Mike Jastrzebski's Blog, page 21

Insanity Row and rise of the Living Dead…

Roll in your extension cords and put on your waders! The view of Zombie Lake from the shed. No, the tide never gets that high, not even in hurricanes. But the concrete lot and shed often flood after heavy rains, at least giving me a brief glimpse from my helm of sun glinting off  an expanse of water.

C.E. Grundler

You can’t see them from the main office or the docks. You can’t see them from the pool, or from the food truck that currently fills the void created when Sandy destroyed the small restaurant, built on the remains of an old river barge. But they’re there, nestled in the far far corner of the boatyard, a stone’s throw from the twin rail lines where passing freight trains drown out even compressors and power tools as they rumble past several times an hour. It’s the northwest corner of the yard, and it’s where they put ‘certain’ special boats, and the people who go with them. In some institutions, they separate the mentally questionable from the ‘death row’ inmates. But not in my little corner of the river. No. The hurricane came through, shaking up the dynamics of the boatyard, and a new type of customer has emerged, and a unique variety of boats.

Boating was already taking a hit long before the storm shook things up. Many boat owners, faced with harder economical times and rising fuel prices, couldn’t afford to operate their boats anymore. Pre-2012, more people wanted to sell and get out than there were buyers. Some boats sat on the hard, their owners still paying for storage until something changed, and others became stationary floating summer retreats. But other boats, once well-maintained and enjoyed, were simply abandoned. Owners stopped stopping by, stopped paying storage, stopped answering calls. Eventually the boats became yard property, but brought in no revenue in an already hurting industry.

Then Sandy hit, and everything changed. Some, trying for years to unload unsellable boats received the news that their boats had been totaled. Insurance companies compensated the yards for storage and labor, and owners for their loss. Boats were transformed from burdens to checks in the bank, in many cases for more than they’d be able to sell in an ideal market. Many got out of boating temporarily, others for good. The word on the water is that most yards lost roughly 30% of their customer base. Some boaters found their treasured boats totaled, and promptly used their settlement checks to buy a replacement, or else buy their original boats back at pennies on the dollar and repair them, either themselves or through the now booming fiberglass repair business that sprang up. Yards brought in fiberglass teams from other regions of the country, even housing them as they fixed the fixable. Some boaters had no insurance or had let their policies lapse at season’s end, and abandoned their boats on yard property. And a handful of new boaters appeared, lured by an abundance of now affordable vessels to pick from and fix in whatever degree and manner they deemed suitable. Which brings me back to Insanity Row.

Way long ago, back B.S. (before Sandy) it was known as Death Row. It’s usually the furthest corner where boatyards put those sad vessels so far gone that it’s unlikely they’ll ever see water again, unless it comes to them, which in some cases it does. (See above photo.) But a few, blocked on the highest elevation, right outside the shed, survived. And in the last year, others have arrived at ‘Concrete Beach’— boats that Sandy chewed up and spit out, and now someone is trying to resuscitate. Extension cords and hoses criss-cross the lot, radios battle with sanders and passing locomotives, and gradually work progresses as the boats written off as dead return to life — sort of. Zombie Boats, once shrouded in shredded blue tarps and peeling shrinkwrap, shedding scabs of peeling paint and rotted wood, and each time one is revived and launched it’s a victory… and a new spot for the next arrival. People help each other out, share admiration, commiseration, and cold drinks as we each regard our fellow inmates as just a bit crazier than us. Sanity is a relative thing, especially when it comes to old and/or damaged boats. Some are starting to truly shine, and you can see the pride their owners take in their work. Others — uhm….no, you don’t back a fiberglass repair by stuffing wadded newspaper into the hole so the patch won’t fall through. You don’t put twin 454s into an ancient Chris Craft with a hull so rotten and hogged it’s heartbreaking. At least, I wouldn’t. But no matter the approach or philosophy, there’s one thing everyone in that corner has in common…we’re all mad here. We have to be. And judging by the company I’m in, I’m starting to believe the yard is putting us all back there, where no one can see us, for a reason.

You weren’t actually expecting I’d say the decks are glassed? Honestly? That’s okay, I wasn’t either. Had EVERYTHING gone perfectly, had all the stars aligned, then perhaps, just maybe. It’s nice to be optimistic. But in the real world, the shed Annabel Lee occupies is also used by the yard for their own repairs. And when the owner’s boat (technically a Sandy-wounded replacement of his totaled boat is brought in for a full gelcoat respray,) and they ask that we refrain from any grinding for a few days, that sort of threw the whole schedule off. With boats, you learn to roll with these things, or you’ll just go mad. As for me, it’s already too late.

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The 38th Voyage

The Charles W. Morgan sails again, her 38th voyage. A remarkable feat for a 173-year old wooden boat, even more so given that she is the sole surviving vessel of the American whaling industry’s 2,700 ship fleet.

As I write this post, the Morgan sits in Vineyard Haven, following a trip that started in Mystic, Connecticut with a stop in Newport, Rhode Island. When she leaves the Vineyard she will sail to New Bedford, her home port where she was built and commissioned in 1841, and then beyond to Provincetown and Boston.

Somehow, the Morgan lived on while other whaling ships were wrecked or destroyed for scrap. Her survival is credited to the good luck that Edward H.R. Green took an interest in her. Green, who was known as Colonel Green, was wealthy and eccentric and he had a link to the ship, being the grandson of Edward “Black Hawk” Robinson who co-owned the Morgan in the mid-1800s. Green’s mother, Hetty, was famously frugal and enormously rich. Unlike Hetty, Colonel Green didn’t mind spending a few dollars. He built an enormous estate on Buzzards Bay, constructed an airplane strip and provided free fuel to any plane that stopped by, and he looked after the Charles W. Morgan.

(Colonel Green’s Mansion at Round Hill, along the northern shore of Buzzards Bay)

(Green, an amateur scientist who used this small car to get around his estate, had a childhood leg ailment said to be the result of neglect stemming from his mother’s unwillingness to pay a medical bill)

(A newspaper account of the Morgan at Round Hill in 1925)

Ultimately, the Charles W. Morgan was towed to Mystic, Connecticut and it has been a centerpiece of the Mystic Seaport ever since. But it’s one thing to tie-up an old vessel to a dock, another to rebuild a craft of this size and age. Yet, that’s exactly what happened.

(The Morgan in July of 2013, about to be launched following her rebuild)

Several books, including The Charles W. Morgan: The Last Wooden Whaleship by Edouard A. Stackpole and The Charles W. Morgan by John F. Leavitt, have been written about this fine old vessel that once sailed multi-year voyages to far away destinations such as South Africa, Hawaii, and Japan. And if you are looking for some excellent reporting on the ship and the 38th Voyage, you might want to look at the following stories in the Martha’s Vineyard Gazette.  http://mvgazette.com/charles-w-morgan

We owe gratitude to the shipwrights who kept the Morgan going a hundred years ago, the ones who just rebuilt her, and all in between. The same for the preservationists who came through on the financial side of the endeavor. I think of Melville, too, and others who encouraged us all through their writing about the era of sail.

(The Charles W. Morgan in Vineyard Haven, courtesy of the Vineyard Gazette)

I remember the first time I saw the Morgan. I was a young boy and my family drove to Mystic to see a former neighbor. While there, we visited Mystic Seaport. That day, my sister and I returned home with a glass jar full of salt water. I smile when I think of that long-ago excursion. Seeing photos of the renewed Charles W. Morgan underway, her various flags flying, brings nothing short of full-hearted joy.

The commerce undertaken by the Charles W. Morgan is rejected today. The harsh working conditions and questionable financial settlements with crew are other unflattering aspects of the whaling era. But that’s the point – this ship isn’t a Disney fairy tale, it’s certified history.

by John Urban

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Countdown to full time cruising.

By Mike Jastrzebski

We sold our car yesterday–the first time I’ve been without a car in 48 years. It’s the final step in a twenty year journey that has included living aboard for eleven years and will hopefully lead to a truly nomadic life aboard our sailboat, Rough Draft.

After spending four months living on the hard we’re counting down the days with a tentative Titusville departure date of Wednesday the 25th. It’s weather dependent of course, and as any boater knows anything can happen in three days, but that’s the plan. From here we plan to make a shakedown motoring trip to St. Augustine and after a few days of exploring the town we’re heading into the Atlantic for a sailing shakedown.

We have signed up for the Salty Dawg Rally leaving Hampton, VA in November and sailing to the British Virgin Islands. This is approximately a 1500 mile trip and will be our first long distance blue water trip. We have sailed back and forth to the Bahamas twice but our longest sail was only 36 hours as opposed to being on the open water for a couple of weeks.

And wouldn’t you know it, it’s all Mary’s fault. It was her idea to buy a boat. She taught me how to sail. She suggested we take the boat from Minnesota south so that we could live aboard full time. It was even her idea to get married on the boat, and by the way, on June 14th we celebrated our 18th anniversary–you guessed it–right here on the boat.

Here’s our wedding picture. If you look closely you can see the Mackinac bridge in the background.

Our journey began when we took our boat from the Chicago area to Duluth, MN. We had four crew with us on that trip, one of whom was the minister who married us. We sailed for three years on Lake Superior then had the boat trucked to the St. Paul area where we spent five years getting her ready to cruise.

We moved aboard the 2nd of September in 2003 after having the boat trucked to Lake Pepin on the Mississippi. From there it was down the Mississippi to the Ohio, over to the Tenn-Tom waterway and on down to Mobile. We spent two years in Mobile until Hurricane Katrina blew away our jobs and put Rough Draft into someone’s backyard on the Dog River.

After repairing Katrina’s damage we sailed to Key West, spent three months there and then moved on to Ft. Lauderdale for seven years while Mary worked as a massage therapist and I wrote and published four books.

The past two years we’ve been sailing between the Bahamas and Cape Canaveral and now I say, “Let the real journey begin.”

And while I’m writing about countdowns and books, my first Wes Darling mystery, Key Lime Blues (Wes Darling) is on sale at Amazon for only .99 cents. This is an Amazon countdown deal and the price goes back to $3.99 Saturday the 28th. Wes lives on a sailboat and here’s the blurb:

For some people working in the family business means suits, power lunches, and afternoon meetings.

For Wes Darling it was guns, lies, and dead bodies.

The Darling Detective Agency was founded in 1876 by Aaron ‘Dusty’ Darling. Now Wes’s chain smoking, stressed out mother is grooming Wes to take over. How does he handle his mother’s demands? He heads to Key West, moves onto a sailboat, and takes a job tending bar at a little joint called Dirty Alvin’s.

Life is carefree until his mother’s lover, a man who mentored Wes for years, is murdered on a Key West Beach. Reluctantly, Wes is drawn into a spinning web of murder, sex and deceit.

First there are his mother’s pleas for help. Throw in a six-foot-tall red-headed stripper, a retired mobster who acts like it’s the 1940s, a pair of dim-witted hit men, a phobic psychic named Elvis, a small fortune in stolen diamonds, and what do you have? Mayhem in Key West.

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What was I thinking?

by Christine Kling

So often, the topic here on this blog of boating writers has been some version of, “How can I maintain my boat and get my books written at the same time?” That, I am happy to say, is no longer my problem. I sold my boat a few weeks ago, and I will now be living on a boat that comes with a full-time, very knowledgeable guy who does a great job of maintaining her. Great, right? I am so fortunate and absolutely thrilled with my new situation.

As we were traveling through Europe, often people would ask me about my methods for doing research and asking when I would start the actual writing of the book. We were booked on a flight to return on May 12th. I kept saying I really needed to start the writing on May 13th.

It’s not like what came next was a surprise. I knew we were returning to a boat that needed to be cleaned out and sold and that we were planning a trip up Pacific Coast Highway from California to British Columbia but I had a plan. All the books I’d bought that need to be read and studied, I packed into a little box. I had visions of turning the backseat of the car into my writing office.

What was I thinking?

Have you seen the scenery up here? To read or write while driving requires super human concentration and the ability to ignore spectacular beauty. Top that off with the fact that I have this local BC boy as my tour guide – a guy so eager to share his love of his homeland – and it means that even looking at my computer is practically hopeless. Today, I am trying. Really. It is already Friday noon and I need to get a blog written. I didn’t even post a blog at all last week. We are driving from Victoria up Vancouver Island to visit Wayne’s sister in the north. Right now Wayne is pointing across my laptop toward a spectacular local stream that he says in season is totally filled with Chinook salmon. The road is hung over with pines, cedar, oak and maple and as we swing in and out of the sunshine, I can peer into the woods on our right. On our left is a granite cliff face oozing with fresh water springs and mottled with green and red lichen. If we come across a Hobbit around the next bend I will not be the least bit surprised.

Okay, I figured, I’ll just write when we stop driving at night. Yeah, right. We’ve been staying with Wayne’s friends and family and they’ve been driving us around, taking us out, cooking spectacular meals. The folks we stayed with in Vancouver owned a cabin on Gambier Island. Wayne’s friend took us over in his small speed boat and we hiked and picked fresh mussels, then our host cooked them up. We ate the fresh steamed mussels sitting out on the porch drinking red wine and enjoying the spectacular scenery.

Because there is this writing revolution going on with ebooks, and many writers are suddenly putting out multiple books per year, I feel this intense pressure to get to work. Dragon’s Triangle was just released on June 1, and it is doing really well. The sales of that book is increasing the sales of all my backlist. This is the hottest my career has ever been. I need to “strike again while the iron is hot,” as they say. The wise career move would be to get the next book written as fast as I possibly can.

But right now I keep hearing Frank singing, “I’ll do it my way.” I’m never going to be one of those writers who is chained to a desk grinding out several novels a year. I’ve written six novels and somehow, I will get this seventh one written. I need to trust myself in that. The day may come when I’ll write about this place – or it might not. But one thing I know for sure. I write about adventure and thrills, and I need to know what THAT feels like. I’m never going to write about a character who would turn down a boat ride through a fjord and fresh steamed mussels just so she could stay behind and write.

 

In order to write with passion, I have to live with passion.

 

Fair winds!

Christine

p.s. I am also involved with a fabulous new bundle called The Killer Femmes. You can get FIVE irresistible crime novels by FIVE different writers for the incredible price of only 99¢. You can’t pass up this deal. Check it out here.

 

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What I did on my summer vacation…

Okay, it’s not officially summer yet, but I am on vacation. Technically, my other half is, though my muses don’t take break, so while I’m spending my day adorned in a Tyvek suit, gloves, eye and lung protection, my phone and Evernote app are always close at hand.  And just as I predicted some time back, the weather patterns would shift to make the task of finishing the Great Deck Nightmare as unpleasant as possible. I’d say 90 degree days with high humidity qualifies. And I’m posting this a bit early, because I’ll be back up a more than a bit early to get a head start before the thermometer starts its daily rise. But as I was cleaning up from today’s work I paused to consider each of the weapons of destruction I consider indispensable. Let’s take a look.

The cockpit at day’s end. Yikes. But there’s a method to this madness. First off, dust control.   After assassinating four shop vacs over the years, another crazy trawler-restoring soul showed me the amazing Dust Deputy you see below. Essentially, it sends all your debris into a vortex, and 99% of what would fill the vacuum instead falls into a bucket.  This has become one of my favorite tools, worth every penny of the $99 it set me back. Had I bought this years ago, my prior shop vacs wouldn’t have died early deaths. They didn’t die in vain, though. Their hoses live on, and 40′ of vacuum hose on a 32′ boat comes in real handy.

The sum of a day’s itchy work.

 

Want to cut through very tenacious layers of glass? (Really? Reconsider.)  But if you must, take one angle grinder, attach one cutting wheel, and let the destruction begin.

 

 

Next, heat guns and chisels. Need some bare glass but don’t feel like grinding it off? I don’t blame you. But heat guns don’t just remove paint and varnish — they’ll strip gel coat straight off — there’s a picture that shows the results coming up.

 

Sanders. What would a job like this be without sanders? Far less itchy, but far more lumpy in the end.  Not in the picture, the dreaded, dreadful belt sander, version Four. My theory is the boat was traumatized by belt sanders in her earlier years, and has vowed to kill as many as possible in retaliation.

 

Jigsaw and Sawzall, for all the things you want to saw. But Baby Powder??? Yes, baby powder. Liberally coat yourself with this wondrous stuff before working, and the nasty itchy dust to follow stands less chance of finding its way into your pores.

 

The corner of the cockpit with a mix of new and old coring, all level and ready to be sealed off. When complete, a final layer of cloth then mat will wrap from inside the cockpit to over the rail.  The inner edge shows just how effectively a heat gun and chisel can remove your gel coat.

A settee full of fiberglass. Yards and yards of mat, cloth, and biaxial. This is what a deck looks like before it becomes a deck.

 

 

And what’s in the cooler? Let’s see. Soda, Sam Addams, and ICE. Lovely lovely ice.

So tomorrow as you read this I’ll finishing the prep and cutting the first yards of glass. Wooo Hooo!

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The Manatees Playground

By Mike Jastrzebski

It sounds like a book title, doesn’t it? The Manatees Playground that is. But it’s not. I’m actually talking about the marina basin here in Titusville.

We’ve lived on our boat in Florida now for nearly nine years, only five months of that here at Westland Marina in Titusville, but on several occasions we’ve seen more manatees here in one day than the rest of the time we’ve been in Florida. One day we counted at least ten floating in the sun.

Here’s a small herd of them.

And here’s one basking in the sun.

Sometimes it makes my day just sitting on the boat and watching as these behemoths (they can grow to 13 feet long and weigh as much as 1300 pounds) wander between and around the boats looking for a source of running fresh water. If they can’t find someone washing off their boat they’ll gather under a dripping faucet or the water outlet of a water cooled air conditioner.

Unfortunately many of these gentle beasts get struck by boats, so if you’re down this way watch out for them, go slow so you don’t hit them, and enjoy the show. And don’t forget to watch for the dolphins in the river. They can be entertaining too.

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So I’ve been looking for a truck…

C.E. Grundler

…but not just any truck. No, when you write murder and mayhem, you sometimes find yourself in the need of an extra special truck. I’m not concerned about mileage, warranties, amenities, or any of the other considerations usually associated with choosing a vehicle. First off, the truck I need must have certain specific features — the ability to drive through storm surge flooded roads, clear or push clear debris and obstructions, be tall enough, heavy enough, and strong enough to get through the worst.  While some quarry trucks may be downright awe-inspiring, for the story, it needed to be something I might borrow from a construction site of the sort found along the Jersey shore.  I’ve been considering a cement truck, but today I took a wrong turn, drove past a construction site of the sort I’d envisioned, and found myself gazing at the truck of my dreams!

What you can’t tell by these pics is just how HUGE this thing is. The tires were taller than me.

  The bottom is covered in steel plates. No working parts exposed and vulnerable. 

I’ve found the specs on this lovely beast, and I’d say it’s just the ticket. And while an 11 foot beam puts it beyond legal road size, I’d imagine once the area’s been evacuated and the roads submerged, the legality of what you’re driving becomes less of an issue. Fill this baby with some gravel (ballast) and I’d say we’re ready to roll!

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Splash Time 2014

by John Urban

Splash time. After months of diligent work, the old wooden boat is ready to start a new season on the salt. All exterior surfaces – the hull, decks, cabin sides, coach roof, cockpit, transom, mast and boom – have been sanded and recoated.

Those quiet moments in the shed offered considerable time for thought. Here’s a sample of what the mind comes up with from the combination of too much time, fatigued arms, and inhaled paint fumes:

• Has anyone else noticed that the Federal Reserve must exclude boating supplies from its inflation index? Is it just me, or are the prices for marine parts and paint rising as if they’re tied to the Argentinian peso in a currency crisis?

• Will this be the year that Christies and Sotheby’s become market makers in driving up the price of old wooden boats? Economists say some inflation is good. We’ve had the dot.com bubble, the housing bubble. How about a wooden boat bubble? Come on, what’s the downside?

• Is it possible that Viking Funerals were simply recognition there has never ever been a resale market for wooden sailboats, even way back when?

But enough talk about labor, markets, and economics. Let’s get on the water. Time to do some research for the next Decatur book. Maybe head to Martha’s Vineyard in August for the 1st Annual Vineyard Haven Harbor Classic Boat Gathering on August 14- August 16.

There will be some boating eye candy over there in Vineyard Haven. Check out Nellie:

http://synellie.com

Yes, after a very long winter, but in the words of James Taylor:

Summer’s here.

I’m for that.

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Coppercoat Anti-fouling Epoxy

By Mike Jastrzebski

I must confess that I have been remiss lately. It has been several months since I’ve posted, and although I will admit that part of the reason for this has been poor internet service (we were in the very back of the yard and even with our WiFi antenna we only had limited service), the truth is that we were busy with boat projects and by the end of the day we were not up to going somewhere to get better internet service.

After four months in the yard it’s like heaven being back in the water. We had the bottom peeled, let it dry out before it was filled and faired, then put five coats of barrier coat and four coats of Coppercoat on the bottom. The process called for sanding the barrier coat until it was relatively smooth. If I were doing it again, because of the sanding, I would have put on two more coats of the barrier paint.

As for the Coppercoat, it was a hell of a lot of work. We needed one more set of the coating than was recommended, but I think the problem was that it was hot and the Coppercoat dried faster than we expected. We put on the Coppercoat over two days, one half of the boat at a time, and our friend, Dick, helped us the first day. The second day Mary and I worked by ourselves. It was easier with three than with two, but having a third person helping on the first day taught us what to expect and Mary and I managed just fine. Here are some pictures of the finished bottom.

Was it worth the time and effort? It’s really too soon to tell. The manufacturer claims that it will prevent barnacle growth for ten years. People I talked to who have used it seem to be happy with it, but I have not talked to anyone who has had the Coppercoat on for more than a couple of years. As a result, I’ll have to wait awhile before I can give an honest review. If it lives up to the claims I’ll be one happy boater–if not, I’ll be very unhappy.

I’m feeling optimistic about Coppercoat, but I’ll let you know in a couple of years one way or the other.

My posts will be running on Sundays and Mondays from now on so I hope you’ll stop by to see what we’re up to. We’re at the dock right now but we hope to head north to the Chesapeake in a couple of weeks. After that we have signed on to the Salty Dawg Rally and if all goes well we will be leaving Hampton, Virginia on or about November 2nd heading to the British Virgin Islands.

When Christine decided to head out to Fiji with Wayne she gave me her Spot device, so before we leave the dock I will post information on how to follow the next stage of our journey for anyone who is interested.

 

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You gotta love capitalism . . .

by Christine Kling

While I have been enjoying the wonderful promotion my books have received by being a part of the Kindle First program, this is a very different book release than I used to know ten years ago. The major difference is that I sell ebooks by the thousands and paper books only by the tens. Why do I sell so few paper books? Because almost no brick and mortar bookstores in the nation will carry paper books by Amazon publishers.

I’ve been watching the whole Amazon/Hachette fight that has been playing out in the press and via the Facebook and Twitter feeds of outraged traditionally published authors who are saying that Amazon is trying to control what books readers are allowed to read. They say this behavior is horrible, unconstitutional and basically evidence of their desire to rule the world. At BEA, James Patterson called for government intervention saying, “Amazon also, as you know, wants to control book selling, book buying, and even book publishing, and that is a national tragedy. If this is to be the new American way, then maybe it has to be changed, by law if necessary, immediately, if not sooner.”

I do feel sorry for friends of mine who are published by Hachette and are suffering poor sales due to this temporary period of contract negotiations while these two enormous multinational corporations are playing hardball. However, I have never once seen any of them Tweet or Facebook about the organized boycott against Amazon published authors that exists among brick and mortar bookstores. Who is really controlling what books you get to read? Amazon, who has slowed delivery of Hachette books or Barnes & Noble who will not stock any Thomas & Mercer books in their 1300+ stores making them available only by special order?

The press has been very lazy in their reporting of this story. It has taken David Gaughran to report how Hachette is not a small company going up against a big one:

“Hachette might be the smallest of the “Big 5″ on paper, but that’s only when you look at the American market. Hachette Book Group is owned by Lagardère Publishing – the biggest publisher in France and the second biggest in the UK. . . . Lagardère Publishing is itself part of Lagardère Group, a giant worldwide media company – magazines, radio, television, online, digital, and books – with annual revenue of approximately $10bn dollars.”

Do you think that allows them to spin the story their way?

And from what I have read, the only one to bring up boycott of  Amazon Publishing books is the self-published phenomenon, Hugh Howey:

So the question is this: Is Amazon a disruptor because of its size? Or is its size a result of previously stifled innovation? The culture of the Big 5, which was built by gobbling up successful small presses and rolling them into imprints, left the door wide open for Amazon, a company that dared to sell direct to consumers, innovate the way we read, and pay authors a living wage. You know, the first company to actually compete.

The response to this new competitor has been to blacklist Amazon-published books from brick and mortar stores and to collusion within the publishing monoculture. Where is the outcry for Amazon-published authors who are blocked from sale by practically every brick and mortar store? It doesn’t exist. The response is simply: That’s what those authors get for signing with Amazon. Imagine an observer today saying “That’s what those authors get for signing with Hachette.” The hypocrisy astounds.

It bugs me when the press doesn’t report the whole story, when they are so lazy and fall so completely for the hype and spin. So this morning, I just wanted to step up on my soap box

I think it just gets down to two big corporations using heavy-handed tactics to negotiate the best deal for them. It’s capitalism and so far, as a person in this book business, I’ve found it very entertaining to read all the hyperbole and vilification of Amazon. Companies aren’t evil – they just want to make lots of money. Heck, so do I!

In fact, in spite of selling very few paper books, I’ve never sold more books in my life than I did this past month. Readers are happy, this writer is happy, and there will be some new wolf to cry about next week. So I’ll head back to my writer’s desk and work on my next book and let Patterson huff and puff. Maybe, it will slow his house down.

Fair winds!

Christine

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