Saturday, January 7

June Cussen
Pineapple Press
P. O. Box 3889
Sarasota, FL 34230

Dear June Cussen:

I was born and raised in Florida, educated in Florida, I married a Florida girl and raised a family in Florida, I have worked in Florida for most of my adult life, at jobs ranging from demolition laborer to information developer at IBM.

I have just finished writing a memoir called BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK: WHY WON'T NOBODY HIRE ME TO BE A WRITER? The book is in three parts, like a job application. "Employment History," "Education," "Honors and Awards."

The book ran 125,000 words and includes 60 pictures from my collection and public sources.

I have been writing about Florida for 34 years. I have published nine books about myself, and the state, and the writing life. Trying to combine writing, work, and raising a family. BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK tells how I did this. I worked as a laborer after I graduated from college magna cum laude, because I was blacklisted for white-collar jobs.

I enclose a table of contents, the first 50 pages of the book, the proposed market for the book, and a list of other books on or near the topic, with a discussion of how my book is different.

I enclose an SASE for your reply.

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

• Readers of Floridiana. I have traveled the backroads of Florida, dug Indian middens deep in the swamp, fished the surf, and streams, hunted and Sunday-painted in the fields, and camped in parks and outdoor festival venues as a grown-up for 50 years, and with my parents before that. Drinking, shucking oysters, and telling stories around the old campfire. My dad graduated from Florida, and knew the head-knockers in every small town in the state-the judge, the pharmacist, and the doctor. I am an accomplished cook of native fauna, garden crops, tropical spices, and so forth. Especially seafood. Well, alligator tail and road-kill chili. I have seen the state grow. Old timers will say, "Yes, I remember it being that way," and newcomers, or people thinking about moving to Florida will say, "So that's the way it is. I didn't know it was that bad."
  
• People interested in writing. BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK is a memoir, but a memoir about a working writer. I thus reflect on different literary forms, and give my opinion of where I think the novel is heading. (I wrote the Great American Novel, and it was a memoir.) I also make observations on the effect the worldwide web has had, and is going to have, on American letters. I write, and publish books in real time, on the Internet. Daily, as I write them.
  
• People interested in self-sufficient living. I represent a do-it-yourself, back to basics, keep it small, less is more approach to modern urban living and working for the man in the corporate rat-race. This is not nostalgia for a bygone era, but a practical, hands-on guide, like Thoreau's Walden. How to simplify your life. Tell the bossman to go piss up a rope. You'll be forced to simplify. Just sing another chorus of "Working Man Blues."
  
• People interested in the dynamics of relationships within a family. I have been married for 38 years and raised two fine children. My sons each make a living playing music and writing songs. They are both happily married, and raising families--that is, combining creative, low-paying jobs with family stability, as their parents did. This is not easy for an artist to do. It's not easy to be an artist in a materialistic culture. A consumer society.
  
• People concerned about where America is heading. BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK is an outspoken book, politically. It will anger conservatives and religious fundamentalists. It may anger some dogmatic liberals, too, as it makes fun of the orthodoxies of the left, especially speech codes and political correctness. Sacred cows make the best hamburger. BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK is satirical. It goes for the jugular. I don't come in half-stepping.

• Russell Baker's Growing Up and Annie Dillard's Pilgrim at Tinker Creek/The Writing Life. People are interested in the mechanics of a craft. Remember The Violent World of Sam Huff? Readers especially want to know how one becomes a writer, and what that life is like. My book is richer than theirs because I had it harder, for longer. This gives me street cred. I earned my badge. Reputation lags accomplishment, though. This can be frustrating. How I dealt with it is inspiring.
  
• Rita Mae Brown's Starting From Scratch: A Different Kind of Writer's Manual and Rita Will: Memoir of a Literary Rabble-Rouser. These books address the psychological and cultural pitfalls of becoming a successful writer. Writing is a life that will kill you, on the one hand, or turn you into a monster, on the other. Success corrupts but failure limits, or narrows. Embitters. I have maintained a balance as well as she has, thanks in part to her example.
  
• Charles Willeford's Something About a Soldier and I Was Looking for a Street. These two books cover Willeford's life as a runaway and career Army enlisted man, but don't deal with his life as a writer. BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK continues to the present. It's complete, up to the present.
  
• Charles Bukowski's Post Office, Women, Factotum, and Ham On Rye. Although novels, these books are autobiographical, and written in the vernacular. They are accessible. I am franker on some subjects than he was, better educated, and my failure lasted longer than his. Also, I supported a family. He was a wino. Also, he broke through. I didn't. By my age he drove a BMW, lived in a house with a swimming pool, and hobnobbed with Hollywood actors and directors. I still live "where the debris meets the sea." I didn't outgrow my raisin'. My friends are roofers, housepainters, deckhands, psychiatric social workers, an engineer. A railroad engineer. Bukowski hadn't had to hold a job in many years. I wrote Bukowski Never Did This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family while still working at the post office, so to speak. That's harder.
  
• Frank McCourt, Nuala O'Faolain, Mary Karr. Recently these three authors caught the imagination of the reading public by writing memoirs. Their voices appealed to readers. I have a distinctive voice. It appeals to people who read my self-published pamphlets and my web site on the Internet. Whether it will appeal to a larger, more general audience, remains to be seen. Some experts say it won't, but that ain't been proved yet. In fact, it hasn't even been tested.
  
• Nonpareil. There are no books exactly like BLUE-COLLAR REDNECK out there because nobody has done what I have done, namely write 272 books without selling a word to New York, Hollywood, or a distinguished regional publisher. If I were you, I'd hate to let this one get past me. I'd be embarrassed to see someone else publish it in my stead.