The berry bushes in our yard are producing a bumper crop of either blackberries or black raspberries. My friend, Larry, says that they’re raspberries because it’s too early for blackberries. He’s a farmer so I’m assuming he knows what he’s talking about.
Susie and Riley have been busy picking the berries and we’ve had them on our cereal the last few mornings. We also have a bumper crop of mulberries which both Riley and Poco II have been devouring at an alarming rate, at least it is alarming to Susie.
She doesn’t care for mulberries, abhors them, as a matter of fact. I suspect there is a story in there somewhere but she has yet to tell me about it.
Picking blackberries, of course, brings back memories. One such memory is recorded in my new book which I have been frantically getting ready for publication. I have included a snippet of that story to whet your appetite for more. This is a what’s known as a marketing ploy.
I was crossing the creek that guarded a great blackberry patch when I lost my footing on the fallen log I was using as a bridge and fell hard into the foot deep water. A broken branch scraped an ugly red welt on the back of my thigh as I went down. I allowed my mom to treat it with iodine but only after she promised to blow air on the sting that resulted from the medicine.
In a week or so, the redness went away but the lump where the welt was, remained. As a matter of fact, it stayed on and on through the rest of my childhood and into my adult life. After a while, it was just something that was there, like an extra finger or toe and I learned to ignore it. It went with me to boot camp and it went with me down the aisle when I got married.
When the 7 cancer warning signs were identified sometime in the intervening years, there was my lump, front and center and that caused me several sleepless nights. But it wasn’t cancer, it was just a lump. It stayed on another ten years or so before it finally disappeared. I didn’t even notice it was gone for a long time and now that I sit here writing this, I suspect it may not be. Gone, that is. I believe it suffered the same fate as my belly button. My body fat swallowed it. I think the rest of my leg just grew up around that welt and it’s still in there awaiting the day when I get skinny again and am able to welcome it home.
I have submitted the book to one publisher and one literary agent and I have not heard back from either one although it has only been a couple of weeks. I am reasonably sure that this book, while very entertaining, is not one for the masses and I suspect I will end up self publishing for the second time.
I actually like the self publishing route. I can dictate what I want and I give up none of the rights to the book. On the other hand, It is extremely difficult to market a self published book although the industry will argue with that.
I wouldn’t buy ninety nine percent of the self published material but on the other hand, I probably wouldn’t buy ninety nine percent of the traditionally published stuff either.
