Sorry… This is long.
On the other hand, it has been a while. HI!!
And at the end… Well forget the end, since you probably won’t get there anyway. Anyway, it is summer, you have time, and I promise this will be nasty. Everyone loves nasty.
IF anyone DOES read this, it will probably be the one person who knows me or remembers me, and that might be someone who remembers that, years ago, I was once “DEREN BECK” for a short period of time, which is now a long period of pain-in-the-ass for AMAZON (their own fault; I’ve tried to help them, but they won’t listen!) and, BTW, no thanks to GOODREADS librarians… I will explain, briefly (you’re welcome) coming up.
I used to be a poet. One day during the aughts I received a letter from a famous poet who edited a very prestigious literary journal (print) apologizing to me for having overlooked some work I’d sent and promising that he would publish same ASAP. Shortly after, however, he left and was replaced with, let’s say, someone with very different tastes. I read what this guy published, very much like his own poems. Find some words on refrigerator magnets, toss them randomly onto a refrigerator… Like that. I waited a year, then wrote to this fellow, told him what the previous editor had told me. A few months later found a reply in my mailbox. The standard mimeo “Thank you for your submission…” He didn’t last long. But neither did I.
I kept writing poetry but I stopped trying to get it published. Everything was going online and was looking like refrigerator magnets.
I’d been writing for a long time and doing a bunch of other things. People kept asking me to write my memoirs. ME? Only because of the various places I’d been, people I’d met and yada yada. I tried. Didn’t seem to work. Had an idea: what if I turn it into fiction?
But I’m a poet, I told myself. I’ve done all sorts of writing, I replied to myself. Someone once said I was a bit schizo but I ignored him every time…
I sat down and gave it the old grad school try. Sent it around to agents. I will not tell you what the agents said. Oh, yes I will. Promised I was going to be nasty, didn’t I?
Almost to a person, the agents said, “Very nice, but there’s no market for this.”
Honestly, I had no idea what that meant. After a while I was brave enough to write one back and ask. Finally, one of them was nice enough to write back and she said, “Self-publish.”
I have a few degrees thanks to American higher education, so I know how to do research. I looked into this “self-publishing” thing. I found out it is a rolling disaster. A sinkhole for dummies with a lot of cash, something I didn’t and still don’t have. But, proof-positive, I have degrees from American higher education, so I am a dummy.
Self-publish I did. And I did it the worst possible way, using a pseudonym, so that even my own relatives wouldn’t know who the hell wrote the books. That was “DEREN BECK” by the way.
Changed my mind after a few months, did a little rewrite and a big name change—back to my own—and now we are well on our way to our TENTH BOOK.
Coming out shortly.
Told you something would be coming at the end. Still with me?
ON REVELATION’S WALL, the tenth volume in The Frank Gould Mystery Series will be published shortly (if Blake will ever get around to finishing the damn cover). I might even consider doing one of those giveaways. Although those have never really paid off. People take those free books, stash them away with their hundreds of other free books, never read them (are you listening, Written Word Media?). The handful who do read go ho-hum. Or if they bother, they’ll leave some nasty note somewhere on GOODREADS.
I wouldn’t even mind if they left a nasty review on AMAZON. AMAZON doesn’t care about good or bad. They only care about NUMBERS. Get enough numbers on AMAZON and you are off to the races, buckaroo! And if you have enough money...YOU CAN BUY THOSE NUMBERS!!!
Told you I’d be nasty…
Have a nice summer, kids.