By Joel Thurtell
People were wondering what I was doing all summer.
Notes came in from readers chiding me for letting weeks go by without a post.
Living in a place with no phone or Internet can make it hard to connect to joelontheroad.com. Even for Joel on the road.
I sure was on the road, and a watery road it was.
And that’s what we were doing for much of the summer. I’ll be writing more about McGregor Bay.
But I was not doing nothing.
That is to say, nothing I was not doing.
Or not doing nothing I was.
In July, I published my second book.
In March, my first book was published by Wayne State University Press: It’s Up the Rouge! Paddling Detroit’s Hidden River, the book I wrote with lots of wonderful photos taken by co-author and Detroit Free Press photographer Patricia Beck.
Up the Rouge! took three years to produce. I did some counting. I’m 64 years old. At three years a pop, how long would it take for me to see all of my books in print?
I’ve written a lot of books!
Why do I have so many unpublished books?
Because it’s damned hard to get books into print if you follow the conventional path of finding an agent and commercial publisher. Because I’d send out letters and proposals, then turn back to my full-time reporting job and forget the project. Lots of attention deficit disorder at work. But I made plenty of tries, and had a winner with the Rouge book.
I can understand why people give up on publishing. Lots of fine books go unpublished because their authors can’t find a way of clicking with the East Coasters who dominate American book publishing.
Having one book published by a university press is great, but it’s no guarantee that I’ll find a conventional publisher for the others. Besides, I don’t have three years to spend on each book. There are just too many of them.
As a result, check this out: Amazon is selling my second book, called Plug Nickel. It’s a collection of some of my columns about the wooden Lightning sailboat I restored. I finished the book in July and had it in print in time to haul the boat, Plug Nickel, out to Lake Onondaga in New York for a series of very relaxed races of vintage wooden Lightnings. What a blast! Sold a few books, too.
Very few.
Publisher is Hardalee Press.
My August project, while we were in McGregor Bay with no Internet, was to publish my third book, Seydou’s Christmas Tree.
It’s the story of how a Muslim kid in Togo, West Africa, led two American friends (my wife and I) through what they thought was a barren wasteland and taught them that ugliness and beauty are mere words.
You guessed it: That’s back cover copy from Seydou. It’s on Amazon, too, and soon will be fore sale on its own website. As will Plug Nickel.
Want to know what’s neat? I can beat Amazon’s price!
Yep, Amazon’s charging $19.99, with shipping for each of my books. I can do it for a buck less and still charge Michigan sales tax.
Watch for our shopping carts. Coming soon.
Now, how did I publish that book with no Internet connection at our place?
Easy.
Well, not so easy. I hopped in the Slick, the same Crestliner boat I used to give the French film-maker a ride on the Rouge in last summer, and drove it nine miles around shoals and islands to the marina. Drove my car another ten miles to Little Current, ordered a sandwich at the English Pantry restaurant and made use of their wi-fi.
I managed to write one blog post at the cottage, but whenever I got to the Pantry, I’d forget to post it. Too consumed with the book. One of these days, I’ll post that column.
Drop me a line at joelthurtell@gmail.com
