Ups and Downs

An alert fellow writer in Santa Fe, Tori Shepard Warner, keeps me up to date on the New Mexico literary scene now that I've left that delightful country. Tori’s novel, Now Silence, published last year by Sunstone Press, is chock full of Santa Fe history at the time of building The Awful Atom Bombs. Talking about bombs, Tori, I don’t know if you saw the horrible review last Sunday’s Albuquerque Journal gave my Santa Fe Dreamhouse. Ouch, big time.

What should an author do about a bad review? Nothing. It hurts but what can I say? He really, really didn’t like my book. End of story. But I saved the clipping.

I had lunch with another writer last week, landscape architect Jim Chadwick whose second book, Landscapes, was a hit for several months last year. It’s witty, artful and downright gorgeous. We talked writers’ doldrums while he downed a giant hotdog and I got outside a duck leg at the local Frenchie bistro in downtown Campbell. Jim sold his book at speaking engagements and then demand dropped off and the upshot is, he’s tired of flogging it. My enthusiasm for pitching my book is also wearing thin.

It’s the Famous Person whose books sell. Unless you are Sarah Palin, in the public eye again and again because she's cute and political, even big time writers have to keep up the popular persona or they drop out of sight. Alas, writers are not, per se, famous persons. Even Jane Smiley who won the Pulitzer for A Thousand Acres and has writ other wonderful books on and beyond the NYTimes best seller lists, has to do an 11-stop coast-to-coast book tour to plug her new novel, The Georges and the Jewels . Phew! Airplanes, hotels, dinners with strangers. (Although Smiley wrote that she loves travel. Perhaps before the security lines.) No way do I want to do that. Teaching is hard work and I’m too old to begin a career as a Famous Author, Professor of Writing and National Pundit. But there is some prestige and a great pleasure in being a small time author and pundit. I am grateful for old friends revisited and new friends made.

Here’s some consolation for tired authors. I had three goals in mind with Dreamhouse. #1: save my Santa Fe memories; #2: enjoy the appreciation of my readers, however many there may be; #3: sell the story rights. So far I’m two out of three.

Next book will be an E book. See of the Albuquerque Journal gets to review that.