An Entirely Selfish Beginning to My 2024 Blogging

I hope 2024 has begun for everyone free of unpleasant incidents. To be honest, as I grow older, I find that any kind of incident whatsoever is best avoided. This may seem like throwing the baby out with the bath-water but, frankly, I think that ‘incident’ by definition implies something to be declined, and in this case, the baby is probably just as undesirable as the bath-water.

Anyway…

This first blog-article of the new year has nothing to do with cats. It has to do with me. I have published a book. I published it through Amazon which required a great deal of learning and effort, but has, in the end, proved advantageous. I had spent some time years ago trying to interest real publishing houses in my stories. However, the subject matter and the format, along with the ever-increasing costs of printing and marketing, made interest in my work less than encouraging. Or I may simply write crap.

This is a collection of short stories about the fictional adventures of an equally fictional British intelligence officer in the 1920s. They are not in the James Bond vein; I tried to make them realistic, though they are, in truth, mysteries with an espionage setting. Each is a self-contained tale, though there is a continuity to them. They do not involve cats.

A number of people may want to buy the book just to be generous to me. While appreciated, there is no sense in purchasing something unless one is interested in the subject. I wrote these stories (and quite a few others, hopefully to follow) through the years just as manifestations of my joy in writing. I published them just to have a physical form to that writing. Selling the finished product would be a bonus, but I will never live off my writing. That was never the point, and I consider it impractical to expect that to happen. I actually intend still to live off my winnings in the lottery, which I am sure one day will occur.

Nonetheless, if anyone wants to buy the book, such action will not make them an enemy of mine. It is available in both paperback and electronic form, the latter for a Kindle reader, from Amazon. I have never purchased an electronic book, and likely never will, so I have no idea if the electronic form is compatible on one’s private computer or abacus. Also, I noted that I cannot purchase the Kindle version from Amazon.com, only from Aamazon.ca. Someone who is not me informed me that the Kindle version is indeed available for purchase from Amazon.com. This confirms what another had told me: that Amazon, for reasons of its own, wants Canadians to buy from their ‘local’ Amazon (.ca) and not a foreign version (.com). Yet I can buy a paperback version from Amazon.com.

All of this is beside the point. If someone wishes to buy the book, in whatever form, it will probably be easy to do so. I have received a hard-copy myself and was pleased at the result. The cover is laminated, the paper of good, if not excellent, quality. Other print-on-demand works I have seen contain numerous errors; this one contains none that I have found. (It better not; I went over it many, many times.) As well, Amazon, whether one likes it or not, seems to be experienced in this line, and so knows what it is doing.

As I wrote, I hope to have sequels in the future. The stories are already written, and need only publishing. I will do this regardless of the sales of the first volume, since, like that initial book, I will be doing it just to have the stories in physical form; perhaps next year. Unless, of course, I am subject to an incident.

Tomorrow, we will return to our regularly scheduled cats.