Don't write anything negative. Nobody wants to read it.

Brenda Saunders.

I disliked them all immediately, sitting around acting clever and superior. They nullified each other. The worst thing for a writer is to know another writer, and worse than that, to know a number of other writers. Like flies on the same turd.

Charles Bukowski

Jack Saunders
Garage Band Books
Box 10501
Panama City, FL 32404

Copyright © 2005 by Jack L. Saunders, Jr.

Tuesday, February 15

Art Brew has a new book coming out from LitVision Press. BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS: A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF AN UNDERGROUND WRITER AND HIS FAMILY.

His family is him and Brenda, living in her old home place in Point and Shoot, Florida, The Empty Nest.

Owen and Balder, their two sons, have grown up and moved out. It's just the two of them.

They are buying the old home place from Brenda's brothers and sister.

In the year covered in BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS, Brew wrote 18 books, and posted them at his web site, The Daily Bulletin, daily, as he wrote them.

He always thought a publisher would see a book at his web site, and ask him to let them publish it, and one did. LitVision Press.

BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS was Brew's 251st, 252nd, and 253rd book.

The last book-length book Brew published was Forty, his 40th book. Lo, these 17 years ago. Not counting the 50 or 60 books he had published on the Internet.

Even Jack Kerouac only went seven years between The Town and the City and On the Road. Brew had him beat by ten years.

Part of Brenda's advice to Brew was don't compare yourself to other writers. So Brew would not.

Brew got Larry Schlueter to write a Foreword for BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS.

Here is what Larry wrote.

I am a reader who has had the great good fortune to have the world's best writer send me simply the best that there is. I love it.

To set yourself the goal of getting at and witnessing to the truth. Can you imagine someone loving you and trusting you enough to send this to you in writing? This has been going on since I was 25, and I'll be 60 in a few weeks. It is unbelievable that I have had such good fortune to receive a steady stream of packages weekly or monthly all of my...my what? WHAT HAS HAPPENED TO THE TIME THIS IS ALL WE GET.

What a great help . I'm not sure I would have made it through the work world or the world full of muggles without someone to witness to the truth and to go through all the very tough work of getting at it. Everyone is so afraid to speak or write.

Without Hazel, and St. John's College, and the world's great books and authors, how bleak it would have been.

You hold in your hands a book by Jack Saunders. This is an unbelievably great stroke of luck for you, as it has been for me. There is simply nothing better than this for us as readers and human beings, to come truly alive, to set ourselves on fire with the possibility of seeing ourselves for the first time. So open yourself up. You have the best, and good luck with your quest. And to Jack Saunders, thank you with all my heart and soul. May the great quest continue.

And so, reader, get ready, this is an open book.

Open up.

Brew added a note, and acknowledgments.

Larry and Hazel Schlueter have read every word I have written. Their counsel has encouraged me in darker moments. They helped me to publish several books, they loaned us money to have Owen and Balder born in a hospital, when Brenda and I were broke, their weird take on things was always refreshing, showing me I wasn't crazy, just outnumbered. I always knew there was somebody there, reading it, who would catch the joke. I believe Larry will read me in his grave. If he's not shooting the shit with Potter up in heaven.

I knew I was appreciated.

Brenda entertained herself the nights and weekends I was working on this book..

She didn't lay a guilt trip on me about getting fired, and didn't nag me about going back to work right away.

She and I enjoyed going to hear Balder and Dread Clampitt play most Sundays at The Red Bar, in Grayton Beach.

Owen and Jean came down with Ella Blue, and let us keep her, so she could get to know here Granny and Grandpa Saunders.

Art Brew continues to be an inspiration to me. I never know what he's going to do next.

He's a hard guy to be friends with, but worth it.