About Breaking

Post 81:

            This post is going to entail a lot of information that is germane to making books and offering them to people, i.e. it might not be the most interesting thing for all readers. But what the heck. If you follow my blog at all it might provide you with some insight into what I’m trying to do.

            First, I try to write blog posts most days because it makes me write. You want to fix cars, you need to work on cars. It’s a simple dictum but one that can stand being repeated.

            Then there’s the books. These buggers are hard to write. But write them I do, imperfect as they are, and even when they’re done, they’re still imperfect. I’m talking on every level, almost like they’re beings of their own. I don’t mean to speak of them with any grandiosity—actually, just the opposite. Anyhow, write them I do. And while I’m trying to reach as many people as possible and learn the best ways to go at that, I’m writing a new book, getting an old one ready for printing, and going through designs with my artist. Another novel is with my editor and will need heavy revisions and goings over.

            It’s a lot. But we (me and my designer) came to the conclusion that this venture should be called Break Press Publishing because we want to break the freaking press with all the books we were going to put out. That and we were kind of saying to hell with the system and doing it in a nontraditional way, finding a path best suited for the stuff I do.

            You may ask how’s it going? Well, I’d liken myself to a guy in a small boat in the middle of really bad storm. Good news is I can see out in the distance a lighthouse. It’s faint, but that lighthouse is hope. On the other hand, my boat is small and I’m prone to screw-ups and every other damn thing. It’s dark and I might get too tired or just plain fail to make it there.

            But it’s my boat. I didn’t have the money or the means for a bigger one—it’s the one I could manage. And so now it’s my job to fix it fast to that light and go. When I get there I’ll be shivering and water-logged, but that will make the getting there all the better.

            Geez. Extended metaphor much?

            So we shall see. If anything, I have learned that an ability to suffer crashing waves, slings and arrows, whatever you want to call them, is requisite. So either we break the press or the enormity of the task breaks me.

            Might be worth watching. See you after.