Q: What does it mean when an editor says she is looking for authors who are eager to play an active role in every aspect of the publishing process?

A: It means you're going to have to do whatever the editor thinks you should do to your book to make it more commercial, and it means you're going to have to be in charge of the book's promotion, doing most of it yourself, at your own expense, because the publisher won't pay for it.

I think it may also mean you have to have a platform, already, because if you don't, you can't promote it, even if you're willing to.

Q: What's wrong with that?

A: It's a barrier to entry.

Also, it's a misallocation of resources.

The writer's job is writing.

Q: You're going to do all you can to promote Bukowski Never Did This.

A: Yes. Because my publisher doesn't have a lot of money for promotion.

I might say I went with an independent press because he didn't hold my lack of a platform against me, and he didn't ask me to tart-up or dumb-down the book to make it more commercial. Like me, he isn't non-commercial, he's anti-commercial---as any literary press must be. Commerce is what's ruining literature. The curse of trade ruins everything it touches. Though you trade in messages from heaven.

VOCATION AND CAREER IN CONFLICT: AN ANTI-MEMOIR. March 15 - ______. In progress. I decided to call DRAGGING UP: ART BREW GIVES HIMSELF AN LDA GRANT (LAST DITCH ATTEMPT) and POSTCARDS FROM POINT AND SHOOT: AN IMMOBILIZED HERO NOVEL Two Anti-Novels, and to subtitle VOCATION AND CAREER IN CONFLICT, which I have just started writing, AN ANTI-MEMOIR. From Art Brew being the ultimate antihero and Jack Saunders being closely identified with Art Brew.

Q: What's an anti-novel?

A: An anti-hero is a hero with scant resources. Who is crossways with the establishment. He works outside the system, without being affiliated with any institutions. He is a rogue agent.

An anti-novel is a novel about an anti-hero. An anti-memoir is a memoir about an anti-hero. Sometimes I combine the anti-novel and the anti-memoir in the same book. I don't know what you'd call it, then.

Q: Just a book.

A: They're all just books.

From: Jack Saunders
To: Christopher M.
Subj: Root Doctor

The box of books arrived Friday morning.

They look good. I like the cover stock you chose.

I called the insurance company to which I surrendered my annuity, and they said the checkbook is in the mail, so I should be able to pay you next week.

Thanks for doing the job without advance payment. That allowed me to sell Root Doctor along with the Dread Clampitt CDs Dread Clampitt and Wrack & Ruin at the homegrown powwow Saturday (tomorrow, as I write this), and fulfill my swinette-picker dream of sitting in the sunshine at my folding camp table in a folding canvas camp chair, the smell of lamb, roasting on a spit, the pennants snapping in the breeze, or in this case, the bag of Apalachicola oysters, with my T-shirt with the Bryan Hand painting of Black McGoon rescuing Miss Weekiwachee on it, among folk artists, a roots music band, and other vernacular writers, if any should appear.

Kindred spirits, eh?

I have decided to write about the powwow in the next book, not as a cliffhanger, so much as owing to the fact that (1) one book naturally segues into the next one, on the worldwide web, with no beginning, and no end, and (2) the next book, VOCATION AND CAREER IN CONFLICT: AN ANTI-MEMOIR, and the previous two books, Bukowski Never Did This and OF MAKING MANY BOOKS THERE IS NO END: A FORM OF INSANITY, which I call, together, Two Anti-Novels, combine to form the three-book set Art Brew and Jack Saunders: Two Anti-Novels and One Anti-Memoir.

I started VOCATION AND CAREER IN CONFLICT four days ago, before finishing this book, and writing two books at once, cleaning the house for company, and entertaining Owen and Jeannie, and Ella Blue, is more than I can handle. Plus, since I can cover the powwow in the next book, there's no urgency to covering it in this book.

So everything's copacetic here.

We're all healthy. Balder plays SpringFest next weekend. I'll have copies of Root Doctor for him to take. And before you know it, Bukowski Never Did This will be out.

Boys, we're sitting on a goldmine.