this read was published by oj dorson and the cover art created by tony tyner. it is just 99 cents which is pretty sweet and (nearly) free!

you can get this heartbreaking work of staggering genius (or just this story) at http://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Vander-Leydens-Glasses-ebook/dp/B00CQAQ6XC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1369064472&sr=8-1&keywords=mrs.+vander+leyden%27s+glasses.

if you want an english teacher to demand that you do some derrida like deconstruction of the text, you have to order that separately.

deconstruction of text has been something i haven’t had to deal with in a while.  nor english teachers, not that there is anything wrong with english teachers.  generally, any love of reading didn’t come from an english class.  another thing i haven’t had to deal with in a bit is an editor wielding a rejection letter.

really, this sort of correspondence can kill even the best ambitions. shouldn’t we do our best to avoid putting ourselves through this?

instead, i just posted on facebook that i needed some help figuring out how to publish a story.  and oj appeared.  then i said i needed a cover.  and tony and oj put one together.  i can’t say i’m great at self-promoting. . .

in 2011 i had a new years resolution to meet all 325 of my facebook friends no matter where they might be. then i wrote a book about it which has been published by tate publishing company. i thought they had a publicity department and maybe they do. or at least they have some gal who sends group email exhorting me (and presumably other tate writers) to get the word out. the reclusive writer j.d. salinger wouldn’t have survived this modern age. on the other hand, he was said to have continued to write long after he had decided to not publish. is it literature if you don’t have an interaction between a reader and a writer? uh-oh, that sounds like something an english teacher would inquire about.

woody allen opined that he didn’t want to be immortal through his work. . . he wanted to achieve it through not dying.

eternal nothingness is fine if you’re dressed for it. . . another fine quote from the man

but what if physical immortality isn’t possible (well, actually, it isn’t possible but that’s another really depressing blog post)

what if instead of physical immortality you’re going to have to do it through good works?  you could found a a country, but that seems to be a rather crowded field.  you could write a heartbreaking work of impossible genius but that’s going to cut into the time you spend watching reruns of parks and recreation.  you could commit a major crime, which seems to be how some people are trying to do this, but that would break your mother’s heart.  and you don’t look good in an orange jumpsuit, trust me, nobody does.  so maybe you’re thinking immortality isn’t going to be for you. . . i’m here to tell you you’re wrong.  you’re going to be immortal.  sure, it’s in a literary sense, but that’s better than the big zero. and immortality is only going to cost you 99 cents.

steps to immortality:

1.  get comfortable in front of your computer.

2.  go to http://www.amazon.com/Mrs-Vander-Leydens-Glasses-ebook/dp/B00CQAQ6XC/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1368534528&sr=8-1&keywords=mrs.+vander+leyden%27s+glasses

this read was published by oj dorson and the cover art created by tony tyner. your little slice of the literary heavens will be available on amazon.com within a few months!

3.  buy it.  read it.  and here’s the tricky part:  review it.  you can probably skate on buying it but reviewing it, gotta do it.

4.  i don’t care if you review it and says it’s great.  or lousy.  or that you couldn’t finish it.  or that you’re an english lit teacher and you’re putting me under citizen’s arrest for defiling the english language.

5.  i am now in your debt.  which means, i will write my next story about you.  yes, you.  which means that you become as much a part of literature as elizabeth bennett, holden caulfield, or that danish prince.  no guarantees on the quality of the work, but enthusiasm will be aplenty.

and if woody allen offers you a better deal, i only hope that you’ll tell me how he does it!

bang with friends is an app that sorts through your facebook friends list, looking for friends who are interested in a casual hook up. if both of you are both interested, bang with friends will put you in touch. where and how you bang is up to you.

it’s not the sort of app you want your parents or your coworkers to know you’re using.  ditto that ex-boyfriend whom you keep on your friends list because you want to check out his new squeezes–knowing you’re using the app would make you seem so . . . desperate.  bang with friends has been slammed by the clueless media outlets like huffington for letting everybody know just how desperate you are.  worst nightmare, right?  especially if it turned out you AND your parents were using it.

but media reports are quite wrong, with a caveat.  bang with friends automatically adjusts its privacy setting.  right now it’s set at “only me” being allowed to see that you’ve installed the app.  on the other hand, there are people who joined bang with friends before january when facebook graph search opened up everybody’s treasure box of apps.  that just means that if you installed this app before january and you don’t want anybody except that casual encounter you’re about to have to know that you’re using, you have to manually adjust your privacy setting.

or you could just not use the app, book a flight to vegas and see what happens.

but only if you promise to meet me face to face later!

this story was uploaded to amazon by my friend oj. i want you to read it, review it, and help write its second draft. click on http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CE04WGW to find it. oj, by the way, now qualifies as a publisher because he designed the cover and uploaded the text. this for this next story, i want YOUR help!

so i have a new story i want to have oj publish.  but i’d like some cover art.  i’d like your cover art and what do i want to give you?

undying devotion

attribution on the cover and in the text

the chance to dedicate your cover art to yourself, a loved one, a pet

a thank you note from me (i’ll break out the crane’s stationery for this)

and the right to say “yeah, i spent last week working on a book” which gets you out of having to explain why you didn’t get your midterm paper written

so here’s what you do:  email me at apresser@hotmail.com or just leave a comment here.  i will send you a file.  read it.  send me artwork in the form of a jpg (at least i think that’s what oj would want).  we have a tight deadline so what are you waiting for?

oh, yes, i nearly forgot:

ripping a page out and starting over was a frustration. a thousand sheet ream of paper might yield only a twenty page short story. think about how often you hit the backspace key.

ten years later, on the edge of my thirties, i sold my first novel.  publishing a short story, a poem or a novel required printing out the entire piece, mailing it with a return self addressed envelop to a publisher, and waiting.  waiting, waiting and waiting some more.  and then getting a rejection letter that would ruin my day or a week or a month.

a form letter is devastating because it has so many ways of being interpreted. . . from “i liked the story but my boss didn’t” to “you don’t even have the talent to write a grocery list”. . . the new yorker magazine gets so many submissions that in the last few years they have instituted a policy of not even giving the writer this much in the way of subject matter for their insecurities.

internet self-publishing means there is no publisher membrane between the writer and reader.  there can be true collaboration between writer and reader, as there has been in the book “wool” written in serial form by hugh howley and his readers.  that is the sort of collaboration and accessibility that i’d like.  

this story was uploaded to amazon by my friend oj. i want you to read it, review it, and help write its second draft. click on http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CE04WGW to find it. oj, by the way, now qualifies as a publisher because he designed the cover and uploaded the text. would you like him to do this for your next story? because then i could download it and give you my feedback. it’s like we’re a writer’s colony and i’m still in my pajamas.  p.s. this story is about a man and his whooping crane.  an interspecies love story.

so i hope you’ll download this story.  http://www.amazon.com/dp/B00CE04WGW  and that you’ll like it, review it, give me “room for improvement” comments.  and i hope to publish more stories this way.  and then i hope you will like those.  i don’t expect to be an internet sensation but i hope for a good reader-writer relationship.  maybe even have lunch with a reader.  or write the great american novel even if it’s just a small little treasure for me and a reader.

really, this sort of correspondence can kill even the best ambitions. shouldn’t we do our best to avoid putting ourselves through this?

a few weeks ago, the model heidi klum rescued her seven year old son henry from a riptide off the coast of the hawaii island where the family vacationed. i would jump right in the water too if my son’s life was in danger. . . of course, i wouldn’t look as great!

there are heroes who face “chronic” or longterm adversity and yet they endure.

the anglo-irish explorer ernest shackleton led three expeditions into antarctica. the middle expedition–named the imperial trans-arctic expedition–was sidetracked by its ship endurance being grounded. from 1914 until 1917, shackleton devoted himself to rescuing his crew. without any loss of life, he managed to bring back his crew and cement his heroic status.

and then there are heroes like my facebook friends geoff and dot fox who are heroes by example.  they have endured shackletonian reversals of fortune (as have many people in this dire economic era). . . they have downsized from a winnetka home just down the street from where i live and they have suffered a business loss.

the fox family owned l & a stationery in winnetka. the shop sold wedding invitations, cards, school supplies, office equipment. it’s hard to remember in this era of evite and ipad minis that there was a tangible beauty in the smell of a freshly sharpened pencil or the delight in running a finger across an engraved invitation.

this saturday, i invited the foxes to go with me to a kids against hunger food packing event.  the foxes arrived with son jon (who doesn’t have a facebook account as near as i can tell unless he’s blocking me just for fun!)  and they worked for two hours to pack nutritious meals to be shipped to nicaragua.  there was no reward, no interview on the today show, no wikipedia entry for them.

the weird part is that if we packed lunches as a job for pay i don’t think we would have had as much fun!

the foxes are very quiet, very private heroes.  in fact, i’m pretty sure i’m violating their undercover status just by writing this.  so i will ask them in advance for forgiveness and then i gotta ask:

in 1941, the watch company bulova paid $9 to air a commercial just before a brooklyn dodgers philadelphia phillies baseball game. the ad was nothing more than this picture with some voice over.  some people who saw this first commercial weren’t interested in buying watches.  wasted advertising dollars.

this morning, when i logged on to facebook i read some ads on the right margin of my home page.  pottery barn.  a new opi gel nail varnish.  christian singles date.  faithful men looking to date mature women.  ameritrade.  a new anti-aging regime.  bone density tests. i have a sense that if i logged onto my son eastman’s account, there would strikingly different ads.   and if he logged onto my account, there would be a lot of wasted advertising dollars.  because he’s a twenty year old dude.  he doesn’t want to date faithful christian men, open an ameritrade account, or get his bones tested.  and frankly, what does he need anti-aging for when he still has to use a fake i.d. to buy liquor?

advertising is an inexact sport.

ever since facebook went public in may 2012, the shroud of pessimism has fallen over its menlo park headquarters.

the shroud of turin is a piece of linen kept at that italian town’s cathedral of saint john the baptist. it bears the image of a man who has injuries consistent with being crucified. some people think it was the burial shroud of jesus. the shroud of pessimism is when everybody thinks you’ve got nails in your hands and feet and you’re dying in between two thieves.

share prices on that first day were over $38 but the price has been bumping and tumbling ever since.  part of the problem is how to monetize facebook.

say what?  you’ve been hearing about how mark is a multi-trillionaire.  but yes, facebook actually has had a bit of a “what are we doing here and how do we make money doing it?” problem.

it’s about advertisers and how much they’re going to be willing to pay for playing on facebook.  when mark first started facebook, it seemed like the easiest thing in the world would be to allow banner ads–users clicked on the image, were redirected to the advertiser’s website, and for each click the advertiser would kick back money.  mark didn’t want to do that.  he wanted interactivity:  customers expressing interest, encouraged to give word of mouth marketing on a massive scale, and advertisers able to respond to the market with customer driven innovations.

okay, how likely are you to visit skittles.com? how likely are you to “like” skittles on facebook? in march, 2012 skittles.com attracted 23,000 unique users in the united states. during that same period the skittles page on facebook was a new “like” for 320,000 people. i want a job responding to posts from fans of skittles. i also want free skittles.

today’s closing share price for facebook is $27.40.  a bit of a tumble from $38 but i think the long term prospects are good.  if i wasn’t paying my taxes this weekend, i’d definitely be down for some facebook stocks. . . and maybe a bulova.  because that first television commercial is making me feel quite nostalgic.