The Velvet Pen Group: Messages by LadyGene

I see that the last message was from me. Well, here's another one. I have posted three of my books on EONS BOOK GALLERY FOR AUTHORS AND BOOK LOVERS. I hope you're one of them, and will check them out. They all can be ordered from Amazon.com, but From Thunder to Breakfast and Widowhood Happens
may also be ordered toll-free by calling 1-888-795-4274. Xlibris will answer. There's Something About Cave Creek can be ordered online at www.lulu.com/ggarrison.

Another of my recent activities was to build an art website at www.artbygarrison.com.

Write me if you have any questions.

Happy

I have discovered, and successfully been published on Amazon.Shorts.
It is composed of short stories, essays, etc. of at least 2,000 words. The requirements are that Amazon has at least three of your books for sale, and they have editors who make the selections.

You can figure out from the title that I have one of those Gender-Confusing Names, and so do many other people. It's a fun read.

There is a 49c charge to receive the piece via the Internet. It might be worth it to see how this works.

Gene K. Garrison
Author of:
From Thunder to Breakfast
Widowhood Happens
Javelina! Have-uh-WHAT?
There's Something About Cave Creek (It's The People)

I thought I had it made when I wrote a book. It was way back when publishers did the PR and distributors delivered stacks and stacks of books to real, not virtual, bookstores.

But that was not my main motive when I wrote From Thunder to Breakfast. In my writing adventures I met a man by the name of Hube Yates, a hero, strong, funny, who could remember details of events many decades after they happened. He was a pioneer too. When he was eleven he moved with his large family in two covered wagons from Oklahoma to Arizona. It took all summer to make the trip on which they had encounters with outlaws and Indians. They were leery about the Indians because they didn’t know if they were friendly or not. This family group went over plains, through roiling rivers, survived hunger, a sick horse, deserts, and even strange animals they had never seen before.

So you know what happened. Hube became the storyteller and I the writer.

Way back in the 1970s we got busy on the book. He ran a riding stable at the time, so we scheduled appointments with each other when he didn’t have riders to take out.

When the manuscript was finished I sent queries out to about six publishers. Not a bite. At the time I didn’t know that six was not a very large number. I wasn’t going to let all that work go to waste, so I decided to publish it myself. I hired a printer who let me type it into his computer. That was to save costs.

On one glorious day the book was born, and I was a publisher, PR person, accountant, and distributor. That part didn’t thrill me. It didn’t take long for me to discover that I wasn’t cut out to be a publisher, as mighty and prestigious that title sounds.

We were fortunate in the reaction of the public. People came from miles around to buy books autographed by both Hube Yates and me. We were sold out in seven months, whereupon a book reviewer from Arizona Highways magazine wrote a flattering piece, and
Northland Press (now Northland Publishing) agreed to publish the second edition. Yiiipppeee!

Out-of-print several years later, Northland was more into Southwestern coffee-table books and wasn’t interested in publishing the third edition. It lay dormant for a couple of decades — until I heard about print-on-demand. It sounded good. The books there don’t expire in a certain length of time.

Could there be a catch? Well, yes. I’m stuck back into pushing books. It takes up so much time that I don’t write books any more.

The good part is that we have a highly-readable history book that should have a very long shelf life, and I DID preserve the personality of a rugged man who was too good to forget.

Gene K. Garrison
Author of: From Thunder to Breakfast
Widowhood Happens
Javelina! Have-uh-WHAT?
There’s Something About CAVE CREEK (It’s The People)

Website: view link

I just joined, but I see that I'm already a member and have posted five or six messages.
One was about Merv Griffin, one was about a book I wrote, Widowhood Happens. I'll get around to the other three one of these days.

I blame this lapse on being too busy. I have a lot
of marketing to do, but I do like having new writer
friends.