Only one week after approving the proof copy from the printer, our listing for Dear Walt on Amazon.com appeared today. Information on the web site had indicated that it would take 15 days for that to happen, so we were very surprised and pleased.

Our “to-do” list now includes learning how to maximize our Amazon listing to supplement our other marketing efforts.

You can see the Dear Walt page on Amazon.com HERE!

Today we began the final phase of actual publication of Dear Walt.

We elected to go with CreateSpace, an amazon.com online print-on-demand, self-publishing company because there is very little cost involved in actually getting salable books online almost immediately.

In our case we were able to leverage our previous graphic design, layout, writing, editing, and web design experience into real dollar savings over other print-on-demand publishing companies which offer varying cost packages which include combinations of these services.

So, today we uploaded Dear Walt into the CreateSpace sytem and are awaiting review of the uploaded files. After their review to make sure the files are to their specifications, we’ll be able to order a proof copy before the book actually goes “online” for sale in two locations, the CreateSpace E-Store and Amazon.com.

The E-Store page is still in its preliminary stages today, but you are welcome to look at it. I believe the thumbnail image of the book cover will be added after the book is finally available for purchase. Right now there is only a placeholder for it. To view the E-Store page click here.

There were many steps involved in getting to this point, and a few more before the book acctually appears for sale on the web. We will chronicle these steps in future posts and give you more step-by-step instruction on how we got to this point later, when we have the chance. Stay tuned!

We have recently expanded our online marketing efforts by establishing accounts at stumbleupon.com and del.icio.us web sites.

Since we are new to this arena, we’ll need to learn how to use them to connect with other folks online and hopefully draw them to this web site.

You’ll see links to both of them on the right side of the page in the sidebar. The stumbleupon.com entry is actually a “feed” from our first choices in our stumbleupon account. If any of you out there have used one or both of these services and have suggestions to make on how to use them effectively we invite you to drop us a line via the comment form on this page.

The del.icio.us link actually gives visitors an easy way to add this web site to their online bookmarks there. Give it a try and tell us how it works out for you if you like!

Thanks, RDF

In 1974 immediately after I left college, I was sent to Glenwood Springs, Colorado for a Texas based microfilm company. My job was to microfilm the courthouse records for Garfield County. The job lasted several months and in my free time I was able to become familiar with the area around Glenwood Springs and Grand Junction. It is a beautiful area and I enjoyed my time there which ran from sometime in January, 1974 until June. Platteville was selected only because of its proximity to Denver where the opening scene of Andy in the bus station took place.

The area of western Colorado is fascinating to explore because of the tremendous variety of terrain ranging from the high mountains of Aspen about 40 miles to the south, to the high prairie surrounding Grand Junction, and Grand Mesa, a 10,000 foot plateau just east of Grand Junction. Colorado National Monument is just west of Grand Junction and the Utah desert canyons are within an easy drive as well. There you can explore the famous Arches National Monument and Canyonlands National Park.

I’ve always preferred mountains for vacations and it was easy to imagine scenes placed in the scenic terrain and weather patterns of the area. Why not place a novel in and area where I’d like to vacation? It stimulates the imagination at every turn of the road.

Today we adopted our preliminary cover design. We’ll be making a few detail changes to it when we get the back cover copy finished. But, we thought you might want to see a thumbnail view of where we’re headed with the design, so here it is.

This particular photo captures the daydream-like quality image that Andy (and possibly Bronson) had in their minds while sitting on that boulder in Platteville looking West. Read the book after it comes out and tell me if you agree.

I was a professional photographer in Cheyenne at the time, and this photograph was what I call an “opportunity” shot because of the fluidity of scene change due to lighting, clouds and waning light just before sunset. The photo was taken in Colorado over 25 years ago when we were heading back to Cheyenne from a day of skiing at a Colorado ski resort somewhere West of Boulder. I was able to capture only a few frames before the clouds completely enveloped the snow covered peaks. A few minutes later the scene completely changed character and I packed up the camera and we headed back to Cheyenne.

The camera I was using was a wooden Tachihara 4″x5″ inch view camera. The film was Ektachrome Professional and the lens was a Schnieder 180mm Symmar.

After sixteen months of writing, I finally finished the first draft of the complete manuscript last Saturday!

Today I provided “working draft” printed copies to three people to read and comment. I’ve also asked them to proof read as they go, and mark up their copies any way they want. I know that is not a very high tech way to do it, but at least they can take their copies with them wherever they like to read, whether it be over lunch as I do, or anywhere else they would normally read a novel.

While they are reading I am about the business of exploring marketing options for my first novel.

Hmmmn! Let’s see, we have no budget and we’ve never marketed a novel before. Where should we start?

I’ll research it on the web and get back to you on that.

Good night!

“Dear Walt” was not premeditated!

Quite the contrary … after an extraordinary Sunday morning portrayal of Moses’ exile to Midian, unrelenting words invaded my thoughts, demanding to be heard, until I set them down on paper. Even so, I still cannot explain the insistence of those beginning words that I write them in a letter to someone named “Walt” that very Sunday afternoon.

There is no one person named Walt in my conscious memory of any particular consequence, and therein may lie the attraction of the name … that “Walt” is not associated with a specific person, but instead represents a composite of lives that have consistently steered me in this particular direction, even during the times I was in my own Midian desert.

I did not set out to write a novel. In fact, as I wrote the first few pages, I was hoping I could develop it into my first real short story. But as the characters took on their respective lives and relationships, they required the same thorough development and inclusion as the text of the Dear Walt letter that very first Sunday. The plot took shape and extended through its own energy, due in part to Pastor Dan’s continuing multi-Sunday treatise on the early days of Moses.

I simply could not dismiss the compelling parallels of Moses’ flight from Egypt because it was “a place he could no longer live” in his self-imposed exile, to Andy’s bus journey to Denver and his first days in Platteville. For Moses, Midian offered refuge from the immediate storms of life, as Platteville had for Andy. But over time, Midian was also the place where God prepared Moses for his eventual calling by transforming him into a shepherd, the same occupation which Jesus himself claims in the New Testament. Unwittingly, Andy was trained, much like a shepherd, to deal with difficult situations in other people’s lives as well, all the while kicking and screaming against God, and repeatedly dismissing the call to earnest prayer in the burning bush dreams.

In today’s society many of us have taken similar journeys away from “places where we can no longer live.” I know I have. My journey lasted three and a half decades. Sometimes our journeys are initiated by difficult family circumstances, or an overwhelming urge to express newfound independence as we grow into adulthood. In other cases we may feel hurt or slighted by a church or other untenable religious connection and rebel, as surely as Andy did, against God himself because of it. But if we are truly called by God, he will eventually find us in our everyday circumstance and confront us with our own burning bush experience, often in the middle of life threatening circumstance or our own self-constructed mess. The challenge is to understand in our own burning bush moment that we are standing on holy ground and have no choice but to acknowledge that we were never really in charge of our lives in the first place. The comfort in that moment comes only when we surrender control to Him and realize that with God there are no limits on healing.

Instead of turning away from the burning bush, perhaps we should seek it out.