The package arrived yesterday. At last, after many a year, I can hold a paper version of Hailstone Mountain in my tremblous hand.

The book is thinner than I expected. I suppose that’s because of the 6”x9” format – more words per page. I’m used to thinking in terms of what’s called “mass market paperbacks,” the roughly pocket-sized books you generally see on racks in stores (or used to). For some reason, we self-publishers seem to gravitate toward a larger size. Perhaps we’re compensating.

Maybe the cream paper that I didn’t select would have been a little thicker, too.

In any case, my books are my children, and I’ve known this one only electronically up to now. Like having a kid whose mother took custody and then moved to California – you only know him through Zoom calls. Now at last he’s made his way to my doorstep. He needs money, of course.

I wonder how I should deal with selling these things at Viking events, as one by one they get instantiated in the physical universe. My bestseller at events is Viking Legacy. After that, it’s The Year of the Warrior (the paper version I have printed, not yet available on Amazon). West Oversea comes in third. This one follows in the sequence. I figure demand for each successive book should be smaller than for the previous one. I anticipate carrying a couple cartons of the later books of the saga with me to events, but I don’t imagine I’ll have to stock as many of those. It’s already a lot of cartons to lug around.

At the festival in Green Bay, I was signing somebody’s book and they complimented my handwriting. This surprised me. I’ve always considered my handwriting awful, for the practical reason that it’s hard to read. My writing may possess a certain grace of form, but it’s not pragmatically effective.

I wish my art to be useful as well as aesthetic. But not enough to write slower.