First off, in the news: (not one to point fingers, for indeed I have was silent as the grave here in Jiggle Blog Flog da Paris Box-ville for half a frikken year) but my cousin Justino has FINALLY blogged again. Yes, I'm Sirius. Check it out. It's a good little story complete with forgotten native Americans, total loss of motor control on black ice & other snow storm hell, road rage, AM radio fuzz, and good Italian that he is he even got his mother in there, too. Click The Burning Mind to crawl inside my cousin's mind.
Secondly, whoever sent me the package to POB 32352, Oakland 94604, that's my address. I'm totally sorry they returned it to you. Postal swine. Seems they have this policy about not holding packages for more than ten daze. Something about lack of space. I remember tiny little post offices along the Appalachians that were stuffed to the ceiling with hiker packages that the local postmasters would dutifully hold onto for months and months w/o complaint. My post office in downtown Oakland is so mammoth it could house an indoor Nascar track. Ridiculous. Well, I bike everywhere these days (no car). Between that and the fact that I exercise my right as a bat-crazy writer to stay up all night writing (and doing my best to promote Dead Men in anyway I can online, as you'll see below), well, I don't get to the box very often. So I missed a package. It arrived around my birthday. I can only imagine it was something very nice, a heartfelt gift. Forgive me kind sender, whoever you are.
So, finally, the promotional crap. Amazon.com has this thing where you can enter in keywords to go with your book. Then they take it a step further and invite you to express in a short paragraph WHY the keyword (or author or book) you've tagged to relates to your book. So I pissed away a few hours tonight plugging my own damn book. I gotta tell you, there's nothing worse than tooting your own horn. I HATE it when people do it to me, and I have never expected any agent or publisher or ANYONE to listen to my own promotion of my work. To my mind, the best recommendations are those that come from other people, two or three steps removed from the source.
Having said that, can I throw a little Christmas request out there into the Universe? I don't want presents. I don't need anything tangible. But for all of you who read Dead Men but never went online to review it on Amazon, how about it, eh? Even if you hated the dang book, write that! Write anything. Just review it. And don't read the other reviews first. You'll taint your own view. Write how it made you feel, what it did for you, where it took you, etc. I know it's sold some 2000 copies, so it totally mystifies me as to why there are only 17 reviews on Amazon. Hell, as you'll see below, I just wrote four "reviews" myself.
Be my good little elves. Be my Santa Clauses and Rudolphs! Click this paragraph to be taken straight there and just write something. Your opinion matters! Thank you.
Amazon.com tag words for Dead Men Hike No Trails:
Appalachian Trail Thruhike:
Several readers of this book have found it inspiring enough to launch thruhikes of their own. I speak based on fact, not ego, when I say EVERY reader of this book has expressed only praise. If the author didn't continue to battle chemical depression, he'd have an agent, a publicist and a bestseller.
Bill Bryson:
When told I thruhiked the AT, people say: Bill Bryson. If you loved A Walk In The Woods for its humor, as I did, but are one who desires a more intimate relationship with your author, read my reviews. They say it all. I take you on an unforgettable journey in a book you'll never want to part with.
Into the Wild:
This is required reading for anyone who felt a personal connection to the whole McCandless epic freedom journey. Why? Because it ends not in death but in LIFE! Thousands head into the forests of the U.S. every year for the same reasons as Chris, and months later they come home alive. Buy this book.
