Four books in a year! (Sort of....)

My newest e-book for Kindle, THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE, is now available at Amazon.com's Kindle Store. This one is gonna cost you a dollar more -- $3.99 -- because it's ... Good Ghod! ... 256 pages long, about 50 pages longer than my first 3 e-books.
This one is "a newspaper novel." Anyone out there who managed to get through my newspaper memoir THE CONFESSOR will probably recognize the setting -- a small town in Wyoming that was home to the smallest daily newspaper in the country, where I worked for six years.
What this book does is pull together some of the funniest, most outrageous stories about working on newspapers ... that weren't already included in THE CONFESSOR. I was surprised how much good stuff I had left....
Though folks who've read CONFESSOR may recognize some of the events, they've all been re-written, extended, elaborated, messed with ... 90 percent of this book is all-new stuff nobody's read before.
The names have been changed, but the stories are all true. This is also fiction, so some of it's just plain made up....
And of course if you haven't read CONFESSOR, it's gonna be all new to you....
Unlike CONFESSOR -- in which it's now obvious to me that I was trying a little too hard to grind an axe -- this book has an upbeat, happy ending. I think you'll like it. I like parts of it very much, and it's an accurate portrayal of what living in an isolated, tiny town for six years felt like.
Most of the book was written in the month between the 4th of July and early August -- though I was adding new stuff all the way up to the end. Proofreading the book took a lot longer than I expected. I wanted to have it done by my birthday, Aug. 21.
Not sure what else to say except I never would have written this if I hadn't read half of Garrison Keillor's A RADIO ROMANCE ... which I couldn't finish, but which helped me think of a way that I could get this material out.
I think this is what writers do -- cannibalize their lives and make stories out of what they've seen and done. Anyway, once I got going I couldn't stop -- which is usually a good sign for me.
Hope you like, and even if you don't, let me know what you think. I'm not getting rich doing this, but the feedback has been nice....
More soon.

A few things about Al Green

Been playing Al Green's imported best-of CD THE SUPREME AL GREEN at work a lot lately, and here's some of the things that have impressed me as I've hummed along with Reverend Al:
* That sneaky descending guitar figure that comes in at the end of "Call Me," his vocal throughout, and the modest lyrics: "Just remember the time we had/And how right I tried to be...."
* The horns and organ on "Let's Get Married," and the fact that Al isn't really that thrilled about getting married -- the depth of his commitment is "Might as well...."
* The really great simple-as-a-nursery-rhyme choruses on "L-O-V-E, Love."
* The way he sings these lines in "Take Me to the River": "I wanna know/Can you tell me?/Our love will stayyyyyyy...."
* The lyrics on "Love Ritual" -- the ones I can make out -- are pretty great ... if "lyrics" is the right word to describe the words on a piece that seems so improvised. I hated it at first, thought it was a comedy throwaway, but it works, the groove's pretty great -- and Al's feeling about how sacred love is really comes across. Not sure about some of what he's ... chanting(?) though.... (I hear "wanna" and "loser" -- can that possibly be right?)
* On "Full of Fire," the way he sings: "There's some things that I know/But I want the horns to blow...."
* There's a hilarious one-liner near the end of his remake of the Temptations' "I Can't Get Next to You," ... which I will leave for you to discover....
* After all of this, "Full of Fire" (his last big hit?) almost sounds like a return to the basics, fairly simple dance music. Its sound doesn't seem that far from his first hit "Tired of Being Alone."
* True confessions: I HATED most of these songs when I was growing up. They weren't loud enough or obvious enough for me then. I thought "Let's Stay Together" was great, but the rest just left me cold and I was turning the radio dial trying to find something else. As a result, these songs really hit me now -- just like with Aretha and Otis Redding and....
* So, I love about a dozen out of 18 tracks on the best-of.
* But so far, I can't take ANY of the SLOW stuff. It's EXCRUCIATING!

...Got 40 more pages of THE MIDDLE OF NOWHERE proofread on Thursday, only 40 pages to go. It might be done before Christmas. I like parts of it very much. And it's still 90-percent all-new stuff....
...The silly horror story I sent to Tor.com back in April got REJECTED, I found out in an e-mail yesterday. That's OK -- I didn't really expect them to take it. It was just a joke I couldn't resist writing. It was either TOO silly or not silly ENOUGH. So I may look at it at some point and send it out again....
More soon....