It was 2:00 in the afternoon, Sunday, February 20th…I had just pulled off Interstate 83, north of the Baltimore Beltway, into the parking lot of the Hunt Valley Shopping Center for a cup of coffee, when I felt the bump-bump-bumping of a front left tire quickly going flat. I got no more than ten feet toward the row I intended to park in, when, in a flash, the brake pedal of my 1987 Dodge Diplomat slumped all the way to the floor; the car keeled over and screeched along the asphalt to a halt!

Getting out to survey the damage, it was instantly apparent I’d escaped calamity out there on I-83. I’d been on my way home from the very special funeral of my august mother-in-law at the Highland Presbyterian Church, in Fayetteville, North Carolina. As if that hadn’t been excitement enough, my head spun as I witnessed, beneath my car’s left front fender, wheel and tire collapsed at a 70 degree angle against a rusty frame! The Endless Mountains of Pennsylvania and home were suddenly a moonshot away!

Dazed, I wandered into Wegmans supermarket, where a sympathetic clerk at a long information desk offered me a phonebook the size of - and just as inscrutable as - the Magna Carta. Slumping to a seat on a bench that faced the check-out lanes, I failed to focus at finding the AAA auto club’s number, of which I happened NOT to be a member. Which of several towing outfits was the right one? And if I did pick a winner, where was I going with the car? Which of the dozen garages listed could be trusted to repair my car? Which of them were open on a Sunday? I never thought of suburban Baltimore as being a particularly friendly place, but the store manager approached and asked what my problem might be. As quickly as I poured out my predicament, he was on his cell phone speaking with an inexpensive and functional towing outfit. The manager also disclosed that I was within shouting distance of a well-regarded Sears’ auto repair center - which, in fact, proved to be on the opposite side of the shopping center directly behind his store. My benefactor had no sooner left when a gentleman took a seat beside me and - explaining he had overheard the store manager’s conversation - called the Sears people, relaying the situation with my car as I laid it out to him. Squirming in discomfort, I uttered a snippet to my tale of woe; I was expected  back in northern Pennsylvania Wednesday morning, bright and early, for eye surgery. Angel #2 smiled in return and put me on his cell with “Chris,” the Sears weekend manager, who guessed they could have my car up and running and out the door by late Monday afternoon.

The tow truck driver, a friendly chap from El Salvador, spoke excellent English. When we’d towed my car around to Sears, he offered to chauffeur me, gratis - in the tow truck - to a motel of my choice. My first selection, the nearby Hunt Valley Inn, at $140 a night, proved too much for my pocketbook. We made the rounds of several other places near the mall (no reduction in the prices!) until he thought of the former Hampton Inn. A mile away, it was $89 plus tax. Recently reborn as a Comfort Inn, it was to be my palatial and comfortable home for the next several days.

Monday, I was at the Sears garage as quickly as I could get there - not as easy a job as you might think. Over the past several weeks, Baltimore and its environs had been stricken with at least four feet of snow; the sidewalks piled even higher - undoubtedly hurled in haste off the streets and now frozen mounds of ice. You couldn’t walk anywhere, even to a place within sight; wild, relentless traffic made the cleared streets too dicey for foot traffic.

Enter “Jimmy’s Taxi,” a super efficient bunch that appeared almost before you called them and, at reasonable rates, got you where you needed to go at bullet speed. The cab drivers, although from India, were cheery, quite Americanized, and knew the Baltimore area like the tanned back of their hands. The warning about the sidewalks and the “Jimmy’s” recommendation had come from the girl manning the Comfort Inn front desk - as it turned out, another godsend from yet another angel.

At the Sears garage, Monday’s news  was mixed: they’d found the problem: the upper left wheel control arm had virtually disintegrated from age and road salt. My car being 23 years old, the suspension parts were not readily available; it could take weeks to locate them. Brown’s salvage yard to the rescue…out on Kirkwood Road in the town of White Hall; they sent a man into a junkyard drifted five feet with snow to pull the part from the single matching Dodge car in their inventory. As for Monday, that’s all she wrote….

At the motel, Tuesday morning, I grew totally antsy. I’d been forced to cancel the eye surgery back home, already once rescheduled because of the funeral. In a dither, bag and baggage, I checked out of the Comfort Inn and took up residence in the waiting room at the Sears garage. Either that car was going to be fixed, or… or, what? Andy, the mechanic, took me out into the garage and showed me the mess confronting him. Trying to mount the junkyard arm, he had discovered further hidden rot at the point of attachment. Andy broke it to me gently - the car was not easily, if at all, fixable. Furthermore, it was Andy’s personal advice not to drive it one mile further, even if he were to fix it. The amount of hidden salt and rust damage to the frame, the brake lines, etc., in his opinion, made the car a death trap. Andy didn’t have to tell me that if that control arm had let go out there on 695 or on I-83, at 70 miles an hour I most certainly would have been attending my own funeral.

I hated saying good-bye to my old friend the Diplomat, but I cleaned the car out, and gave it a burial right there in the Sears garage. (Brown’s arrived the next day and towed it off - along with the unused control arm - to keep the other Dodge company out in there the drifts.) That afternoon, I leased a little Chevie Cobalt from Avis and headed up I-83, first toward York and Harrisburg, PA, then east to a bed at my daughter’s home in Kutztown, some four hours away.

What did I learn from this experience? First, never, EVER, look a gift horse in the mouth. When O’bama presented his “cash-for-clunkers” deal I’d turned up my nose at it - that $4500 dollar allowance I’d missed, was looking very good on the new car I now belatedly contemplated purchasing. Why in hell had I stubbornly stuck to that clunker? Sure, I’d bought it five years ago for $1500, but in the past 18 months the expensive repair bills had been mounting. And as to the SAFETY aspects? - I’d been totally out of my mind driving that car at speed on trips to Florida, lucky to still be alive. I’d certainly been warned - not just by my son and daughter - but by practically everyone who knew me.

The best lesson of all was in discovering how wonderfully helpful Americans can be when they see someone in trouble. It’s the kind of thing that takes you totally by surprise - folks in the middle of a stressful day, coping with their own problems, simply putting them aside to come to your aid. If we are looking at hard times, then, as Dubyah once told us, “bring em on!” I suspect hard times will only bring out more of that kindly AMERICAN SPIRIT that so helped me a few days ago in Baltimore.

Yes, there’s a terrific amount of competition out there meeting anyone who promotes and attempts to direct-sell a self-published book. Forget the fact that a sea of new books hit the market every month. Look at it this way: if you manage to reach a few potential readers every month, that no one else is pitching at the same time, you are likely to convince them that they cannot do without a copy of your book. That, of course, assumes you have an appealing and fully professional volume to present. What better way to communicate your subject matter than appearing before them?…

Instead of spending money with one of the marketing hucksters who promise you lists of available speaking engagements all over the U.S.A., consider your own back yard. It’s an expensive process traveling to distant speaking engagements; every mile in your car costs you a minimum of 40 cents, not to mention time consumed, meals, and the cost of lodging. For those reasons alone, you’ll want to address groups as close to home as possible.

How many people will you be addressing? Probably no more than 50, and often less. After all, most of us are not famous; such turnouts should be considered gratifying. How many of the audience will buy your book when you are done speaking? Ten percent - if you have a novel that really interests them - more, if you have a non-fiction book that realistically outlines a method of health or financial improvement. (Any publisher will tell you that novels are a tougher sell than a non-fiction work. )

Okay, how do you line up the speaking engagement? Well, the easiest way is through a friend. In my own case my first several speaking engagements were suggested by people who knew me well and thought a group they belonged to would enjoy listening to what I might have to say about my self-published novel, 3 ACES.  I don’t really know what they expected to hear, but I do know I have a lot of interesting information to impart about my book - a “relationship” story, with trucking, gambling, and Vietnam as the background - a writing and publishing effort which occupied the better part of 7 years. With my background of professional acting, I was confident I could read my own work to a live audience in a fashion that would pique their interest.

Having lined up several speaking engagements, I pondered how I might present the most compelling parts of the book in the limitations of a one hour presentation. Personally, I don’t like readings that drone on for over an hour, especially if the reader is speaking too fast, trying to cover too much material. My writing is dialogue-heavy and I enjoy doing the character parts, which provide variety and, despite my best efforts to avoid slips of the tongue, some occasional levity.

I try to cover my book in seven or eight selections, each  stressing different characters and plot points. The reading of each section lasts no more than 4 minutes. During a practice reading, I’ll time the selections, reading slowly enough to be understood…two minutes per page. When I have allowed enough time to read slowly enough to be understood, but not so slow as to be monotonous, I know I can relax and enjoy myself. Varying timbre, speed, and volume to match the passage being read is equally important. Keep in mind though, that the tendency for any reader is to proceed too quickly - I can’t stress that enough. You must make an effort to read distinctly and clearly, without rushing.

Another thing I’ve hit on, is to preface each segment being read with a little informal “confession” of what went astray in the writing and was corrected  editorially before publication, or just what ideas gelled that formed a given character, or what kind of research I undertook to get vital information. I’ve become somewhat of a bug on research, so I enjoy spilling the beans on myself in disclosing what I’ve done to fully understand my subject matter.  I try to restrict each pre-reading discussion to four minutes.

Some groups will have meals served at the meeting. In that case you will eat with the group and present later. It’s normal to have some people leave early - they’ve come for the meal only, so don’t take it personally. Even worse, where there is no formal meal, there may be a refreshment table. People will be getting up and down for cake and coffee. You can’t let that rattle you - even when some snack and leave. I like a meeting where there’s no food at all. If anyone walks from that one, you know for sure it was YOU! It’s most gratifying when you discover you’ve held a good-sized audience in their seats for a full hour.

When you finish, don’t forget to thank the audience for coming. Don’t neglect to tell them about your website - www.richardide.com, in my case. Before your talk make sure you have at least five shiny new books piled on a table beside you, with an opened box below. I place my special bookmarks and a few cards alongside for anyone who wants one and close, mentioning a discount for anyone at the presentation who wants to purchase a signed copy of 3 ACES.

That’s it…hope I’ve given you a few ideas for your own presentation.

If you recall, in my blog of July 26th, 2008 - LEAVING I-95 AND LOVIN’ IT… -I stressed the financial chaos experienced, at the time, by the casual automobile traveler to Florida. I referred, at the time, to a quick trip of my own in late June, made from the Endless Mountains, west of Scranton, PA to the Sarasota area. Stressors then had been generally intense traffic flows, especially through the Washington, D.C. area and on down to Fredricksburg, Virginia; erratic and/or deceptive posted gas and motel prices; and the endless spin on every radio station about a recovering economy and “green shoots.”

Last week I took another quick trip to Florida , the object being a speaking and reading engagement at the Tarpon Springs Library. Watercolor artist, Sherri Patterson, had paved the way with The Friends Of the Library and Linda and Jay Linebach (old family friends) were my hosts for the four-day stay. The experience of discussing and reading from my novel, 3 ACES, proved most pleasant, not to mention one wonderful luncheon on the sponge docks, at the Hellas Restaurant. I am pleased to recommend their superb crab-stuffed grouper!

But I must tell you, that in just 7 months, the stressors of June, 2008 have done a mighty flip-flop! No more is there talk of “green shoots.” The high gas prices are now erratic to just plain weak, and traffic in general has thinned out something fierce! What?..all this in just 7 months?

“Job loss” rules! President O’bama has been shaken from his Health Care coddling by the loss of a Democratic Congressional seat in Massachusetts - jolted awake by the jobs situation. The boys and girls of the Labor Department, down there in Foggy Bottom, have shifted into high gear monkeying up the numbers; they’d have you believe things are forever getting better. Their latest computation - 9.7% underemployment.

But add in the 2.5 million people looking for work over the past 12 months, and the Labor Department’s 9.7% grows to 11.3%.  Tacking on 8.3 million  folks forced to take part-time work because they can’t find the full-time version, you arrive at a 16.9% underemployment number.

And, oh yeah - what about the poor devils so discouraged with their search for work that they’ve just given up?… Toss them into the mix, and we’re at 26.7 million - or a total of 17.5% underemployed!

Consider that the American public’s spending accounts for 70% of GDP (Gross Domestic Product) under our “capitalistic” economic system, and you find that we are wading in ever deepening doo-doo!

What I saw on my drive down to Florida reflected this distress. I took I-81 to 1-77 and at Columbia, South Carolina I-26 to I-95 in order to bypass Friday traffic around Washington and on into Virginia; both of which take a toll on your patience. Holding to I-95, you can lose up to four hours.

On I-81, rolling past Carlisle, PA, a major transportation hub - a spot from which I often drove long haul while gathering the information to write 3 ACES - I witnessed any number of enormous, new warehouses with no visible activity at their doors or on the loading docks. The vision of inactivity so stark, that I wondered if these structures were not headed toward bankruptcy proceedings. (Further back on I-81, up around Buck Run,  I had caught sight of several huge new plants and warehouse operations that looked underutilized, but witnessed nothing quite that dramatic.)

Then, while on 295 and I-10 in Florida, I sighted any number of dealer lots overloaded with tractors and trailers for sale. Not just one or two, here and there, but dozens - in every lot! When I left long haul work in 1997 to begin my book, you would have been hard pressed to find even a handful of such vehicles for sale in these same lots. Goods not being warehoused; goods not being shipped. Major consumer turndown, anyone?…

Once on 1-95, covering South Carolina on into Florida, from Friday afternoon rush hour to 9:00 that night, the lack of four-wheeler traffic was shocking. Trucks, even with their reduced numbers, were the dominant vehicles. I-95 traffic was a fraction of what I’d experienced last February and June on trips to Sarasota.

Lending substance to the sharp drop-off in automobile traffic was my experience in checking into motels. At Exit 2 - Kingsland, GA - I checked in and out of one low priced motel (their internet connection too weak to get me online) and then tried two other motels nearby. All three had internet systems that proved somehow inoperative, and I rejected the rooms. Two were quick to drop their prices when they saw I was walking. THAT had not been the case the year before! Then it had been a case of landing a room, at any price, before it disappeared. One room clerk admitted their winter tourist traffic was down at least 50%!  The room I took that night in Florida, was at a popular upscale chain, internet functionality guaranteed. Nonetheless, I pulled the walk-away routine and the room price quickly melted 30% - without an argument - the clerk bending over backwards to accommodate me! Bartering is back;customers have the edge.

Gas prices are still sticky, but this year they were rising and dropping with each unpredictable jump or fall of the dollar. I shopped, as time and fuel tank level permited, for the cheapest “regular” fill-ups I could find. Highest price paid: $2.79, on 1-95 in South Carolina…lowest $2.44, off I-95, on Georgia Route 17.

It’s a great time to be on the road. If we have any more financial shocks, it will only be to the traveler’s further advantage.

I was sixteen, still full of the excitement of World War II. An intact war-surplus P-38 had been sitting, forsaken by its owner, on the tarmac at the Wilkes-Barre - Scranton airport and had been offered to me for $1,000. Trying to convince my father the fighter could be disassembled and stored in a neighbor’s barn, he asked if “I had my head on straight,” saying it was “a fool’s dream.”  My Dad refused to come up with the money.

Forty-five years later, on the road as a long haul trucker - gathering the information to write 3 ACES - I would visit the air museum at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base and learn that the “piece of junk” my father had ignored was currently worth at least $1 million dollars - whatever its condition. The plane had finally been sold for scrap.

And here I was, about to board a Jet Blue A320 for JFK, 3000 miles away, at the very Burbank, California airfield that had been the birthplace of that fighter plane and thousands like it. The Lockheed plant was now a parking lot.

The Burbank airport is tiny compared to JFK, the personnel folksy, its TSA people even managing smiles.  I stood a moment in the hallway leading to the security check-in, admiring a chiseled bronze statue of Amelia Earhart surrounded by photos of her famous Electra parked before some of the old Lockheed hangars.

Once in the air, we climbed through a filmy layer of pure white clouds to 36,000 feet. Scudding at 460 miles per hour through a clear blue sky, I read for most of the flight, but spent the last two hours in conversation with a student occupying the window seat next to me. Deep into criminal law, he had spread his schoolwork out on the little seat tray before him. He wanted to know what I did, where I was from, what my life had been like - and what I thought of his girlfriend. His questions were sincere, very much in earnest. I did my best at the answers, and he thanked me by saying the conversation had not been like talking to “just another old man.” Those questions of his opened up the age gap in a way I’d never experienced. On the ground at JFK, when we shook hands at the baggage carousel and parted, I felt like I’d just lost a chunk of my past.

Getting off the Air Train and approaching my car in the long-term parking area, a queasy feeling hit me. The weather here very cold during my week in Ojai, something told me my battery was dead. The key went into the ignition switch very carefully…I turned it…and my 1987 Dodge Diplomat roared to life! Then came a sharp rapping on my driver’s side window - a frantic young couple pleading for help: it was their battery that was dead! Half an hour and two jumper cables (in series) later - after one hell of a cranking session - we got their newly bought Chevie running.

An hour later, I was coming off the lower deck of the 59th Street bridge, proceeding west in Manhattan on 60th Street. May I advise Mayor Bloomberg that his 60th Street is an ungodly mess of dips, patches, and thick steel plates?.. Cars double-parked in the middle of the night, buses and taxis converged on me more rudely than ever. West on wider 57th was little better. Relief came only when I emerged from the Lincoln Tunnel and found myself running almost alone on New Jersey 3, west toward Scranton and Tunkhannock, PA and the peace and quiet of the Endless Mountains.

My thoughts drifted back to the two hour ride that morning to the Burbank airport, with Tom and Christine, my hosts for the past week. We’d left their peaceful home in the Ojai Valley bathed in 80 degree sunshine, to climb route 150 along the edge of the Sierra Madre Mountains then descend steeply into Santa Paula (an area setting for the Daniel Day-Lewis movie, THERE WILL BE BLOOD). Those quiet agricultural valleys, framed by leafy, sandy hills had left me partly in another world.

A quick Cheeseburg platter at my favorite diner polished off the transition back to the East Coast. As always, Frankie and Charley (I’ve no idea of their real names) were on duty. “Frankie” sits on a stool as you enter the diner. He escorts you either to a table or the counter. When I indicated the counter he grunted, his face curling in a sour smile. My platter came “up” as though it had been waiting, the Cheeseburg delicious, and “Charley” slithered from the kitchen, waving an empty milkshake glass at the Strawberry phizz machine; it spit a horrible thin stream of rosy liquid into his glass. A dejected look on his puss, he moved off to the empty dining room.  At the register, “Frankie” grunted again, took my money and waved a menu to three wise-guys who, elbowing me aside, had just come up the diner’s brick steps. Yeah, yeah, yeah…I was back in Jersey. But traffic was light and the diner business was hurting.

Four hours later I turned the key in my door and set down my stuff. Just for fun, I unzipped my overnight carry-on bag: I didn’t need the TSA’s pre-printed, stamped tag to tell me what had happened. Those smiley faces at Burbank had dumped the contents, pawed through every smidgeon, then jammed it all back in again. The inspection probably triggered when the metal in my surgically corrected hip and shoulders set the bells a-ringing, which in turn had brought a fierce sweat to the TSA fellow’s brow; combing my frame with his wand, he couldn’t get the bells to stop ringing. (When was that bomb he thought I was carrying going to explode on him!) I’d stuffed the transformer, wires, and cables for my laptop into my overnight bag (along with the mouse and batteries in the toe of one slipper) to make my laptop case lighter to carry. Wonder what kind of a sweat my bag had raised on the forehead of the X-ray techie?…

Well, it’s a changing world, folks. Moving a little too fast for this old man…and maybe way to fast for the poor devils at the Burbank TSA.

From the corner of my eye, driving home New Year’s Eve, I spotted him in the the driving snow…treading the bridge walkway over the ice-filled Susquehanna River…bent into the snowdrops, grizzled, ruddily complected, bed roll strapped above his backpack…not a scene I felt comfortable being a party to from my snug, warm vehicle.

Had I been the victim of some paranormal vision? - a witness to some holiday will-o’-the-wisp?..or some benighted Santa sailing through the Christmas of our town and on into 2010? Bless me, I swear I was perfectly sober…and may I say, completely rational.

In nine years of crossing this nation as a long haul trucker - incidentally gathering information for my novel, 3 ACES - how many lost wanderers had I borne witness to over the million miles I logged? In springtime they would sprout, once again after a winter’s absence, along the highways and byways. And a week or so later you would pass them off as part of the indigenous scenery. But this? - this isolated Santa seeking neither aid nor attention, this apparition bending doggedly onward in a swirl of snowflakes… Read the rest of this entry »

It seems so long ago…atop the mountain, at Button Top with my wife, Susan, and two growing children, Nick and Gwen…Christmas approaching, the kids yearning for another dog. Truth to tell, so was I.

While I was away on a business trip, my wife had been forced to bury our friend, “Irving,” an exhausted, cast-off collie who had, one winter evening,  limped into our family circle out of a blizzard roaring through the surrounding woodland. The bedraggled Collie entertained us through that next summer with numerous porcupine chases, all ending painfully for Irving - though happily enough for “Dr. John,” our local veterinarian over in the town of Meshoppen. Irving’s porcupine adventures came to an end one sultry summer day, in the shade of my wife’s car where the old fellow breathed his last. My wife, along with a visiting woman poet and the children, solemnly laid Irving to rest in the clearing behind the cabin. Read the rest of this entry »

Whenever you pull alongside a big truck and glance up at the driver, you may spot another face staring down at you, that of man’s best friend. Truth is, many drivers - not to put down their womenfolk, at home with the kids - welcome a dog’s company. Reciting your troubles to a canine pal won’t get you any answers; on the other hand, it won’t produce any criticism. When you’re all done kvetching to your four-legged friend, what you will get is an impulsive slurp or two on the kisser accompanied by an enthusiastically wagging tail. Your long haul pooch is happy just to have you all to him or herself.

A trucker faces often impossible delivery deadlines, grueling hours behind the wheel, arguments with his dispatchers, and telephone battles with the home front - if there’s anything left of the marriage after a few years of regional or long-haul driving. You want to rest assured there’s no one breaking into your cab while you’re in a truck stop shoveling down a meal or enjoying a good, warm shower; a snarling beast steaming up the windows of your truck is a wonderful deterrent. Read the rest of this entry »

Growing up during World War II, one of the things I most looked forward to was running to our roadside mailbox and greeting the weekly arrival of the Saturday Evening Post. Each issue was sure to feature a cover by Norman Rockwell. I didn’t realize it then, but those incredible magazine covers - and the associations they represented - were to become an indelible part of my life.

In the course of nine years of long haul truck driving - the main purpose being to gather information for my recently published novel, 3 ACES - I often ran trips to New England, each time routed up I-84 to reach the eastern portion of the Mass. Turnpike. Only once did I run the western section, unaware, at the time, that I had passed a few miles north of Stockbridge, Mass. and the Norman Rockwell museum.

Last Saturday, returning home in my car from a holiday visit in Boston with my son’s family, I found myself driving west on Mass. Route 102. I decided to both reawaken a few childhood memories and make up for that occasion I’d missed visiting the Rockwell Museum. At Route 183, a bit beyond Stockbridge I turned left, then left again less than a mile down the road, into the tree-shrouded Museum drive. Read the rest of this entry »

Looks like there was some unfinished business in last week’s piece…too much for a single additional blog, so let me take it one subject at a time.  Let’s settle, this week, on a relatively quick discussion regarding book reviews and their purported suppliers, the review purveyor.

Anyone who publishes (whether through a NY Trade house, or via the self-published, POD route) comes to the realization that their book must be reviewed many times, and each time as well as possible. I don’t speak for authors published by major Trade Publishers, but am assuming their publishers have made arrangements to have their books reviewed in venues such as the New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Poets and Writers, etc. This may NOT always happen; I have been told that, in some cases, the author has been called upon to assist in lining up reviews for his or her book. Should the reviews disappoint, or the cover, title and edited contents not enthuse the publisher’s marketing & sales department, money and effort earmarked for the promotion of that book may be applied elsewhere. The author is deprived of a sincere sales effort by the company’s distribution arm; book tour and advertising money is diverted. What else might set off this ugly chain of events? Perhaps a block-buster book by a certain celeb. needs a greater initial push (if only to recover a huge advance). Suddenly, a chill wind is felt - you are left very much alone. At publishing conferences, I’ve heard several such stories directly related by the victims. Read the rest of this entry »

When an author finishes writing a cherished piece of work - be it poem; an essay; a memoir, popular, or paranormal novel; perhaps even a humorous work - at that very moment, the writer’s creative enthusiasm has him teetering at the edge of a precipice. If he hasn’t already landed a book or magazine deal, he’s either looking for an agent, or thinking deeply about having the work printed and distributed independently. Let us then count the peddlers of provender gathered in the valley below.  In a great sweat, without an agent or a trade publisher, that writer is virtually forced to take the independent leap…possibly into the arms of one or more scammers.

Need a POD publisher?.. A website?.. Editorial help?.. Guidance in finding an agent?.. Promotional help?.. A distributor?.. Book designer?.. Cover artist?.. on and on goes the list. No end to the services available, ’til your credit card  registers dry on an emptied checking account. Read the rest of this entry »