Adele sold two “I Will Keep You Alive” to a high school classmate, one for herself, one to donate to the school. I sold two to a friend who plans to give them as gifts. Adele sold one to a woman in the health club locker room, and I sold one to a-back-to-the-land second cousin in rural Arkansas. (She couldn’t begin reading it until she and her husband had finished injecting oak stumps with shittake and oyster mushrooms, which reminded me that another fellow can’t start our book until hew finishes Michelle Obama’s. I note these delays as evidence of our audience’s wide range of interests.)
We also got a check in the mail from a complete stranger. (Not only do we not know him, we never heard of the town he lives in.) The only action at the café was from a prior customer – and elderly, bushy bearded fellow in several layers of clothes and bulging backpack, who said he would be back after the first of the month, presumably by which time his S.S.I. check will have arrived.
Words-of-mouth have included “an extraordinary book” (A lawyer-friend) and “overwhelming” (A fellow author). The president of my Mended Hearts chapter plugged IWKYA in our monthly newletter. The locker room woman (See above) said she would tout it to her reading group. A buddy from my pick-up basketball days recommended it to everyone on the game’s mailing list. (One fellow said he’d ordered it, and another said he would.)
But an East Coast journalist pal pitched a review to a half-dozen places, and heard, “Not one fucking word.”
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.