I received the first draft of the layout for my next book, Walking with the Muse, yesterday from the book designer, Lubosh Cech. There’s nothing quite like the process of seeing your book being born step-by-step. It’s a completely different kind of joy than posting your writing online—in book form it seems more formal, more permanent, and has more gravitas in general.
This is my tenth book over the last three decades. This time there’s been much less stress and more excitement and anticipation. This process, the joy of creation, is such that the entire world with its worries and obligations just seem to melt away. A big part of this has been learning to trust myself and trusting the designer I’m working with. This is the fourth book that Lubosh has designed for me over the past decade. I was introduced to him through a mutual friend who used to write on this platform but left long ago.
This week will be spent proofing the first draft of the interior design, looking at different iterations of the cover, and working on a marketing campaign. I’m not going to rush this one. It won’t be released until I know in my heart everything is ready.
One sizable stumbling block for indie authors publishing through Amazon has always been not having the option of allowing preorders for paperback books. Amazon offers the preorder option only for Kindle and I’ll never understand why. If anyone knows a workaround to this I’d be thrilled to learn what it is.
My goal with this book will be to get as many reader reviews on Amazon as possible. Verified reviews are what triggers Amazon’s algorithm to start suggesting your book to more people on the platform and raises visibility tremendously. Amazon’s algorithm is getting more and more stringent in regard to this and it stops indie book sales before they can even get started.
This, I’m convinced, is why my last book, (Poetry from the Edge of the Apocalypse) didn’t sell as well as expected. Just one verified review on Amazon meant that the book remained basically invisible. Any tips on how to get more reviews would be greatly appreciated.
Also, many thanks to all of you (especially 
It’s going to be a very busy week for me. My head will surely be spinning by the end of it. I leave you today with the A Note from the Author page that will appear in Walking with the Muse:
A Note from the Author
This book has been more than thirty years in the making.
It began in a high school English class, with a short, comedic piece about failing my driver's test — an awkward, anxious sixteen-year-old trying to look cool behind the wheel of an enormous 1978 Dodge Monaco. That first spark of delight at making readers laugh never left me. The journey deepened in 2006, when I took C. Michael Curtis's short fiction course. Under Michael’s sharp eye and generous guidance, my writing diverted to a more serious path.
In the years since, the short story has become one of my great literary loves — compact, intimate, capable of holding an entire world in just a few pages. Editing this collection, I found myself transported back to the exact moment each story was born and who I was when I wrote them. Revisiting them felt less like work and more like a reunion.
Through every false start, every quiet triumph, every late night of revision, one thing has stayed constant: the Muse. The Muse has walked beside me all these years — patient, insistent, and full of grace. This book is the written record of our long relationship.
Thank you for walking this path with us. There's so much of me in these stories, and I hope reading them brings you the same joy they've brought me. I am, without question, the luckiest man alive to call this my life's work.
Most days I really do feel like the luckiest man alive and I thank you all for the part you've played in this process. The support, encouragement, and kindness you've shown me here in the past decade has meant the world to this indie author.
All for now. Make this a wonderful day.
