I suppose more than I could count.
“I am a decent writer, but I am not a good marketer.”
Some readers found Dead and not Dead too intense to read at night. One fella said it was very difficult to read the descriptions of the characters’ residential school experiences, specially the perverted sexual molestation sections.
I think a few folks, didn’t get it. That’s okay. The novel’s main point is based on something that many folks can’t intrinsically get their heads around. Hell, I don’t get lots of things. I don’t get how to market my book.
An Indigenous fella was sitting next to a Non-Indigenous fella. When the Indigenous man was asked what he did, he said that he was the Chief of a community.
The other fella said, “I guess I pay your salary.”
The Indigenous fella then gave the man a economic’s lesson. He told him about where money comes from, and that access to land is the basis of the economy that our society gets its wealth from. He went on to discuss the sad abuse of the Indigenous People, the many broken treaties and the theft of their land.
As I once commented, “Truth hurts, but it’s still truth.
I was walking Dominic, my super dog, who is now outside hiding in his squirrel hunting blind, and I was troubled. Grief affects people in different ways. I find mornings the hardest. That’s the time when my mind is turning like a hamster running on a wheel. Maybe it’s my mind’s way of looking for existential equilibrium. This morning was not one of my better ones. Some mornings I will talk to Dominic or to Sue or to the big power that many of us suspect is everywhere or some believe is only in their church.
As I said, I’m not a marketer. It’s not easy for me to push anything, and if it’s something that came from the vicinity of my soul, then it’s even harder. However, I decided I would.
“No. I just felt like doing it for you.”
On the way, I stopped at a friend’s house, and while there, only coincidentally, an Indigenous person dropped by and bought one of my books.
And the irony doesn’t escape me. I will, on the Canada Day weekend, be marketing my novel, Dead and Not Dead. When I will be trying to punch through the veil and see what happens.