Update on Letterpress Project: Promo Video Ready

Couldn't upload promo video here, but was able to upload to facebook page. What fun! Looking to go live soon with this Kickstarter project and turn The Saltness of Time into a print book done on a local letterpress and hard-back bound by a local bindery. Just leave me an email address if you'd like to know when this goes live on Kickstarter.

http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=10151209526046122&notif_t=video_processed

The 41st Sermon Up for a Vote of Confidence

The 41st Sermon is one of  nine books first offered by bookkus for reviewers to read, review, and vote on if bookkus should publish it. Entry portal here, I hope.

We are seeing many different publishing efforts in this epublishing age. This is one that I guess you would call crowd-deciding. I suppose it means I should go out there and ask friends, family etc. to vote for my book. Consider yourself asked.

Actually, if it gets you interested in the book, that's what is important to me. I've just done a major re-edit of the manuscript before sending it off for professional editing and proofreading before turning it into a paperback POD. I like The 41st Sermon a lot. But the ebook hasn't done very well. It has a Walker Percy connection, which I've commented on before.

It's also told from the third person POV, but with a lot of thoughts presented by that character in first person. I've now put those in italics. That simple change has given the manuscript a new tension and drama, I think. Much more powerful.

It's a good story and quite erotic. Episcopal priest in mid-life and mid-faith crisis gets caught up in a phony kidnap plot with a blonde parishioner who seduces him and turns out to be the daughter he didn't know about. And that that's just part of Satan's complications!

Here's a non-erotic taste from the beginning and then one from near the end:

He looked up. Phosphenes danced in the pale blue sky the way they did when he closed his eyes. Do people look up at the sky so much because they are curious about the weather or because they are looking hoping to see God up there? Maybe they looked up in fear, afraid that God was up there looking down and seeing everything they did. Maybe we're damned either way. Damned if He isn't up there – damned in the morass of own humanity – and damned if He is up there because we deserve His condemnation.

And so, for the first time in his life, The Reverend Christopher Talley, rector of St. Philip's Episcopal Church, offered up a real prayer to God. A prayer not taken from the Book of Common Prayer, a prayer with neither fine phrases nor elegant, wonderful sounding words, but a prayer without words taken from the book of his own newly discovered soul.

Bitterness, Bitterness, Bitterness. But a Happy Last Realization: Elie Wiesel and Me

Let me see if I can set this scene. I come home and find a message on the phone. It is the editor of JewishFiction.net telling me that they love my story, One More Victim and want to publish it in their online journal, but I have not responded to their emails.

What? I sort of remember submitting that novella to a Jewish publication because the Holocaust is a critical element in the story, and it is classified as world literature Jewish in Amazon.

Long ago, I stopped keeping track of where I submit stories. Takes so long to hear back, and usually it's a rejection. Why bother? And was this publication worth it anyway? I go online and check them out. Holy Crap. Their latest issue has a piece by Holocaust survivor and Nobel winner Elie Wiesel! I could have a story in a journal that published Elie Wiesel?

I check my spam folder. Sure enough, there it is. Email saying they love the story and want to publish it, and here is the attachment with the contract.

Download contract. Read same. No pay. That's okay. But, oh, oh. Can't have been published in English in any other format. And I just have in my hand a paperback POD of the story that is the title work of a collection that contains it, another novella, and three short stories. AND it has been epublished for many months now. It even had broken through the 100 top paid downloads for Jewish literature a couple of times.

So I email back, explain, offer to unpublish from the internet. Guess what? They don't want it anymore because it's been epublished. Won't bend the rules. Even though they were offering no payment for publication. Deprive their readership of s story they loved just because I had epublished it! Bitterness, bitterness! To have been able to say I was published in the same online journal as Elie Wiesel! What an honor that would have been.

Wait a minute. I can say, with complete honesty: the same journal that published Wiesel, accepted One More Victim for publication. That feels very good, indeed, even with the bitterness. As one of my favorite authors used to say: "So goes it."

Three Books Now Available as POD Paperback

It feels quite wonderful to have physical books in hand. I now have three works in paperback, which are available for POD download. Two novels: the coming-of-age, Young Adult, mystery-thriller, Crazy About You; the dystopian work, Rabbletown: Life in These United Christian States of Holy America; and a collection of two novellas containing the title work, One More Victim, and The Saltness of Time and three shorts stories. All can be found here.

Lovecraftian Tale Recommended by Respected Lovecraft Scholar, William Hart

Nice recommendation for my Lovecraftian Tale from a respected Lovecraftian scholar, William Hart: "I received your excellent story today, The Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley, read it, and having found it to be a marvelous tale that touches upon Lovecraftian mood, and events somewhat similar to those in The Case of Charles Dexter Ward, with your own original spin on the past haunting the present; I now also recommend it as a bargain to download in a Kindle format from Amazon. Search for The Strange Case of James Kirkland PilleyThe Strange Case of James Kirkland Pilley and you'll be pleased too.

Letterpress Project Update

Did today, I hope, final filming on promo video for upcoming Kickstarter project to turn "The Saltness of Time" into a print book done on a letterpress here in KC and bound at KC bindery open since 1885. "If they didn't do it in 1885, we don't do it now" heard the owner say over the phone. This filming took considerable courage on my part. I absolutely hate to see a photograph of myself and now there I am in hi def video. I hate my voice, too. Yech. But had to be done. Nick Naughton, KC artist and printmaker, is going to do the printing of the book and also provide illustrations. This is a really cool project and I look forward to giving more details. If you are curious about this story, which, I'm sorry, is in that awful genre of "literary" the single story can be found here and it is also contained in a paperback collection to be found here.

Crazy About You Now in Paperback

Crazy About You has now joined Rabbletown and One More Victim as being available in paperback as a POD on Amazon. Much as I am beholding to ebooks and what they have done for me, it's great to have a physical book in my hands. But I'm glad I did ebook first because it gave me a chance to receive some positive reviews I could excerpt from for the back cover.

Graphic designer Michael Irvin improved on the cover for Crazy

Nice thing about a physical book is that you can autograph it and add a message. However I just got my first request for a digital inscription and signature. Check this service out: http://www.kindlegraph.com