Aspirations to Never Give Up –DeWese
It’s not long before vanity publishers hear of the frustration and begin calling to offer package deals where they will publish and promote the book for a modest $6,795 or thereabouts. The callers are skilled at reviewing your manuscript, even though they haven’t even read it. Actually reading the book is a small impediment standing in the way of the publication of the The Great American Novel.
These reviewer salespeople are adept at lavishing praise by saying things like, “You write in the style of a young Hemingway.” “Your words have the poetic flow of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the beauty of Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings.”
The author’s ego has been fed, and if he can lay his hands on $6,795, then we’re talkin’ about rollin’ the presses.
By now, you may have guessed that this happened to me. Twice. I didn’t have the $6,795, so both books are spiral bound and languishing in my desk drawer.
Okay! Okay! You force me to reveal the plots of my books.
The first is about an incompetent, 23-member motorcycle club called Satan’s Saints. These guys cannot commit a successful crime. They cannot brew a batch of methamphetamine; it explodes or starts a roaring fire in their laboratory. They were apprehended red-handed in every liquor store stick-up that they ever attempted.
You know how I write. I laughed so much that my ribs hurt.
The second book is about an 11-year-old boy growing up in Florida in the ’50s. The boy survives a hurricane, a couple of murders and a deceitful, cheatin’, holy-roller preacher father whose lascivious ways result in some colorful prose.
Now, what does my failure so far to publish a best-selling novel have to do with you selling more printing, more profitably? I’m teaching you to never, never, never give up. Even if you have to tear it up and start all over again.
