reading

I have two full days with nothing on my calendar, and a substantial but unfinished manuscript, which means it’s time to read through the new book on paper. Every once in a while I need to step back from writing and read what I have so far as an actual book. That way I can see the plot line and get a sense of how the story flows. There’s always a lot of literal cutting and pasting, which I often prefer to do the old fashioned way. One dog nose, phone call, or other interruption and it’s too easy for computer cuts to disappear into the ether.

So, while I attend to my work, I thought it might be a good time to remind you that you can catch up on my series by purchasing the first four novels now, or, should you prefer, pick up a little children’s book, My Dog Pete (available exclusively at the link) to add to someone’s Easter basket. It’s on Kindle, too.

You don’t have to buy my novels or essays from the guys in Seattle. Let’s face it: civilization needs local bookstores, and if we want them, we need to patronize them. Some of my favorite bookstores include Honest Dog Books, Books & Company, Boswell Book Company, and Politics and Prose. You can also order at Barnes & Noble, Target, or WalMart.

Or maybe you can find the time to follow me on Goodreads—where my numbers are pathetically few—or to leave a nice review wherever you buy books.

And, of course, you can also pre-order the one I’m working on now—the fifth in the series— if you haven’t already. You have, right?

Now available for pre-order wherever you buy your books.

If you have a favorite bookstore, leave a link in your comments, so others can find it.

Thank you!

Who’s your audience? It’s a question asked of writers all the time. Agents want to know. Publishers want to know. Even book club readers want to know. Most writers know how to gauge our answers to meet our business needs. Of course, to be published, a book needs to meet customer demand. But, to be honest, most of the time that’s only a guess based on what has sold before, and demand can also be created by marketing teams and media campaigns.

So, while I am delighted to have my books published, I don’t think about any of that when I’m writing. I really only write for an audience of one: me.

I write the kinds of books I want to read, and to be honest, while I do read for information, I mostly read for comfort and companionship. When I had high-pressure, stressful day jobs, I didn’t want to come home to read high-pressure, stressful books. I taught in the inner city. I didn’t want to read about suffering, murder, crime, drug use, and lost opportunities. I lived with that every day. When I moved into an executive position, I still spent a great deal of time thinking about human misery and how to help alleviate it. Again, I was often in the inner city, visiting schools, homeless shelters, prisons, half-way houses, and addiction centers. I also had many uplifting experiences in the fine arts world, to be sure. But what hung with me was always the human traumas that went on before my eyes every day.

I don’t think I’m alone in that. Many people have intense, exhausting, high stress jobs. And some of them find catharsis in reading about intense things, perhaps because at the end of a well-written book, there can be a release of the built-up strains.

But that’s not for me. I want to go to a world where there is a group of characters who feel like friends I can hang out with. I want to look deeply at the small miracles of daily life. I want to feel enmeshed and revived by the creativity and joy of an ordinary day. And so, both in the novels I write, and in my books of essays, I linger on the hope, the joy, the beautiful and all the ways in which frustrations, unkindness, and misery can be diminished—although never eliminated—by the way we focus our attention.

And so, when I’m writing, my incentive is the pleasure I take in joining the worlds I’ve created. I write (mostly) about characters I want to be with, who live in a world I enjoy being in. Maybe that’s selfish. I don’t know.

But honestly, I don’t know any other way to write; I don’t think I could write a horror story if I had to. “Write what you know” is the old adage, and I really don’t think there’s any better advice. Luckily, based on my readers’ comments, the kinds of books I like are also liked by other people. And that’s a pretty good system, I think.

So now, if you’ll excuse me, it’s time to go hang out with some old friends.

Cheers.

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