An Arthurs Life

22. August 2008 · Comments Off on An Arthurs Life · Categories: Domestic, General, History, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

I worked at home entirely today, for almost the first time since the beginning of the month. Was that only three weeks ago? Guess it was. Time does fly, when you are having fun. Or working your ass off.

I had to face the inevitable evil and go back to work for a corporate giant – but only part-time, and only for as long as it takes for assorted writing projects to begin bearing fruit. Not all of those writing projects are my own – that is to say, my “Truckee Trail” book and the “Adelsverein Trilogy” in which I repose so much hope. I have also begun working on various projects for the proprietor of a local publishing company. She is a lady of certain years and considerable skills as an editor, locally very well connected… but of an age to where a bit of slowing down is expected and encouraged. Her dearly beloved husband died in March, about two weeks before my friend Dave the Computer Genius, whose client she also was. Dave was always on about how I should connect up with her, as we had so many interests in common and so many complimentary skills. He had an appointment with her the very week that he passed on himself, and had promised that he would set up a meeting of sorts for the two of us. Of course, such a meeting did not happen at that time, and perhaps it was for the best.

I finally took it up when I began looking for regular and reliably-paying employment again, and called her. We hit it off, and I am accepted more or less joyfully as a fellow scribbler… but I have to generate some business first. And come up with some ideas for a redesign of the website. And figure out some marketing strategies. And show her how to download attachments into a file… The nice thing about working for her is that I can do most of this at home. If things come about as we both hope, I will be able to do research and writing on various of her company projects as will pay as much per hour or more as the Reliable Corporate Entity.

Ah, yes, the Reliable Corporate Entity. I will say no names, although anyone so inclined and with specific or local knowledge can probably make an accurate guess. It’s a call center, within a short distance of Chez Sgt. Mom, which pays a fairly acceptable hourly wage for reliable workers. Of course, they are generous about considering employing anyone warm, breathing and able to speak more or less coherently, which assures an eclectic assembly in the company break room at any hour of the day or night. The varied range across socioeconomic, and ethnic classes within in the employee force, is of such breadth as I have not encountered since basic military training. That particular experience was limited only to those within a certain age and fitness capability – the Reliable Corporate Entity provides a much broader spectrum of humanity; reentering housewives, laid-off corporate drones, feckless college students, wastrels of every conceivable stripe, a fair sprinkling of military veterans of every possible vintage, bored senior citizens, single parents (an astonishingly large number of them, actually) in search of flexible hours and a salary which is several degrees above minimum wage and in a safe neighborhood.

We take incoming calls for hotel reservations – which is not too bad, as these things go. The clients are happy and accommodating, they are looking forward to a bit of a holiday – and we have the power to expedite that for them. The only hard part is that we are expected to do a free-form and personalized sales pitch based upon artlessly whipped-up-on-the-moment conversation about the various delights offered at this destination, at the very same time as we do a fairly complicated bit of data entry. And we must perform both of those duties flawlessly and in record time. Eh… I am already setting up a short-timer calendar. I will last at this until January. I will last at this until January.

I am buoyed by consideration of my books. Today, I received my copy of the final print version of “Adelsverein: The Sowing”. This is the volume which takes the story of the Beckers and the Steinmetzes and the Richters through the Civil War… the episode that I had the most worries over, because I ventured onto so much unexplored and unverified territory… but there it is; blessed by a good editor and a local historian.

December – I am living until December, all the hours that I spend at The Reliable Corporate Entity. Every hour, every paycheck, are spent and collected with a purpose. Every reservation I set and minute that I spend with a client looking to spend their holiday hours beside the sea – those times bring me closer to being a ‘real Arthur’ and making my living with words. Written words, not just spoken words.

Further Adventures in Book Publishing

21. August 2008 · Comments Off on Further Adventures in Book Publishing · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, That's Entertainment!, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

The adventure continues, with final approval of the text and cover for Book 2 of Adeslverein, (AKA The Civil War Years). Two down and one to go! Mike at Strider Nolan (the publisher of record) is editing the final volume. When that is done, all I need do is review it, and the final cover… wait for the printed version to come in the mail, and there we are… nothing much to do until December, except continue scrounging for reviews. This time around, because I have delayed final release of all three volumes until December, I can appeal for reviews from print venues which prefer to do reviews beforehand. As I discovered last year with “Truckee” it takes anywhere from a month to six months to squeeze a review out of some venues. Ideally, the reviews appear around about the time that the books will be available. It’s still very much a crap-shoot, though. A couple of months ago, another IAG member who was a subsidy publisher, pointed out that getting one single review for every four review copies sent out was a pretty good return on the investment.

I was startled to find that out, actually. I’ve been doing reviews for a while, for Blogger News. My thought was, if I have the book in hand, and I have asked for it… well, then I am pretty well committed to doing the review. I only ask for books that I am semi-interested in reading anyway, so it’s not like this is an insurmountable chore. It does appear that there are all sorts of scope for interestingly shadowy dealings in the review gig. The first of them is that the main print review producers – the Mt. Everests of the literary scene, like the New York Times Book Review- receive simply tons of free review copies of books every week. There is only space for a tiny fraction of them to be read and reviewed, so the excess are mostly donated to various worthy causes. I am given to understand that most of the other reputable reviewers do likewise. For a writer, sending out review copies is a gamble anyway. Not quite up there with playing the lottery, but pretty darned close. You have to put the book out there, one way or another. Many of the mainstream literary review publications don’t do publish-on-demand books (the snotty SOB’s!) so those of us who have done small press or independently published books have to go to the second tier review sites, of which there are any number, in response to demand. Some of these sites and reviewers are reputable and discriminating; those are the ones that are as exacting in their requirements as any of the mainline published reviewers. Some are not; but all of them depend on volunteer reviewers, even if it is only a review as basic as one posted on Amazon.com. This is one of them – for which I do reviews, also.

By volunteer, I mean that like me – they usually like books and reading. Getting sent any number of freshly-minted books that you didn’t pay for is still a bit of a tiny thrill to me and I would presume for many of the other volunteers. Strictly speaking, that is how we are paid – with a free copy of a book. After we post the review, we can do whatever we like with it; put it on our own shelves, donate to a local library, school or hospital, trot down to Half-Price Books, put it on E-bay, whatever. From a discussion in the IAG forum last week, it does appear that a certain degree of corruption as tiptoed into this arrangement. That is, reviewers trolling in the pools of small-press and POD authors, offering reviews and requesting book copies… and then either producing a very cursory review with a five-star rating, such as might be dashed off by reading the back cover or the accompanying publicity materials, and then offering the book for sale on E-bay or some such. Sometimes a review copy is even offered in the “used” section of the Amazon listing, in competition with a new version! Or even worse, no review at all. This has some of the IAG members fit to be tied; not only does the cost of review copies comes out of our pocket, but every sale of a new copy of our book is precious, as our sales stats inch ever higher. Some of us are considering stamping “review copy” in a couple of places in the interior margins, but for now, naming and shaming those particular review sites and reviewers is enough. In the meantime, treat short, glowing but 5-star reviews with extreme suspicion. Especially if the reviewer does a lot of reviews; I’m doing good if I can read half a dozen books in a month and pound out 300-plus words, but then I have a life, two jobs and another book to finish.

Writing the Range

01. August 2008 · Comments Off on Writing the Range · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, History, Old West, That's Entertainment!, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

In a fit of boredom, as we flipped through the cable channels looking for something new and/or interesting, we stumbled across the Hallmark Channel. Hey, Hallmark – how bad could one of their movies be? – and wound up watching “The Trail to Hope Rose“. The premise interested us for about twenty minutes, and then we realized that although whatever book it might have been based upon may have been a very good read, the movie was a bit of a painful watch. We stuck it out, just to see if any of our predictions made in that first fifteen minutes came true. (They did – all but the kindly old ranch-owner who befriended the hero being killed by the villainous mine-owner. He didn’t – but he was deceased by the end of the final reel.) It was just a generic western: generic location, generic baddies, card-board cut-out characters and a box-car load of generic 19th century props from some vast Hollywood movie warehouse of props and costumes used for every western movie since Stagecoach, hauled out of storage and dusted off, yet again.

It wasn’t a bad movie, just a profoundly mediocre one. Careless gaffes abounded, from the heroine’s loose and flowing hair, her costumes with zippers down the back and labels in the neckline, and the presence of barbed wire in 1850, when it wouldn’t be available in the Western US for another twenty-five years, neat stacks of canned goods (?), some jarringly 20th century turns of phrase – and where the heck in the West in 1850 was there a hard-rock mine and a cattle ranch in close proximity? Not to mention a mine-owner oppressing his workers in the best Gilded Age fashion by charging them for lodgings, fire wood and groceries, as if he had been taking lessons from the owners of Appalachian coal mines. It was as if there was no other place of work within hundreds and hundreds of miles – again, I wondered just where the hell this story was set. It passed muster with some viewers as a perfectly good western, but to me, none of it rang true. Whoever produced it just pulled random details out of their hat – presumably a ten-gallon one – and flung them up there. Hey, 19th century, American West; it’s all good and all pretty much the same, right?

Me, I’ve been getting increasingly picky. Generic, once-upon-a-time in the west doesn’t satisfy me any more, not since I began writing about the frontier myself. It seems to me that to write something true, something authentic about the western experience – you have to do what the creators of “The Trail to Hope Rose” didn’t bother to do; and that was to be specific about time and place. The trans-Mississippi West changed drastically over the sixty or seventy years, from the time that Americans began settling in various small outposts, or traveling across it in large numbers. And the West was not some generic all-purpose little place, where cattle ranches could be found next to gold mines, next to an Army fort, next to a vista of red sandstone, with a Mexican cantina just around the corner. No, there were very specific and distinct places, as different as they could be and still be on the same continent. 1880’s Tombstone is as different from Gold Rush era Sacramento, which is different again from Abilene in the cattle-boom years, nothing like Salt Lake City when the Mormons first settled there – and which is different again from Laura Ingalls Wilder’s small-town De Smet in the Dakota Territory – or any other place that I could name, between the Pacific Ocean and the Mississippi-Missouri. Having writers and movie-makers blend them all together into one big muddy mid-19th century blur does no one any favors as far as telling new stories.

Being specific as to time and place opens up all kinds of possible stories and details. Such specificity has the virtue of being authentic or at least plausible and sometimes are even cracking good stories because of their very unlikelihood. For example, Oscar Wilde did a lecture tour of western towns. If I remember correctly, the topic of his lecture was something to do with aesthetics and interior decoration, and he performed wearing the full black-velvet knickerbockers suit with white lace collars. He was a wild success in such wild and roaring places as Leadville, Colorado, possibly because he could drink any of his audience under the table. Anyway, my point is, once you have a time and a place, then you can deal with all the local characters and the visitors who came to that town at that time, have a better handle on the technology in play at the time. Was the town on the railway, who were the people running the respectable businesses – and the unrespectable ones? Who were the local characters, the bad hats and the good guys, the eccentrics and the freaks? What was the local industry, and for how long – and if not long, what replaced it and under what circumstances? What did the scenery out-side town look like? Even such details as what were the main buildings in town made of and what did they look like, over the years can be telling. Where did the locals get their food from? Their mail? Who did the laundry, even! What kind of story can a writer make of a progression from canvas tents over wooden frames, from log huts and sod huts, to fine frame buildings filled with furniture and fittings brought at great expense from the east. I had all those questions while watching this movie – and I’ll probably have pretty much the same, if I ever watch another one like it. It would have been so much a better movie if someone had given a bit more thought and taken a little more care.

Above all, if a writer can be specific with those underpinnings, of time and place and keep the story congruent within that framework – than it seems to me that you can tell any sort of story, and likely a much more interesting and entertaining one. As near as I can judge from some of the western discussion groups and blogs, like this one, writers are moving in that direction. Eventually movie producers may move in that direction as well; supposedly Deadwood makes long strides in re-visualizing a more specific west.

But they will absolutely, positively have to get rid of those costumes for women with the very visible zippers down the back.

Brief Respite in the Writer’s Life Waltz

28. July 2008 · Comments Off on Brief Respite in the Writer’s Life Waltz · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Working In A Salt Mine...

Not a lot of time to spend on blogging on current affairs this week! I am stuck between the final edit of Adelsverein – Book 2 (The Civil War years), sending out review copies of Book 1, and polishing Book 3 (The cattle-ranching years) to a fine glossy sheen, and stuffing it full of local color and as many contemporary references and personalities as possible… oh, and doing the odd bit of marketing for “Truckee’s Trail”. One of the other IAG writers posted a tid-bit on the average sales of a POD or indy-published book; apparently the average number of copies sold is around 160-200 copies. I went back and looked at the various royalty statements for “Truckee”, tallied up a couple of other things – such as the copies that I sold through this website and from out of a box in the trunk of my car and came up with a grand total of 270-280 copies sold… possibly even more, since it takes four months for sales through bookstores, Amazon and Barnes & Noble to post. Those nice people at the Truckee Donner Historical Society just bought another box of twenty, so yay, me!

Once the final edits are done, and Books 2 and 3 uploaded… there’s not much more to be done until all three are released in December, except organize what I can in the way of exposure. The covers are all but designed, the promotional copy already done. I can even say that it’s being put out by an established (albeit small!) publisher – Strider Nolan Media. (Owner is another IAG writer and a fan of interesting western novels, having written one himself.”Shalom on the Range” – it’s hilarious, by the way; sort of Seinfeld on the Prairie.) I’ve been talking with some people in local bookstores, setting up signings – and the director of Fredericksburg’s Pioneer Museum bookstore is absolutely agog with excitement. The local historian who reviewed the manuscript for historical boo-boos found nothing more than some misspellings of German names, and he loves the story so much he is talking it up to all of his friends. Yes, it might very well work out that everyone in Gillespie County will buy a copy, just to see if I have mentioned their ancestors. The museum bookstore manager has ancestors on both sides that are mentioned, so he was quite tickled.

It will take months for the advanced reviews to be completed… so in the meantime, I am going back to work. I needed another two jobs to replace working for my computer genius friend, and the radio station. The royalty checks just are not consistently large enough, to permit me to stay at home. I applied to work part-time at a local call center, knowing full well that most people can only stick that sort of work for about six months, or a year, tops. Part-time, I can endure. The other job is with a local publishing company, whose owner was also a client of my late computer-genius friend. He had been after me for months, saying that I ought to get in touch with them, especially since the owner’s husband and partner had just died quite suddenly. Well, I finally did. The owner can’t pay anything much, until I bring in some big projects and clients for her… but there are two good parts to that: I can do most of the work from home, and she knows everyone in the San Antonio literary scene. Which means more local credibility for me… I might even get a review in the San Antonio Express News, in spite of their policy of turning up their nose at POD and indy books.

So that’s where it all stands at present – and grateful I am for all the people who have been truly helpful, sympathetic and supportive over the last two years, which have been quite a bit more rocky than they needed to be. Maybe I am just now beginning to see glimmerings of light at the end of the tunnel, not just the headlight of the train bearing down on me!

Child Labor

23. July 2008 · Comments Off on Child Labor · Categories: General, The Funny, Working In A Salt Mine...

I know its old, but still funny

Here’s a truly heartwarming story about the bond formed between a little 5-year-old girl and some construction workers that will make you believe that we all can make a difference when we give a child the gift of our time.

A young family moved into a house, next to a vacant lot. One day, a construction crew began to build a house on the empty lot. The young family’s 5-year-old daughter naturally took an interest in the goings-on and spent much of each day observing the workers.

Eventually the construction crew, all of them ‘gems-in-the-rough,’ more or less, adopted her as a kind of project mascot. They chatted with her during coffee and lunch breaks and gave her little jobs to do here and there to make her feel important. At the end of the first week, they even presented her with a pay envelope containing ten dollars. The little girl took this home to her mother who suggested that she take her ten dollars ‘pay’ she’d received to the bank the next day to start a savings account.

When the girl and her mom got to the bank, the teller was equally impressed and asked the little girl how she had come by her very own pay check at such a young age. The little girl proudly replied,

“I worked last week with a real construction crew building the new house next door to us.”

“Oh my goodness gracious,’ said the teller, “and will you be working on the house again this week, too?’

The little girl replied, “I will, if those @**holes at Home Depot ever deliver the f***in’ sheet rock.”

The New Broom Sweeping Clean

08. June 2008 · Comments Off on The New Broom Sweeping Clean · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Media Matters Not, Working In A Salt Mine...

Being let go as a part-time announcer from the public radio station where I worked since… umm, how many years ago? Thirteen, I think – maybe fourteen. It was a bit of a shock, being told over the telephone that there would be no need for my services after the 14th, thank you very much. Still a better way to be told than just ordered to lump all of your personal stuff into a cardboard box and being escorted off the premises by a large security man; TPR doesn’t have a security guy at present anyway, even though that might be another one of those things that are changing. As it turns out – it wasn’t just me. It was all the part-timers who worked one or two regular shifts a week; weekends and evenings mostly, and additional if needed because someone else was sick, or going on vacation or had a temporary conflict with their regular work schedule. We were all given the word, by letter, email or phone. Almost without exception, each of us initially assumed that we were the only one being let go.

A little background might be in order: I started work there under a general manager who was the original GM, since the classical station began broadcasting in 1982. Both the classical station, KPAC and the news/information station KSTX operated from the adjacent studios in the same location, shared the same management staff and production facility and even occasionally swapped announcers back and forth. The announcers, full and part-time were an amusingly assorted lot – so were those who produced various pre-recorded programs. Over the last fifteen years there have been a couple of retired Air Force broadcasters besides myself, including one who had been the commander of Air Force Broadcasting. Another producer was a lady was an accomplished poet. There was a retired diplomat who wrote a weekly opera lecture program that I produced, who was the single most cultured human being that I never knew personally – we worked together every Saturday afternoon that the Metropolitan didn’t broadcast an opera for about a decade. Musicians – there is a horn-player for the local symphony, and a teacher who builds exquisite bespoke harpsichords, and a young man who played piano in a restaurant on the Riverwalk.

There was a genial Irishman who was a retired railway executive – his wife owned a white Rolls-Royce. (We have – or had – four Irish people on staff, an amusingly high ratio for South Texas.) There were a couple of actors, both of whom had pretty recognizable names in local theater circles, a freelance video producer, a writer for a small glossy magazine, and a woman who teaches at the local community college and helps run a local animal shelter and the spay and neuter program. Add in an assortment of ‘ladies who lunch’ who did it for amusement and broadcast students who did it for exposure and experience, amateurs and enthusiasts of every stripe – and when I say amateurs, I do not mean it in the pejorative sense. Just about all of us were quite skilled, enormously experienced – having done this sort of thing for years. This wide assortment among the staff conferred upon TPR a considerable degree of connection and inter-connection to the community. I used to joke that you could connect anyone in San Antonio to anyone else in about three degrees, if you routed the connection through TPR.
Unlike the local PBS TV station – which seemed to have a revolving door for their staff, turnover in at TPR was pretty minimal. Hardly anyone was fired or quit – people left because they died, or a spouse relocated out of the area. Otherwise, people stayed for decades. This was SOP until the old general manager retired a couple of years ago. The new GM had ambitious plans to expand the local news mission.

I think the station came into some serious grant money – for the studios were all rehabbed and updated, this last year, with all sorts of jazzy new equipment and computer razzle-dazzle. The old sat-net room was also rehabbed, and turned into a cubicle farm for the news staff. They hired a guy to be news director, and just last week a new full-time announcer, who had an impressive resume from another classical station.

The thing about the new computer technology is that long segments of programming can be pre-arranged to play – the music, the announcements, spots and IDs all. Automated radio, in other words – other stations have done this for years, and the means of doing it has become less and less complicated and easier and easier to facilitate. Some of the more far-sighted of us joked about this possibility over the last couple of months. But the thing about TPR was that we weren’t like other stations – we had real human beings in the studio, after hours and on weekends. Our listeners expected to talk to a real human being – and as I said, many of us had been there for years. Surely management couldn’t seriously be thinking about throwing all that community good-will and staff experience over the side, just to turn TPR into a clone of Sirius radio, or a classy version of Clear Channel …

Alas, they could, and did. I don’t even think we are getting any sort of severance pay, not that we would have expected anything, being that we were part-timers with no benefits at all. I don’t even think we will get a certificate or anything like a letter of referral. New broom, in the hands of new management – we agreed that if this is what TPR is being transformed into – than it is just as well that we have been swept out the door.

(So please, I bleg of you, hit the book link and boost my sales stats for “Truckee” – and next month I will begin taking advance orders for the “Adelsverein Trilogy” – with luck, the royalties will soar well above what I earned at the radio station!)

Moving Ahead

05. June 2008 · Comments Off on Moving Ahead · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

I am trying to see this as a sign – that I am plunging in considerably more than shin deep in the waters of ‘making it as a writer’. Thanks to all the copies of “Truckee’s Trail” which sold in January thanks to a nice review from Eric at Classical Values, which was Instalanched, I will receive a fairly substantial royalty check this month. Royalties for sales other than through Booklocker are on a 4-month delay, then another month for Booklocker to forward them on to writers. I am fairly sure there will be another good check next month, for sales in February also carried on fairly steadily.

This is all to the good, making a living at writing, because it seems that all three of my part-time jobs have melted away in the last month or so. The real-estate guy is having a rough month and can’t afford office help and the work that I did for a client of my computer-genius friend Dave was only a temporary assignment. They were quite pleased with my work, and would recommend me to any other clients, but it was still a long drive to get there and a lot of telephone-calling his potential clients. And just yesterday, the ops manager at the public radio station called to say regretfully that one of their full-time employees was taking over my Saturday afternoon shift, as he was more of an opera guy. I will no longer have a regular shift there. I think I was nearly the last of the one-shift a week part-timers. They have just hired a new full-time announcer, and apparently were extensively revamping the shift schedules.

That was a bit of a surprise, as I had worked there for longer than I have practically anywhere else than the Air Force. I had originally hoped to transition into a full-time position there, which never came about. I think I just kept on working Saturdays out of habit more than anything. Still, when all is said and done, I am not sure that I mind very much. Just about all the announcers that I worked with closely over the years are all gone; moved on to other things. I see this as a hint for myself to move on, to let go of something that I stopped being really interested in a couple of years ago – and being pushed just as I was making up my mind to jump.

So now, I have my Saturdays back, I no longer have to make that 40 minute drive across town, and with the cost of gas, that is some consideration. I will be able to do more book events at a prime time and day, and at least a little bit more family stuff, since Blondie works or goes to school during the week. And I have to go full time at this writing and marketing my books now, with no distractions from any other job, none of this working for other people stuff. It’s time to work for myself.

One big consideration is that I am planning on releasing the Adelsverein Trilogy, or Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms (thank you, Andrew!) in mid December. Yep, all three volumes at once – and believe me, I am snowed under with revising, editing, and sorting out the publicity angle for them. I have been offered an opportunity to work with another IAG author and publicize them through his own publishing website. He does westerns as well, and has all sorts of ins with that market and a lot more experience in book publicity than I do. The Adelsverein Trilogy will sell like hotcakes, locally. I’ve already been told so by no less than three local bookstores.

While the official release for the Trilogy won’t be until December, I will begin accepting pre-orders for the trilogy next month – all three volumes, at a discounted price of what they would be separately, and delivered in November, in advance of the official launch – and autographed, too. I’ll post links as soon as I get the pricing figured out.

So, how was your week? Better than Hillary Clinton’s week, I am sure.

Interesting Times with POD Books

21. May 2008 · Comments Off on Interesting Times with POD Books · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Working In A Salt Mine...

Just when I was beginning to think the whole Amazon-Booksurge-POD imbroglio was dying down, now it begins again. Angela and Richard Hoy of Booklocker.com have filed a class action lawsuit against Amazon. Com (details here)

I had begun to hope that Amazon had seen the error of their ways, deafened by the level of outrage expressed by the many, many, many POD small presses and niche writers like myself, as well as professional associations like the The Author’s Guild, the American Society of Journalists and Authors (ASJA),and The Small Publishers Association of North America and was going to rethink their policy of demanding that all POD books sold directly through Amazon.com be printed by their in-house print service. Well, there was certainly no more talk of any more POD houses caving in , under threat of having the “buy’ button turned off on the Amazon page for any authors’ books published by those houses.

At the Independent Authors’ Guild, our members are terribly split over how to respond. Not in the sense of “I’m going to take my marbles and go home” sort of split, more the “everyone decides what is in their best interests” in the way of response. We are an association of equals; there is no corporate line to be toed. Some of us do not give a rat’s patoot if we have any sales through Amazon or not, especially after this greedy grab. Others care very much, since they make the bulk of their royalty payments through on-line retailers, of which Amazon.com is the 800 lb gorilla. One very dedicated member felt that she had no choice but to sign with Booksurge to publish her historical novel, into which she had put too many years of work to put at risk. Others of us are boycotting Amazon.com, and switching any links in our book-marketing materials to Barnes & Noble or Booksamillion. It’s not just buying books and other goods through Amazon.com – I’ve stopped posting book reviews there, participating in any of their blogs or discussion groups, or asking my readers to post reviews for “To Truckee’s Trail” there; I’d much rather throw my custom and marketing interests to Barnes and Noble. (They answer emails about my book page there much more readily than Amazon does, oddly enough. Amazon’s ‘author tech help’ runs the gamut between unresponsive and non-existent)

I’m only too proud to be a Booklocker author, and to continue to be published by Richard and Angela: the Adelsverein Trilogy (aka Barsetshire with cypress trees and lots of side arms) will be available from Booklocker in December. I got my ‘economic stimulus’ tax rebate this week and am using the largest portion of it to get started. Who says that the gummint doesn’t support the arts and literature?

End of the Line(s)

14. May 2008 · Comments Off on End of the Line(s) · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Rant, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

Just this afternoon I finished the last few pages of the final chapter of the final volume of the Adelsverein Saga (known to all as “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and Lots of Sidearms” – first draft, so there is quite a lot of snipping, editing, revising, et-cetera to be done.

But still – a grand total of 437,800 words, spread over three volumes. It’s nearly as long as Lord of the Rings, which is supposed to have clocked in at half a million. No wonder I feel like I have just finished a marathon.

There is so much that I wanted to do, to flesh out the characters and the various dramatic incidents, to include some significant backstories and to generally do right by the epic, even if some of the not-so-essential stuff is snipped, I may very well finish with just as many words or more.

Something to think about, perhaps dividing the final volume into two. Say the heck with that and make it a quartet….

Slightly depressed this evening – the part-time job that I went to, after my dear friend Dave the Computer Genius and part-time employer died most unexpectedly, has come to an end. Also somewhat unexpectedly. Eh, I knew it was temporary, I just thought it would last a little longer! But they did think the world of my work and enterprise, will call me in again to work on specific projects and will recommend me enthusiastically to their various clients, I departed on extraordinarily good terms – it’s just that I am back to a certain degree of job and financial uncertainty.

On the up-side, the commute, even once a week was a bear and I would have slashed my own wrists with my teeth after spending another couple of eight hours a day on the phone doing cold calls.

Home Stretch

11. May 2008 · Comments Off on Home Stretch · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Sorry for the light blogging this week; I can only handle so much Obamania. Having pegged him as a gorgeous, charismatic empty suit a couple of months ago, watching the wheels wobble on his bus, in spite of all the fawning adoration of our supposedly non-biased press corps… well, it’s just tiresome. The crash is inevitable; it will be messy. His wife is a shrew, his associates are as embarrassing as the close associates of machine pols always are, and the professional black race-mongers will rally around him regardless. Yawn. I think I will have another cup of tea – I have a book review, two DVD reviews and the draft of an old-media article about city politics (in another city!)… and a book chapter to finish.

Personally, the book chapter is the most important. It’s the final chapter of the Adelsverein saga, AKA “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a lot of Sidearms”, for which I first sketched out some notes and a short plot outline eighteen months ago. It was going to be a single book, incorporating a lot of the elements for which “Truckee” was criticized as not having, in order to be commercial; a lot of suspense about survival of the main characters, a fair amount of violence, romantic tension and even a hint of sex. I decided that I might as well throw in operatic levels of everything, in the hopes of being more commercially appealing. I thought I could do another unknown dramatic story of the frontier, since hardly anyone outside Texas has ever heard of the German colonies. The more I discovered in the course of researching this little corner of the 19th century, the more that I was drawn into my characters’ lives.

I wanted to go farther than just a simple romance about the founding of a small town, and the heroine’s discovery of love and a new land, of marriage and the birth of her first child. I had to follow her and her family and circle of friends through the crucible of the Civil War, through loss and desolation, up to the dawning of new hope and the crumbling of the Confederacy. The last volume does not tell quite so neatly contained a story; it’s a story of building again, of the rise of the cattle baronies in post-war Texas, of middle age and seeing your children open their wings and flying, of letting go of illusions and coming to terms with life. At the very end, my heroine sits in the 20th century parlor of her younger daughters’ house, reflecting on it all. She has seen marvelous things, known fascinating people, seen the world move from one powered by horse and sails to one where men fly, in engine-powered contraptions of wire and canvas. She has also become an American.

Sometime this week, I will write that last chapter of her story, Oh, I won’t be done with it, of course – I will need revise and edit, polish and format. I will need to re-read a stack of books, classic and modern Westerniana, immerse myself in the coffee-table books of Western art that I bought at the library sale last month, make about a thousand notes of new inclusions, take in the feedback of all the people who have read all three volumes, and chain myself to a hot computer for a couple of months. But it is the beginning of the end. One of the other Texas IAG members takes beautiful scenic photos and likes to fiddle around with artistic effects. He is letting me use three of them as covers for the Adelsverein Saga – look for all three in December of this year. For a sneak peek at his work, I put some of them up on my book website.

What to do next? I don’t know, yet – I had thought of doing a sort of prelude, about pre-Republic Texas, and maybe an adventure to do with the Mason County Hoo-Doo War, the original farmers-and-cattlemen feud. I’d hate to milk a franchise to death, though. I’d almost rather start on something original.

On the literary front I have a signing for “Truckee’s Trail” at a local Borders next month, a place that not only has a very interested and supportive general manager, but a venue that jumps most evenings, being co-located in a complex which includes a huge movie megaplex and a lot of popular restaurants in a well-heeled part of town. Alas, the IPPY short-list has been released, and “Truckee” didn’t place. The other contest I entered it in won’t be announced until October, so I’m well served by putting it out of my mind entirely.

Back to the 19th century…

Guest Post – Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Amazon.com

11. April 2008 · Comments Off on Guest Post – Who’s Afraid of the Big Bad Amazon.com · Categories: Ain't That America?, Fun and Games, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Technology, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

(Although the following appears with my name on it, ths is actually a guest-post by another IAG member, who did a lot of numbers-crunching and came up with some recommendations: Michael S. Katz is an attorney, editor-in-chief of Strider Nolan Publishing, board member of the Independent Authors’ Guild, and author of the comedy novel Shalom On The Range Take it away, Mike!)

Amazon.com recently announced a new policy requiring all Print On Demand authors to use Amazon’s own printing company, Booksurge, in order to be sold through Amazon. Many POD authors and publishers are understandably upset by this, as this can only serve to cost the authors money, and cost the printing companies business. But in terms of Amazon’s market share, how much business are we actually talking about?

WHO’S ON FIRST?

Sales of books totaled $2 billion in 2000, at which time on-line sales made up between 7.5% and 10% of that total.1 Amazon and BN.com now account for more than 85% of online book sales.3 Recent data shows that Amazon’s book sales are approximately four times that of BN.com,4 and Amazon has a 70% share of the Internet book market, so this translates into a 15 to 17.5% market share for BN.com.5

Amazon’s total sales in 2006 were $4.63 billion, but this includes books, music, and various other items, including a lot of high-end electronics, jewelry, and the like. Barnes & Noble actually outsold them at $4.68 billion (and they were basically limited to books, music and movies), but their on-line presence had only $477 million in sales. Why are people flocking to Amazon over BN.com?

A LOT TO RECOMMEND IT

A lot of it has to do with programming. Amazon has a reputation for being the best at tracking customer habits, having collected information longer and used it more proactively. Over the years they have collected detailed information about what its customers buy, considered buying, browsed for but never bought, recommended to others, or even wished someone would buy them.10 Amazon uses this information to calculate recommendations that boost sales.

In the entertainment industry, recommendations are a remarkably efficient form of marketing, as they enable films, music and books to more easily find the right audience.9 For example, the book Touching the Void, a tale of a mountain-climbing tragedy, was released in 1988 to good reviews but modest success. In 1998, the book Into Thin Air, about another mountain-climbing tragedy, was released and became a bestseller. All of a sudden, people began buying the older book again. Touching the Void began to be displayed side by side with Into Thin Air, and actually wound up outselling the newer book. How did this happen? Chris Anderson, author of The Long Tail, attributes this to Amazon.com recommendations. Amazon’s programs note buying patterns and suggest similar books to readers. Some people follow the suggestion, enjoy the book, and post excellent reviews. These purchases and reviews lead to more sales, more recommendations, and the cycle continues.9

Readers’ reviews also stimulate sales, although moreso on Amazon than BN.com. One study (Chevalier and Mayzlin) examined how sales on both sites correlated with number of reviews and customers’ ratings.12 They determined that a good review will increase the number of books sold, although with much greater effect on Amazon than BN.com. A bad review has a greater effect than a good one, based on the assumption that many 5-star reviews are believed to be “planted,” whereas 1-star reviews are seen as more legitimate.12

GETTING FROM POINTS A(MAZON) TO B(ARNES & NOBLE)

How do prices compare between the big two? A study (Chevalier and Goolsbee) collected Amazon and BN.com data for 18,000 different books during three different weeks in 2001. They determined that there was significant price sensitivity for online book purchases at both sites. But the demand at BN.com was much more price sensitive—both to its own prices and to Amazon’s prices—than at Amazon.4

A one percent increase in a book’s price at Amazon reduced sales by about 0.5 percent at Amazon but raised sales at BN.com by 3.5 percent, implying that (based on the 4-to-1 ratio in sales) every customer lost by Amazon instead bought the book at BN.com. Conversely, raising prices by one percent at BN.com reduced sales about 4 percent but increased sales at Amazon by only about 0.2 percent.4 Therefore, a customer lost by Amazon would usually wind up buying the book at BN.com, whereas a customer lost by BN.com would not necessarily go to Amazon. If BN.com keeps its prices right, they can steal away a lot of Amazon traffic.
More »

Texiana and Chisholm Trailing

25. February 2008 · Comments Off on Texiana and Chisholm Trailing · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, History, Old West, Working In A Salt Mine...

At present I am about halfway through the first draft of Book Three, the Adelsverein Trilogy – or as has been called “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”. I have gotten the various members of the Becker and Richter families up to the making of their various fortunes in the post Civil War cattle trade, when an acute surplus of cattle in Texas met the advancing trans-continental railroad.

Well, not exactly met, since the cattle were in Texas and the railroads were advancing at a good clip west from Chicago and St. Louis; the Union Pacific, the Kansas Pacific, and the Atchison, Topeka and Santa Fe. The actual tracks were stretching ribbons of iron track across Nebraska and Kansas, putting the four dollar a head Texas cow a considerable distance away from that forty-dollar a head market in Sedalia, Kansas City or Abilene.

Out of that not inconsiderable distance was born the enduring legend of the long-distance cattle drive. In the twenty years after the Civil War about 10 million cows walked north, most to the Kansas railheads, but a smaller portion went farther north, into Wyoming and Canada to be used as brood stock for ranches that eager entrepreneurs were falling all over themselves to establish.

Trailing cattle out of Texas to profitable markets elsewhere was not, by that time an entirely new phenomenon. Texas longhorns were brought north beginning in the 1840s, along what was called the Shawnee Trail between Brownsville and variously, Kansas City, Sedalia and St. Louis. Another trail, the Goodnight-Loving trail went from west Texas to Cheyenne, Wyoming, following the Pecos River through New Mexico. But the most heavily trafficked trail was the many-branched Chisholm Trail. It’s tributaries gathered cattle from all across Texas into one mighty trunk route which began at Red River Station, on the river which marked the demarcation between Texas and the Indian Territories of present-day Oklahoma. The Chisholm Trail crossed rivers which, thanks to storms in the distant mountains, could go from six inches to 25 feet deep in a single day and skirted established farmlands farther east, whose owners usually did not care for large herds of cattle trampling their crops and exposing their own stock to strange varieties of disease.

Once into Kansas, the trail split again, over time as the railroads crept west. The end of the trail came variously at places like Dodge City, Newton, Ellsworth and Abilene – depending on the year, how far the railway had come, and the exasperation of local citizens with the behavior of young men on a spree after three months of brutally hard work, dust and boredom. The cattle were loaded into railcars, their drovers paid off… and next year, they did it again. The tracks can still be seen from the air, all across North Texas and Oklahoma.

So this is what I have been researching and writing about, these last few weeks – a world not much like that seen in TV westerns and old B-movies. It was a bit more complicated than it looks, watching an old TV show like “Rawhide”, with a great many more interesting characters, a lot more hard work and not nearly as prone to stupid gunplay and bravado. As one of my characters reflects… “The cattle drive was…uncommonly like the Army. The days combined long mind-numbing stretches of tedium interspersed with back-breaking labor and the occasional moment of innards-melting terror; all of it in the open air and in the exclusive company of men, day after day after day.”

Other curious things noted as regards the golden age of western cattle ranching:

The average age of a cowhand/drover was about 24. About one in six or seven was black, about one in six or seven Mexican. The work was seasonal, and most did it for only about seven years before moving on to something that paid a little more, or setting up as ranchers themselves.

They usually did not own their horse. Horses were provided as a necessary tool by the cowhand’s employer, to be swapped out when necessary. Which, depending on the work involved, might be two or three times during the working day.

In fact, at the end of a long trail drive, the horses were usually sold, and sometimes the cook-wagon, too. The cowhands returned to their starting point by rail; a ticket home being provided along with their wages.

In 1854 a drover named Tom Candy Ponting took a herd of longhorns all the way from Texas to New York City.

A French nobleman with a glamorous wife and apparently bottomless funds of money, the Marquis de Mores emerged with a small fortune after building a processing-plant and slaughterhouse… and a whole small town at Medora, in the Dakota badlands. Unfortunately, he had started with a large one. He also nearly fought a duel with Teddy Roosevelt.

Wyoming cattle baron Granville Stuart was married happily and successfully for nearly thirty years to a Shoshone Indian woman, Aubony (or Awbonny) Stuart.

Curiously, there didn’t seem to be all much cattleman-sheep herder warfare in Texas. Many Texas ranchers had stocked their lands with whatever herding animal was likely to make a profit. There was horrific bad feeling between cattle ranchers and ordinary farmers, though. See the Mason County Hoo Doo War, in which the farmer and the cowman were pretty evenly matched.

(more to follow – reposted to allow comments)

Random Thoughts on Interstate Highway Travel

04. January 2008 · Comments Off on Random Thoughts on Interstate Highway Travel · Categories: Ain't That America?, Critters, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Memoir, Site News, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Topmost on my list of such thoughts is – oh, god, it’s good to be home! It’s good to be able to sleep in ones own bed, to stretch out and not have cold feet, cold hands, cold-whatever-body-part-winds up pressed against the side panel of the Montero and is just a thin sheet of metal and some miscellaneous plastic bits removed from the frigid, wind-whipped New Mexico or West Texas weather.

Oh, yes, it was bloody cold out there; there was no snow to show for all that cold, but some nice patches of blowing dust and sand. The winds kicked up the day before we left Mom and Dads and made such a racket we couldn’t sleep that night anyway – and followed us all the way across three states. Nothing says “I want to go home” quite so much as vacating the area at 2 AM.

The best thing about departing in the wee hours on New Years Day – no traffic, once you finish dodging the drunks. There was one suspiciously careful driver, weaving gently down the Valley Center grade, which Blondie felt obliged to try and call 911 about – but all we got was it ringing about twenty times and then an answering machine. On 911; I guess they had their hands full. And the driver we were worried about didn’t look to be the reckless sort of drunk driver.

The “Starbuckifaction” of the coffee-drinking element has spread it’s what some would claim is an insidious influence far and wide, yea my brethren even to the truck plazas and gas stations along the interstate highway system. The Flying J/Pilot stores provide a surprisingly excellent selection of coffee… and have half-and-half on tap. Not just exclusively that ghastly powdered chalk non-dairy “cream” muck, thankyouverymuch. Extremely drinkable and for about a third of the cost of an equivalent at a Starbucks. No demerara sugar, though, but I expect that to appear by the next time I do a long, long road trip.

Oh, and speaking of coffee in the wee hours, I must pour scorn and derision upon the Carls Junior, just off the 1-8 in the eastern suburb of San Diego where we attempted to purchase some handy breakfast comestables and coffee at 4 AM. Yes, I know it was 4AM on New Years Day and the single unfortunate young person running the place was so junior as to make drawing fuzzy end of the lollipop and working that shift inevitable… but still; no breakfast items? We were told that only lunch items were available… oh, and sorry, the coffee brewer wasn’t fired up. And payment could only be made in cash. Yeah, so he wasn’t senior enough to have the keys to the debit-credit card processor or the coffee urns, but lunch items at 4 AM? Jesus jumping key-rist on a pogo stick, the whole damn reason for 24 hour fast food places is to dispense coffee!

Gas prices – not to shabby once outside California, and Blondie’s Montero got very good mileage on the highway. We filled to the top four times and came in well under budget, having allowed for gas at $3.25 a gallon when we planned the trip. Most gas stations along the interstate in Texas, New Mexico and Arizona had it within a nickel of $2.90, either way.

What to call the road-kill count – Bambi Bits? Bambicide? Whatever it is, the deer population takes a hell of a beating; that stretch of 1-10 through the Hill Country is a veritable holocaust for them. As a stratagem to keep ourselves awake and amused after coffee ceased having the required effect, we counted road kill from Mile 300 to Mile 511 in the median, on the roadway and off on the shoulder. Not counting various nasty looking smears and blots on the paving, our grand total was 49 deer, 8 raccoons or opossum, 3 skunks, 3 large birds (turkey or guinea-fowl of some sort) and 23 U-L-O-M, which is our acronym for “Unidentified Lumps ‘o Meat”. At that, we probably missed about a third as many, off-sight on the opposite side of the highway.

So – we’re home – and when I get home, the first thing I find is that Eric at Classical Values posted a lovely review of “To Truckee’s Trail” and Da Blogfaddah linked to it. With a resulting uptick in sales through Amazon. Maybe I should go away more often. Oh, never mind – provision of good bloggy ice cream will commence as soon as I finish going through my email in-box.

The Perils of POD Publishing

12. December 2007 · Comments Off on The Perils of POD Publishing · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Memoir, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Strictly speaking, unless your last name is Grisham or King, Steele or Rowling or any other scribbling royalty lurking meaningfully on or near the of the NY-Times best seller lists, life is bleak and full of frustrations. And also very short of people who are nice to you as a writer and welcoming to you and your books. No wonder so many of them turn to drink, or otherwise crash and burn. Even the flash in the pan overnight successful ones fall to this– Grace Metalious, anyone?

Those of us at the bottom, toiling and marketing in obscurity take our little successes where we can, lonely beacons shining in a dark and generally frustrating world. Everyone who reads the Book and loves it, or recommends it to a friend, or drops a favorable comment in an on-line forum; that’s a light like Erandil in the dark places of the day. Not quite up there with royalty checks in three figures, but the trick to being happy is to be happy with what you have.

Last night I found a comment in a discussion forum about off-road vehicles; a contributor quoted a bit from “To Truckee’s Trail” about storage arrangements in Dr. Townsends’ wagon and drew a very neat parallel between that, and how modern off-roaders now install storage for long treks – that just about made my evening. Such crumbs as do nourish the writers’ ego on these long winter evenings after looking at my ranking on Amazon.com. It’s available in the Kindle format, by the way. Or so it appears. I think. Even if there is no picture of the cover or links to the reviews for the paperback edition. No idea from the admin responses in the author forum as to why… just another way that the non-royal scribblers are incessantly kicked in the teeth by a cold and unfeeling world.

Ah, yes – reviews; absolutely necessary to have in order to market your book. Think of them as word of mouth, made solid and permanent in print. In the grand halls of the literary industrial complex, competition is fierce to review the books of the scribbling royalty and the well-connected commentariat; even so, it will take months. Almost always, the book is made available to a select few way in advance, and rumor has it that sometimes reviewers are paid and quite healthy sums too. It’s a necessary step in marketing the book, think of all those lovely complimentary quotes on the back jacket, or in the first couple of pages. At a lower level – naturally the one occupied by other indie authors – are also paid… by getting a free copy of the book. It’s one of those nice little freebies available to those in the loop and I confess to having scored a nice little collection thereby. (I asked to review a book last month for no other reason that I looked at the description and thought what a wonderful Christmas present a copy would make for a certain friend.)

Alas, it has taken months and months to assemble my collection of reviews, and pushed back my marketing plan by a considerable period. Good thing that it is a POD book, as a traditional publisher would have pulled the plug by this time. On the other hand, a traditional publisher would have been able to squeeze a review out of the San Antonio Express News, whose book editor informed me snottily that their policy is not to review POD books of any sort, not even by local authors. Don’t know what their reasoning is, probably afraid of getting literary cooties or something. God knows there are some simply dreadful books out there, but last time I looked, quite a lot of them came out of the traditional publishers. Indie writing may be the next wave, just as indie movies and indie music have offered an alternative to the traditional Hollywood blockbuster and the manufactured and wholly synthetic mega-hit.

Next – why it’s an uphill fight to get the book into traditional bookstores, and why do I bother anyway?

Items of Note – Progress Report

05. December 2007 · Comments Off on Items of Note – Progress Report · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Media Matters Not, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

A few items of note to report

A bit of progress in the first draft of Vol.3 �Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms� � well into chapter 4 of the final volume. A test reading by my skilled and perceptive first-line editors (ok, Mom and Dad) provides positive feedback and a high interest in a new cast of characters. I am setting up a positively soap-opera-esque level of drama here, and yes, I will be careful not to turn the sister-in-law aka the Southern Belle from Hell into a caricature� although she is a walk-on, and at full strength these ladies tend to seem terribly over-the-top to us repressed Anglo-Yankees anyway. Mom and Dad give high props to the introduction of new leading characters, BTW. Since this is by way of becoming a family saga, and covers about half a century of eventful Texas history, this was necessary� a hero of a wild, wild western creaking around on a zimmer-frame just does not work for me. There may be writers of genre fiction this would work for, but not me and not this genre.

I�m tinkering a little with the first volume, and meditating upon revisions to the second volume; I�d like to finish the whole thing before going out and fishing for publishers again � just in case I am struck by a wildly creative notion about two chapters from the absolute end, and need to go back and set up the preconditions.

Blondie and I finished Christmas shopping last weekend � er, rather we emptied out the closet where we chuck the items as we buy them here or there throughout the year, take an inventory and figure out what few little items we need to put on the glorious display of generosity to our nearest and dearest that custom requires of us.

Never mind that most of our gleanings were bought on sale, from yard sales or are items for D-I-Y gift basket assortments needing assembly and the lot is currently spread out over the dining area table along with rolls of Christmas paper and a bundle of bags and Christmas tissue paper picked up on sale after Christmas last year. Note to our nearest and dearest � the book-writing thing is not paying off that well yet although I do have hopes. �To Truckee�s Trail� is available at Amazons� Kindle reader store. Can�t figure out how come the cover pic isn�t posted, and given their customer service degree of friendly helpfulness I am afraid to ask why.

The Fat Guy did a lovely review here; so did Juliet Waldron for this month�s issue of the Independent Authors Guild newsletter (scroll down, it’s on the third page), and Jaime at FictionScribe posted a long interview on how I came to write it. Might I suggest that it would make a lovely Christmas present for anyone who likes a good old-fashioned read?

I�d work up some bile for Franklin Foer�s belated and protracted apologies for the Private Beauchamp/Baghdad Diaries debacle, but I have to be in a sour mood to do it proper justice.

As for Legacy Media/The End of/As We Know It, I�ll note that a sales rep from the local newspaper called last night, offering a special home delivery deal; the Sunday paper for $2.00 and the rest of the week at no additional charge. I love the smell of economic desperation in the morning. Or whenever.

The March of Technology

29. November 2007 · Comments Off on The March of Technology · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Technology, The Funny, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Sorry to have been a bit chintzy with the free bloggy ice cream over the last couple of days; I was wrestling with the many-limbed monster that is technology – or at least that aspect of it involved in doing a version of “To Truckee’s Trail” for Amazon’s “Kindle” reader. It turned out that the PDF version that I have, which is the final print version was incompatible with what Amazon has established for their system.

Which was a bit of a facer, because it uploaded and converted and looked – if not perfectly OK, at least fairly OK – but some of the other information I had to load – about which I would never in the world goof up (you know, like my SSAN?) were kicked back as invalid. What the hey? Email to Amazon customer service, expressing bafflement and considerable annoyance. Received an email back, with an option for a phone call to a customer service rep, which was totally surprising. I mean – there’s an option for speaking to a real hoo-man at Amazon?

Well, there was, but the first person I talked to sounded like a cousin of Special Ed, who handed me on to a technician who was about as helpful as one of those terrifyingly crusty old senior technicians, back when I was not Sgt. Mom, but merely Baby Airman… with a completely baffling problem.

You remember – the exchange with the crusty old technician with enough stripes on his arm for a zebra farm, which went roughly like this:

Baby Airman: Umm… can you tell me how to perform this insurmountably complicated and obscure task about which I have not the slightest clue?

Crusty Old Senior Technician: It’s in the manual. (Which is, let me add, about the size of the LA phone book, and printed in eeensy weensy type)

Baby Airman: (quavering slightly) Yes, but I…

Crusty Old Senior Technician: (growling contemptuously) Didn’t you read the manual?

B.A.: Yes, but…

C.O.S.T: Well then, what are you asking me for? Go and read it again!

B.A.: (creeping away in silent despair, racking brains in a futile attempt to figure out task)

So the Crusty Old Senior Technician – Amazon version basically told me the file format was all wrong, contemptuously forwarded a page with a lot of links to discussion forums – none of which really addressed my problem, since I wasn’t really sure what it was, exactly, and I wound doing just as what usually happened back then: some slightly more knowledgeable tech whispering “Pssst! Try this!” and handing me a short and well-thumbed little cheat sheet which told me exactly what I had to know to perform that formerly insurmountably complicated and obscure task.

In this case, it was one of the other Independent Authors’ Guild writers who said, “Oh, just convert it from PDF to Word and upload it again.”

So, within another ten hours, assuming something else hasn’t thrown a spanner into the works ( translation: a monkey wrench into the gears) “To Truckee’s Trail” will be available for purchase by those who are keen on the latest hot technological gadget! Enjoy! And thanks to those of you who have purchased paperback copies in the last couple of months!

The Cowboy Way

20. November 2007 · Comments Off on The Cowboy Way · Categories: General, History, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

I never have quite understood the appeal of the cowboy, when it came to the whole western-frontier-nostalgia-gestalt. How on earth did that particular frontier archetype sweep all others before it, when it came to dime novels, movies and television shows… given that the classic “cowboy” functioned only in a very specific time period; say for about twenty years after the Civil War. Admittedly, the Western cattle industry seemed to be co-located with spectacular bits of scenery, and the final years of the frontier per se offered all kinds of interesting potential story lines, many of them guaranteed to thrill urban, eastern wage slaves living blamelessly dull lives… but still.

For the generic cowboy was a himself hired hand. Yes, indeed – working for wages as hard (or harder) than any store clerk or factory laborer, tending to semi-wild cattle – of all the domesticated animals only very slightly brighter than sheep. Your average cow is pretty much a functional retard. If if has had one functioning brain cell to rub against the other, all that would happen would be smoke trickling out of their ears. And, not to put too much of a fine point on it – herding cattle, even on horseback was unskilled labor in the 19th century. It was grueling, low-skill, low-paying labor, most often seasonable, and most intelligent and ambitious young sparks didn’t do it for a month longer than they needed to. It was the sort of work done these days by high-school kids and illegal aliens, mostly until better employment opportunities came along.

You have to wonder, especially when there were so many other truly heroic epic adventurers available to hang the hero worship on. How did the cowboy even begin to loom so large – especially when the cattle business (and it was a business!) didn’t really begin to thrive until all the excitement was practically over? What about the mountain men, living on their wits in the early days, alone among the variously tempered tribes of the Great Basin? And surely the miners in the various gold and silver booms – they worked just as hard at pretty mucky drudgery, for themselves in the earlies and for their employers later on. And what about my own personal favorites among the frontier archetypes, the wagon-train emigrants, setting out with their whole families along a two-thousand mile road through the empty lands? Stage drivers and teamsters were quite a bit more likely to have adventurous encounters with the lawless element, or particularly hostile Indians… although even the stereotype of the Western towns being particularly lawless falls down a bit in contemporary comparison to elements of big cities in the East. Why one particular line of work would inspire a century of dime novels, moves and television shows is enough to make you shrug your shoulders and say “que?!” to the camera, like Manuel in Fawlty Towers.

So how did all that glamour and mythic stature come to sprout from acres of Western cow pies? Damned if I know, although I can take some guesses. The popular press fairly exploded after the Civil War, creating a demand for tales of frontier adventure. Right time, right place; and it has often been noticed that the typical Western TV show or movie perpetuated ever since is more often set in about the 1865-1885s time frame. Telegraph and the transcontinental railroads are in place, the Indians are reserved (with sporadic exceptions necessary to the plot of the moment, of course) and all the little towns have wooden sidewalks and glass windows, suitable for a reckless cowboy to ride his horse down one and crash through the other. But still – a pretty limited visualization of the frontier west – surely there was more, even in the late 19th century for popular culture to fixate on?

I wonder if the attraction for the cowboy thing wasn’t based on a melding of one particular and very old archetype and a certain cultural folkway. The archetype was that of the independent horseman, the chevalier, the knight – able to go farther and travel faster than a person on foot. There was always a predilection in the West to look up to the man on a horse, to see them as beings a bit freer, a little more independent. The cowboy might be a paid laborer, but in comparison to man working in a factory, much more independent in the framing of his work day and much less supervised. And as was noted in the lively yet strangely scholarly tome “Cracker Culture”, the Scotch-Irish-Celtic-Borderer folkway which formed a substantial layer of our cultural bedrock rather favored herding barely domesticated animals (and hunting wild game) rather than intensive cultivation. Better a free life, out of doors and on horseback, rather than plodding along behind a plough, or stuck behind a workbench – even if it didn’t pay very much at all.

It is fascinating to go back to the roots of the cattle industry – as I am doing for the final volume of Adelsverein ( or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”) – just to discover how very, very different it was from what has always been popularly presented. Owen Wister didn’t get the half of it.

Still Waltzing Madly

17. November 2007 · Comments Off on Still Waltzing Madly · Categories: Ain't That America?, Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

So Philippa Gregory still has nothing to fear in sales competition from me as the author of “To Truckee’s Trail”, as I have to sell another one million, nine-hundred thousand plus copies before I can even think of buying that tastefully renovated castle in J.K.Rowlings’ neighborhood. I can’t make out from either Amazon’s stats or Booklockers’ how many – if any copies have sold in the last couple of months, because the book distributor Ingram has a four-month lead anyway. And individual POD books like mine are so expensive, relatively speaking, to print when they are done in runs of fifteen or twenty, rather than fifteen or twenty hundred thousand copies at a whack – that bookstores usually can’t get them at a 40% discount… which is a whole nother ball of wax, and the reason that the big-box-bookstores are an un-crackable nut for us independent authors. Thank god for the small local bookstores: I have a book-signing event planned tentatively at Berkman Books in Fredericksburg in December, and another one January 16th at The Twig in Alamo Heights. And my Number One fan, Mom, might be able to twist the arms of her literary friends in Escondido and Valley Center, and schedule something for me over Christmas week. Discouragingly, it still takes months to get reviews, though. Apparently not everyone can read a book as fast as I can.

Still, at least independent authors can get published now – they can get their books out there without having to pass through the gates of the literary industrial complex. There are other options than paying a bomb of money to a printer and stashing crates of copies in their garage. There is another way to find an audience, as independent musicians and independent movie-makers have already discovered. I have gotten together with a handful of other writers to brain storm some marketing strategies; all of us are either small-press or POD and totally exasperated with the current paradigm. There must be a better way for our books to reach interested readers. Without very much more ado, we formed the Independent Authors Guild, put up a website and a discussion group, published a newsletter (which will be a monthly) and began recruiting more members. So far we’re still working out future moves, and putting in sweat equity rather than a lot of cash. Check out the website… my work! (Not the logo, though – someone else did that, and it’s a book, not a pair of panties!)

Oh, and I scored a stack of books for reviews that I have to read and then write about. I promise I will post some more of that good bloggy ice cream here.

And I am four chapters in to the final volume of the “Adelsverein” trilogy – or “Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a Lot of Sidearms”, and need to do some very specific research on 1) how to harness a team of draft horses to a wagon, and what driving them involved -diagrams would help enormously and 2) 19th century prothesis available for a below-elbow arm amputation. Does the BAMC medical museum have a collection, I wonder?

All Apologies

06. November 2007 · Comments Off on All Apologies · Categories: Domestic, General, Home Front, Literary Good Stuff, Site News, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Mmmm… I’m building a website. For a writer’s guild that I have joined. I’m on the board, actually. There’s this group of people I met in an Amazon.com discussion group who have decided that dammit, we need to really do something about the literary industrial complex. And holy c**p, about two dozen of us have gone and done something.

We’ve formed a non-profit writers’ guild, and plan to collaborate on marketing and publicity, and some other stuff, like a newsletter and making the scene at various book-fairs.

We have mad visions of doing for the literary industrial complex what blogging did for the legacy media. You know, storming the barricades, and all that.

Wish me luck, and keep that flaming torch handy. I may need it…

The Hollywood writers are on strike? Well, butter my buns and call me a biscuit – how the hell can you tell? Blondie just discovered that we have BBC-America in our cable package. We’re set for the next few months, what with Torchwood, Doctor Who and the new Robin Hood.

All The News

14. October 2007 · Comments Off on All The News · Categories: Fun and Games, General, Media Matters Not, War, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

…That�s fit to print.

Or not, as the case may be. My own disillusionment with legacy media over the last three or four years has been pretty profound � not that I had them on all that high a pedestal to begin with. Being in the military media afforded enough occasions for brushing up against the big guys, either at first hand, or at second. There were enough stories filtering around the world of military broadcasting, of incredible arrogance, lack of accuracy and lack of professionalism displayed by the big names to give me a bad taste in my mouth anyway. I was already aware of the tendency for blow-dried big-name anchors and reporters to helicopter in, do an on-scene standup reading words that some lowly staffer had written for them. I already knew of how news luminaries like Peter Arnett had to back down over the bogus �Tailwind� story � which had made my eyebrows raise skeptically from the very first; I mean, guys handling a chemical so dangerous that a single drop on bare skin could be fatal? And not being in MOPP-gear (or the Vietnam-era equivalent) up to their eyeballs? Pull the other leg, chaps � that one has bells on it. I could cheerfully write off the cack-handed treatment of all things military by the legacy media to sheer bloody ignorance � after all, the military is a weird and wonderful world, all to itself.

What became harder to take over the last couple of years is their ignorance, credulity and bias regarding just about everything else. This list is a pretty comprehensive encyclopedia, although I am given to wonder how many bogus stories were never noticed until the rise of the internet, and the ability of astute news consumers to fact-check legacy media asses from here to the ends of the earth.

And to add one more depressing example, there is the matter of General Sanchez�s recent double-barreled blast. Of course, it was relayed to us by legacy media in the manner which we have come to expect of them; omitting the withering criticism directed at them� which formed the larger part of General Sanchez� remarks. (linked here) Now that�s a shocker � one might think they didn�t care for criticism directed at their impartial and noble selves, so down the memory hole it goes, at least as far as the headlines are concerned.

And finally, another writer friend of mine is curious about this photograph � an AP stock photo which has been used lately in venues such as the LA Times and Newsweek in their stories about Blackwater. He is a veteran, a combat photographer and former AP editor himself � and he thinks it is a little too perfect. Well, the two Blackwater guys rushing towards the camera while the guys behind them are all sitting about, in apparent relaxation. Take a look � what does it look like to you? Firefight or lunch break? Both? Or just another example of AP faux-tography?

Just for Fun

04. October 2007 · Comments Off on Just for Fun · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Old West, The Funny, Working In A Salt Mine...

Another writer sent me this musical parody, to be sung to the tune of “Back in the Saddle, Again”. It was composed especially for me, as he was inspired upon actually recieving a copy of “To Truckee’s Trail”.

“BACK IN THE BOOKWORKS A’GIN”

Well, she’s back in the bookworks a’gin.
Writin’ away when she kin’.
‘magination’s never dry,
When there’s his’try there to ply,
‘Cause she’s back in the bookworks a’gin.

Writin’ ’bout his’try once more,
Poundin’ her ol’ com-pu-tor
She’s describin” Truckee’s Trail,
Starvin’ and tra-vail
Back in the bookworks a’gin

Chorus:
Whoopi-ty-aye-Oh
Writin’ to and fro
Back in the bookworks again
Whoopi-ty-aye-Yay
She goes her own durn way
‘N’ she’s back in the bookworks agin.

Now, the first book’s the worst
You think the whole durn thing’s cursed
But you stick right to the trail
And you know, you’ll never fail!
You’ll be back in the bookworks a’gin.

I’ll send her a cowboy’s farewell
Pop off a round, bang the bell
She’ll be back someday, I know
An’ a-writin’ she will go
Back to the bookworks a’gin.

Chorus:
Whoopi-ty-aye-Oh
Writin’ to and fro
Back in the bookworks again
Whoopi-ty-aye-Yay
She goes her own durn way
‘N’ she’s back in the bookworks agin!

(I’m also working in one office or other, every day this week – even parttime, it does cut down on the blogging time – sorry!)

I Don’t Know Where We Are

28. September 2007 · Comments Off on I Don’t Know Where We Are · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Local, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

-but we�re making great time. So goes one of the great mottoes of the navigator training school at Mather AFB, c. 1981. I am not quite sure where I am this week, but I think I am making some small progress in giving that Philippa Gregory byotch a run for the money in the historical fiction best-seller stakes. Well, farther along than I was last week at this time.

Received a box of twenty-five copies of �To Truckee�s Trail� last night, bought with my Christmas present from Mom and Dad, who indulgently sent me the customary check three months early on the very logical grounds that I could make better use of it at this moment in generating review buzz and in getting local retail outlets to carry it, than in December. Dispatched a number of copies this morning through the professional and fairly inexpensive services of our friendly government Post Office; to reviewers, to contributors and to people who were just plain supportive over the last couple of years � none of whom I have ever actually met face to face. All hail the power of the fully-functional internet!

Of course, it does take time to read and meditate upon a work of great literature� and also for a fairly agreeable bit of genre fiction such as this, so whenever I want to begin screaming, I must remind myself to put my head down on my knees and breath deeply, while asking for patience. Now! I want patience now!

There is a review up at Amazon.com, though. I beg you, if you have read �To Truckee�s Trail� , and love it, please post some kind of review, here. Three or four stars is fine. Save the five stars for something that knocked your socks into the stratosphere; the conventional wisdom in the book-blogs and discussion groups is that five stars for a POD means that the writer twisted the arms of all of his or her friends. I don�t twist arms; it�s too crude. I just put on a yearning expression. Think of Puss in Boots in the Shrek movies. I was supposed to have a review published in the Sparks Tribune, but it hasn�t shown up yet.

Just put my head down on my knees for a minute.

OK. The Truckee-Donner Historical Society has ordered copies, with an eye to stocking it in their bookstore in Truckee City. The manager of the local hardware store on Nacogdoches also has a copy now, and he is madly enthusiastic about stocking it. Which makes sense in a totally bizarre way. The readers who have most loved the book are guys. Guys who like Westerns � and this is sort of a Western, if you stretch the definition to the point where it nearly snaps � are more likely to go to a hardware store, of the kind that stocks a little bit of everything totally manly, than a bookstore. So he wants to have a stand next to the cash desk, and to have all sorts of other books as well. Hey, whatever works!

And I finished off my afternoon at the Twig Bookstore in Alamo Heights with not very high hopes at all. Really, one gets quite conditioned to rejection. I dropped off a copy of �Grandpa Was an Alien� a couple of years ago, with contact information and all, and never heard another word, so my expectations were fairly minimal.

Really, it turned out to be quite pleasant, except for trying to find a parking place! I telephoned and spoke to one of the managers. Who sounded quite interested � color me pleasantly surprised, and when I showed up with a copy, they welcomed me with lemonade and a slice of coffee cake, and intelligent questions about what I had done so far in the way of publicity� and I had not given away too many free copies to local friends, had I? We talked about local history, and the Adelsverein trilogy, and where had I done all the research for �To Truckee�s Trail� and how the experience of the Stephens-Townsend Party had diverted so strikingly from the Donner-Reed party under the same circumstances� This was interspersed with shoppers coming in for books, and with questions about this and that. Really, I love San Antonio; it�s a small town cunningly disguised as a big city. They took three copies to sell on consignment, which was all that I had on me- (Stupid! Why didn�t you put the whole damn box in the car!) and priced them so that I would make back what they cost me� which is still less than it would cost to purchase from Booklocker plus postage. So, anyone in San Antonio who wants a copy? Go into The Twig, on Broadway. They have three copies.

The second part of the meditation on the Civil War will be posted this weekend. Promise. Sample chapter for the third volume of Adelsverein is here. Enjoy. More to follow�. Oh, and the PJ Media booth here will have info about “To Truckee’s Trail”. The event bookstore may even have copies for sale, for everyone in the Los Vegas area, or planning to attend that event. Fingers crossed on that one, everybody.

Later: Review published in the Sparks Tribune, here! Thanks, Kathy!

Pet Detective, Inc.

23. September 2007 · Comments Off on Pet Detective, Inc. · Categories: Ain't That America?, Critters, General, Rant, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

There must be something in the water, or a phase of the moon. One of my neighbors blames it all on the comparatively wet summer – another sign of global warming or cooling or whatever. A co-worker from the radio station blames it all on that old devil, the sex drive. Whatever the rationale, it seems to Blondie and I that a very high number of our neighborhood dogs have suddenly developed a serious wanderlust and Houdiniesque escape skills.

Since we have two dogs, whose high point of the day involves towing me at a brisk pace around a long circuit through the neighborhood, we’ve encountered most of the other resident dogs. Mostly they are towing their owners around a similar course, or leaping up and down behind a window or a fence in a frenzy of barking. Most of them we know well enough to know their real names, others only have a nick: Einstein, the not-very-bright young boxer who always goes nuts when we walk by, Goliath the enormous Papillion, Daisy-May the golden lab who likes jumping up on people, Fluffy the little white something or other who looks like an animated fuzzy bedroom slipper bouncing around on four little legs… you get the idea. Weevil and Spike usually have a lovely time barking back at them. It all reminds Blondie of the ‘midnight barking’ in 101 Dalmatians; for all we know, the dogs may be passing on messages.

It’s the other dogs that make our hearts sink right down to our running shoes – the ones who are out and about, unconstrained by a leash, an owner or a fence. Last week it was an elderly German shepherd whom Blondie named “O’Malley”. He lives two streets up and has perfected the technique of slipping between the fence bars. He’s been getting out all summer. By now, everyone recognizes O’Malley and knows where he belongs, but I don’t think his owners have a clue. I’ve walked him back to his house a couple of times, and he hops back through the fence obediently and trots around to the back with the air of a hard-working dog having done his duty for the day. The week before that, it was a fluffy little Shi-Tzu who followed me all the way along Creekway, barking like mad, and dashing out into the street. I thought sure the little wretch would be run over about four times. I tried to catch him; not with any success, being encumbered by my own two, who were going nuts. And I am still pretty damned annoyed at one of the neighbors, who primly refused to let the little dog stay in her yard, tied to a tree for safety and visibility. She had called the pound, though, since the dog had been hanging around for a day or so. I finally turned around and dragged Weevil and Spike towards home, with the stray following after, figuring that I could at least catch it, once I had put the two of them inside. Luckily, a pair of kids walking to school overtook us before I got very far: the stray Shi-Tzu was theirs.

A couple of Saturdays ago, we retrieved another German shepherd – this one a well-mannered female whom Blondie called ‘Lady’ for the lack of a better name. We found her at the bottom of the neighborhood, and Blondie put her on a leash and walked her around the neighborhood all that afternoon, until she found where Lady belonged. And it turned out her name really was ‘Lady’ but her owner was so unenthused about getting her back, it was really no wonder she went wandering in the first place.

We had an easier time yesterday, but still – two loose and lost dogs in a single day. The Chihuahua who lives in the house with all the sculptures got out and went skittering across the road, chasing after us. In all the excitement, Weevil slipped her leash and the Chihuahua, aka Mr. Teeth bit Blondie’s hand… didn’t break the skin, fortunately, and we managed to return Mr. Teeth to his owner. Didn’t latch the gate after himself, and didn’t notice when Mr. Teeth headed straight across the road to pick a fight with two larger dogs and a Marine. Forty minutes later, when we came back down the road what do we find at practically the same corner? A sad little min-pin, a miniature Doberman slightly larger than Spike, with no collar… and as it turned out, no chip, either. But he let me pick him up, and we went through the whole routine, walking down the street asking people if they recognized him. No one did, although he was very obviously a pet and well-cared for. We took him home, where he got on amazingly well with Spike and Weevil. We planned to do the whole sweep of the neighborhood this weekend, but fortunately Blondie spotted the posters that his frantic owners were plastering on the neighborhood mailboxes. They were very glad to get him back, since he had been missing for two days.

And I thought yesterday was the far frozen limit, but I just now came back from being towed around the block and it happened again! There was another Chihuahua-type doggie, innocent of collar running along the creek-bed that I couldn’t catch, and which snapped and snarled at me anyway… and a pretty and affectionate Weimaraner female who came running after us. At least the Weimaraner had a collar with her name on it, a telephone number, a rabies tag and one of those electric-fence restraint thingies. Which is no advertising for that system and the telephone number turned out to be disconnected! But at least today, one of the neighbors helped me catch her and has promised they will keep her safe tonight and call the veterinary clinic tomorrow… if no one comes around looking for her before then (as I am sure they will.)

Really, this is getting past a joke; being a magnet for every sort of lost and loose dog in the ‘hood. I’m really almost afraid to go out tomorrow; at this rate there will be a lineup of the lost and pathetic, waiting for me at the bottom of the driveway. Perhaps we should begin asking for a reward; through repetition, we’re getting pretty good at it..

On With the Dance!

14. September 2007 · Comments Off on On With the Dance! · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Memoir, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine...

And someone throw another quart of liquid soap in the bubble machine, the madness of the writers’ life waltz has just been ratcheted up another couple of notches. No, wait… that’s the Tylenol cough syrup kicking in… that blue stuff does have a kick, doesn’t it? Yes, sports fans, I seem to have contracted the current misery of a very sore throat and hacking cough. Fortunately our vast collection of over-the-counter medications seem to be kicking in at long last. The cats didn’t mind… much. Not with something warm to curl up next to, 24-7 but the coughing rather disturbed them. Whenever I started hacking like Camille, I would get this dirty look from Sam and Percy – like “Do you mind keeping it down?! We’re trying to sleep, here!” “Well, don’t mind me, fellas, that’s just me and part of a lung.”

Finished the first draft of the Civil War volume this week; next stop, revisions, but only after reading… a lot. Went and ordered some books from Amazon, bought some more at Half-Price and picked up an armload at the library, including a local history of the town of Comfort, Texas, written (I kid you not) by a gentleman named Guido Ransleben. Is this a great country or not? I went to school with a kid named Sean Nardoni, though, so maybe I am used to ethnic collisions when it comes to names. My stack of required reading is as high as an elephants’ eye, metaphorically speaking. I did some work for Dave the Computer Genius early in the week, but was too damn sick to do anything else but read or sleep.

One of the library books turned out to be damned fascinating: “The Civil War in the American West”. Sort of an overview and very well written, I thought… of everything that happened west of the Mississippi River during those years; in Arkansas and Missouri and Minnesota, in New Mexico and Colorado and Texas; all those efforts to secure the overland trails to Santa Fe Trail and Sacramento. How the regular Army troops were withdrawn, and so many of their officers resigned their commissions and declared for the South, while local companies of volunteers assembled; not to go off and fight in Virginia or Tennessee, but to take the place of the regular Army, in securing the frontier forts. And the frontier went up in flames during those years for two reasons… the Regular Army stepping back and the Indians seeing an advantage, while the local volunteers were much more accustomed to conditions and much more eager to settle the Indians’ hash for them. Which is how we wound up with the Sand Creek massacre…

Fascinating stuff… also found a compilation of short biographies of women in the Texas cattle business, who trailed herds of cattle to the northern railheads, or to California. Some went along with their husbands; some did it as a business after being widowed. Most of them seemed to have enjoyed the experience terrifically; and I am taking serious notes on this. Volume 3 of Adelsverein, or Barsetshire with Cypress Trees and a lot of Sidearms will get into this territory. I am still pretty amused at the difference between how the cattle bidness appears in Western movies, and how it really looked in people’s memoirs.

Jousting With The Windmills

06. September 2007 · Comments Off on Jousting With The Windmills · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Memoir, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Always fun to land a blow on an ever moving target, with a wobbly lance. And no horse to speak of, just me at a dead run across the hillside, this being the perils of the low-budget POD author, when cleverness and creativity try and make up for not being able to do what the big playas in the literary-industrial complex do… which is to throw pillowcases of money at the providers of advertising, reviewers and air-time.

Progress in the case of transforming “To Truckee’s Trail” into a best-seller feels as slow and torturous as a slug crawling across a twenty-acre parking lot on a Texas afternoon in August. It’s endless and frustrating, every bump in the pavement is a nearly insurmountable obstacle… and it’s very, very hot.

On the other hand, successfully negotiating them, one by one by one allows me the illusion that I am getting somewhere, after all. Those readers and fans who ordered autographed copies from me last month have received them, and I have a couple of cards and emails assuring me of their utter delight and enjoyment. Pure nectar to the writers’ ego! And very welcome too, but must be careful not to soak in it too much. Or to be battered by its’ obverse, all those various stripes of criticism. Note to self, suggested response when encountering this: there’s a bajillion other books out there; If mine doesn’t send you, one of them surely will!

I sent a box of review copies last week to KC in Sparks-Reno, who aside from being one of those readers who encouraged me to even write the book in the first place, also is connected in various media and publicity outlets there. Quite a lot of the book happens in that area, so she can scrape together enough of the ‘local interest-local history’ attention-getting machinery.

And I sent a box of review copies to my parents. Mom is one of those retirement-age busy-bodies who is well-connected in Northern San Diego to the local artistic and literary circles. God love them, Mom and Dad are also sending me my Christmas present early, on the very good grounds that I may make better use of that check now than in three months. Out of that, I’ll get another box of review copies, and some advertising, of the kind that has to be paid for.

Sent a review copy to a reviewer for Blogger News. Net, and another to the editors of “True West” and to the California Oregon Trails Association. No results to report, yet.

Sent out about 65 postcards to an assortment of independent bookstores, and frontier/pioneer museum bookstores, following up with emails. So far, only a bookstore in Truckee, and the Truckee Donner Historical Association have nibbled, that I know of. Just not enough demand, not enough people have read it, liked it and said so very loudly!

And Cpl. Blondie has chatted up the manager of a chain bookstore, who is agreeable to ordering three or four copies, displaying them prominently, and if there us enough demand, ordering more, and even staging a book signing. Now if I can only get it reviewed by the local newspaper, I could make a bit more of a splash here in San Antonio. So far, I haven’t gotten an email back from the person who allegedly edits the Sunday book section. Honestly, these people are always wondering why no one reads the paper any more…

Off to crawl across some more parking lot, and stick some more stamps on post-cards!

Adventures in the Literary Life

30. August 2007 · Comments Off on Adventures in the Literary Life · Categories: Ain't That America?, General, Literary Good Stuff, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

Finally got paid last week for the ever-loving magazine article, but alas, just as I feared, being implacable and insistent about being paid did rebound. My friend who referred me to them said “Ummm – you know you won’t be getting any more story assignments from them.” Which neatly coincides with what I had decided; if actually getting a check for work performed and published was going to be so prolonged an agony that I would pass on doing any more for that particular publication.

Getting the check at last means I could order another box of review copies of To Truckee’s Trail which will go out in the mail the instant I get them. Most of them will go to Mom, who is even more brash about promoting my work than I am. Always has been; she was the one who practically frog-marched me into the place where I got the job that carried me all the way through college.

I mailed out autographed copies this week to everyone who paid for one, one to be considered for review by �True West�, another to be reviewed at Blogger News Network, one to B. Durbin with extravagant thanks for the use of her photo for the cover, one for The Fat Guy, who loves Westerns and Westernish things. Does anyone else want an autographed copy? Dave the Computer Genius helped me install a donation/payments page at www.celiahayes.com where you can order one with a simple click of the button. I�ll be sending for another box of copies in a couple of weeks, if anyone does.

On the marketing front, I have sent out quantities of postcards to various museums, historical societies and independent bookstores across the western states, and followed up with emails. A google map-search only turns up one independent bookstore in San Francisco which isn�t self-consciously leftist, new-age or oriented to alternate lifestyles and/or the LBGT community. I haven�t tackled Los Angeles yet; San Diego I�ll leave to Mom and her friends.

So far, a bookstore in Truckee has e-mailed me back, saying they will order copies � they carry about a dozen books about the Donner Party alone. I am picturing my book in the �local history� shelf, waving its hands and calling �Hey � read about the people who didn�t screw up their journey big time!� And the Truckee-Donner Historical Society is making noises about reviewing and stocking it as well. So my instincts for marketing the book are paying off in a small way; not bad, considering I have no reviews at all to publicize it with, so far!

I do believe I shall finish the first draft, volume two of �Barsetshire with Cypress Trees, etc� this week, at about a chapter and a half to go. This ends neatly with the conclusion of the Civil War, with all the men trickling home and facing up to the ruin that the war left of their farms and businesses. I�ll be taking a breather and doing a lot more reading before I do necessary revisions and additional research. Then comes the final volume, and finding a new way to write about trail drives and cattle baronies, something that hasn�t been seen in about a couple of million books, movies and TV Westerns.

There is some promising stuff I have discovered so far. Did anyone know that there were trail drives out of Texas, to California, well before the Civil War? And that refrigerated beef began to be shipped out of Indianola almost as soon as the war was over? Or even that the long trail drives towards the railheads in the mid-west even began because Texas was glutted with cattle that had run wild during the war?

Stay tuned�.

Jam Tomorrow – Progress Report

22. August 2007 · Comments Off on Jam Tomorrow – Progress Report · Categories: Domestic, General, Literary Good Stuff, Memoir, Site News, Veteran's Affairs, Working In A Salt Mine..., World

“The rule is jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but never jam to-day.”

Or so saith the Queen, and I can just completely relate, because in the mad writers-life waltz that is my own life these days, there is always the hope of jam tomorrow. The bread today is plain and budget, and naked of jam, but tomorrow it may be miraculously spread with finest-kind Confiture Bar le Duc.

Or so we keep hoping. I think the cats are holding out for a can of nice juicy salmon, hold the toast hold the capers, just plain, thank you. The dogs will be ecstatically happy with anything edible that has only bounced once when it hit the floor.

Tiny tastes of jam include the fact that “To Truckee’s Trail” is in Booklocker.com’s list of top-ten print best-sellers, and I did get an email from this bookstore in Truckee City thanking me for my query and noting that they had ordered some copies from the Ingram catalogue to stock in their bookstore. I am testing out running an ad here; home central for all things Western… and I finally got paid for the magazine article that had been published several issues ago. (What a goat rope… I’m not really sure I want to submit any more articles, not when I have to wait to get paid for months and then throw a temper tantrum. How demeaning is that? And do publishers do it because it’s a hell of a lot easier to stall writers than suppliers and printers?) But I had some paid work at Dave The Computer Genius’ place of business, and he let me use his computer and soft-wear to tweak my book-website, so my need to buy my own copy of it is put off for at least a little while. All good, all jam., or at least a tantalizing expectation of same.

Still haunting the mailbox though; last week I ordered a box of copies from the publisher; these are the autographed copies which readers have ordered, and some are to be sent out to reviewers. I ordered another box this week; more review copies, and one for the kid in the sandwich shop where I get a smoked-chicken sub every Saturday… and I have promises of all kinds of linky-love and reviews in the very near future. As soon as I have the books in hand. And mail them out.

There was that saying about promises and pie crust, though…
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