Sold five Lollipops. One went to a reliable customer/semi-relative/retired attorney in NYC, who explained he hadn’t bought earlier because he’d been ill. One went to a reliable customer/café pal/retired UC administrator, who explained… Well, actually she didn’t. One went to a sometime customer/retired physician/e-mail correspondent (mainly basketball). One went to a long time friend from Philly/psycholgist-turned-B&B-owner/now living in the Carribean, which required me to equip my business account to accept funds wired internationally. (So if you know any oligarchs in need of a way to launder funds…) And one. along with a Schiz, went to an adjunct college professor in Texas/apparent UG-comix fan, whom I “know” only through FB, hence a “stranger” and those sales a special thrill.
I also sold a Best Ride. It went to another stranger, affiliated with a production company in LA which, further inquiry revealed, seeks “interesting” properties to develop into films. Now solicitations from outfits which have spotted possibilities in my work are not unknown to me. [Just this morning one came from an allegedly Chicago-based company that had seen such “potential” in one of my books (unnamed) it would “offer more than 540% investment to Republished or Published (it)” (sic.) Their “investment seems to take the form of reducing the cost to me of their re-publishing my book from $1699 to $1299, a “one time opportunity.”] So this “stranger”’s plunking down $10 American coats his presentation in a titillating patina. But I recall the producer he once told me, “You know how it works. I tell you how much I love your book, and you never hear from me again,” so I am not ordering any Teslas yet.
(Another weird thing is that BR has been around for 45 largely ignored years, but recently a fellow – now friend – who had optioned its film rights shortly after its publication told me he was trying to revive his project. Now here comes this guy, and, the last time someone wanted to option one of my books, I was immediately contacted by someone else who did too. It’s like once somebody in Hollywood gets their eye on something, someone else does.)
In other news…
1.) My correspondent who writes e-books for the Christian bondage market asked if I was the author of Most Outrageous: The Trials and Trespasses of Dwaine Tinsley and Chester the Molester. I said I was and asked why she wanted to know. She said she had wondered what I wrote and found it at Amazon.
This led me to click the link she provided, where I saw the book had two reviews. One (five stars) was posted in 2008, praising it as a “powerful and disturbing” reminder of the forces of cultural repression in America. The other (two stars) went up a few months ago and complained there were not enough cartoons.
You can’t please everyone.
2.) The editor of a book I recently reviewed requested the editor of the on-line journal where it appeared to re-write one of my paragraphs. My editor forwarded her request, and I said I preferred my version but suggested her’s run in the “Comments” section. The complainant seemed okay with this – but seems not to have proceeded with the purchase of either of my books she had been contemplating.
3.) On a more positive note, the fellow (See “Adventures” 313) who bought Outlaws, Rebels… let me know it had found a place on his shelf for books he has found “meaningful.”
That’s three people, previously unknown to me, that book has touched sufficiently to take the trouble to express appreciation for it.
I am grateful.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.