No sales.
The lawyer who solicited me as a prospective expert witness in a comics copyright case (See: Earlier “Adventure”) remains disappeared. (May have to give up on him.)
The book I was solicited to review (See: Even Earlier “Adventure”) remains undelivered.
It has gotten so that, seeking recognition, I have taken to scanning the book shelves behind the experts being interviewed on CNBC hoping to spot the spine of one of my titles.
I did get a form letter off to a dozen Philadelphia area indie book stores trying to interest them in ordering the new printing “Cheesesteak” from its distributor, but many of these same stores had ignored me when I’d asked them to handle the original on a consignment basis.
On the plus side, I received confirmation that articles I’d written about UG cartoonists would be appearing in the second and third issues of a new magazine from IDW.
And I have not been totally ignored in the café. Pancho, a tennis instructor, who moonlights as a phone-sales solicitor (or a phone solicitor, who moonlights as a tennis instructor, depending on your POV), with whom I have been acquainted for 40 years – but never bought any of my books – asked how business was going. “Not so good,” I said. “You haven’t paid your mortgage?” he said. “My mortgage is paid, thank you,” I said, “but I haven’t paid off my espresso.”
Then Lefty, a retired cab driver, with whom I have been acquainted about four weeks – and hasn’t bought any of my books either – was attracted by “Best Ride.” “$5,” I said. “Quite a discount,” he said. “Trying to build my audience,” I said. But he dislodged this hook and swept away after he began to rave about the work of the journalist Chris Hedges, at the expense of Ernest Hemingway and Hunter Thompson, and I proclaimed my preference for them both.

My latest piece has gone up here:

The (Other) N-Word

It begins…

Two years ago, I self-published 250 copies of Cheesesteak, a memoir about growing up in West Philadelphia in the 1950s and ‘60s. I gave about half away to people who had shared experiences with me and sold most of the rest. A distributor offered to take the book on if I printed more, and a friend, who had experience as a copy editor, offered to read proof.
On p. 3, she questioned my use of the word “Negro.” (I had written that my immigrant paternal grandfather’s medical practice at 10th & Baimbridge was devoted primarily to “Jews and Italians and Negroes, who paid him in cash or produce or homemade wine.”) It turned out that in 101 pages I had used “Negro” 18 times, “black” (in a racial context) 10 times, and “Afro-American once. (I had also used, twice each, usually quoting a speaker, “nigger” and “schvartze.”) All the pieces which composed the book had appeared on-line or in-print in publications of modest but actual readership, and no one of whom I was aware had objected to any word I’d written, except for one editor, who’d changed the title “My First Faggot” into a Spanish phrase with all considerations of – or attitudes toward – sexual preference removed.
My friend said “Negro” was unacceptable. She cited as authority President Obama, The New York Times, the Oxford Dictionaries, Wikipedia, and an esteemed friend of hers who edited a journal about flutes. (My friend played one.) She said if I did not replace each “Negro” with “black,” she did not want her name associated with my book…

[Preferatory Note: I’ve picked up a few new “Friends” recently, so let me explain that since I began self-publishing, most mornings I’ve sat in a café with a “Buy Bob’s Books” sign (courtesy of S. Clay Wilson) and a display of my works. Then most weeks, I’ve posted news of my experience — and related matters.]

So…

No sales. (One shopper examined “Fully Armed” because he thought the fellow in the wheelchair on the cover might be a gangbanger he knew from Oakland but, of course, he wasn’t.)

Worse. That lawyer who was definitely going to call me Tuesday about my testifying as an expert witness in his comic book copyright case hasn’t been heard from since.

And worser still, the new collection of my comic-related writings, which I expected to have out in the fall, won’t happen until the following spring because I missed a deadline I didn’t know about or had forgotten if I did. If there were any heads to roll at Spruce Hill Press besides my own…

However, seeing these newly opened gaps in my schedule as Messages from God, I may accelerate the publishing of Adele and my co-written account of our adventures in cardio-vascular land.
Love (certainly. Death (nearly). It’s got it all. Can I see a show of hands for pre-orders.

One (reported) sale.
A college friend (and retired assistant D.A.) in upstate New York advised in a note with his Xmas (Take that, Donald Trump) card that he’d (a) had prostate cancer (Prognosis: “Excellent”) and (b) purchased “The Schiz.” (He made no mention of having read any, but that would have placed him among a rarer breed.)

In other news, I see two pieces I wrote for “The Comic Journal” made its Best of 2017 list. That was nice, (but I can’t truthfully say they were ones – even among mine – I would have picked).
Also I received an e-mail from an attorney with a Northern California law firm asking if I would be interested in testifying as an “expert” in a copyright case involving comic books. “Let’s talk,” said I.
I have been tagged as both a comics “critic” and a comics “historian,” both of which put a twinkle in my eye – and neither of which are how I see myself (though I understand how others might drape those robes upon me); but being an actual judicially-certified “expert”… Now that would be a step up in weight class. (Not to mention billing-by-the-hour out-performing peddling my wares in cafes. And think of the employment opportunities. I could advertise in the classified pages of the Bar journal, along with the PhDs in structural engineering and chemistry and neuro-biology.)
So while the inquiring attorney and I have been playing “phone tag” (A phrase I haven’t encountered since I was in practice – and hated then), I’ve been mentally bolstering my credentials – and imagining the witty repartee by which I’ll dazzle the opposition when cross-examined.
Of course, I don’t yet know the issue, let alone which side I’ll be on.
No matter. Paladin is I. Have Gun Will Travel.

Sold no books.
But gave away a “Cheesesteak.”
A guy in the café, looking over my books, asked if I was from the East Coast. He turned out to be from South Philly (Southern ‘60), where he played in a combo with Ernest Evans (“Chubby Checker”). After graduation, he split for NYC, where he lived the life of a dancer/actor/artist/carpenter/handyman – and lived in the same apartment building as Sam Melville when he was making his bombs. He came here in ‘84, attracted by the “light” (a very “artist” thing to say) – and driven from the Apple one winter when pipes were freezing and madmen were screaming in the street.
Anyway, he made no move to purchase, so…

In other news…
Okay, it’s not the same as an editor at a notable NY publisher saying she’d read your short story, do you have a novel she can look at, but, as things stand, pen-and-paper ledger-wise, having a publicist at a notable NY publisher ask if you would review a book about the 1936 Berlin Olympics, recently translated from the German, is a kick. When you stand this far from the literary red hot center, any approving nod is a ticker tape parade.
How did you get to me, I asked. Usually it is some off-the-wall, transgressive, outlaw cartoonist, thinking, well he liked _____. Maybe he’ll like me. (Which I also, let me quickly add, welcome.)
It turned out to be my otherwise-ignored panning of “The Boys in the Boat” as manipulative, manufactured hogwash in the not-widely-read broadstreetreview.com a year-and-a-half ago. She hadn’t read the book but my review “fascinating and the criticism valid.”
So I checked “Olympia” out of the public library for Deep Background.
Toss stones into ponds and you know where the ripples lead – even if sometimes it’s only a free book.

Sold one Schiz and one Cheesesteak. Both went to a stocky, balding middle-aged fellow, whose hair was slicked back like Jimmy Hoffa’s. He turned out to be an ex-Alameda County employee, who had worked with the homeless, schizophrenics, and the abused, and was now in in a doctoral program on social change, believing the best way to improve people’s lives was to improve their environment.
A few days before, my Checkered Demon “Buy Bob’s Books!” sign had caught the eye of a 30-something woman and her older male partner-of-10-years. Her parents had fled Peru when she was 13 to avoid the violence of the Shining Path. He was from Colombia but had been sent to Valley Forge Military Academy by his parents (who later moved to Miami) to avoid the violence of the drug cartels. She was an abstract artist, with an upcoming show in Richmond, and he ran a start-up working toward “clean” electricity. We discussed “Narcos,” the Free Speech Movement, my 45-year marriage, whether he should move his company to Mexico or Florida, his hyper-tension, my heart attacks. (I know we didn’t discuss the Warriors and I am pretty sure no one mentioned Trump, both of which were a relief.)
The conversation was fun and engaging and so warming in its humans-can-be-good-folks connectivity, not slaughtering anyone, not kicking others further down the economic ladder, it barely occurred to me to note that they hadn’t bought a book.

In other news, I have been notified that the distributor has only two copies of The Schiz in its warehouse. Who, I thought immediately, bought them?
Well, one person I now know of. A cartoonist in Toronto, about whom I have written, said he purchased a copy at The Beguiling (but had not yet read it). Only 6-700 more for which to find homes.
My contact/guide says we should await post-holiday returns before ordering a second printing. But what about an e- or audio book. (He has the equipment.) I liked the later idea particularly. I am to be the reader. Can Adele do Tisa? I ask. Or must I do all the voices? Do I differentiate between speakers by lapsing into (probably offensive) dialect?
I was a great reader aloud in elementary school.
Sounds like fun.

No sales.
No reviews.
But my college roommate e-mailed he “loved The Schiz.”
Your college roommate, you may say.
But his taste does not run to mashed potatoes. The last novel he recommended to me was by David Mitchell. And I bet he was the only athletic director in America with a collection of first edition Nabokovs in his office.
True, it was a Div III university, but still…

In other news, a friend in Manhattan has offered to copyedit Cheesesteak before its second edition for a less-than-nominal fee. She has professional credits in this field and, as befits a credited copyeditor, is a tad obsessive, as witnessed by its taking about 40 e-mails and two days to get past p. 1.
But now we are cooking, and have reached 12.

Finally, O, the artist who had been impressed enough by my promotional activities in the café to ask me for tips, invited me to the opening of his show. He gave the address and date.
“What time?” I said.
“9:30,” he said.
“Can’t make it. Too late”
“Don’t you go out at night?”
“We go to Bob Dylan concerts.”
He nodded. He could see that.
“Sometimes we go to house concerts at a friend’s, but we leave by 9:00, after the first set.”
“What time do you go to bed?”
“8:00. Get up at 5:00.”
“Even if I offer inducements. There will be cookies.”
I imagined how that would play with Adele. My expression must not have been encouraging.
“I guess it won’t work. But can you be there in spirit?”
“I can be there in spirit. Sure.”
“That is the important thing.”
I had the date. I had the address. If I woke up around 9:30 to urinate, which was not out of the question, I would give my spirit directions.

My writer-friend Z came into the café. He had bought a “Schiz” two weeks ago. “You’re an excellent writer,” he said. “Those caterpillars. I couldn’t have written that.”
I felt honored by the compliment. Z thrives on literary feuds and back-stabbings. He has been none for not talking to people for months over slights others might have countered with a “Glorioski!”
But not so honored to not say, “That’s on page two.”
“I’ve been skipping around,” he said.
“It’s intricately plotted,” I said.
“Seriously?”
“Sort of. Yeah.”

Awhile later, Y, my former secretary, came in. She bought a “Cheesesteak” and a “Schiz.” She had been a hold-out for months, but I gave her a deal.
I also gave her too much change for her fifty.
When I called her, she said, “Should I bring it back?”
“No,” I said. She was going to Kenya for a month. “It’s a sign from God. Buy me a bracelet. I have a seven-inch wrist.”