Dwan Hightower
Dwan Hightower
Dream Catcher Publishing, Inc.
Box 14058
Mexico Beach,
FL 32410
Dear Dwan Hightower:
Nice to meet you at booksALIVE 2005! last weekend.
Here is the
manuscript I told you about, THE SALVAGE ARCHEOLOGIST OF FLORIDA'S CO-OPTED COASTS:
A MEMOIR OF 38 YEARS OF GRACIOUS CRACKER LIVING.
I hope you like it.
Douglas Fairbairn wrote a memoir called Down and Out in Cambridge, in which
his father tried to make his fortune selling canned coquina broth up north. Fairbairn
died of Alzheimer's not knowing he had ever written books.
At the book fair
I talked to Jeff Klinkenberg about growing up in South Florida. He's from Miami
and I grew up in Delray Beach. Now he lives in St. Pete.
I told him that
all those hustles that worked in Orlando when Disney came in and built their theme
park work in Florida's Great Northwest, Inc. now. Same hustles, different players.
The difference now is if Carl Hiaasen writes Team Rodent, he has to send it
to Disney to get it published.
An independent press is a way around that.
Anyhow, I hope you like my book.
Jack Saunders
Garage Band Books
Box 10501
Panama City, FL 32404
Jeff Klinkenberg
From: Jack Saunders
To: Jeff Klinkenberg
Subj: Column
Idea
Nice to meet you at the book fair in Panama City this weekend. I am writing
a book about quitting my day job, to write a book, on spec.
Do you remember
the cartoon in The New Yorker, a bum in a suit on the streets of Manhattan,
with a tin cup, and a sign, saying, "Sold one story, quit my job."
That's me. Got invited to a book fair, quit my job.
It went to my head.
Actually, the job I had, my boss's boss thought I was a slacker.
She thought
I wasn't giving my job 100%.
I wasn't. I was writing books, too.
In the period covered by BUKOWSKI NEVER DID THIS: A YEAR IN THE LIFE OF AN UNDERGROUND
WRITER AND HIS FAMILY I wrote 18 books.
I got fired from one job for blogging,
and now it looks like I have gotten myself in trouble at the second job, for blogging.
I posted all 18 books at my web page, The Daily Bulletin, daily, as I wrote
them.
I tried to serve two masters, but half-a-lick was not good enough.
I served two masters for 33½ years, but I can't do it anymore. I need a break. I
am going to cash in an annuity I rolled my pension over into when Lucent Technologies
laid me off, write two books, and then start looking for a shitty job again. That
is, I'm giving myself an LDA grant.
Last Ditch Attempt.
When
we chatted briefly, you told me if I had any ideas for a column, to email you.
If I had any ideas for a column I'd have Art Brew write it. He writes press releases
for the Point and Shoot Institute (PSI), the prestigious left-wing think-tank in
Point and Shoot, Florida, where Brew is a senior fellow.
Then I thought you
might want to write about me. I'm a Florida eccentric, like Tom Gaskin, at his Cypress
Knee Museum, near Fisheating Creek. Or Tom Morrill, suing Ed Ball for putting a
fence across the Wakulla River to protect Wakulla Springs.
Jack Rudloe, fighting
the developers for 30 years, writing a book, a novel, about how the local fish cops
turned into roid-rage stormtroopers, with jackboots and sidearms.
Anyhow,
it's a thought.
If you like, I'll send you a copy of Bukowski Never Did
This when it comes out, and you'll have a hook to peg your story to.
In River of the Golden Ibis, Gloria Jahoda wrote about Jack Kerouac's sad
last days in St. Pete.
I'm 65. But I quit drinking in 1977, so I'm not going
to end up like he did. I don't think.
Patrick Simonelli
From: Jack Saunders
To: Patrick Simonelli
Subj:
News
I noticed that in the "Acknowledgments," in the front matter of Bukowski
Never Did This, Ella got to know here Granny and Grandpa should
be Ella got to know her Granny and Grandpa.
Bryan Hand has
finished the cartoons for the cover and is painting one in acrylics. He thought
my trip to Wakulla Springs for Creaturefest for the 50th anniversary of the filming
of The Creature From the Black Lagoon was like Hunter S. Thompson's trip to
the cop convention in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
I talked Brenda
into letting me quit my job and take a year off to write, by cashing in an annuity,
so I will be free to publicize Bukowski Never Did This when it comes out.
She was very understanding about my screwing up at work, and trusting about me not
writing the same old excuses and complaining. And enumerating how many books I've
written, like Don Giovanni.
I started posting to The Daily Bulletin
again, after two weeks away from it, two weeks in which I wrote six grants at work
and wrote a 25,000-word manuscript, GUY LIT, I set to the side when I started writing
DRAGGING UP: ART BREW GIVES HIMSELF AN LDA GRANT (LAST DITCH ATTEMPT). Nobody
wants to hear about what genre you write in, either.
The book fair was good
for my morale. I lined up a couple of speaking engagements, and the Friends of the
Bay County Library will probably throw me a book release party.
When I left
work today I snuck out, taking French leave.
I didn't say goodbye to any
of my co-workers. Although I hugged my boss.
No sayonara party for me, at
my day job.
But every day will be a party from here on out.
I feel
like a weight has been lifted from my shoulders.
Slacker--I was like a man
carrying two full field packs. Just writing, my workload is cut in half.