This is an old re-purposed post from 2016 to kill some time so that this blog doesn’t kill me.
Life is hard here in the Kingdom of Paffoon where you labor hard at a labor of love and try to give birth to something eternal that ends up going nowhere… stacks of old writing litter my closets, and the prospects of being published grow dimmer and dimmer. My book Snow Babies has a contract with a publisher, but, apparently they are not going to be able to publish it after all. I am at the very least going to have to find another publisher for the rest of my books, both finished manuscripts and works in progress.
I do intend to follow through and get published, though. I can no longer teach, but I feel a powerful force pushing me towards the sheer precipice of authordom. One way or another I am going to make it over the edge and plummet to the bottom of that cliff. I am compelled by the need to tell stories, and I have a captive audience every school day no longer.
I used to tell my classes that doing impossible things was like trying to pull chicken teeth with pliers. You know, impossible things like getting a book published or teaching a mostly Spanish-speaking student how to read in English… every-day-sort-of impossible things.
“But, Mr. B, chickens don’t have teeth,” some bright-eyed student would say after realizing that “chicken” was the English word for “pollo”.
“Exactly!” I would say. “That’s what makes it so challenging!”
And now I must put on my chicken-catching socks, find my tooth-pulling pliers, and get ready to make more novels happen. After a brief bout of consternation and depression, I actually feel a bit better about the whole fiasco. There are other publishers, and publishers seem to like my writing, even if they can’t publish it. And I have waited two years to get Snow Babies published, all apparently for nothing. It is time to stop wasting time. And maybe to stop repeating repetitions too.
I would like to here note that I now have 21 books published, all but one of which is self-published on Amazon and fully under my control. My other book, the award-winning novel from I-Universe, Catch a Falling Star, continues to be little-purchased and less read, though I discovered they pay all my royalties to my wife’s bank account. That was unexpected. Chicken teeth where they can’t be reached by me.
Catch a Falling Star 