Recovery TIme

It's been a long time since I updated this blog. Most of June was spent traveling 4100 miles in our van, Mobi. We left Silver City and camped in Navaholand, then went through Monument Valley north, caught hwy 95 to Capital Reef in Utah. Spectacular colors and rock formations. I'm not sure why people make such a deal of Monument Valley, because once you turn onto 95 the views are amazing.

We camped there one night and then drove a short distance to Calf Creek Campground where we stayed two nights. Beautiful. And hot. It was well over one hundred degrees, and roasting in the screen tent during the day. We took folding chairs and sat in the creek most of the day.

Then we went toward Bryce Canyon, turning north and heading west on I-50--billed as the loneliest highway. Now there is a road that lives up to its billing. We camped in a KOA, for lack of a better alternative. 

We made it to California the next day, camping in a free campground about 100 miles outside of Shasta in a lovely treed area along a river. The next day we made it to Hilt, California, our first destination. That's where Dagny's son, Lorenzo, lives and we got see the amazing young ladies his two daughters are becoming.

This trip was all about visiting kids, grandkids, and my mother, who just turned 95. That meant a few days in Hilt, then heading to Seattle. We did arrange to camp south of Portland for one night, getting together with my old music-writing pal, Frank Milan (formerly of Silver City), then the next day we got to Federal Way, where my mother lives. My brother Jim lives there and our youngest brother, Dan, and his lady Naomi, made it up the same day, so it was a reunion of sorts.

After a lovely visit, we headed to Bellevue  WA for a few days to see Dagny's daughter Selene and her two boys. Again it was great to see how they'd grown.

Then we came back. Constitutionally unable to retrace our steps, we headed down to Eastern Orego, went into Idaho and Wyoming, then into Utah. We did have to backtrack a bit, and we wound up in Moab where it was again scorching hot. At 4 am it was 77 degrees and headed above 100, so we packed up and left, getting home the next day.

We got back before the July 4th weekend started and hid out. Now, in a few days, I'm going on another road trip, this time with my friend Javaid Qazi. He'll be by here to pick me up and we'll be going to Marshall, IL, taking his wife's ashes back to her family for a ceremony there.

It's a lot of miles, and in between I've been writing. The last trip, driving a 22-foot Uhaul in convoy with two others from Portland to Silver City, gave me an idea for a short story. In particular, staying in a freeway motel in California was... inspiring, let's say. I just finished a draft of the story and will let it sit for a time, then get back to it. It's called Motel Endings, and came out with a rather Raymond Carver flavor to it, in tone, if not language.

I'm hoping all my trips will give me material for fiction. Travel is supposed to open your eyes, after all, and a writer with open eyes is handed diamonds. Usually they need a lot of polishing, but life isn't supposed to be easy.

Book reviews, sales and other confusions

Float Street Press has been experimenting with things, trying to figure out how to reach readers. We'd like our books to be read (seeing as that is the point of publishing them) and especially find readers who like a particular author. Javaid Qazi writes strange and wonderful short stories, but his two collections (UNLIKELY STORIES and THE JEWELED WEB) have not sent tremors through the publishing world. Still, when UNLIKELY STORIES came out, it got good reviews. Someone giving it a five star review wrote:

 

Excellent stories from Pakistan to Silicon Valley 

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Javaid Qazi's first collection of short stories is notable both for their insightful nature and amazing variety. A country-western barfly, Silicon Valley office workers, a doctor and his family in Pakistan, a lustful maid in Portugal, and a German 'stripteuse' populate these tales. Throughout the world Qazi finds interesting people in interesting dilemmas. His language is as original as it too is varied. A highly recommended first book by an upcoming writer who measures up internationally.

 

 That was lovely, but it doesn't seem that it encouraged shoppers to avail themselves of the book.

 

Okay, I get it that short story collections, especially when they lurk in a strange limbo between experimental and mainstream fiction, sometimes encroaching on one, sometimes the other, isn't the easiest sell. How do you tell people what it is? Our thought was to publish some stories individually and let people know they were from a large collection of such stories.

So we published two stories and made them available at 99cents and used the Kindle free days to let the world know.

 

 Both received an encouraging number of downloads, both free and paid. And one reviewer (the only reviewer) of President Sahib's Blue Period gave it:

5.0 out of 5 stars Wise, metaphorical, entertaining May 16, 2013

By Scrabble Fan

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

This short story contains many allegories and metaphors for our age, at the same time containing irony and humor. The writing style reminds me of Marquez' "One Hundred Years of Solitude." 

 

We've seen no reviews for Berlin Danse Macabre yet, but it is a challenging story.

 

Understanding what this anecdotal evidence means is difficult. I don't know what inspires people to write reviews, or how other people relate to reviews. I take them along with salt tablets myself, as single grains are usually inadequate, but the reviews of Javaid's books suggest that they struck a lovely chord with some readers.Now we are hoping that the interest this generated is enough to get readers to go for the collections. We could publish all of the stories individually and we will if that is what readers prefer. Given that the least we can charge for a story is 99 cents and the collection of 11 stories in UNLIKELY STORIES is $3.99 and THE JEWELED WEB has 18 for $4,99, I am not sure why readers would prefer single stories, but I know that I am not a typical reader. (We have both in paperback as well, for those who are not addicted to ereaders and like the touch and feel of books.)

It's a fun experiment and the results are sketchy. If you have any thoughts on the idea or value of individual stories versus collections, or how to let people taste a collection in another way, I'd love to hear them.