I got an email from a man who wrote,

i recently ran across Open Book at an Asheville, NC library sale. great book! so I searched out more and being a book dealer when I buy books; i generally buy quantity.

well, i cleared Amazon.com's inventory of them. so, they might be tracking you down to find more. but, what i was hoping is that i might mail you a few copies to have signed. i will send a prepaid return envelope and all that jazz.

i think you will be happy to know that myself and several other book dealers have priced Open Book and Evil Genius at over 150$. there are not many buyers at that price, but it is more a show of respect from book dealers and a note to the public that this is something unique.

just use Bookfinder.com to do a search for all the market prices.

That explains the run on my books at Amazon.

I forwarded the email to Brenda.

She said that I ought to send it to Owen and Balder and tell them these were the books they rescued from the bonfire when I had the book-burning of my own books.

Termites got into the boxes, when we lived on Martin Lake, and the covers had worm poop on them.

I burned the boxes.

But Owen and Balder retrieved the copies that didn't have worm poop on them from the fire.

I was proud that Owen and Balder thought my books were valuable, and that Owen's classmates, and later, Balder's classmates, liked them.

Owen and Balder weren't ashamed of their dad, for being a failure.

They were proud of their dad. For being a failure.

I wasn't a failure, to them, I was an underground writer.

Being self-published, my books not sold in stores, gave me cachet.

It's a hard road, and most people lose heart.

Thoreau said he had a library of 1,000 books, 900 of which he had written himself, but how many writers had had their own book burning?