what is left to do is merely minor tweaks – or so I hope. I will, of course, take any feedback to heart, but what I’m crossing my fingers for are thumb ups and hell yeahs.

I find that editing a book is a fluid process that takes its own sweet time. I spend more than twice the amount of time editing the text than I do writing the first draft. I don’t have a count on how many times I go over the text – in the end there are far more drafts behind the final result than the ones the beta readers get to read. And in the end the book would not have been the same without the wizards.