Randy Attwood's Blog, page 18

Thank You Note for Crazy About You

Thank you note arrived in the mail today from Marcia Epstein, who is the director of Headquarters Counseling Center in Lawrence, KS. When Crazy About You came out as a paperback I sent her a copy because I've been donating $1 from every ebook sale (and will continue to do so for ebook and paperback) to HQCC because these wonderful folks, among other things, work the Suicide Prevention Hotline for this part of the United States.

I wish Crazy were selling better so I could donate more. But, you know, a small donation every month adds up over time and can become significant. It's good to find a cause you can donate money to regularly. Makes you feel better about yourself every month you do so.

I'll put a scan of the note below but here is a text copy:

Thank you for your support of Headquarters Counseling Center through your regular donations from book sales, as well as the dedication to the book. That was amazing, so touching to be right there with your father.

Thanks for sending us a copy. I grabbed it first -- and didn't want to put it down til I finished it. Then I  puzzled over how much was your experience. Although parts are disturbing, all of it kept me reading. Thanks.

Work is hard. Support for local services is hard to obtain. But what we do is important. So we keep on.

Thanks for helping us.

To which I say: thank you for being there so I can help. I wish I could do more.

Commercial time! Buy the book folks. $1 goes to these dedicated people. But if you want to donate directly go here.

The 41st Sermon Now Available as Paperback

I am taking the steps to turn my ebooks into paperbacks. The latest work available is The 41st Sermon .  I've doing what I should have done from the front: pay an editor/proofreader to correct the manuscript. The errors I make are embarrassing to me when I see the corrections. I find I have a kind of dyslexia. I know the difference between brake and break and wondering and wandering and yet I make those bone-headed goofs.

As I get corrected manuscripts for the print books, I also resubmit the ebook files so that the corrected ones are available for Kindle readers.

The 41st Sermon has a connection to Walker Percy, that great Southern writer. I won't repeat it here, just refer you to an earlier blog. In the paperback edition, I was able to include an image of the note from Percy to me about the manuscript.

Here's the back cover text for the paperback:


When a 45-year old Episcopal priest, suffering from mid-life and mid-faith crisis, gets involved in a phony kidnap plot with his sexy blond parishioner the result is a supercharged novel of sex, payback for decades-old double-dealing, and despair, which only God can cure.
Father Christopher Talley, spends a week each year at a resort in the Ozarks. This gives him a chance to escape the constraints of his life as a minister – to fish, to drink, to cavort. He also writes his sermons for the coming year. This year, while at the resort, he runs across one of his parishioners, the lovely Molly, who says she is thinking of divorcing her husband, but has a different plot in mind.

...a strange story...lots of different themes – finding yourself, redemption, finding faith, learning what life is all about... I really liked the book, ... it had a lot of good things to say, and I thought the story was one in which many people could find enjoyment, once they get past feeling shocked about some of the issues that come up.... you need to be open-minded about the story, but if you are willing to do so, you should find something in here to love. Amazon Reviewer
One marketing ploy I've been using is to say The 41st Sermon is a sort of Shades of Gray for Episcopalians.

Arrowhead Controversy Prompts Publishing This Excerpt from SPILL

In my comedy SPILL: Bil Oil + Sex = Game On the owner of the local football team sells the team to someone who will move it to Oklahoma City. Fans are not pleased, even though it's been a losing team for years. This is from the scene of the last game before the team is moved.

Game day Sunday, unfortunately, was unseasonably warm, clear, dry and pleasant. The police were hoping for a blizzard, maybe even give them cause to shut down the roads to the stadium. But, no. God, showing Himself or Herself or Itself for the humorist He, She, or It must be, provided weather that encouraged every rabid-mad fan to get his, her or its sorry ass out to the stadium to get drunk at tailgate parties and be prepared to riot.Fans who couldn't afford tickets or even parking fees in the past now came in droves. Wiser season ticket holders stayed away. Tailgating quickly got out of hand. Police, for example, stopped one group playing tag football that was using a baby as the ball, forward passes and everything.Open seating to the stadium quickly filled its 78,000 seats and another 10,000 fans were angry outside that they wouldn't be let in.The assembled mob cheered the opposing team and booed when the Sharks were introduced. Ushers knew things were not going to be pretty when some fans started ripping off their plastic seats from their bolt mounts.
Book can be found here:
http://www.amazon.com/SPILL-ebook/dp/B005MRA588/ref=sr_1_7?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1316031857&sr=1-7

Kickstarter Project Features Realism Artist

One reason I was delighted to collaborate on the Kickstarterproject with Kansas City artist Nick Naughton is that his art work embraces realism. The Saltness of Time is a story much suited for realism. One of the scenes I hope he'll use for an etching illustration is this one:
It was a house made for another era, another place, a set of dreams beyond my understanding. In the failing light, and in the shadows of the trees, the air around the white, three-story mansion had a bluish tinge, the color of my own cold lips. The house needed painting. And what a job that would be! Wide eaves above the attic windows that were above that third floor. Fancy-cut posts, gables, and columns. The entire front porch of the house was screened in. It had the look of a plantation mansion, and I wondered if the porch might not contain a misplaced southern gentleman in a white suit and Panama hat, frozen in mid-stride while smoking his after-dinner cigar.
Below is an image of one of Nick's works. If the project get's funded, the DVD we're going to do to provide will document the letterpress and bindery process and  also show Nick working on the illustrations for the book.

Letterpress Project on Kickstarter is LIve!

Got through all the hurdles at Kickstarter, it was really pretty easy, and the project to turn The Saltness of Time into a printed book using letterpress technology and a local bindery is now live on Kickstarter


http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/6...

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.p...

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.