Publishing as a HobbyI never expected that my book would get anyone’s attention in the publishing world.  I put it together for my own entertainment, and to give as party favors.  My friends like it, or at least they like the idea of the book.  It does look nice, something I owe to my younger years spent around typographers.The next step for me should be to show up at bookstores around here to ask if they would just put one copy on their shelves.  Again, I would not expect any sales, but if anyone came across it, opened it, read maybe one paragraph of it, I would be very happy.  How would I know?  Perhaps I could visit the bookstore once in a while to check if the book has been opened?Regardless, I find it very hard to go to the store and say, “I am the author of this book, I was wondering if you would put it on your shelves?  I’m not expecting it to sell; it would just be to say that it is on the shelves.”

I will have to resist applying self-censorship sooner or later.  I picked up a book at the Library called Telling Lies for Fun and Profit by Lawrence Block and after reading the bit about writing short stories versus a novel, I put myself in front of the computer and continued to write – or rather, revamped – a short story that was already, in my mind, part of a novel.  It is just that I get lazy when I think of the amount of pages still to be written, and the holes I leave to fill later.  The initial story draft, for example, was written in the first person, which to me was limiting (it seemed to help to give the character a more definite personality).  To some extent, I keep wanting to write the chronicles of a character in whose head I like to be.  Here’s the rub: the character engages in gay prostitution, and it raises red flags in my mind.  The funny thing is that I have no idea about the lives of actual sex workers, and this …

Self-publishing… There was a rumor that short story collections did not sell.  You could not find a publisher to put them together, much less convince a bookstore to place them on their shelves.  An author should keep submitting stories to literary journals in the hope that one would be accepted.  There is no money to be made: it is only a way to get one’s foot in the door, because one day there will be a novel, the big thing.  Having published short stories is a way to elongate one’s resume to propel one’s first novel up the slush pile.I have come to the realization that I just needed to get my writing out in print.  The perspective of receiving more rejection slips keeps my pen up.  After all, why should I write if I know my chances of having someone, anyone, to read the story?  I already have a number of reasons to block myself, why add this one?  It is even worse after finishing school, where at least one gets the teachers’ feedback.Enters the Internet.  I first thought I would build a …

Whoa…  Kepler’s (our local bookstore) closed yesterday, bankrupt after a four-year battle.  They had just celebrated their fiftieth anniversary.  It was the southern end of the literary triangle with Cody’s in Berkeley, and City Lights in San Francisco.  So, would you ask, where does someone get his books around here?  Online?  At Border’s?  How about the author events that Kepler’s used to hold?  All gone. It’s amazing how these “signs of the times” keep happening.  Recently we got upset at the perspective of a Starbucks establishing yet another of its standardizing stores on California Avenue, one of the streets until then forgotten by the corporations.  Printer’s Inc. Café across the street, is the only remnant of the Printer’s Inc. bookstore that went bankrupt (how should I say, coinciding with Border’s and Amazon’s flourishing?).  On University Avenue, now very much invaded by chain stores, there used to be a record store that soon disappeared after Border’s came up with its vast selection.  The really nice Torrefazzione Italia café is now closing, with the revelation that Starbucks had bought the small chain a few years ago.  It’s all about corporations …

Ants on my desktop.It happened a few days ago.  An ant was going up on my computer screen, ignoring the borders of windows.  I looked around and found more ants making their way through the randomly stacked papers and objects on my desk.  Where was the food, I wondered?  Perhaps they had found crumbs from cookies I had consumed while typing a story.  I should clean up.  I should really clean up, because I plan to change my office furniture.  It will be nice, I think, doubling the shelf space to fit the books that are currently on the floor or just stacked in front of other books.I realized that the ants had formed a path to the waste paper basket.  Of course, I thought, I should not have thrown foodstuff away in this one.  I emptied it and washed it after leaving it on the porch for a while so the ants would go away by themselves.

I suppose I have not joined the Blog revolution.  I still write little notes in my notebook, start stories either on the computer or on paper, but I am still far from reaching blogspace.  Yet, the railroad tracks can be bad and I won’t be able to write by hand at times.  Maybe that means I should only read while riding the train.  Should I be like those power people who dictate?  Talk to a machine, then pass it on to a secreatry? It was nearly midnight Saturday night when I returned to Kepler’s to retrieve my bike after seeing a movie.  Near the bike rack sat a man with big glasses and a walker loaded with travel bags.  He tried to get my attention by looking at me and vaguely gesturing while saying words I could not understand.  It was as if he could not pronounce the words very clearly, in the way people with degenerative disorders end up.  I approached him, expecting the usual request for money.  But it was not so: he could still not make himself understood by me.  I remained silent …

I must say that while I was in school the impending deadlines kept me going. Now it feels like whether I write or not will not change anything in my life. But perhaps it will. There’s my project of publishing “Guy’s Peninsula Rides” or “Rides from the Peninsula” which I think will be a web site. I have also written a short story that I sent to a Glimmer Train contest. One never knows. The drawback is that the story is kept prisoner until the verdict (winner? loser?) comes out. The story is that of a man who finds out that his lover died in the war, uncovering issues of acceptance of gay men (to others and themselves), and the absurdity of war. Look back at the writers of the Modern period in England and similar themes come up. It seems that history repeats itself. I think that the process of looking at our world doesn’t change. We have bigger and faster machines, but the people around us still behave and adapt in the same …

Can you tell I’m done with school? Yes, I graduated a couple of weeks ago with an M.A. in English, having completed a collection of short stories “Heating Up the Fog” as a thesis. You, my reader, can see some of it on my web site http://www.tiphane.org/guy/portfoliobut only my friends (or a publisher) can get a complete copy. Actually serious requests will be served gracefully with a paper version. I still think I could publish the collection as a book, but since I have submitted a few here and there, I will wait for the rejection letters before I do so. I liked the process of writing each story separately, then putting them all together as a collection. The final revisions were the most difficult, as when one is close to having completed several levels of a house of cards and someone slams the door behind. Fortunately we have computers to preserve our work. At the beginning it felt like submitting essays to a teacher, when the student makes sure to put his copy underneath …