DRAGGING UP: ART BREW GIVES HIMSELF AN LDA GRANT (LAST DITCH ATTEMPT). February 15 - March 3. 56,000 words. I attend booksALIVE 2005! and sign books in the Gulf Coast Community College Conference Center. We fire the maid and I do the housework. The old rollback, or collateral damage, got her. I am invited to give a presentation to the Panama City Writers Association and to participate in the fall book festival held by the Panhandle Writers Guild. Dreamcatcher Press, in Mexico Beach, asks to see SALVAGE ARCHEOLOGIST. Bryan Hand paints Art Brew rescuing Miss Weekiwachee from the Creature from the Black Lagoon for the cover of BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS. I send it to LitVision Press. He’s not sure yet whether to use it or not. If not, I’ll use it for this book, or the next one. It looks like an antique Florida postcard. Brenda may have sold the trailer in Wewa, near the prison. I go in training, and stop drinking coffee, and beer. Hunter S. Thompson commits suicide. Bukowski went on a drunk between his last two chemotherapies. Michael Montfort sold his Bukowski archive and moved to Prague, but then had a stoke, and isn’t doing too well. We’re all getting long in the tooth. Hunter S. Thompson with a broken hip? I finish reading Sideways. I liked the movie better. I read Visceral Bukowski: Inside the Sniper Landscape of L. A. Writers. I read de Kooning: An American Master. Val Kilmer played de Kooning in Pollock. A small part. Pollock left Lee Krasner okay. The Springs is now a National Historic Landmark. Patrick Simonelli uses "Calliope," by Stone Riley, as a cover for Bukowski Never Did This, so I make Bryan Hand’s painting the cover of DRAGGING UP.
POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT: AN IMMOBILIZED HERO NOVEL. March 3 - March 19. 35,000 words. About the fate of Bukowski Never Did This and DRAGGING UP in the world. Like Forty, my 40th book, was about the fate of Evil Genius and Open Book. I go to a conference of literary magazines, independent publishers, and writers in Tallahassee, Other Words, sponsored by the Florida Literary Arts Coalition. Anhinga Press, University of Tampa Press, Fiction Collective 2. All three have rejected my books. I get a review copy of Doyle Lawson and Quicksilver’s Rounder CD You Gotta Dig a Little Deeper. I buy Bukowski’s Slouching Toward Nirvana. I use my painting of a fiddler crab, Uca rapax, on the cover of POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT. Keep it in the family. I am invited to a homegrown powwow in the yard of Big Chief Visions, in Cedar Grove, and prepare to attend that. I ordered 250 more copies of Root Doctor. If it comes in time, I’ll sell Root Doctor and Dread Clampitt’s CDs Dread Clampitt and Wrack & Ruin. If not, I’ll give away fliers and the pamphlet 32 Short Reviews of BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS. Who’s Bukowski? I see that "Dragging Up" and "Postcards From Point and Shoot" combine to form OF MAKING MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END, a continuation of, or sequel to, Bukowski Never Did This, like Manon of the Spring was a sequel to, or continuation of, Jean de Florette.