Conversations with a female butcher (“The Schiz”) and a male mixed-media artist (“Bob on Bob”) produced words of interest and promises of follow-up – but sales of zero. I gave away one book (“Outlaws, Rebels…)” though, through a web of café connectives.
It reached Z, an author/publisher; but before we get to him, we must pass through the authors Y and X and W, another author/publisher. As I was headed to the rest room, X stopped me to say Y had been looking for me. When I speculated he probably wanted to know if I had read his latest book, which he had given me two weeks earlier which I have had trouble reading (but am about a third through), X asked who had published it. I said it seemed to be an Austrian company, which could do books in English but had no distribution in the US, o its business bona fides seemed questionable. I then asked how X’s own book was coming along. He said Y’s company had it, which, as he described it, seemed to have devolved from a non-profit dependant on grants to a hybrid that charged authors for services. It had Y’s book for six months and was still demanding revisions he disagreed with. X was asking about my book when Z arrived.
Now Z and I have a strained relationship. Usually we ignore each other but once we’d exchanged words of a nature most uncharacteristic of me, who is generally as serene as ‘enry ‘iggins at his most mannerly. Not long ago, as what I took to be a conciliatory gesture, Z had given me his new book (published by his company), which I have been unable to read and have spent much time considering how to rid myself of. But he now seemed sufficiently interested in and impressed by my forthcoming publication that I gave him what I did.
Which, I am sure, he won’t read and will have to figure out what to do with.
Meanwhile, we have resumed ignoring each other.
In other news…
1.) I received a FB “Message” from a woman who had somehow gotten hold of a “Goshkin.” “A much needed, desperately wonderful transfusion,” she wrote, “poignant and lovely…” What a delightful surprise!
2.) And my publisher confirms “Messiahs…” went to the printer’s Friday. (Or, if it didn’t, it will go today.) Furthermore, my copy for the web site announcing the availability of pre-publication orders has been approved. Once it is up, I will let all know.
So many Bob Levins on the Internet; I'm the Bob Levin who writes.