May 19, 2005

The Author

My friend recently wrote me and asked how I was doing because I don’t always cover it on Ash Tree. It’s true. I don’t write a lot about my marriage, about being a father, my relationship with my parents, brother, and the city of L.A.--things that I deal with very often. In some ways, I don’t get all that personal here. My moods are often redundant so there’s no real reason to repeat how I’ve been feeling.

Lately, I’ve been down. Maybe it’s post-partem depression after finishing a story and I’ve got to face what’s in front of me. I’ve been thinking about self-publishing my novel "North of Sunset" and that is depressing to me. One might think that all I think about is writing and publishing, and that’s almost true. I’m obsessed with putting books out, getting read, and it’s not happening. I'm not sure who the audience is for the fiction I write. See, I’ve already said as much on this blog which is why I haven’t been repeating it.

So I’m looking into self-publishing. I’m looking into Xlibris and Lulu.com. Print on demand places. It makes me feel more than a little pathetic, but I’ve got to get another book out there. DH Lawrence did it, I think, and other major writers who couldn’t get a break, so I can justify it that way. If ten people read the novel it’s better than no one. Something good could come from getting the book published in some form. I need to put out another representative of myself besides Oscar Caliber Gun/The Golden Calf which was basically written when I was a teenager.

This is all premature really because I already have two things being published this year. I keep thinking, I’ll believe it when I see it. I was fretting about the money from the French publisher like I’d never get it. I thought it might be wired to somebody else’s bank account by mistake or some other problem. Such is my faith in my luck. But these two pieces could be exciting and lead to other things.

I am projecting other anxieties onto publishing, no doubt. It’s been a while since one of these morose posts so I thought I’d dive in again. I need to lighten things up a bit. Here’s the blue author:


blue

5 comments:

Charlie said...

I liked the original version of this post better, when you began by saying that your friend wrote you to "tell" you how you were doing. I need someone to do that for me more often.

You need more oxygen, by the way.

RuKsaK said...

you have to be careful eating Willy Wonka's experiments.

Now - there's a metaphor.

Henry Baum said...

Spiral, that "tell" sentence was up for only five or ten minutes. It was a slip and I’m sure it means something.

I’m still waiting for the Blue Man Group, blue in the face comments. Or at least, Hey, that’s what you sort of look like!

I’m gonna put up a normal picture of me when I get one.

I think I have to take a step back from this blog again. It’s part of my mania. Because I haven’t published anything substantial in so long the blog is overly important to me. Of course, whenever I make these proclamations I never stick to it.

tequilita said...

hi henry. it's good to finally see you. i had googled a picture that i thought was you a while back...but now i know that it definitely was not. anyway, spiral's right...breathe, it'll help your mood!

Magazine Man said...

So can we say we knew you during your Blue Period?

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