got jabbed yesterday afternoon, and i've had sore arms all day today, causing me to lose all my motivation and collapse in my chair, where i do minimal marketing work and don't have the motivation to do anything substantial. likewise on the house, where i swept the basement and hauled off some garbage, but did very little else. it's cold and rainy in galesburg, in spite of it's being homecoming weekend at the high school, and they had to move the pep rally inside, it was so cold and rainy. but i moved inside anyway, feeling kind of covid-ish and getting very little done.

i have done my best on my new book and it's time to face the fact that it's just not as good as i hoped. it doesn't meet rave and stunning reviews worldwide as people scoop it off the shelves. on the contrary, it will take its place among nine other collections of short stories, and be one more subject of my relentless marketing and constant attempts to get someone to pick it up. no problem, although most people would throw in the towel, i am not nearly ready to throw in the towel, although i have not been able to produce the kind of novel that would bring in that kind of acclaim. i have what i have, i do what i can do, and the world will just have to bear with me while i get reorganized and crank out something it cares about.

In fact, the fact that we sold our house in new mexico, took that huge chunk of cash, and made it disappear in lightning fashion by paying off debts like this house and the car payment, thus making our living situation easier, has made me take a deep breath and decide that now is the time to produce the things i have always wanted to produce, namely a book on my great-great grandfather (a guy born in about 1830, who served in the Civil War, and settled the plains several times), and a book about language theory. Neither of these, I expect to become best-sellers. They are on my bucket list for life, namely among the important things I want to do before I fade into a cloud of dizziness, inability to walk, etc. In a sense I'm in a hurry to finish these. I am not in a hurry to make big cash from what I write (a very difficult undertaking anyway, possibly out of my reach) so a choice has to be made.

the new book takes its place as the 27th book on my shelf, with one of them being one that i didn't actually write, but merely typed, the memoirs of another great-great grandfather. it is possible that i'll have more of these before it's over. i'm kind of into typing up old yellowed-out documents from within the genealogy files and if i find enough good material, i'll type it all up. but i could type up virtually anything that's sitting there, has demand, and is having trouble coming online with everything else. if nobody types (or scans), nothing happens, if nothing happens, it's not available. but if someone like me is in the right place at the right time, something could happen. some guy scanned all the works of plato into one volume on kindle, and he's making a fortune as we speak. he's a guy to keep track of - he's doing what i want to be doing, deciding what gets saved by being moved over into the digital world, and letting everything else go.

i fret considerably about the paperback and hardback books, worldwide and especially nationwide, that simply get left in someone's living room until they die and then nobody knows quite what to do with them so they go to a dumpster or to a local thrift store if they're lucky. one of my goals, bucket-list, visionary kind of thing, is to organize (or at least understand the organization of) the kind of safety net that's already out there for these thousands of books. thousands of people my age are dying every day and with them hundreds of books each are being lost or deposited into that in-between space where someone might read them, or find them, but most likely they will be at the bottom of some dumpster with a box of old shoes on top of them. information is being lost. old classics are disappearing into the mist.

but that bucket list is not taking precedence over the one i mentioned first. yes i'd like to save the nation's books. but first i need to promote my twenty-seven, and it's possible that in the next few years i'll need to use my books to raise some income. i haven't reached that point yet. i'm still making about thirty a month, in spite of all the read-marketing, writing and publishing i do, and that's a pitiful sum for what really amounts to a second career, a part-time job. not sure i can turn that around in my lifetime, either, if every new thing i turn out meets a lukewarm reception like this latest plate of spaghetti, and people turn their back on it for a trip to the mcdonalds of publications.

a wild night out in galesburg tonight. galesburg is fair-sized, maybe 30,000, big enough to have things going on. tonight, for some reason, garbage night brought all kinds of things out to the curb. tons of furniture, an old grandfather clock, couches, chairs, unbelievable. to me it reflected the fact that lots of people were moving, or aggressively downsizing, or something. one guy actually said that to me, when i admired his pile. going somewhere with about half as much room, because his kids had moved off to college.

that's actually what we should be doing as well, because one of ours moved off to college, but it's beginning to look like two of the last ones aren't moving off anywhere. that's another post, but my main point is that i felt like picking up some of this stuff, which i generally would have done in my earlier days, but these days we're feeling like anything we really need, it would be better to simply buy. i wouldn't have even minded asking that neighbor for that grandfather clock, they always say yes, then you have no compunction about comeing around with a truck. but my wife draws the line there. she doesn't like scavenging. and i've come to see it her way, or at least, not willingly shame her that way. recycling/reusing is actually honorable, but let someone else have the honor. i'm ok with minimalism/nothing.

my new book of stories (below post) came out with underwhelming response. i will struggle, and hustle, and ignore all my other books for a while, to make sure it stays afloat in its ratings. people don't want to read about devouring spaghetti, maybe. i am not sure i am even remotely close to a short story audience. or maybe i just suck even with short stories, and should go back to biography. well, that's what i did. i jumped straight back into history, family history to be specific, my great-great grandfather, who was a pretty interesting character.

we have a lot in common, in fact - he had eight kids, six who lived, and he moved a lot, but he did it mostly for the kids. he would always try to find what was best for them, particularly when it came to admitting that educating them himself wasn't quite working. i admired that in him. he was willing to work unsavory jobs well into his sixties, just because he had to keep things moving. and finally, when he had the chance to have what he wanted, he bought an apple orchard in the ozarks.

he survived three major depressions. and, he fought in the civil war but lived.

i am humbled by history. but most of all, i'm simply protected by it. delving into it helps me avoid thinking about all kinds of other things.

Devour That Spaghetti

Devour That Spaghetti
and 22 other short stories

Now available at Amazon
On Kindle $3.99
In paperback $5.25 + shipping
Free on Kindle Unlimited
Coming soon on ACX

---

tonight it rained, and to me that's a joy: september and it still rains. in new mexico it stops for about eleven months, and comes around again next july, but here the west wind brings in a new squall every once in a while and you get to go out on your front porch and listen to the rain.

unfortunately, i can't bring the puppy out there, or i haven't figured out how to do it, as i don't like tying him up if we're just hanging out. still if he's free, he'll simply walk away, and that will cause me anxiety and stress wondering if he won't come back, or he'll be difficult catching. so, no puppy. just me, the popcorn, and the rain.

the puppy's ok with this late night arrangement: i read until i fall asleep, and he occupies my lap. he's good at that lap spot while i pet him and it's all quiet and cosy, and now it's still raining outside, but, having taken my shower, i've let go of my hearing aids and hear only the thunder. or rather, i feel the thunder, since i don't really hear anything except crickets.

lots of action on the house. i might be out of that back-to-work idea after all. this would be a huge relief, and i would take up where i left off with the writing and marketing.

nevertheless i got a scare, and came to realize that with what i'm making on writing, barely twenty or thirty a month, it's not sustainable and i'd have to go work the aisles somewhere just to keep going, even at the age of sixty-eight, and only do writing when i come home tired. well i'm already tired - one more night with no writing, to speak of - but the writing is on the wall. i need to develop my income so that it sits there still being income even when i'm busy.

the advice i gave myself in a nutshell was, stop writing things about your grandparents, and start writing more about madonna and trump.

not that i'll totally follow my own advice. but i could at least write something that is more marketable, like a novel, that hits the scene and gets everyone's attention. that was kind of fun the first time around. now people know who i am, and i think i would have more fun. i just have to write the darn thing.

you see the blueprint for my future. it's about texas. there's a story collection about disney, too, if i ever get it together. stay tuned.

i'm tired from a very long week; the sale of our land in new mexico, which was supposed to have closed around today, fell through, and this meant i'd have to go back to work in the near or immediate future just to cover the mortgage of our new house in illinois. we are now very land rich but cash poor - we had it all figured out, if they bought it, that we'd survive, and now all is in the air. a quick survey of jobs in the area show there are some. the mental preparation for doing them is another thing.

the ones involving a kind of teaching - subbing, being a special ed assistant, etc., are the ones i'm most qualified for, of course. but having a few years of a break has made me want more of a break. i'm more inclined to be a truck driver or amazon warehouse worker, if i were to just simply go by what would give my tired spirit a rest.

fortunately the puppy picks up on my spirit and stays close. he rests on the arm of the chair as i write this and, though he has to run off and see what's going on every once in a while, at least he sees his companionship as as valuable as it is to me. he sticks by me. he values my petting.

i'm struggling with a kind of writer's block. no time would it be more important for me to simply finish my book of stories; i have about twenty, and would like maybe twenty-three to fold and call it done. i haven't actually published anything in a while, being too preoccupied with moving. i've backed so far away from novels i'm not sure i can make another one, though i'm about half finished with at least one. i have a kind of despair with this writer's block, not so much futility as just that it won't ever be quite good enough for me. i'm over-critical of everything i've ever produced, and when i have the chance, i go back and redo it, but that just seems to make it harder to crank out anything. and i need to crank out something. today i came home from running around, got some free time in my chair, and cranked out nothing. how depressing.

instead i do online surveys, a kind of sinister occupation in that it's easy to give away too much of your information, in fact you do it endlessly, all for pennies which basically i turn into amazon gift cards and fold back into my writing. i need to have more of these books around, and to give away, so i'm replenishing my stock which was low after moving. also i've changed covers on so many books that i need to have copies of some of the new covers as well as figure out how to get rid of the outmoded ones. i've proven to be slow to turn these books out into the public yet that's the only way a person can become known in the print-copy marketing world. if people don't see an actual book they probably won't buy another one like it, so you have to at some point just crank them out and turn them out into the world. and i've only just begun.

but the problem is, i'm kind of the opposite of a consumer. i consume virtually nothing, and pay little attention to the difference amongst various brands. i don't really believe in getting all into stuff and i just don't, so when they ask me all the tech gadgets we own i'm barely even aware of them, and might be misrepresenting. but often they're willing to pay any random consumer and i'm sure they figure in those of us who often don't have a clue what we're talking about. they have caught me saying different things at different times, and of course they don't like that, but it's easy enough for me to do even without bad intention; i simply have to guess some of the time.

they ask me all kinds of things, and i get somewhat obsessed with just always answering, moving on, taking my two bucks and buying me a book or two. in a way i'm using my time to develop my paperback presence, or my ratings at least, since i buy them all over the top, as a consumer who doesn't want to pay postage. but it's limited. not only am i sick of surveys, but also, i'm of limited value to them, with my lack of ability to distinguish finely (there are exceptions - tonight i got one about two of the worst corporations, and i let them have it) - but reading and answering endless survey questions is about as stimulating as reading and evaluating bad indie writing.

i'll admit, i'd read a couple of real bad ones just before. and i was a little sick of that. it was like, if that was the only way i could develop my readership, that was a slog, and might not really be worth it. life is short, after all - why should anyone waste it on slogging?