Catch a Falling Star

Lately, I have been getting good signs from my book-sales dashboard at Amazon.. People have started buying and reading my books, at least, the ones with nudist characters in them. A Field Guide to Fauns and Recipes for Gingerbread Children lead the way with more than a thousand pages read on Kindle Unlimited between them. I have already made more than $8.00 total this month in only the last two weeks.

Like the male cardinal who shows up in our yard when good things are happening, it is a sign that it is not all done for nothing. $8.00 will make no real difference to my bank account. But it does show that people are reading my books. I know that this does not sound like the results of lots of readers reading, but remember, publishers, especially Amazon, always screw writers out of most of what they deserve when books are sold.

The most expensive of the books that are actually being bought are priced at less than $3.00, of which, most of that money goes towards Amazon’s e-book-making expenses (whatever those are). If I needed to make myself rich, I would never have become first a teacher, and then a fiction writer. Having readers is the thing. And these are a couple of my best books that are getting read.

So, I take it as a good sign. A symbol that I really am an author.

I took pictures that I drew back in the 70s and 80s and updated them with digital art, redrawing the pictures with a stylus, a touch-screen phone, and an AI digital assistant. I took pictures I drew of real-life people I knew and updated them. I can’t make them look much like the real people. I have turned most of these into fictional characters anyway, but I won’t use any real names.

Clint was a student whom I loved to hate. He held classroom farting contests in my fourth period class with his mindless minions. He gave me no end of trouble for two years. But when I finally got the relief of his graduation from 8th grade, he was the kid I hugged the hardest, hoping to make it hurt, and the kid I missed the most.

Shelly Cobble, one of the twin Cobble Sisters, was both a member of the Pirates and a nudist at home.

Sherry Cobble, the self-proclaimed smarter twin, was also a Pirate and even more of a nudist than sister Shelly. And, no, they are not based on my twin cousins. Yes, I am pretty sure that’s true.

Sherry again as a high school senior, still a member of the Pirates’ liars’ club and still a nudist.

Shelly again, same grade still, nudist still, Pirate still, but maybe the nicer sister.

Edward-Andrew Campbell, better known as the Superchicken, still in Junior high at the time of this picture.

Andrew Doble, Pirate, liar, not a criminal according to him, most likely a criminal to local law enforcement.

Dennis.

And so, I run out of time for more. But I like what I have done.

The first story that started all the naked stuff was the Superchicken novel which in many ways mirrored my own first experiences of nudism. Where Edward-Andrew accidentally ends up camping with the nudist Cobble Sisters and their family, and learns to like it, I accidentally ended up repeatedly visiting the clothing-optional apartment complex on Manor Road in Austin. All of it is about getting used to girls and the whole girlfriend business.

I was initially horrified by what I was caught up in. But it went on to be a thing where I got to know Ysandra and also Crazy Andrea in a way that was not sexual, and really not intimate, but definitely the kind of friendship that loosened the iron chains of traumatic childhood experiences… and helped me heal.

The nudist Cobble Sisters, as you have probably realized by now, are based on the nudist twins from my early years of teaching. I will not give you real names. If you feel the need to call them names in the comments, you can use Rani and Dani. Not even close to their real names.

But I understood twins well. I have twin girl cousins that are the same age as the younger of my two sisters. I have taught at least six pairs of identical twins and at least two pairs of brother-sister twins. one pair of maternal twins that were boys, and one pair of maternal twins that were girls (those are the twins that don’t look exactly alike.) I taught one pair of Vietnamese twins, one pair of African-American twins, and two pairs of Hispanic Twins. I have gotten Facebook wedding pictures and new baby pictures from the last pair of Hispanic Twins in the past seven years.

But the point is that the twins and their nudism have not only taken over my fiction, they have taken a bit of control over my life. Rani and Dani would have a gigglefit if they read this.

The Cobble twins play a key role in my “I-am-not-a-monster” novel, The Baby Werewolf. They play an even more important role in the companion book, Recipes for Gingerbread Children. Sherry Cobble is one of the multiple narrators in the book, The Boy… Forever. So, I have naked people in half of my books. Some of my friends and relatives wonder if that doesn’t spoil the stories. But I would beg to differ. I find it to be a key feature. And the nudists on Twitter and the Clothes-Free Life website, seem to agree. A Field Guide to Fauns is a book a wrote completely set in a residential nudist community. I wrote it for nudists. And I joined the AANR nudist organization to become a nudist myself.

So, this is all the overlong and overcomplicated explanation for why I am writing a book of naturist essays with lots of stuff with naked people in it. I will do my best to make Governor Abbott and Governor DeSantis hate and ban my books. When they jail me, it will be a badge of honor.