A Monday Morning Posting

Dear readers and friends. Or should I say dear friends and readers? Which comes first for a blog writer anyway? Never mind, I’m not going to go there.

It’s Monday morning. I didn’t write a new posting over the weekend like I usually do because we had company. Kathleen’s two sisters and their husbands were here from Montana and California and we were having fun with them, so the blog took a back seat.

But now the relatives are gone and the Perkins household is pretty much back to normal, except that Sam isn’t here. He’s still at the dog sitters’ where we left him yesterday so we could attend a Mariner’s baseball game - which they actually won (go figure). I’ll pick Sam up in awhile.

I’m not sure if I’ll write new blog posts for Wednesday and Friday either because I’ll be at the Thurston County Fair, nestled in among the pigs and chickens and carnival and hot dog stands, trying to drum up book sales at an Author’s Table. This is something new a local lady dreamed up and got the fair people to agree to (thank you Ann) and so I’m going to sign and sell copies of The Red Jacket and The Wine Red Road (I hope). My books haven’t sold too well yet, but I remain optimistic. It’s not so much that I want to get rich and famous - especially famous - but it would just be nice to achieve some sales so that I know my books are being read.

I’ve given several copies of my books to relatives and friends, but they’re not real good for feedback. Most of them haven’t said anything to me after reading my books or the comments I usually receive go: “I started to read your book, but then I got distracted or somebody loaned me another book (like Hunger Games) and I started reading that.”

Discouraging eh? All I want is a little respect, but it’s hard to come by. I wouldn’t mind all the rejection from family and friends, publishers and agents if I could just manage to hold on to the belief that eventually someone - like Oprah maybe? - is going to discover my books and they will all of a sudden go viral, somebody will make a movie of at least one of them and I will have left my mark on this world. Anyway, this week I’ll be at the Thurston County Fair. If you are there and you have time, drop by the Author’s Table or whatever they’re going to call it and say hello - and buy one of my books?

My newest book, Where Once Was Peace, I’m currently shopping around to different agents, hoping not to have to self-publish again. The self-publishing game is tough because I have to do my own marketing and that takes too much time away from writing. I’d rather just write.

Where Once Was Peace is about a young man who struggles to regain the peaceful life he once had, after losing his girlfriend, killing a man to save his stepfather’s life and surviving combat in Vietnam. I hope I’ll have it out there for you to read in the next couple of months or so. A bag of poop on you if you don’t though or is that being overly sensitive?