Jack Saunders wrote 250 books without
selling one to New York or Hollywood.
He published eight of them himself,
with the help of friends, and serialized many more, on the worldwide web, after he
gave himself a web page when he signed a 30-year mortgage on a house, at age 60.
A small press publisher, LitVision Press, asked to publish Bukowski Never Did
This: A Year in the Life of an Underground Writer and His Family. Saunders quit
his job, cashed in an annuity he had rolled his retirement from Lucent Technologies
over into, when they laid him off, in a recession, and went on the road, barnstorming
for Bukowski Never Did This, at zine fests, bookstore readings, and book-signings
around Florida's Northwest Coast.
August 31, 2005 is Saunders' 34th anniversary
as a writer.
He plans to write SORRY BUT NO: CONFESSIONS OF AN UNDERGROUND
WRITER during the month of August, and serialize it online, daily, as he writes it,
at his web site, The Daily Bulletin.
Since March 18, 2000, he has
done this with more than 75 books, at three web sites. So he is not inexperienced.
This is his pace. His rhythm. Of 34 years.
SORRY BUT NO is a one-volume memoir,
like Angela's Ashes, Are You Somebody?, The Liar's Club, or Lynn Freed's forthcoming
Reading, Writing & Leaving Home: Life on the Page.
Freed's book
is a collection of essays, but when Harper's published an excerpt, "Doing
Time: My Years in the Creative Writing Gulag," they called it memoir.
SORRY BUT NO tells about the life of an underground writer, an outsider, slogging
away in the small-beer trenches of events like Philly Zine Fest 2005 and Zine-A-Polooza
2005. Wanna-bes and has-beens, like the two models at Glamourcon '99 who both claimed
to be the first, that is the oldest, Playboy bunny.
Still, he was
a headliner at the Underground Literary Alliance's Legends of the Underground readings
off-off-Broadway in May 2001.
The ant's a centaur in his dragon world. Even
though his tits may sag.
SORRY BUT NO is about life off the page, a life
excluded from the page because his life is "off the rails," as Norman Mailer
said. A life in self-published pamphlets and homemade web sites, family akimbo, keeping
the faith. Waiting for his breakthrough.
SORRY BUT NO is his attempt to write
a break-out book. To break himself out. In front of a live audience. With no safety
net. One take. No overdubs afterwards, in the studio.
An audacious performance.
As Brother Dave says, "Here, Julius-hold this."
SORRY BUT NO is
the record of a performance. As it's taking place. Like Desi Arnaz's "Dance
of Desperation." It's Saunders' last ditch attempt. Before his do-it-yourself
grant runs out.
When Lee Child got laid off, and blacklisted, because of
his shop steward activities, in broadcast television, he wrote the first Jack Reacher
novel, The Killing Floor, before his separation package ran out.
All
you need is a goad.
I'm too old for the factories.