Timing is everything, they say – and if I knew six months ago that the economy was on the verge of tanking, I don’t think I would have tried to do anything different with my scheduled release of the Adelsverein Trilogy – the saga that I have been working on for two years and a bit. This will make my third-through-fifth book out there. The third time is supposed to be the charm. Thanks to the accumulated book-writing, book-marketing and book-selling experience at the Independent Authors’ Guild, I think I will come closer to getting it right, this time – like delaying the release so as to allow six months to get some seriously earnest reviews, from publications like “True West” and others. ( Reviews posted here. I’ll be pounding away on the “True West” review for years – decades, maybe.) Such was the wise counsel of writers who had done it before.

Taking their advice also, I worked a lot harder at getting local signings and attempting to interest local museums. It was a lot easier this time around, honestly. The only places that I could interest in “Truckee’s Trail” were a couple of outlets in Nevada and Truckee City – there’s only so much one can do at a thousand-mile-plus remove, especially if you can’t claim to be a local author. But having a book-three books – with several Texas settings, and fifty years worth of interesting and famous or obscure Texas characters contained therein – that something much more appealing to work with in generating local interest. My dance-card, otherwise known as my signing schedule is beginning to fill up, and praise be, I might actually have some local media interested. As in the old-fashioned, print-on-dead-tree kind, which people do still read around here. And let’s face, it Texans are passionately interested in history. They remember more than just the Alamo.

The kick-off is Thursday, at the Twig Bookstore in Alamo Heights. 5 PM. I don’t know which is my worst fear about this event: that I’ll sit there for two hours and sell maybe one book…. Or that Blondie and I and some friends of ours who have promised to come along for moral support will walk up to the place and the line to get into the Twig will be down to the next block, and they’ll run out of books before the first twenty minutes. I’d prefer the second, of course.

Wish me luck. I couldn’t have done it without you all.

PS: All pre-sold sets are in the mail. The final volume should be up at Amazon any time now. All three – The Gathering, The Sowing and The Harvesting are already at Booklocker.