Friday, January 6 (cont'd)

From: Jack Saunders
To: Jeff Potter
Subj: Reply

Marketing makes my head hurt. It's like talking to an insurance agent, a real estate broker, or a securities salesman. They believe their own bullshit, but it can't work. I don't understand why Amazon.com loses money and I don't understand why, if they lose money, they are a glamorous stock.

It seems like the Internet would be more efficient than snail mail, but it isn't, it's just faster, and there's spam, and government lurks, reading your mail, and nerd hackers, giving you a virus.

I have a web site. I don't advertise it, except by telling people what the url is.

People find me through a search engine.

They can buy my books from me, from you, from LitVision Press, or from Amazon.com, and do buy from all four sources, although not in great number.

They can't buy my books in a bookstore. Maybe three bookstores, nationwide.

Lately, with what you and Pat and the ULA are doing, I get more unsolicited mail.

That Look at Random Page is a nice feature, at Amazon.com.

Don't know what Google Books will mean.

There ought to be a way for this to work much better than it does.

But from being completely excluded to being less excluded is progress, to me.

Pat says he sells books by going to book fairs and zine fests, with books, and talking about them, to readers.

That's what I do. I go to Oktoberfest, too.

I usually don't make expenses. But a book gets passed around, and people who read a free one will buy a new one, for a gift.

From: Jack Saunders
To: Brenda Saunders
Subj: Slidell Report

Gerald says his FEMA trailer is too small to do anything but sleep in.

He said his neighbor helped him visqueen off the family room, of his destroyed house, where he can use the fireplace to warm himself.

He said Del is flying in here the 19th and it will take both of their cars to take everything that's left back to Slidell. He'll be in here the 17th to meet Del the 19th.

He thanks us.

He wants the answering machines. I told him I have them set aside.

His neighbor is being dunned by FEMA to supply receipts or repay them the money.

I can't see that this applies to Gerry as he hasn't gotten any money from them. But I don't know.

His situation seems horrible.

I bought a DVD recorder for your bedroom. I connected it to your TV monitor but you'll have to set it up.

I'm going to cook redfish outside, on the charcoal grill, for supper. With fresh spinach and stewed squash.

I've started cleaning the living room and kitchen, but haven't gotten very far.

It's still cluttered from Ella Blue and Cale.

Dennis McMillan
Dennis McMillan Publications
4460 N. Hacienda del Sol (Guest House)
Tucson, AZ 85718

Dear Dennis:

Here's a manuscript called RACE, SEX, AND WORKING FOR A LIVING: A THREE-RING CIRCUS.

I wonder if you'd like to publish it.

It is to Charles Bukowski's Pulp as Mulligan Stew is to Red Harvest.

Enclosed find SASE for your reply.

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

I sent Dennis McMillan RACE, SEX, AND WORKING FOR A LIVING: A THREE-RING CIRCUS. I think it is to Pulp as Mulligan Stew was to Red Harvest.

Of course, Mulligan Stew was a succès d'estime, that didn't sell.

Dalkey Archive reprinted it, but they don't seem to be publishing much original fiction, and I don't think they would make it past the heading "Any Niggers in the Audience?"

On the other hand, McMillan's web site used to say he published outré fiction.

Maybe he does.

And there's a strong tie-in with Charles Willeford's difficulties with the movie studio in The Woman Chaser when the hero edited his feature film down to four reels instead of six.

I'm trying to think who to send BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK to.

I looked up the University Press of Florida.

Their web site made me so mad--they have rejected half a dozen proposals from me--with their rules for manuscript submission, and superior air, I decided not to bother, with a query letter.

Maybe I'll try Pineapple Press again.

They have rejected half a dozen proposals from me, too, but it's hard to find anybody like Pineapple Press that hasn't.

Peachtree Publishing has. Hill Street Press has.

Blue-Collar Redneck just sounds ugly, like William S. Burroughs' Junky, or Queer, Dick Gregory's Nigger, or Brendan Behan's Borstal Boy.

Who would call himself such a thing?

Why Won't Nobody Hire Me To Be a Writer? Because you're ignorant? Because you're prejudiced? Because you're a racist?

I told Brenda I made great strides in my writing today--I finished a book and started a new book--and she said, "What are you writing about? How many books you've written?"

"Driving to Panacea and eating seafood platters," I said.

"Being seduced by a lonely farmer's wife who looks like Meryl Streep to my Clint Eastwood."

Brenda snorted.

"When we got married, I thought you looked like a Greek god," she said. "Now you look like a goddamned Greek."

Where do I get jokes like that?

I got that one from David Roth, Dan Roth's brother.

Dan Roth died.

I'm sorry. I guess I'm doing better than Dan Roth.