THE GARAGE SAILOR

A New Novel Coming Soon

I’ve wasted two years fretting out the back door window, watching the birds, churning over the future of my third novel The Garage Sailor. Publishers release fewer titles and book shops sell throw cushions and candles. An archaic industry struggles with disruption. And I’m aware that what I write appeals to a very slim audience, if anyone at all. A couple of people I know have seriously suggested that I seek psychological help although who are we to argue with what goes on in my head? However, I am capable of scribbling a well written story.

The Garage Sailor is the most commercial book I’ve written which probably isn’t saying much. But hey, it features a diabetic tabby cat, I mean, c’mon, that’s cute. There’s some prose about being a rabid music fan too: maybe too much or perhaps not enough? Falcon Press published my first two works and I am grateful to that organization, but this time around I’ve decided to crash and burn on my own - without professional help.

There is a stigma attached to self-publishing. Personally, I imagine a Holocaust denier busy in his garage cranking out damp pamphlets from an antique mimeograph machine, high on hate and chemicals. Me, I will own up to being a relatively harmless misfit with a weathered voice. My friend Netflix Derek jokes that I write “dick lit.” Male readers don’t tend toward fiction and oftentimes I wonder why I bother to do what I’m apparently wired to do. Still, I believe The Garage Sailor deserves more than a seventh draft stack of paper constricted by a blue rubber band.

Thirty-nine years ago a creative director at McKim in Montreal harrumphed to me that everyone in the ad industry had a manuscript in their desk and that’s where they tended to remain; I would be no different. Upon the publication of a couple of short stories and then because of the gracious support of Falcon Press, I’ve been able to spare him a few smug second thoughts through the ensuing decades – I’ve never been overly prolific.

Flogging a novel is a lot like job hunting. Everyone worries about the potential fit. I’ve always tried to manage my own existence on my terms. Slots designated by others never particularly suited me. Despite the highest hopes and the best of intentions, the results I’ve achieved have often careened between disastrous and catastrophic. Life hasn’t been a picnic and I suppose I haven’t been one either.

Well, here I go again, as stubborn as ever, trying to do something my way. Inspired friends of mine, talented artists, musicians and entrepreneurs whom I respect and admire, are doing it for themselves. The tools to augment this young century’s DIY ethos are readily available at a reasonable price - for the first time in all of human history. The times, they are a sea changin’. No point in testing the water, time to dive in. I am excited. I am utterly petrified.