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The Kingpins of Riverbend
The publishing difficulties, many of which were a result of COVID, have been overcome and the book is starting to appear on the shelves. There are actually used copies available. I was very pleased that it is being sold in England, France, Germany and the Scandinavian countries. Almost all the buy reviews were 5-out-of-5, with a couple of 4's thrown in.
Mark Twain once said, the difference between reality and fiction is that fiction has to make sense. I think that is one of the biggest reasons people like the book. It's very easy to believe that the characters and their situations are normal. There is no magic or something from the sky. Most of all, the stories of the characters have a finish.
Most of you know that I did a lot of writing in my blog, and I wrote a number of articles for horseracing magazines. I learned that writing a book is very different than writing articles or blogging.
It was extremely difficult to find a publisher. Writing experience in an area other than fictional storytelling is worth very little when you're trying to write sensible fiction. I learned very few books from "new" authors (especially aged ones) make it to the shelves, and some that make the shelves don't sell many books.
I hardly care how many books I sell. I wrote this book because I always wanted to write a real book. Of course the more books you sell the more you can claim you are a good writer/author.
One funny thing is that I don't bowl. I did when I was a kid, but I haven't picked up a bowling ball in 50 years.
Someone continues to try and take my life away. I had a momentary case of pancreatic cancer that turned out to only be stage one cysts filled with water or phlegm. So I'm going to go through testing regularly, and if they start turning cancerous, probably surgery. The doc told me 50% of adults get them, but that many of them never get symptoms until it is too late. At the same time I'm still fighting the leukemia. My life seems to be pack a day full of all I can then go to be at 9:00pm and wake up at 9:00am the next day, eat something, go back to bed, eat dinner, go back to be. Wash, rinse repeat. I worked at the golf course all summer. Did some horse riding. Had daily contact with my publisher until he politely told me if I didn't leave him alone the book would never get done.
The book got done and he sent me and author's copy, after which I had to tell him he had made a single, but critical typo. On the back cover, it noted one of the characters "was coming back from the war," except the somebody wrote it as "coming back from the way." I said, you can't publish the book like that. It sounds like he had escaped from a cult. He got pissed but I had proof I told him to fix the mistake two months earlier. I never said that they were a great publishing company. So my book will go to the Library of Congress.
I lost the price war. I wanted it to be $19.95. They made it $15.95. I'll get $8 a copy. The book seller gets about $7 (so he can put it on sale and still make money), and the publishing company gets the 95 cents. So if I don't sell a lot of copies all I can do is remind people that if you want more books the writer has to be fed. Not many write books for free.
There was a Star Trek episode where these two indentical looking guys are trying to kill each other. It was a kind of good versus evil story. Anyway they both wind up in a different dimension sentenced to fighting each other until the end of time. What I mean is I stopped by Religion III.
That's my update.
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