The link above is still capable of giving you a free copy of this e-book until midnight on Tuesday, November 12th, 2019. By all means, click on it and get yourself the free Kindle e-book.

I write this plea as my third free e-book promotion is half-way done. It is, as expected, failing miserably. As of this writing, the promotion using Facebook and Twitter has managed to give away six free books. And one of those is me grabbing a free e-book for my own free Kindle reader on my laptop. So, basically, I can’t give away copies of my own book for free.

But writing this book was not a matter of making myself famous or wealthy or even acknowledged as a good writer. Those are not the things I need. I wrote this story because I myself have been badly damaged by life. I was sexually assaulted by an older boy when I was ten. I had teenage bouts of depression that nearly made me end myself. My sex-life did not develop normally and led to chronic prostatitis and the precursor to “Priests’ disease”, a prostate gland the size of a grapefruit. Yes, it may ultimately end in prostate cancer. And then when I finally made a family for myself in my late middle years, I was besieged by depression again, this time not my own, but others in my family. So, in many ways, I have lived a sad life.

The novel itself is a means to self-healing and recording how I rebuilt myself using love, laughter, and artistry. The singing orphan boy wearing clown paint and singing only sad songs is a metaphor for me and my struggle. The clowns that haunt the main characters’ dreams are also a metaphor. I was always known as the laughing teacher, the one who joked around in class, and let laughing grow into a means of instruction in the English classroom. I used humor to make learning painless. I used it to take away many other kinds of pain as well. The book is about how a family can be healed by someone who has nothing, yet selflessly gives everything to make that family come together and be whole. It is a story, just as the introduction claims, about what love really means.

But the world is stacked against lying truth-tellers like me who make up stories only to heal themselves. Facebook stopped me from messaging everybody who is a Facebook friend whom I wanted to send the book link from Amazon. They called it spamming, which really means, “advertising something on Facebook without paying Facebook lots of money.” I discovered on Twitter that sending the link in DMs makes more of my followers stop following me than it makes followers click on the link to obtain a free book. Ah, disappointment again. At least I gave away three more books than I did on the last promotion.
So, this is like a blacklight, shining on my promotional inspiration. It only shows in ultraviolet the opposite of what I thought I would see. And it resigns me once again to be only ignored as a writer of novels. I suppose it is my proper place in life.
The Secret Life of Clowns
The clowns of Sing Sad Songs; Mr. Dickens, Mr. Shakespeare, Mr. Disney, and Mr. Poe
The truth is, clowns are rarely happy people under the greasepaint and the manic grin. An underlying feature of every funnyman is a background of hardship, suffering, and sadness. There is a reason why Robin Williams committed suicide and Lenny Bruce died of a drug overdose. If you listen to the comedy of George Carlin in his last few years, he became a horribly bitter and cynical man.
The reason for all this wearing of clown masks and underlying sadness is really based on a very simple equation. Living a hard life, but dealing with it with the power a sense of humor gives you, yields wisdom. And how do you best deliver wisdom to all the people out there? A sugar-coated candy shell is just the thing. A spoonful of sugar helps the medicine to go down, to plagiarize Mary Poppins. Say your wise words like a wise guy and say it with a smile.
So why am I so clown-happy and therefore clown-posty today? Well, I have used clowns in a very metaphorical way in the novel I am now finishing, Sing Sad Songs. Clowns are definitely on my mind. And I have a sneaking suspicion creeping up on me that maybe… just maybe… I am myself a clown.
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Filed under clowns, comedians, commentary, humor, irony, Paffooney
Tagged as clowns, Sing Sad Songs