I will do the unthinkable. I'm going to do nothing about selling copies of my book. I can already see the "savvy" experts shaking their 20th Century heads. You watch a show like Shark Tank and the mill-billionaires always ask the novices, "How many have you sold?" And "What are you doing to market your product? Which in my case the product is a novel called The Black Butterfly Woman. I would have to answer the Sharks, "Six books in six weeks". Now they will look at each other knowingly. And my marketing is this blog, "New Novelist". When I tell people about my novel they almost invariably respond with "I don't have a Kindle reader". And then when I tell them how wonderful and revolutionary the Kindle Fire is and even easier to read than a real book, which was way beyond my expectations, I begin to feel like a Kindle salesman. The truth is I don't want to be involved in the act of selling anything. It's not in my nature to be a salesman. I have no joy and therefore no enthusiasm for barking and huckstering and therefore no time for it. All of my passion is burning hot for writing.
In my novel, Vo Tuyen, the Black Butterfly Woman, tells the weary soldier, "You must move beyond motion." It is a mystery, one that takes the soldier many years to resolve.(The other big question The Black Butterfly Woman answers is "Why do the Vietnamese fight us so hard and not love us?").Move beyond motion means to do all of the work necessary and then let it go. If it is meant to have force in the universe the universe will align with it and everything that is supposed to happen next will happen next.
In Wolf Totem, Jian Rong says the same thing after the student and the master have set all the wolf traps perfectly and after great preparation. The student asks if he should check the traps. The old master says if you have done all of the work, God will do the rest.
And so I rest my case and my novel and do the unthinkable and move beyond motion.

Here is another thing Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP) has done for me: it has given me the gift of time, or rather, freedom as an author from the slavery of time. When a printed book is published people need to be paid: the printer, editors, publicists, agents (not to mention the author). The book has three weeks to get noticed and "take off''' much like a racehorse--otherwise it is out of the race. Everyone loses interest; everyone loses money. The author loses credibility. Not so with the KDP e-book. It is more like a seed. There is time for the rays of reader interest to reach into infinite soil of e-space and e-time and to slowly grow and find the happy warmth of a glowing audience. The audience for the book can grow at its own pace without the need of the book being unnaturally pushed forth with hypered advertising. In one month I have sold only six books and yet I am thrilled. No "real" publisher would be thrilled with me. Yet I know I have written a very good book, a book of wonders, The Black Butterfly Woman. A very good seed. And I am granted the gift of time and freedom from time for that good little seed to grow into a beautiful tree that stands on its own deep roots from which it was drawn. It can take six months or six years for it to reach the sunlight. That is a great gift. I thank KDP for this small private space from which I now reach out to the world of e-reading people.

It is done. I have published an ebook, The Black Butterfly Woman, through Amazon.com's Kindle Direct Publishing (KDP). It was fairly easy to do even for me and I highly recommend KDP. The website for uploading your work is very friendly. You imput your title, your name, your front matter, your book cover and upload your document. You chose your price point between $2.99 and $9.99 and receive a 70 percent royalty. I chose $4.99. For each book I sell I will get about $3.50. The revolution is here. Why exactly would I want to sell my book to a "real" publisher for a 5 percent royalty? Let's say the real book sells for $20 just to keep the math simple. For each book my author's share is $1. If I need an agent to get this deal my profit goes down to 85 cents. Somebody pinch me. Somebody tell me what I'm not seeing. Another great thing is that, when I downloaded a copy of The Black Butterfly Woman, much to my amazement I still found a few typos and paragraphing problems. I was able to make the corrections and upload the book again and now it is a perfect copy. I did not hire a copy editor and I challenge anyone to find a mistake in it. I did not have a company of house editors slashing my story and I challenge you to find a better written or more interesting story. Somebody smart, please come burst my balloon. What is the dark side, what is the awful truth about Kindle Direct Publishing that I am too wildly happy to see?

The Novel As My Best Friend

For twenty years I created a world of goldseekers, Indians, adventurers, and a few very bad hombres. After that I created another world where a young man disappears into the tunnels beneath Vietnam and discovers the reasons why they will never surrender. Now I am done working with them, carving and shaping mountains and streams, now I miss those worlds, those heroes terribly. I am lonely for my friends of ten thousand days and nights. The modern world holds nothing and no one to compare to them. Yes I can still walk the canyons where the goldseekers toiled in stone and water searching for the earth's rarest treasure. And still I can sense their ghosts laughing and crying in the shadows of this world. But they are all gone, except as I recreate them, call them, conjure them, to live again in the world of stories.
The truth is, I belong more to their world than to this one. The truth is, I do not belong to this century at all. I was fairly able to navigate the 20th century--all the while wondering where all of the people, cars and buildings came from. I am barely able to navigate at all in the new 21st century with all of its gizmos and wizardry. Who are these modern people? I do not know them. I have nothing to say to them they would not regard as quaint or antiquated or out of date. For one thing these new people talk too much and have no knowledge of the power of silence. I prefer the quiet whisperings of streams to the constant yakking of men and women who have nothing to say. So you see I am a hopeless case.
So if you meet a stranger who does not care to talk, perhaps you may understand that he is not really here.

The Writer as Clown

For over twenty years I gave my all to writing novels in my spare time. Two novels given with heart and soul, what I intended to be my gift to the world, the meaning of life borne from the crashing sea of life. All of it was joy. On the other hand: Studying writing, I paid little attention to thoughts or articles about marketing. Now, wonder of wonders, the hard won novels finally finished, comes marketing day to try and sell the fruits of my creation. But this isn't wonderful. In fact it's awful.
Over the years my mind fogged over when I read writing manuals that included pieces on marketing: Practice speaking in front of a mirror; cultivate editors and agents for friends; publish short stories in literary magazines. I did get a story published in CrossTIME VII (2008). But I do not want these other things. I find myself whispering, "Oh, God." What I want is writing, not speaking.
I come from a family of quiet men. I had a great uncle, a farmer, who seldom spoke. I became a writer because I have virtually no small talk within me. My brain is fortunately (or unfortunately) wired for big ideas, big concepts, big philosophy. Why are we alive? Why do we die? Why war? Why greed? Why need? I also love geology and any sentence that begins with "Plate tectonics is..."
I wrote two big novels creating action and adventure that were drama platforms for explorations of these big ideas, of the deep mysteries of life: The Goldfinder and The Black Butterfly Woman.
Now I'm supposed to get on a stage and bounce around like Bo Jangles? Like a street barker selling elixirs in a bottle--I am supposed to conjure an audience from thin air.
It is not enough that I have done that impossible thing, creating worlds and living beings with only the force of my mind. It does not feel right but now I must become a lively clown to get my notice for the children of my mind. I do not know.
I think I will not become a clown.

Writer with a Working Problem

I am a writer and a working man. This season of my life I drive a twelve hour shift on a bus. I have no Ph.D's or Master Degrees. I have never founded a foundation that was not made of cinder blocks or concrete, the best kind in my opinion. Which is to say I am a blue collar worker and writer. What I have to say is connected to the earth. What I write is born from bloody knuckles and sweaty days spent in the sun or cold hours below zero trying to stay warm.
I came across a gold mining camp hidden within a gorgeous and heavenly valley of the Sierra Nevada. Emblazoned on a tall wooden sign were these words:
WE ARE A DRINKING CAMP WITH A MINING PROBLEM
Just so. I am a writing man with a working problem.
Yesterday I received a letter from Jonathan Galassi, president and publisher of Farrar, Straus & Giroux. He read the first fifty pages of my novel, The Goldfinder, and said he found the setting and premise "made for interesting historical fiction" and said "many of the passages are lyrical and powerful", but that overall the writing was inconsistent. I have received three such letters from The Gods Who Rule the Writing World. It's hard to be consistent when you work twelve hours on the streets--but that is the job of a working writer.
Now I must find a way to return to that imaginary world where I am almost someone, where I am in love with my mind pulsing through my fingertips.

Working Novelist

This blog (while I may be speaking to no one) really works for me. My words are transmitted into the public domain to an audience potentially larger than a dentist's office or any other place where people supposedly read magazines. Temporarily at least, the great kick for me is to not receive a notice from some stranger: "Your article does not fit it with our needs at Horses End Review. We wish you success somewhere else."
My problem is my work does not fit with any of the thousands of commerical journals that populate the market grid the world has been sliced into by the smart people. Every day I listen to crap on the radio and on the TV (I do not use this term loosely--there are sights and sounds insulting to any normal human being every minute on radio and TV). And yet there is no place for me? Not one word? Apparently I am not welcome in the commercial world of crap. So I have my blog: Working Novelist, where I create my place from space, a space for beautiful language. Now then, we were talking about novels.
I have written two novels: The Goldfinder; 782 pages; and The Black Butterfly Woman; 315 pages--taking twenty years and five years respectively to complete. I am merely a working man who puts his boots on in the morning and goes to his day job right after I having finished my writing. The reason I have been able to persevere at novel writing for so long is that I love doing it. Every day I look forward to that three hour writing session. It is an incomparable ecstasy. Now I am trying to market my novels. This is not ecstasy. Not to mince words, it is headache producing misery. One serious problem I have is that I am a novelist, not a short story writer. I've only had one SS published, Evolove, and it easily should have been a novella. I do not write short. Why would a marathoner be expected to run a 50 yard dash? Anyway not having a long list of published stories might signal to big book publishers I am either not much of a writer, or lazy. I say without any misgivings at all that I am likely the hardest working novelist on earth if you consider my working life. If there is a novelist out there who is also a coal miner, I want to hear from you. I will consider taking second place.
I have always done brutal physical jobs. I have been a laborer on bridge construction, a framing carpenter, a shingler, and finally, a UPS driver for 28 years. I began my serious writing when I was a UPS driver. I came home so beaten up I could not write and unless you're Jack London, brutal labor doesn't lead to great novel writing. So I did my writing in the morning, always three hours, never less. This is the pure creative time, the golden hours with the mind still refreshed from the sacred dark temples of sleep, when the mind is yet still and suspended in that nearly subconscious state that welcomes divine ideas from the many twilight zones of creativity. If you would write a real novel (something that is new) you will write upon awakening.
I think I have said enough for now.