Three radically different novels

Over the past year, I have uploaded three radically-different novels, OOOEELIE, THE HERO, and THE TRUCKERS, onto the web primarily via Kindle, Amazon, and Smashwords.
Writers often tend to tell the same story in different forms in their train of books. Obviously, I have successfully avoided that dip in the road:
OOOEELIE’s protagonist is an Airedale, the reincarnation of a canine creature on an interstellar journey who crash-landed on earth tens of thousands of years ago. Ever since, as in all good dog stories, Oooeelie has been trying to find a way home to his planet in the Sirius (Dog Star) system. He has come down to modern times through a chain of lives as a dog with two natures: the superior being and the animal.
Ryan Garrity, whose dream of a career as a professional soldier was shattered on a battlefield in Korea, is the protagonist of THE HERO. Ryan is a bookstore operator, who suffers from the guilt of failing to have expressed gratitude to the soldier who courageously saved his life. After returning to civilian life Ryan’s savior is killed saving a young woman from an onrushing subway train in Queens. The plot of THE HERO spins around Ryan’s effort told against a background of mysticism, arrogant duplicity and murder to determine why the soldier was denied a Congressional Medal of Honor.
THE TRUCKERS is a novelistic sequel to my nonfiction book, COLLISION, about Ron Carey’s successful campaign to capture the presidency of the International Brotherhood of Teamsters from the union’s old guard. There are two protagonists in THE TRUCKERS: Tommy Kerrigan and Helmut Knall who are uneasy allies dedicated to transforming the nation’s largest union, the Truckers International Union, into a progressive force capable of dragging the American labor movement out of the quagmire that is sucking it under. Tommy emerges as a legendary hero experiencing great triumphs and tragedy. Helmut is the unwavering force behind the Truckers rank and file reform movement.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

Cuban Pork for Next Thanksgiving

Every Thanksgiving for the past decade or more, my family has gathered around the dining room table for our annual Thanksgiving feast: Cuban Pork.
I had lost my taste for turkey and had been searching for a substitute roast when I came across a recipe for Cuban Pork in one of the cooking magazines to which I subscribe. I’m not sure which one. When my daughter, Carol, recently asked me for the recipe, I did what everyone does in search of information, I turned to the internet.
I found the exact same recipe I have been using on MASSrecipes.com. Recipe:
Pierna De Puerco Asada (Roasted Fresh Ham)
SERVES 10- 15
Unsmoked (fresh) ham makes a delicious roast pork.
1 15-18 lb. fresh ham on the bone
Juice of 12 bitter oranges or 8 sweet oranges and 4 limes
1 head garlic, cloves separated, peeled, and minced
Pinch dried oregano
Salt

Trim off ham's outer skin and score fat about 1/2 inch deep in a diamond
pattern. Put ham in a roasting pan and set aside. Mix juice, garlic, and
oregano in a bowl and season to taste with salt. Reserving 1/2 cup, pour
juice mixture over ham, rubbing garlic into scored fat. Cover with plastic
wrap and refrigerate overnight.

Preheat oven to 325 degrees. Remove plastic wrap, then bake ham, basting occasionally with reserved juice mixture, until internal temperature reaches
170° on a meat thermometer, about 5 hours. Allow to rest 20 minutes before carving.

Note: We serve the Cuban Pork with black beans and rice. My recipe for the black beans:
Three cans of Bush’s black beans; two cans of chopped tomatoes; three packets of Goya spices that is “Sazon Goya sin achiote”; chop up two onions and two peppers.
Sauté the onions and pepper briefly. Add rest of the ingredients. Bring to a boil and simmer for 15 minutes.
Best consumed with a pinot noir or a dry white wine. My sons prefer beer. If you can find it, try Polar Beer—once brewed in Cuba, now Venezuela.
I fell in love with Cuban food back in 1971 when the Newsday Investigative Team spent three months in the Miami area as part of an investigation of President Richard Nixon’s pal, Bebe Rebozo.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

The frightening future of newspaper production workers

A frightening glimpse of the future for newspaper press operators, distributors, truck drivers, deliverers, paper manufacturers and ink makers surged into my consciousness while I lying in a hospital bed a couple of weeks ago. It was a Monday, a day I always read Paul Krugman’s column in the New York Times. My traditional paper version of the New York wasn’t available so I picked up my Kindle and purchased that day’s copy of the Times in electronic form.
As I read the Times, I realized that the Kindle edition is easier to read than the paper-print version and that a grim future is near at hand for newspaper production workers. As more and more Kindles and similar e-reading devices are sold, the market for e-versions of the New York Times, Newsday, the Chicago Tribune, the Los Angeles Times, etc. will expand exponentially.
Pushing the expansion will be the price, ease of delivery, and the green reality. Cost: Currently, I pay $46.80 a month for the Times paper edition, while the Kindle version is $14.06 a month. Delivery: Lately, I have been enduring such lousy delivery service—no paper on five mornings on a five-week period—and wet papers almost every time it rained. An e-edition of Newsday for example appeared on screen within four seconds. The Greening Reality: Every other week, I fill two huge baskets with copies of the New York Times and Newsday to be recycled.
Just as e-books barely existed five years ago and now are taking a significant share of the books market, the growth of e-newspapers is inevitable. With that growth will come the undermining of the bargaining power of the newspaper unions, which enabled their members to enjoy decent standards of living.
Journalists will still have jobs, but the outlook for those production and distribution workers is frightening.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

THE TRUCKERS novel

My latest novel, THE TRUCKERS, is available as a paperback on Amazon.com and as an e-book via Amazon’s Kindle and Smashwords.com. There is no hiding the root of THE TRUCKERS: the decades-long struggle by Teamsters for a Democratic Union (TDU) to reform the International Brotherhood of Teamsters. There are two protagonists in the novel: Tommy K and Helmut Knall. Tommy K is a daring and successful leader of both his New York local and the Truckers International Union. He flashes across the union firmament like a comet, is consumed in the process and emerges as a legendary figure. Helmut can be compared to an infantryman, an eternal soldier, who moves relentlessly and fearlessly towards the seemingly impossible goal of transforming the Truckers into a progressive union. And of course, there is the woman from Colorado.

A suggestion: my novel, THE TRUCKERS, has been described as a fun read. It is serious and tragic too. Try it free on Kindle, Smashwords, Barnes and Noble, or Apple.

TWO YEARS OF SHINGLES

Yesterday on the eve of my second anniversary of the shingles affliction in and around my left eye, I walked up to my local drug store to discover a sign in the window offering the shingles vaccine. I was happy to see the vaccine, which was somewhat difficult to get only two years ago, now broadly available.
I said to the clerk at the counter where I was picking up a prescription, “I am a poster child for the shingles vaccine. I’ve have gone through two years of suffering with shingles.”
After two years with shingles, there is little to report other than to say that nothing much has changed: the itching, aching, unpleasant sensations including a feeling of swelling continue 24 hours a day at anywhere from a mild to a significantly-irritating level around my left eye including the eyelid, eyebrow, forehead and scalp.
When the feelings get really bad, I take Advil or Tylenol, which takes off the edge but doesn’t completely relieve the symptoms. I find that taking hot baths and applying hot compresses once or twice a day helps too.
For those with the continuing onslaught of shingles, I offer my sympathy. For anyone 60 or older who has thus far escaped this minor plague, I suggest getting the shingles vaccine, Zostavax. This is the only shingles vaccine available at the moment. The vaccine gives the recipient a 50-50 chance of escaping shingles. Based on my personal experience, I would say those are good odds.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

BROWSING FOR FREE ENOVELS

In my relentless search for free novels in the past, I had an in-person browsing technique that provided me with some fabulous reading. I would pick a letter from A to Z, go to the fiction section of my local library (Half Hollow Hills Community Library), and go along the shelf with the authors’ names beginning with the chosen letter, say P for example.
I would read page 84 of the novels that looked interesting to determine if I should take the book home to continue reading.
The modern library with hundreds of thousands, or perhaps millions, of free novels available, just like the community libraries of old, lies within the confines of the world wide web.
The selection process can be the same or a variation on my approach. Some of the sites where you can find free or modestly-priced eBooks: Smashwords (www.smashwords.com), obooko (www.obooko.com), Jennifer Armstrong’s Free-online-novels (www.free-online-novels.com); Adam Decker’s onlinenovels.net; Online novels (online-novels.blogspot.com); and Wattpad (www.wattpad.com).

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Glenn Beck as prophet

Glenn Beck went on stage at the Lincoln Memorial Saturday (Aug. 28, 2010) in the role of prophet before an audience of 87,000 to 500,000 fans, an unknown number of whom are true believers. Beck told the gathering: “America today begins to turn back to God. For too long, this country has wandered in darkness."
In inflating his role from television/cable/radio performer into one entrusted by God to bring about a new American religious revival, Beck fulfills the vision of Budd Schulberg in “A Face in the Crowd” (1957) in which the leading character, Larry (Lonesome) Rhodes, played by Andy Griffith, blossoms from an insignificant wandering small-town entertainer into a television personality with a massive, hypnotized following.
Lonesome Rhodes’ downfall resulted from the foolish mistake (repeated by so many politicians since) of laughing in the presence what he thought was a dead mike at his audience as a bunch of hooples.
On the other hand, Beck’s bubble may never burst, instead lifting him ever upward towards heaven or the heavens.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Obscure Novelists like me

I ordered a Kindle today (Aug. 23, 2010) with the intention of using it to review novels by obscure indie writers like me. Two years ago, I set out to review such novels buying paper versions or printing them from online sites but only managed to do a couple before being hit by shingles in my left eye, which ended that undertaking for over a year.
Unfortunately, several of those novels proved to be dreadfully unreadable. Since I have a policy of only reviewing obscure novels that I enjoyed or could recommend, I didn’t bother writing about those.
I assume having a Kindle will make the reading of obscure novels a lot easier; I plan to focus my obscure novelist effort on free eBooks or those costing .99 cents or thereabouts.
Of course, I’ll continue to read and review the traditional novels that come into my possession either through purchase or gift. In the case of the traditionals, I usually focus on a particular aspect of the book—a great character, an interesting plotline, etc.—rather than providing a full fledged review since the usual newspaper, magazine and online reviewers are fulfilling that need.
As with everything, I Googled various takes on obscure novels to see what others might have written. The Googley results: 57 hits in “best obscure novels;” 24,000 in “obscure novels;” and 985 “obscure novelists.”

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Substantially wrong

On Aug. 21, 2010, in a front page story about the upcoming film, “The Social Network” two New York Times writers offered staggeringly erroneous conclusions about the substance of two great films: “The Godfather” and “Network.”
The Times story said, “If ‘The Godfather’ was about family and ‘Network’ about rage, ‘The Social Network’ appears to be mostly about emptiness.”
I wondered if the writers had seen or thought about either "The Godfather" or "Network." So here are my corrections of their analyses:
“The Godfather” (1972) is about a criminal warlord, a Machiavellian figure who has made himself a prince of the underworld through murder, bribery, and political skills. Don Corleone is not the head of a family, but the leader of a coterie of vicious, lethal, cruel outlaws.
Paddy Chayefsky’s masterpiece, “Network” (1976) deals not with rage, but forecasts the corporatization, the corruption, the dumbing down of a significant segment of today’s television and cable shows that pretend to be delivering news, but in reality are shallow entertainments and political propaganda.
I hope that “The Social Network,” inspired by Facebook, turns out to be worth watching for substance rather than emptiness. So many films of modern times are nothing but special effects and chase scenes.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

WHO IS LISBETH SALANDER?

Lisbeth Salander is Cool Hand Luke, Jesse James, Dillinger, Robin Hood, Bill Munny (the gunman in the “Unforgiven”). Salander, the heroine of Stieg Larsson’s trilogy, is a modern outlaw (or should I say outsider) of epic proportions who uses modern e-weapons (computers and i-phones) with devastating skill.
The magnificent character that Larsson has created is who lifts his three thrillers (“The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo”, “The Girl Who Played with Fire”, and “The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest”) far above the pack of this genre that pours into book stores year in and year out.
Of course, the three books are really one novel. The first and third books propel the reader; the middle book, “The Girl Who Played with Fire”, drags, but is necessary to consume, no matter how disappointedly, to understand the final book.
Should Salander serve as a role model, girls and young women will aspire to be bi-sexual, unforgiving almost predatory avengers, fearless and unbelievably effective in a fight against any man no matter how fierce, totally self-confident, capable of financing their lives by stealing from the unworthy rich, and most of all super hackers.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

THE CREATIVE IMPULSE

When my sisters, Gloria and Miriam, came over for dinner recently, I gave each a copy of my science fiction novel, OOOEELIE. After we had our goat cheese on slices of baguette; lamb tagine on flavored rice, red wine and water, and finally a strawberry tart with whipped cream accompanied by Scottish tea, Gloria held up OOOEELIE and asked, “Why do you write novels.” I responded, “For the same reason poets write poetry, artists paint, and sculptors sculpt.”
Gloria didn’t ask the follow up question and I didn’t offer what would have been the follow up response: What prompts the creative impulse. The answer lies in man emulating god; the desire to be godlike, to be a creator. How else to explain cave art, early jewelry, tattooing, the stone-age Venus figurines, the first musicians, the story tellers around the fire? From the very start, after finding food enough to fill their bellies, men and women have been driven to create.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

THE HERO, a mystery

THE HERO, a mystery, is my latest novel to go online. It is available on Kindle, as a paperback on Amazon, and as an e-book on Smashwords and Obooko.
The novel centers on two mysteries: the source of artificial courage and a homicide. THE HERO, set in the mid-1950s, involves the Korean War, cowardice, artificial courage, heroics, the Medal of Honor, a shaman, homicide, a mystery writer, a relentless detective, and a book store on the East Side of Manhattan.
It is worth reading. Of course, that is the author’s opinion.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

OLD FRIEND

I was 21 before I had the joy of seeing my first poem in print. My grandson, Cole, is 12. At that age I certainly didn’t display the talent this poem of his reveals.
I’m sure the casual reader won’t experience the pleasure I do in reading this account of our baking adventures:

Old Friend By: Cole Hattler

My old friend is my grandfather
We visit him at least once a year
We are always coming and going
Whether it is raining or snowing
But the thing we do the most at his place
Is to gather in the kitchen to sit down and bake
We bake cake and cookies
And eat them for dinner
Often times we will have some company
Who will always say our cakes look lovely
They decide it’s time to take a bite
And tell us all that is tastes just right
My old friend and I are so very proud
You even heard what our guest shouted aloud
My old friend and I, we get up early the next morning
So we may plan what we will bake next!

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

ON BP OPENING PANDORA’S BOX

BP on a greedy quest
Gave us an oily pest

Oh tell me BP, can it really be true
Oil in the marshes is everlasting goo



(Note to readers: Feel free to add your own BP/Pandora’s Box couplet in the comment box)

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

WHY I WRITE

Back in 1997 in an article on Renoir in the New York Times, Roberta Smith quoted the French pedagogue and painter Andre Lohte as having said "Great painters paint in order to learn to paint."
I wouldn't classify myself as a great writer, but a serious one. I would paraphrase Lohte by saying that serious writers learn to write by writing. And, I have never stopped learning.
Every so often, I ask myself why I write? I set out as a teenager to be a writer, starting with poetry, moving to short stories and finally in my early 20s to the novel. I am now 75 and my passion for writing has not diminished.
Early in my career, I became a journalist to support my writing habit and family and did a lot of free-lancing—mostly true detective stories—to supplement my income.
Try as I might I couldn’t get my novels published. Twice I wrote nonfiction books both to make some money and with the hope that a publisher would be so entranced that one of my unpublished novels would be transformed into a bookstore commodity. That didn’t happen.
Obviously my failure to sell a novel to a traditional publisher proves I don’t write just for money. Three of my novels are available through Kindle, Amazon, and Smashwords.
So why do I write. Any art, any pursuit of creativity is a god-like role. I found support for that hypothesis in Alexandra Sokoloff’s Screenwriting Tricks for Authors blog of Jan. 18, 2010, a perceptive critique of the Wizard of Oz, which ends with: “You are the writer. Ultimately, it’s you and the page. You are God, baby. Make your own rules.”

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

POMPEII by Robert Harris

I read this book at the end of 2003. What follows are my notes to myself.
X Jan. 1, 2004: I finished reading “Pompeii” Robert Harris’ latest novel last night. The characters, the story, and the physical and historic setting carried me along. There were two glaring false notes in the writing. The first in a scene in which the reader hears a conversation between the antagonist, Ampliatus, and a character whose identity is hidden as a device to build suspicion and suspense. That might be appropriate in a film, but not in a novel with an omniscient narrator. The second and worst false note because it is a copout comes in the conclusion of the book. The eruption of Vesuvius is set up as inescapably murderous—with the protagonist, Attilius, the acquarius, and Corelia, a girl he has risked his life to rescue, plunging themselves into the Roman water system to escape the lava, fire, and smothering ash of the volcano. Not good enough. They wouldn’t have escaped. So the author tries to present their ending as part of a myth of a man and woman who seemed to rise from the earth in escaping death from the eruption of Mount Vesuvius. Once again, Harris stepped away from the omniscient narrator to a hapless device to deal with an insoluble problem if he is to have a happy ending. So once again, I have read a book that was impressive in the process, but failed in the end.
I must say that Harris’“Fatherland” was a marvel of writing, setting and story telling. It is one of my favorite books.
“Pompeii” tells the story of Attilius, a Roman acquarius, sent to the Naples region to replace another acquarius, which is a waterworks engineer, who has disappeared. The book provides interesting detail about the Roman aqueducts and the men who maintain them. The story is set against the eruption of Mount Vesuvius and the disappearance of Pompeii under the volcano’s hot ash. There are some very shaky transitions in the book. During the course of the story, Attilius discovers a corrupt entrepreneur has murdered the missing acquarius; Attilius falls in love with the entrepreneur’s daughter; the daughter has come to hate her greedy father; and Attilius is displayed as somewhat of a superman of intellect and morality with boundless luck fostering him, saving him from death and destruction.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

SHINGLES AFTER A YEAR AND A HALF

Based on my experience what to expect after 18 months with shingles:
The shingles attack on my left eye began on Sept. 15, 2008. In the aftermath, I still have itching, aching (sometimes feeling like some one punched me in the eye, swelling, soreness, an unpleasant pressure, and numbness on my eyelid, above the eye, along the left side of my nose, on the left side of my forehead, and in the scalp. In addition, I get fatigued rather easily.
Oh, by the way, the little miseries of the aftermath are a 24-hour-a-day constant.
How have I improved? Within the past two weeks, I found I could read in bed again. I have been reading in bed for a half hour to an hour since my earliest boyhood. So I lost that pleasure for about 17 months. I have returned to limited reading, watching films again on cable, using the computer, a more restricted writing schedule, and exercise—although not as heavy as before shingles.
When this process began, my doctor told me not to expect a quick cure; that was followed a few months later with the doctor telling me to expect the aftermath to last from six months to a year. This past December, the doctor told me the aftermath probably would continue for another two to three years. That last diagnosis could be on the mark because I am 75 and people my age have been known to die in two or three years.
My great hope is to wake up one morning symptom-free. As an alternative, I would settle for diminished itching, aching, etc.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

Free e-books

Considering the issue of free e-books called to my mind a scene from a 1954 invitation to dinner at the home of Dot and El in Queens Village. Dot had been a high school classmate in upstate Binghamton of my girlfriend Ginger, now my wife.
The occasion was memorable for two reasons: for the first time in my life, I was 20, I ate spaghetti and meatballs in a tomato-based sauce. Even though I consumed pizza with gusto, I had steadfastly refused the classic spaghetti and meatballs made by my mother at home or on family outings to Italian restaurants. Crossing that culinary line plunged me into a love affair with pasta that has continued through the years.
And, the second reason: As we entered the little house in Queens Village those 55 years or so ago, the television was playing a commercial pitch that caught El’s attention. He waited until the TV offer was finished before he turned off the set and said with a smirk, “Nothing down, nothing to pay, just come in and take it away.”
El’s words bubbled to the surface of my mind a couple of years ago when I put my novel, THE DREAM DANCER, online as a free e-book. I was in search of an audience since I couldn’t get an agent willing to peddle the book to a traditional publisher. In the interim, I’ve learned that writers often offer their books free online as a stratagem to lure readers to buy their other works. So the free e-book is a good device for a writer in search of an audience and possibly paying readers.
Curious about the source of El’s immortal phrase “nothing down, nothing to pay, just come in and take it away” I Googled it. No hits with full expression, but 1,011 hits on shorter version of “nothing down nothing to pay.”
So, I now credit El as the originator of his wry remark: “Nothing down, nothing to pay, just come in and take it away.”

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

WILLIE into OOOEELIE

My latest novel, OOOEELIE, is now available as a Kindle and soon as a paperback on Amazon as well as e-books on Smashwords and obooko.
To sum up the novel: The Oooeelie Myth: A dog, the reincarnation of a canine being whose space ship crash-landed on earth tens of thousands of years ago and taught humans to speak, is still trying to find his way home to Sirius in the Twentieth Century.
The seed for the book was my admiration for courage and intelligence of my wife Ginger’s Airedale, Willie.
The role of walking Willie night and day fell to me. One of our frequent walks was to the mail box about three blocks away.
In his puppyhood, I would let Willie off the leash as I ran laps around our local park. Unfortunately, he decided to play a game of you-can’t-catch me with me. He began running off with me in pursuit and unable to catch him as would stay just beyond my reach. This would go on until he tired of the tease.
In reaction, I began leaving the leash attached to Willie while I did my running. One day, the game began as usual, but he took it to another level: he not only stayed beyond my reach, he ran off disappearing into the distance. I searched the neighborhood for him on foot and in car, then just accepted the fact that Willie was gone.
A couple of hours went by. A neighbor knocked on my door to ask: “Is that your Airedale down by the mail box”
He said he had tried to pick up the leash, but the dog bared his teeth. I trotted to the mailbox and lo and behold: Willie was sitting there patiently awaiting my arrival. It was a happy reunion.
As a result, I tied Willie to a goal post whenever I ran around the park. I usually walked a mile and half before I began running so he got plenty of exercise before being attached to the post.
I was at the other end of the park when I saw a father and son team who walked a huge Australian dog of some sort. I had heard about the dog terrorizing other dogs in the park—much to the amusement of the father and son. As I drew closer, they let their monster of an aggressive dog loose and he charged Willie.
What a mistake. Anyone who is familiar with the Airedale nature could predict what happened next. Willie tore into his attacker. The father and son had to pull him away from their dog. As I approached, the father said, “Dogs usually sit and submit when(Brutus or whatever his name was) goes after them.”
I never saw them again.
In case you wonder how I arrived at the name Oooeelie, I did so by taking the W in Willie and extending it to ooo, and the i to ee. Put together with the rest of his name, it becomes Oooeelie.
Willie died at age 14 on May 20, 2001. I buried him by the big rock in our back yard facing north (he preferred the cold and the snow) with his favorite stuffed animal, which was a soft white doll shaped like a gingerbread man, a bowl and some food; he was wrapped in the cover he usually slept on in the living room.
In death, he looked as though he were running. He looked alive, but his soul was gone. Ginger asked where I thought the spirits of animals went after they died. I have to believe they go to heaven or are reincarnated.
Everything is a piece of God so perhaps Willie returned to God.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

FOOLS CROW

FOOLS CROW by James Welch (1986)is a novel about the Blackfeet just after the Civil War when the whites were expanding into the tribe’s homeland.
Welch is a writer who creates another world; the novel is a journey from one end of the Blackfeet experience when the hero, Fools Crow, is becoming a full fledged warrior to the point when he realizes that the way of life that his people revered and enjoyed is going to expire with the whites overwhelming them and destroying their culture.
This is a book that should be taught in high schools to give students insights into Native America culture. Besides it would introduce them to James Welch, a great American writer.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.

My 99-cent novels

I recently cut the price of my three novels, OOOEELIE, THE DREAM DANCER, and THE JYNX to 99 cents on Kindle. After trying to sell them at $3.99 and $4.99, I came to accept Joe Konrath’s sage advice on A Newbie’s Guide to Publishing that “Cheap sells. Free sells even more.”
Of course, I knew all about free. The three novels are offered as free e-books on Smashwords and obooko, while they are up for sale at bargain prices on Kindle and as paperbacks on Amazon.
In reality, Joe Konrath might have saved me $500. Seeing that my three novels weren’t moving, I decided to set out to push OOOEELIE with an advertising budget of $500. Research showed me that I could place classified ads in two literary publications for three months for a total of a little more than $300.
Further research led me to Konrath and others, but he was the best leaving me convinced that paid advertising might very well be a waste of money for an author as insignificant me.
On Monday, Feb. 1, 2010, Kindle listed the books at 99 cents for the first time—and I sold a copy of THE DREAM DANCER that day. As any author knows, there is no more a joyous feeling than selling a book or I should say books. For an Indie-author like me one book excites that feeling. Maybe it takes a 100,000-book-day to stir James Patterson.

A suggestion: My novel, THE PENCIL ARTIST is available as an e-book on Smashwords, Kindle, and Barnes and Noble; as a paperback on Amazon.