A few years ago, I wrote a blog for aspiring journalists. I said that the prospects for earning a living as a journalist are not nearly as good as prior to Internet news sites.
But the idea of writing a book is booming thanks to Amazon. I have about 600 books on my Kindle, all of which I’ve purchased from Amazon. I get three e-mails per day from Amazon, BookBub and ManyBooks, all of which offer free or reduced price books. Most of the ones I buy are around $1.99 and until recently, when I became overwhelmed with books I have yet to read, I was buying around 10 per week.
As a writer, I enjoy decent writing that will take me to a place I might be interested in. Places like the future and worlds of fantasy are among my prime reads. Many of the books I read are in the “young adult” category, and they contain many sequels. Amanda Lee wrote a fabulous five-book series about a college girl involved with the supernatural. She did six follow-up books about life after graduation and she’s done at least a dozen books involving a midwest witch coven with many comedic aspects, which led to at least a dozen books about supernatural hunters under the guise of a traveling carnival.
And that’s just the beginning. There’s also what I call the “duds.” They’re books that I don’t care to finish and others which I will finish but won’t re-read.
Anyhow, I am a published author, but that is from journalism and trade magazine articles. I estimate that I have well over a thousand bylines, very few of which were in wide circulation magazines.
But I keep plugging away, writing whatever I damn well please in this blog and perhaps finally pulling together enough articles to do a book. Think about a travelogue with a twist. I’ve been all over the country and I keep running into ghosts. Sometimes they are personal and others are historical. For example, I encounter the ghosts of Custer and Sitting Bull at the Little Big Horn. They’re still arguing about how white people took over Indian lands.
But the book, which had a strong start, has slowed down due to many distractions. One would think the the Covid Stay-at-Home confinement would give me every opportunity to write. It hasn’t. I was recently asked by a high school classmate for advice on writing a memoir. So here’s some advice, but remember that it’s free.
Have you viewed “A Christmas Story?” It’s a tale about a kid named Ralph who lived in the Depression. More than anything, he wants a genuine Red Ryder BB gun. And it seems his entire world is against him saying “You’ll shoot your eyes out kid.” Jean Shepherd wrote the script and nattarate’s it.
Shep’s far more than a one-shot deal. He hosted a PBS series called “Jean Shepherd’s America.” But long before that, he was a secret for my high school persona. Every night, he would host a radio show for an hour that was frequently ad-libbed. Out of it came many fabulous stories which wend into half a dozen books.
And these are the stories that create great memoirs. Most of the time, it was what Shep experienced as he viewed his world. A New York resident and erstwhile Broadway actor, he loved the city, but teased the suburbs, especially New Jersey, as places of “avarage,” and little more. He would hold lawn decorations in special scorn, calling it “slob art” and on one hot, humid night, he urged his radio listeners to just leave their cars and go home , creating one of the worst traffic jams in the history of New York City.
Most of his stories had much in common. His youth and early adulthood were a main source. He would talk about his childhood and some of the crazy things he experienced. He also loved to talk about his adventures in the signal corps during the Second World War. Another thing was working in a steel mill.
