Taking the RV to Big Bend National Park

The Rio Grande in Big Bend National Park

Our friends didn't think we’d go on Monday, because the weather had been so bad here in New Mexico. But we had already left Las Cruces for Big Bend in Texas before the weather soured, and were clueless until our return today. Passing through El Paso, we could hardly see the nearby Franklin Mountains, which were a ghostly outline through the swirling sand. The wind whipped across the border from Juarez, occasionally limiting the visibility to a few hundred feet.

So by virtue of our RV trip, we missed most of a big howler. Good thing. We had headed east on I-10 to Van Horn, and then south through Valentine, Marfa, Alpine, and Marathon, with gorgeous weather nearly the whole time. We saw a family of javelinas by the roadside, but by the time I could stop and grab my camera, they had escaped deep into the chaparral. Same luck with the antelope we saw. There were lots of free-range cattle, and Nancy had to hit the brakes to avoid hitting a bull that had wandered onto the highway. He had trouble with his footing on the asphalt, but he found his way to safety. As we started back this morning, we saw five vultures perched on a wire fence and looking at a dead animal—like personal-injury lawyers checking out a potential client, I thought.

We met interesting people at the RV park in Marathon. A retired couple, for example—she a former prosecutor, he a former police detective. Back in the 1990s, they had just been back from their honeymoon about a week when she saw him on live television in a shootout with a man who had just murdered his girlfriend. Our companions were both fascinating; we could have listened to them reminisce all night.

Ocotillo in bloom

Our RV in Marathon, Texas

Cholla with nest (cactus wren, I think)

RV park grounds, Marathon, Texas

Big Bend National Park

Maiden voyage to the Gila Cliff Dwellings

This week, we drove our new (to us) RV up to the Gila Cliff Dwellings in south central New Mexico. Technically, it can be a day trip, but we have friends who left Las Cruces at 6 a.m. and returned at 10 p.m. Much of the trip is on narrow, winding roads with occasional steep drops. We had to avoid a stretch of Highway 15, because it is closed to vehicles over 20 feet long, and our vehicle is 25.

Both elevation and latitude increase on the trip, and the vegetation changes gradually from sere desert with dried-up arroyos, creosote bushes, and prickly pear cactus to ponderosa pines and streams with honest-to-goodness water in them. The cacti never completely disappear, but they become much less prevalent in the upper elevations.

I will hold back on many of the details, because I have an assignment to write an article about it for Southwest Senior. But the dwellings were briefly the home of the Mogollon Indians about 700 years ago, and were abandoned for reasons unknown. The area was the home of the Chiricahua Apache, whose most famous member was Geronimo.

An Amazon plot?

On my favorite writing list, The Internet Writing Workshop, there’s been discussion about what Amazon is supposedly doing to self-publishing outfits such as iUniverse and PublishAmerica. Angela Hoy wrote a lengthy story outlining Amazon's supposed malfeasance. As the story goes, bad boy Bezos (see mug shot) is protecting his own BookSurge by removing the “Buy” buttons on listings for competitors’ books. In a variation of the tale, competitive listings themselves are being removed. I read that “all 1500” PublishAmerica authors have been affected. When I expressed skepticism, saying that my iUniverse offering, When Pigs Fly, is still available for purchase on Amazon, a correspondent said I would pay for my smug refusal to read the whole Hoy piece, and my day of reckoning would come.

Yeah, well. Allow me to quote my favorite B-movie actor, Ronald Reagan: Trust, but verify. In the small sampling of PublishAmerica, iUniverse, and BookSurge listings I checked on Amazon, all were treated the same.

Maybe there is something to the claims, but I don't see it. If you want to scare me, do it with easily verifiable evidence. At least do some minimal fact-checking before you pass along a rumor.

A trip to Arizona

Last week I finally met my friend Kate Reynolds after corresponding with her for years by email. She and her husband were gracious hosts to my wife and me when we went to Arizona to pick up our RV. Kate is a fine writer who has contributed to The Insider’s Guide to Phoenix and The Insider’s Guide to Tucson.

The timing of the trip was great, as poppies and bluebonnets are abloom in abundance. This is a photo taken at the Tonto National Monument, said to be the last stronghold of Cochise. Note the blanket of poppies on the mountainside:


Roadside bluebonnets, my mom’s favorite flower:

Poppies and saguaro on a hillside:

Bergaalwyn blooming in Tohono Chul Park, Tucson:

And bougainvillea at the Holiday Inn, Mesa:

“Ve have our vays”

In my research for an article about self- and subsidy-publishing, I came across the name of iUniverse’s #5 best-seller, which I won’t name here. So I bopped on over to Amazon to see what its ranking is, and wouldn't you know, it doesn’t have a ranking. A quick email to Amazon confirmed that no ranking means they haven’t sold at least one copy. So I called iUniverse’s marketing department to inquire about it. The author lives in Florida and apparently has pretty decent sales on Amazon UK, but none at all in the US. The guy I spoke to at iUniverse had been curious too, and called the author to learn his secret, but apparently the author refused to reveal his methods. He has his vays...

The iUniverse guy did mention that for some of their best-selling non-fiction, an institution might purchase a substantial number of copies and distribute them to members, thus creating the high sales numbers.

Bright colors, dull sales

We visited our son in Austin for a few days—a 1300-mile round trip—and I packed copies of my novel in the car, hoping to do a little business along the way. I already have two retail customers, and I’d hoped to add to my client list.

Seeing our son was more important, of course. He showed us around the city, we ate too much, and we spent a couple of hours at the Zilker Botanical Garden, which is beginning to show some beautiful colors.


My gift shop customer in Johnson City still has a dozen copies of my book from her last purchase. Business is generally slow, she said. They just aren’t getting much foot traffic at this time of year. She still sells copies now and then, but she is hoping that business picks up a lot in spring when everything is abloom at the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center.


My restaurant customer still has a ton of copies of When Pigs Fly left, including four at a prominent counter display. My wife and I ate lunch there on our way home, and we watched as two fellows stood and looked at the book. One of them picked it up and flipped through the pages, appearing to be on the verge of buying. His friend said he was pretty sure he’d heard of it. Then the man picked it up again, flipped through the pages again. Then, oblivious to the urgent brainwaves I was transmitting (“Buy it, already!”), they left without the book. I like to think they’ll be back.

One of the loveliest towns along the route to Austin is Fredericksburg, where I found a small, independent bookstore. I walked in and introduced myself and my book. The lady said that business is very slow now, but the book looked interesting. She suggested I come back later and speak to her husband, so I left the copy with her to examine.

Later, the man said my book’s pricing wasn’t too bad for a self-published book. But he has a deep-seated prejudice against “dot-com” publishers and everything they publish. I said I understand fully, and that’s why he’d be dealing only with me. And yes, the irregular quality of the books can be an issue, but my book has gotten great reviews. No, that’s not it, he said. It’s the discounts. I told him what I was offering, ten percent better than iUniverse. Fine, he said. but there is also the problem of non-returnability. But you’d be dealing with me and not them, I said, and I will accept returns.

He was still skeptical, so I told him he could hold onto the book, read it, and judge it on its merits. He seemed to think that was fair. I don’t expect immediate business from him in any case, but I hope that we will eventually do business.

“I’ll think about it”

A booksigning at Coas is always fun. The owner lets me plunk down behind a table right by the door, brings me a cup of coffee, then leaves me on my own for two hours or so on a Saturday morning. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve sold books there—five, maybe six—and I never sell fewer than five copies or more than six. This past weekend I arrived early, sat down, and started smiling at people. It was going to be a good day. After all, hadn’t my good friend Dave sold 35 copies of his novel the week before at this same table? His book even costs more than mine.

People stopped and smiled, then moved on. Or didn’t stop at all. A couple of previous customers said hello. My friend Joan staggered by to say she was getting over pneumonia. Another showed interest but claimed to have no money. One nice fellow spoke to me for ten minutes because we have the same last name. An elderly gentleman asked if this was a book he could read to his granddaughter. I said no, and he left. A gangly mountain-man type wearing boots, dusty denim, a broad-brimmed hat, and a long beard half-glanced at me and shook his head as he left the store. They allow all kinds in here, his look seemed to say.

This is no way to get rich...

---

After a while, he seemed to have a point. What was I doing here, wasting my time, selling nothing for the first hour? Several people looked at my book, said “I’ll think about it,” and disappeared into the store. That usually means they have no intention of buying my book, but they are too polite to come out and say so. My only consolation was going to be the sight of all the pretty women walking by.

Then the unexpected happened: One of those folks who said they would think about it came back to the table with a copy for me to sign. She actually had thought about it. Such a relief; I hated the thought of striking out. And along came three New Mexico State students to chat me up, and two of them bought copies. But the most satisfying sale was to a woman who said she would wait to buy it used. She never paid list price for a book, she said. She much preferred to buy books for a dollar, which you can easily do at Coas. I said oh, that’s fine, but she kept talking until she convinced herself to spring for a copy then and there. (Today she wrote me an email to say she just finished the book and how delighted she was with it.)

So I sold five for the day, but also met a couple of prospects for editing manuscripts, and one for building a website. Not bad. I can’t always judge a booksigning just by the number of books signed.

Later in the day, I proofed a novella in exchange for a purchase of eight copies of my book. This is no way to get rich, but life is good.

“Oh, they’re long gone.”

Last week, I sent out a batch of brochures for When Pigs Fly, and today I began following up. I’d obtained a list of truck stops off the website of a trucker’s association. The first six numbers I called from that list had been disconnected. Then I reached a fellow who said that all his customers spoke Spanish. After that, two of my numbers connected to offices of Progressive Insurance Company, followed by one that connected to the post office in the town I had in mind. I told the lady about the truck stop I was trying to reach, and she said, “Oh, they're long gone.”

Sigh. This list was worth what I paid for it, and not a penny more.

My last call worked out better. I spoke to a woman who said I had to contact their corporate purchasing department. I did so, and collected contact information. Then I contacted iUniverse to find out how big a discount I could offer for large quantities, with the idea of the customer buying directly from the publisher. Pfft! Thirty, thirty-five percent. If I want to offer a higher discount, I have to buy huge quantities and sell them myself—national chains normally demand a discount of 50-70 percent, the iU guy said, “and don’t forget that we never accept returns.”

I never expected to make a profit selling my novel, but I had hoped at least to get more copies of my book out there. It’s a truism that self-published and subsidy-published books don’t sell many copies, but of course they don't. The publisher's whole business model is based on many authors each selling only a few copies. They are simply not interested in volume sales.

When Pigs Fly garners uniformly excellent comments from readers, but it seems I have to reach those readers one by one. I may look into canceling my contract with iU and republishing on my own, but I’m sure that's no small task.

A lesson from the desert

The things a writer won’t do for research. On Friday, I headed into the Chihuahuan Desert to explore it as a possible setting for my next novel. How about following some of those unpaved roads off I-25 and heading in the direction of the San Andres Mountains? What a great idea! Maps show a road leading to a locked gate at the edge of the White Sands Missile Range, which encompasses the entire hundred-plus-mile mountain range. Nothing appears to be paved between the Interstate and the restricted federal land. There are very few roads, and they are marked poorly when they are marked at all. Creosote bushes, grassy clumps, prickly pear, cholla, and other low-growing vegetation dominate the landscape. Rattlesnakes aren’t obvious, but travelers on foot had better tread with care.


What have I forgotten? Oh yes, sand. The county road is like a washboard for the first mile or two, and you can drive on it in perfect safety if not in perfect comfort. Hard-packed sand and a wide road pose no problem.

Long-neglected fencing drew my attention, though out here it’s hard to know what is being kept in or being kept out. At a fork in the road, a tiny sign points towards Engle, a town that is nowhere in sight across a vast, open space. On the other branch is the back of a yield sign that's peppered with bullet holes. I followed that left and never saw another sign until I returned on foot—about which more later. That looked like the direction to follow, as it would take me deeper into Sierra County, where Spaceport America is going to be built some day soon.

The road split again, and my sharp left turn gave me serious pause. I stepped out of my car to check the road ahead, because it looked as though I might be about to drive off a cliff. If you’ve driven the dicier hills in San Francisco, that’s what it looked like. But okay. Reassured that my death was not imminent, I drove carefully down the hill.

From here on, the road narrows to barely more than a car’s width. Deep gullies appear in several places along the roadside. The sand becomes softer—much softer. At another fork, I took a right and saw the road parallelling a string of telephone poles that seemed to disappear into endless flat nothing. That looked like a mistake, so I executed a careful three-point turn (four-point, really). The banks of sand on either side proved no problem.


Back at the fork, I took a right—not my first mistake of the day, but surely my biggest. My all-wheel-drive Volvo got stuck in a deep sand bank. What a mess. I had nothing to work with but my hands. All four wheels were stuck, and I couldn't see any daylight between the sand and the undercarriage.

I looked around: not a building in sight, and absolutely no traffic. I started digging with my hands and jamming flat rocks under the tires for traction. No go. I called my wife and then AAA. The lady asked how many feet my car was off the paved road. About 15,000, I said, estimating three miles from the highway. Triple-A really wasn’t a viable option, as any tow truck would likely have gotten stuck itself.

Eventually, after more hand-digging, I abandoned the car and hiked back to the highway. One fellow in a pickup truck stopped on the way, but said it would be a couple of hours before he could help me, as he had to go help his mother, who was recovering from a stroke. He offered me a ride, but he was going in the wrong direction, and it was getting dark. So I thanked him and kept walking to the highway, with the plan of making it to the Border Patrol checkpoint a few miles to the south. Within a few minutes, a Border Patrol cruiser picked me up and gave me a lift to their station. My wife arranged for some friends to come and pick me up.

The next day, my friend and our wives drove back, bringing shovels and cardboard for traction. We went down that steep hill, immediately thought better of it, and turned around in what was the last available wide spot. Then we hiked about a mile, pretty much all on a downhill slope.

Even with two shovels and four brains, it took us 90 minutes to extract the car, but we did succeed. Then we all headed north to the Bosque del Apache National Wildlife Refuge, where we rounded out an oddly satisfying day.

There is a lesson in this, that we must respect the desert. It’s still winter, and the 60-degree day turned into a 30-degree night. In the blazing summer heat, my gaffe could have been deadly.

Balloons, batteries, and books

Tip: If you go to a balloon rally, pack extra batteries for your digital camera. On a co-o-o-old Saturday morning, we arose at an uncivilized hour to meet friends and walk to the 16th annual Mesilla Valley Balloon Rally. My double-A’s were good for only five exposures; luckily, this was one of them.

This coming week, I’ll start mailing copies of a new brochure out to prospective retailers, offering them a 30 percent discount if they purchase When Pigs Fly directly from iUniverse. Direct mail isn’t known for its high response rate, but I will follow up with them by phone and see what happens. For the last several weeks, thinking about and working on promotion has occupied more of my time than writing fiction. But my 2007 sales were about 300 copies—all hand-sold—and I’d like to do as well this year.

Writing groups, marketing my pig, and making time to write

The other day, we drove to Bosque del Apache to see the snow geese and sandhill cranes. The Bosque is one of the few places to find open water in New Mexico, and it is a haven for many thousands of migratory birds. It was a welcome respite from my writing and marketing, as fun as those activities are.

Once a month, I make the 40-mile trek south on I-25 and east on I-10, past the smelly stockyards of Vado, over the Texas line (“Drive Friendly—It's the Texas Way”), and head for the Dorris van Doren Library and the monthly meeting of the El Paso Writer's League. They have just put up a website, which no doubt will grow and prosper.

That’s the week after Mesilla Valley Writers meet in Las Cruces, and I try to be active in both.

Then there is the admin work for the Internet Writers Workshop and the reviewing and web work for the Internet Review of Books. And every so often, but not nearly often enough, I hook up by Skype with my old writer’s group who are in Massachusetts.

All of this, and I am trying to market When Pigs Fly a little better than in 2007. It looks to me as though gift stores may be the best retail market for my book; the bookstores want a bigger margin than iUniverse is willing to give, and then in a bookstore, my WPF would be just one more book competing for attention. In a gift shop, there might be little or no direct competition. So that’s the new focus for 2008.

Wouldn’t it be nice to just sit down and do some extensive writing? I have started three different novels in the last year without making a whole lot of progress on any of them. But I think—maybe—I have the story I want to stick with. Now to actually write it...

December Internet Review of Books is out!

Yesterday the Internet Review of Books published its third issue! This is a monthly collaborative effort among Carter Jefferson, Ruth Douillette, Gary Presley, Jane Elioseff, and me. It's a lot of work and a lot of satisfaction. My main responsibility is maintaining the website, but I also write monthly reviews.

Cuando los Puercos Vuelen

Our friends Jim and Robie sent along this photo from Mazatlán, Mexico today, and I promised Jim I'd steal it. This is an out-of-business restaurant named Cuando los Puercos Vuelen, or When Pigs Fly. On the left is a detail of the li'l porker.

Old novel, new book?

In the last year, I haven't written as consistently as in the past, partly because I've been busy marketing When Pigs Fly. I have begun a couple of new novels in a comic vein, though neither is far along. Probably, it'll be necessary to set one aside and push on with the other. It's a certainty that neither could be ready for publication in 2008, not at my writing pace.

This morning, my wife was telling some friends about my prize in El Paso for Little Mountain, and she suggested I self-publish the novel. I'd had an agent for it back in the '90s, and it made all the usual publishing rounds without success. One small publisher expressed great enthusiasm to the point of calling me several times and doing a free copyedit in anticipation of publishing it, but then he went out of business. Since then, the darned thing had been sitting on my hard drive for so long, it was going to start collecting mold.

So this poses an interesting question. whether to publish and market a northeast-based ethnic mystery that is so different from When Pigs Fly, which is pure comedy and largely southwest-based. I've decided that life is to short to waste circulating my novels to agents and traditional publishers anymore, spending months or even years searching for the approval of strangers. Screw that, to coin a phrase. Barring unforeseen circumstances, any future novels of mine will be either self-published or unpublished.

A plus to publishing Little Mountain in 2008 is that it would give me the time to finish a new project and publish in 2009, thus giving me a record of publishing almost annually.

Folks who have read my comic novel speak well of it. They laughed with me, but will the same readers be willing to read a serious mystery about a Cambodian homicide detective in Lowell, Massachusetts? Or am I going to have to look for a different set of readers?

The photo shows a Cambodian dancer in Lowell, Massachusetts, circa 1981.

A writing award

Don't you just hate it when you don't blog for six weeks, and no one notices? Lately I've been deeply involved in The Internet Review of Books, but lots of my energy, what energy there is, spins out in a dozen directions.


Today I won an award at the El Paso Writer's League, second prize for book-length fiction. I'd submitted a portion of my unpublished ethnic mystery, Little Mountain, which is set primarily in the Cambodian community of Lowell, Massachusetts.

Here are some mountains with a dusting of snow in southern New Mexico:

Battling Bastards of Bataan

Less than a mile from where I live in Las Cruces is a small park honoring those Americans who suffered so much in the Bataan Death March in the Philippines in World War II. The captives included a large contingent from the New Mexico National Guard. Frank Hewlett wrote a poem that begins:

We're the battling bastards of Bataan
No mama, no papa, no Uncle Sam...

We owe our freedom to such men, and I won't forget them.

Of memes and things

My friend Ruth posted about memes, a word that sent me scurrying to my dictionary without success. A Google search found me frEdSCAPEs 0.1, which defines a meme as "an idea, project, statement or even a question that is posted by one blog and responded to by other blogs. Although the term encompasses much of the natural flow of communication in the Blogosphere, there are active bloggers and blog sites that are dedicated to the creation of memes on a regular basis."

Pronunciation? Who knows? My guess is "meem," but maybe it's "me me," as in a little boy clamoring for attention, or Mimi the seamstress in La Bohème. Either way, I won't be using it in conversation anytime soon.

So Ruth has tagged me with a meme, to write about my writing strengths. Ummm, well, the usual, you know, like my way with words and stuff.

Discipline is a strength I wish I had. Oh, the butt-in-chair part is easy enough. The question is, what then? Does endless checking of email get the writing job done? Reaching down to pet the cats? Rearranging the papers on my desk? Stopping to write a to-do list? In my pre-computer days, I used to come home from work with multiple lists stuffed in my shirt pocket. Now those lists go on the computer, and I won't hesitate to stop whatever else I'm doing to add to a list.

Anyway, my real strengths. I am always open to improvement and willing to accept constructive criticism. My writing process is slow, because I tend to edit on the fly. How does that sentence sound? Can someone take it the wrong way? Is it grammatical? Is there a better word? I'll write a sentence or two, then go back and read the paragraph. Long bursts of creativity? Not from me.

I am a nitpicker, which works both for and against me. Against, because it slows down my work. For, because my work is better. All in all, it serves me well.

Whom to tag? Let's try Kathy, Moni and Richard.

ArtForms of New Mexico

My writing friend Cheryl Fallstead is also a talented artist and photographer here in New Mexico. Recently I spoke to her art group about how people can create web sites for free. I must say, she's done an excellent job with the information. Here is the website she created for ArtForms.

Of book sales and book reviews

Is it my hard but intermittent promotional work finally paying off? The last time I'd checked, my novel's Amazon ranking hadn't budged much from the million-one, million-two mark, a fairly pathetic sales ranking that had lasted for months and required no small rationalization on my part. And I checked tonight to find my ranking at 165,000. Lordamercy, someone bought When Pigs Fly online. Bless you!



Most of my sales have come from signings and (can you believe it?) a restaurant and a gift shop. Last Saturday morning I spent a couple of hours at Coas Bookstore in Las Cruces, where foot traffic is greatly enhanced by the farmer's market in the pedestrial mall. My table by the front door was a great venue for people watching: tall, short, fat, skinny, plenty of exposed skin with tattoos—ankles, arms, necks, faces, on the exposed breasts of low-cut blouses; a Chinese woman with a handbag from "The Forbidden City"; a handsome African couple; children; retirees with canes; browsers carrying huge bags of popcorn with an aroma that triggered my salivary glands. Anyone who looked in my direction got a free smile, which they usually returned. Most kept moving, eye contact or not, smile or not. Women were more likely to stop and chat than men, and they were slightly more likely to buy. In the past, it's seemed that if someone picked up a copy, flipped through it and we conversed about it, I got a sale. Today was different—I had a nice chat with a woman and her husband for about ten minutes before she finally walked off, saying, "Well, I don't have any money." On the other hand, there was the woman who said, "Oh, it's funny? I'll buy it." A man stopped by to tell me that one of the vendors outside had a winged pig built out of a propane tank, but I never got to see it.

Thanks to the inspiration of Carter Jefferson and no small amount of work by him, Ruth Douillette, Gary Presley and Yours Truly, The Internet Review of Books has launched. We plan to publish a wide range of thoughtful reviews to help you, dear reader, find books worth your valuable time. We're rather pleased with what we've done in this first issue, and we plan to get bigger and better from month to month.

By the way, we four are all members of the Internet Writing Workshop, a terrific online place for writers of all skill levels. If you're a writer, check it out.

Pigs do fly

Here is a Halloween hay bale in some scary part of Texas.

We’ve made a couple of trips to Austin recently to see our son, a recent emigre from Boston. On our way home last month, we stopped for lunch at a roadside restaurant where I noticed that they had locally published books for sale at the counter. The boss wasn’t in, so I emailed her when we got home, proposing that she offer my novel for sale as well. What a delight when she promptly replied that she’d take a whole carton—26 copies—which I promised to deliver on my next trip through town. So I delivered them this week, along with an invoice.

Later that same day, we drove through Johnson City, the boyhood home of LBJ, where I sold another seven to a gift shop. What drew me to the place was the banner on the side of the building. The proprietor said she'd been told pigs would fly when she started her own business, so she proudly announced to the world that pigs do fly.

All told, I sold 34 copies over the weekend. It feels good.

The Denton Writer’s League had me as a guest speaker at the local library on Saturday. Denton is a small city north of Fort Worth with an appealing downtown area and a good-sized modern library, the Emily Fowler. My audience was small and receptive, not to mention kind enough to treat me to a local Chinese buffet.

By the way, in case you think these trips are little spins around the block, prepare to be disabused. Las Cruces to Austin is about a 1300-mile round trip. And Austin to Denton is another 450 there and back.

Did I mention that Texas is a big state? Believe it, y’all.

Writing practice

Our Mesilla Valley Writers met today, and the speaker, Susan Long, presented us with a brief exercise. We were to pick out a photo or postcard from a stack and write a brief story based on the picture. I happened to pick a postcard with an old photo of a swimming pool surrounded by lots of sunbathers. There were a few tall palms, and I guessed the photo to be from the 1940s or 50s. The large pool was empty except for one person in the middle. The idea was to scratch out whatever we could in ten minutes. This was my take:

We all stood aghast as the body floated in the swimming pool. The gunshot had seemed to come from nowhere. It seemed just fantastic luck that the victim was the evil maitre d' whose repellent squid soup had so recently brought us all such gastric distress. We were all innocent of the deed, but on reflection we all wished to buy the killer a margarita.

Lord, that's bad writing. It was fun, though, and the most creativity I've shown in days.

Southwest scenes

Part of the Organ Mountains, within sight of Las Cruces, New Mexico. Nearby, a highway rises through a mountain pass and descends toward the White Sands missile range and the White Sands National Monument. That’s not my house; would that it were.

A few weeks ago, we drove with friends to White Sands to watch a balloon festival. Hundreds of people showed up, only to learn that the wind was too strong—and blowing in the direction of the nearby mountains. The children didn‘t seem to mind the event's cancellation, because they got to climb and slide on the soft gypsum dunes. They often use plastic sleds.



A daisy outside the T or C Public Library, which hosted a book signing for me. T or C is the area's shorthand for Truth or Consequences, which renamed itself in honor of an old television program. T or C used to be known as Hot Springs.



The long, lonely road from Marathon to Fort Stockton, Texas. Most of the road looks just like this: straight and empty. Behind me were a fence, a field, and a small family of longhorns. Dad’s picture is in the previous blog entry.



Crape myrtle in bloom, Austin, Texas.

A drive through south Texas

We recently took the long way from Las Cruces to Austin, heading south to Alpine and Marathon and the Davis Mountains. In Marathon we stayed at the old Gage Hotel, dating back more than a century. Floors creaked, the bedroom door barely closed let alone locked, and the floor had a common bathroom down the hall—unless you paid extra, as we did. We had no television and no telephone, and across the street, freight trains rumbled through the night on an hourly basis.

The next morning, we drove the lonely road up to Fort Stockton. Often we’d see no other humans for long periods. But there were hawks and eagles, deer crossing the road and leaping a fence, and a family of longhorns.

Great review

Didn't win the Author of the Year award given this year by the Friends of the Branigan Memorial Library. Ah, well. But in their awards program, they published this review:

"When Pigs Fly is a fast paced, action-oriented quest. Better still it's funny, laugh out loud funny. Bob Sanchez has created a very humorous tale of mis-adventure, sparkling with unique and believable characters. It is packed with plot twists, humor and a picture of the great Southwest. Once you start reading When Pigs Fly, you will not want to put it down until the last page."

Back yard rose

As I sat in the chaise supposedly intent on reading Bless Me, Ultima, my eyes wandered out the window, past the doves and finches scrabbling for seed around the feeder, and settled on this fine blossom. I read a few more pages and then tucked a bookmark inside the book. On went my shoes, out came my camera, out I trotted. Tonight, Anaya's fine novel waits patiently on the chaise.

The framing effect is thanks to Paint Shop Pro version 8.

Tonight I learned that I didn't win the author of the year award I'd hoped for. That's disappointing, but I'll just have to get on with another project.

A radio interview and more

This week I interviewed on the telephone with Toni Child for The World of Publishing. Toni was subbing for Jeannette Cezanne, aka Dr. J., and we had quite a good time, with the hour of live broadcast just zipping by. Sometime next week the link to the recording will be available, and I will post it. Our conversation ranged over various aspects of the self-publishing process, with some emphasis on my own book.

I'm under consideration for the Doña Ana County Author of the Year award for my novel. This week I received a letter telling me that the committee has decided, but they apparently announce that decision at a September 16 luncheon. This area has some excellent writers, but maybe there is a chance for me. Wouldn't it be sweet irony to win with a novel that a comparable organization (Friends of the Library) in Alamogordo thought unsuitable for a public reading?

There's also a contest sponsored by the El Paso Writer's League for members only, and I am entering 20 pages of an old mystery that I'd slaved over but didn't publish.

Lately I haven't done much new writing. Today we headed up to the mountains of Cloudcroft where the temperature was 72 vs. 96 at home. The first photo shows that we're no longer in the desert!


Couldn't resist this one:


And this is in downtown Cloudcroft:

"Don't let anyone stop you from writing."

One of the nicer venues for selling books in Las Cruces is Coas Books in the downtown pedestrian mall, particularly on a Saturday morning when shoppers wander in from the twice-weekly Farmer's Market. They sell a mix of used and new books, and are hospitable to local authors. The owner, Mike Beckett, sets up a table by the entrance to maximize the author's exposure.

Today I set up shop there for the third time and had a good day chatting with dozens of folks and selling a half dozen copies of When Pigs Fly. Early on, a stranger stopped by to say she'd already read the book, loved it, and planned to read it again. No sale for me this time, but the compliment was satisfying. It took nearly an hour to get my first sale of the day, but business improved. Some people picked up the book, asked about the price, and said they couldn't afford it. Many folks come into Coas looking for bargains and finding them. There were plenty of people saying they'd "think about it," and I'd send them away with a bookmark to remember me by. Maybe I'll meet them again; sometimes, the people who buy from me have heard about the book a few times before.

Plenty of people just walked on by the table, giving me the chance to just watch them. A very large number of folks down here, men and women alike, have tattoos. Young men in shorts with purple art on their calves, arms, necks -- young women with flowers decorating their shoulders or just below their collarbones, sometimes well below. The weather gets warm down here -- mid-90s today -- and maybe the resultant bare skin encourages the body art that seems so common here. It seems generational, though; tats and wrinkles don't go together often.

Getting people's attention required me to be active, though some folks walked right up to my table. Others would look at my display and walk on by. Whether they stopped or not, I'd always try to make eye contact and say hello. If they showed the slightest interest, I'd say, "It's a humorous crime caper." (Pause.) "It's gotten great reviews everywhere except in Alamogordo." That typically raised an eyebrow or two. They'd look at the book and then at me, then ask "Why?" Then we had the makings of a conversation. "Well, I sent chapter one to the Friends of the Library," I'd say, "and it starts out with the villain. They objected that the villain has bad moral character and uses bad language, and that readers in Alamogordo wouldn't like it."

At this point, much eye rolling ensued. Many folks knew about Alamogordo's reputation (though I'm still not sure how to characterize the city myself). Yes, that's Alamogordo, they'd say. One gentleman who bought my book shook my hand and said on his way out the door, "Don't let anyone stop you from writing."

Speaking at SouthWest Writers

Nancy and I drove the 225 miles to Albuquerque Friday in anticipation of my Saturday talk at SouthWest Writers. We treated ourselves to a nice room at the Marriott and took an enjoyable tram ride to the summit of Sandia Peak. This photo from the back of the tram shows the city below:

And here is the tram, which travels 2.7 miles and climbs about 4,000 feet:



The talk the next day seems to have been a success. SouthWest Writers is a large and congenial group with over 600 members, of whom over 100 were there to listen to me. The title of my presentation was "Publishing Your Pride and Joy," which focused on self-publishing and subsidy publishing. Earlier in the week I'd prepared a six-page handout and run off 110 copies, which turned out to be not quite enough. I'd practiced my talk over and over again, and it never came out the same way twice, but the practice got me through the real thing nicely.

BANNED IN ALAMOGORDO!

A while back, I contacted the Friends of the Library in Alamogordo about doing a reading of When Pigs Fly. My initial query was greeted with interest, but then their program chair read the first chapter of the novel on my website. Afterward, I received the following email:

Bob, After reading the first chapter of your book, I do not think the Friends of the Library would be a good sponsor of a reading of your book. Because of Diet Cola's language and lack of moral character, members of the group would not be interested in his "adventures" or "misadventures". I cannot think of any other group who might sponsor a reading and I regret that your book does not fit the criteria for our group. ______, Program Chairman

This is from the city where in 2001 a minister held a public burning of Harry Potter books. Maybe since I missed that event, I can arrange for the good reverend to purchase a couple hundred copies of my book for a special burning. Why should only big-name authors get all the attention? I would happily pay for the gasoline.

I am honored to join the ranks of authors who have written unacceptable works.

Speaking of self-publishing

Twelve days and counting; will it be terror or triumph? Public speaking is one of those great betes noires of human existence. Which do you fear more, a terrorist attack, or standing in front of a group of strangers and giving a talk? For some people, it's a close call. On the last night of one of my business courses many years ago, I had to present my project in front of class. Every molecule in my body felt like it would shake loose in a separate direction-God, the fear.

On August 4, Southwest Writers will allow me, the world's leading authority on nothing at all, to speak to an estimated assemblage of 100 to 110 of their members in Albuquerque. The topic will be "Publishing Your Pride and Joy," and here's the pitch:

"When should you consider self-publishing, and what does the term mean, anyway? In this talk you will learn about print on demand (POD), self-publishing versus subsidy publishing, and the advantages and pitfalls of the do-it-yourself approach. The speaker will use his own experience with iUniverse as a case study, freely sharing the lessons he has learned."

The schedule says it'll last two hours, though the talk itself will likely be less than half that, with the floor open to questions thereafter. In my nightmares, the first question will be, "Why are you wasting my valuable Saturday morning?"

My scant experience in public speaking is mixed, really. Somewhat unexpectedly, I am comfortable with public readings and answering questions about my book. My tentative conclusion is that a high comfort level with the material is the key to reducing anxiety about public speaking. It is (fingers crossed here) all in the preparation.

So how to prepare? This week I'll be working on an outline and practicing sections of my talk. My wife knows well after lo, our forty-two years together, that I tend to go off and talk to myself, and she will hear lots of that in the next week or so. I'm counting on lots of mini-rehearsals to carry the day.

Ideally, it would be nice to speak without notes, but that might be a tad ambitious. I hope to have some solid handouts - "Don't worry about taking notes, folks, 'cause it's all in the handouts." We'll see.

By the way, they'll not only sell my book for me (for a $1 commission) but they'll pay a small honorarium. How cool!

Remembering Larry

My brother Larry died ten years ago tomorrow, July 21, 1997. I no longer think of him every day, but his birth month of March and death month of July always bring back memories. Every year on March 1, he used to breeze over to Mom's house and recite, "The stormy March is come at last!" He loved to make people laugh, and he did it with ease. He would phone me to chat, and then when we were through talking, he would invariably say, "Hey, thanks for calling." He loved to read but had little use for formal education. Most of his jobs consisted of manual labor, and he did tree work for many years, generally freelance work without the highest regard for safety standards. One time in the 70s he nearly dropped an enormous pine tree on me; if I hadn't dived out of the way at the last second, it would have killed me. On another occasion, one of his co-workers allowed a large tree branch to hit him in the head. It was one of the few times I'd known Larry to wear a safety helmet; I saw him in his hospital bed that evening. His entire head was purple, and he had a hairline fracture in his face.

One of his safer jobs, and probably his favorite, was working as a guard at the county house of correction. I liked asking him, "How's life in the can?" He lost his job once because an inmate accused him of brutality during a scuffle. I never learned what really happened, but the Lowell Sun covered the incident with a banner headline, mentioned Larry by name in the opening graf, and declared him guilty. Months later, the county reinstated him, but he never forgave the newspaper, which he henceforth called the Lowell Scum.

Larry and his wife took on the burden of raising several of their grandchildren. He loved hiking and fishing, and did his best to instill those interests in his grandkids. On the evening before he died, Larry reminded me that he was taking two grandsons, 8 and 10 if I recall correctly, with him to climb the 5,000-foot Mount Lafayette in New Hampshire. They made it to a high ridge a short distance from the summit and and close to an AMC hut. Larry stopped to take in the splendid view while the boys walked on a few yards. When they looked back, he had collapsed.

That evening, the telephone woke me. I had an unlisted number at the time, and the operator was calling to say that someone was trying to reach me and claimed it was an emergency. Trudy had forgotten my number and couldn't get it from the phone company. But when we finally spoke, her sobbing message hit me like a sledgehammer to the chest. Nancy held me for hours after that as I struggled to breathe normally again.

At the wake, I met one of Larry's former supervisors at the jail, a tall, strapping fellow in uniform with lots of dignity and bearing--I wish I could remember his name. He recalled a night shift where he walked in on Larry, who had fallen asleep on the job, his head on his duty desk. "Larry!" the boss said. "What the hell are you doing?" Larry sat right up, opened his eyes, and said, "Oh, I was just praying." That was typical Larry; no one could stay mad at him, and he even caused us to laugh at his wake.

Years later, his eldest daughter Lisa went to work at her job as a department store supervisor. She said she felt ill, went into a back room to rest, and was shortly found on the floor in a coma from which she never recovered. She was 39.

Larry would have been 70 now. Our mom, who outlived him by six years, liked to tell me, "I miss that rascal." So do I.

Self-Publishing - Ten Great Tips to Make Your Book Shine

We self-publishers fight a lonely battle, finding readers for our wit and wisdom. We write alone, and now we sell alone and search for ways to market our work. How do we entice readers to open their wallets?

Those questions are often premature. Before asking how you’re going to cope with all those book orders, you need to make sure you have a quality product. So here are ten tips to make your book, fiction or non-fiction, the best it can be.

#1 Use a spell-checker, but only as a first line of defense. Then you look for misspellings the spell-checker won’t catch, such as then/than, to/too/two, tail/tale, or its/it’s.

#2 Read your manuscript critically, as though you weren’t the author. Some things to check include complete chapters, well-organized paragraphs, complete sentences, and accurate punctuation.

#3 Be consistent. If you capitalize a word once in the text, chances are you always want to capitalize it. Decide whether you want one space or two at the end of a sentence, and stick with it. Never change your font or type size without good reason. If your work consists of more than one file, be sure that every file is formatted identically.

#4 Get honest, competent critiques. Leave your mother and spouse alone; your family has better things to do than fawn over your work. Avoid critiques from anyone who has an emotional stake in making you happy, because that isn’t what you need. The Internet Writing Workshop (http://internetwritingworkshop.org) is an excellent source of constructive, informed criticism.

#5 Use your judgment. Even good critiquers may give you conflicting advice. Remember that it’s your project, so the final decision is always yours.

#6 Refer to a style manual such as the Chicago Manual of Style, which is the most widely accepted guide for standard writing.

#7 Make a style sheet. A novel or other large manuscript can involve lots of small stylistic decisions by the author. Keep a pad of paper with a running list things you don’t want to have to keep looking up. For example, a cartoon I liked showed a bank robber writing a note and asking the teller, “Is holdup one word or two?” Think of words you often misspell or don’t know how to capitalize, and write them correctly on the list.

#8 Follow your publisher’s guidelines religiously even if they don’t insist.

#9 Repeat tip #2.

#10 Review the publisher’s proof carefully. When you receive the publisher’s proof isn’t the time to look for typos; you should have done that already. At this stage, the publisher may even charge you if you fix many of your own mistakes at this stage. Instead, look for their errors. Are illustrations in their proper places? Are pages and chapters numbered properly? Look at every page’s overall appearance. Is each one properly aligned? Is any text missing?

If you follow these simple (but not always easy) tips, I can’t guarantee best-sellerdom for your book, but I can promise you this: Your book will be far superior to the vast majority of self-published books. You will have a quality product.

(This article originally appeared in EZineArticles.)

Back by popular demand...

My fan base, Ruth Douillette, has challenged me to get off my lazy butt and blog again. She and Carter roped me into joining them as admins on the Practice section of the Internet Writing Workshop, which if you are a writer and haven't seen it, you must visit. I've made all the predictable jokes about the pay scale--my pay doubles daily and all that--but it's an honor to join a doughty band of volunteers who help make the list run smoothly, productively, and flame-free.

Ruth asks that I not use my IWW duties as an axcuse for failure to blog. I won't. A bad cold is my alibi du jour, and I am milking the sucker. All my book-marketing tasks I have put off 'til next week, when my telephone voice has been restored--who the hell wants a phone call from a frog?

My laryngeal discomfort did not prevent my appearance at a book fair 0n Saturday, sponsored by the wonderful people of the El Paso Writer's League. My friend Maria Kruse took the photo below of me reading from When Pigs Fly to the assembled throng, which is something of a lie. I was scheduled to read, but it was getting late, the vendors were beginning to pack up, and my voice box wasn't up to the task anyway. So Maria consented to take some photos of what I'd like to have happened: me wowing the literati.

See that lady? She's wondering what I'm doing, talking with the microphone off.

So my natural sloth finally has just cause, and for the next few days I shall take full advantage. I have my wife, our cats, our chaise, and my Robitussin. Life is good, misery notwithstanding.

Here's a photo of George on the chaise with a book I'm reviewing.

Checking in from Indy

We arrived tonight in Indianapolis from Buffalo, having logged around 5,000 miles on our trip so far. Much of what we saw is lovely farm country, like southern Indiana; no pix, since we've been single-minded about covering lots of ground, and our cameras are probably buried under a ton of junk in the car anyway. We're anxious to be home now, and will be there on the 4th if we keep up this pace.

Here's a photo from the other day when I met with Carter Jefferson (the handsome fellow on the right) and Ruth Douillette.

Meeting friends and heading home

Not often does a person get to meet the folks he corresponds with online, but I recently had the pleasure of meeting Carter Jefferson and Ruth Douillette near the end of my vacation in Massachusetts. They are—surprise! just as nice in person as they are in their emails in the IWW.

Writing habits don’t change easily. My new novel is not writing itself, alas, nor have I put more than a couple thousand new words into it during this family vacation. Tomorrow we leave Cape Cod for Vermont, the home of Nancy’s 101-year-old grandmother. Barbara is tiny, blind and frail now, but her mind is as strong as ever. We have known each other for well over 40 years, and I can attest that she is a genuine lady. When she heard about my novel, she had a friend order a copy from her local bookstore; she wouldn’t hear of accepting a copy as a gift if she could boost my sales instead.

After a day visiting her, we’ll begin our trip home in earnest. Our plan is to skirt the Great Lakes, pass through Kansas and Colorado, and drop into New Mexico from the north. We expect to arrive home on July 5, or July 6 if we get lazy. It’s been a fine vacation, but Nancy and I are both ready to have it done now. I suspect that our travel companions, George and Gracie, will also be happy for familiar turf. When Nancy started cleaning the big carrier the cats travel in, G & G hot-pawed it out of sight. Gracie quickly forgot her worries and wandered back to greet us, but not George. We began to worry that he might have slipped out, which would have been serious, but we eventually we found him hiding under the bed.

Here is an old photo of the cats who rule our lives (Gracie is on the left):



Once we’re home, I have to figure out how to improve book sales. I’ve had a couple of radio interviews, have been featured on the cover of a (small) literary magazine, received glowing book reviews, and so on. My online sales are insignificant. At book signings, my sales to date have ranged from two to six copies. I do have a couple of upcoming events where I expect to sell a good deal more, but hand-selling won’t move copies quickly.

Wow. What a whiner. The fact is, having a book in print—a good book, one that makes people laugh, is a lot of fun.

A month on old Cape Cod

We’re on Cape Cod in Massachusetts for the month of June, 2500 miles and a week’s drive from our New Mexico home. Our rented cottage sits on quiet Buzzard’s Bay, where we could hide undiscovered for a very long time. There are no superhighways, no police sirens, no pimped-up hot rods with thundering stereos. But there is peace, and there is time to write. On many days, a stiff northerly breeze creates whitecaps on the bay, which I can see from where I sit. Now and then, a small recreational boat putts past.



We are in an old carriage house next door to the lovely Federal-style home that our landlord and her husband live in. Our place is comfortable, although the dimensions are such that I’ve bumped into shelves and cabinets more than once. The sharp pain has taught me to shuffle around the house with more care. Our Bengal cats, George and Gracie, walk through the fireplace and then leave gray paw prints on the white bookshelves. Nancy cleans up behind them, but initially she worried about the damage the cats would do to the assortment of knickknacks on the shelves. Our landlord, a nice lady, assures us that nothing is valuable.




Rhododendrons are in bloom, and some of the bushes in the neighborhood appear to be ten feet high. This is also a friendly environment for roses, especially the wild ragusa that I have always associated with Cape Cod.



Our landlord’s advertisement specified Internet access, but they only have it in their house. The wireless is kaput until her son can come and fix it; perhaps I could troubleshoot the problem—maybe it’s as simple as a loose connection—but I don’t intend to. Nancy and I bring our laptops to the Falmouth Public Library now and then, and we check our emails. Yesterday, we showed up when the library was closed, so we sat in our car and used the library’s wireless signal. It worked fine.

We had lived in Massachusetts for nearly 60 of our years (over 40 of them together), so our trip back here from New Mexico is a good test of how much homesickness we feel. So it may sound odd to say that while I have always liked Massachusetts and been proud to live here, I don’t miss it at all. Today the skies are blue, but for twelve of our first 14 days in this cottage we had heavy, dismal clouds and harsh winds. Our landlord’s elderly husband told the tired joke about New England weather, that if you don’t like it, just wait a minute, it will change. (He told it three times in a half hour the other night, because his memory seems to be slipping.) Anyway, the weather can change quickly around here, but not necessarily for the better.