Well, look at that!—The End-of-the-Line Club is an Amazon Best Seller in its category. The category is “aging parents”! I didn’t expect that. Book buyers seem to be looking out for their parents, not themselves, at least for now. Or maybe it’s sheer curiosity about the future.
Book launch reading at Cordia Senior Residential Club
Also the book is on a “”Hot New Releases” list. At my age, covered with scar tissue from rejections, and polished with various accolades, I look at all this with some skepticism. Books come and go, mostly go. Nothing lasts. When you see that’s how it is, you wonder about the frantic wish to be Number One. That wish seems to be mostly for young people, although I have to say, if one of my books won the Pulitzer, I’d be thrilled. At last, is what people say, isn’t it? Like I should have had it years ago?
I am working on July’s Newsletter based on the book. Here’s June’s edition, our first. https://endofthelineclub.substack.com/ I’m having a good time with this. I’m a bit of a journalist. As for newsletters, I was once editor of the “Newsletter of the D.H. Lawrence Society of North America.” I also edited a national magazine, “Current: the Journal of Marine Education,” this latter one for pay. I am a good editor if you mean content; I’m a bad one if you mean proofreading, although I get better with age.
If you’d like to contribute to End-of-the-Line Club newsletter, there’s a category for you. It’s “stories of adjustment to aging – real people/real stories.” Send me a note to let me know what you have in mind. bfleda@gmail.com
Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I’m tinkering with my prose poems. I just got a lovely email from the editor (not a mere minion, but The Editor herself) of a major trade press, asking if I have anything she could look at! I say to myself, for heaven’s sake, I barely have these recent books out the gate, now this! Too many exclamation points!
Meanwhile, I am still hurting. The cortisone shot did no good at all. PT is barely helping. I can’t walk any distance without a walker, and even that quickly hurts. Understand, I don’t think I’m doomed to a walker forever. I think some nerve, some tendon, some muscle, is going to have to be addressed. I’ve sent a message to my surgeon’s P.A. We’ll solve this, or sheer time will solve it. I’m beginning to doubt the latter.
Physical pain is not, I repeat not, conducive to writing. It shuts off the thinking mind. Furthermore, what IS the right mood, attitude, pain level, to do good writing? The thing is, poems are unpredictable, mysterious. So is poetic prose. In spite of all the books telling us how to write a poem, there are really no guidelines. You can follow the books and get to be a better writer, but the zap of otherworldliness that makes a good poem can’t be caught and bottled.
Meanwhile, it’s another day. I’m sitting here with my Mac on its rack on my lap. Coffee’s almost ready. Jerry’s mother’s old kitchen clock is ticking assertively, urging me to write in trochees. Windows are still open to what has been, still is, a lovely spring, but by tomorrow, I think, we’ll need to turn on the AC.
Question: what happens in the space between the actual moment I described and what you just read? No right answer, but interesting to think about.