HOT TIP: Hurry out and buy paper manufacturing stocks now! Because my acclaimed novel, Troll Valley, was released today in paperback, and surely those presses will be running till their gears smoke, turning out copies for a hungry public.

[NOTE: This is the paperback version I’m talking about. The audiobook, about which I’ve written so much, is still in the pipeline. The instructions at Amazon ACX say the approval process may take as long as ten days – but a look around in online forums tells me six weeks isn’t uncommon, and it can take months. So your patience is appreciated.]

I’m planning to accompany the audiobook release, if I’m still alive when it happens, with a five-minute video short, to promote it. I’m intrigued by these short videos I see all over (on Facebook and YouTube; I do not visit Tiktok). Just as I taught myself book recording on Audible, I’m now teaching myself video editing. The result, when I have accomplished it, will be posted here.

In personal news, I got word of a recent death that made me thoughtful. It was that of a man who had been one of my schoolteachers. He never liked me, and at one point he singled me out for a humiliating punishment, in front of my classmates.

I forgave him, formally in my heart, years ago. As a matter of spiritual obligation. But I couldn’t help recalling one of C. S. Lewis’ letters (or it might have been a journal entry, but I think it was a letter, perhaps to his brother). He wrote it as a young man, recalling the sadistic, insane headmaster he had endured at one of the boarding schools he attended as a boy. But now he was a young man, and enjoying life and freedom, while his old tormenter was long dead “and in hell.” (This, I should mention, was before his conversion). I must admit that I had anticipated this teacher’s death with… what shall I call it? Interest. But he lived quite a long life. I may not outlast him by much.

Loni Anderson died too. She was a native of St. Paul, and a lot of people around here (not me, I must admit) remembered some local commercials she did here (as a brunette) before she upped stakes for Hollywood.

Like most people, I remember her best for the brilliant comedy series, “WKRP In Cincinnati.” I remember my astonishment as I found myself increasingly drawn to her as the series went on. I was always a firm Jan Smithers supporter – her character, Bailey Quarters, was the girl of my dreams – drop dead gorgeous, but so insecure I could imagine her going out with a dork like me. But Anderson’s brainy glamor grew on me, in spite of myself.

I’m already on record as being in favor of commercialized glamor. Loni Anderson carried it off well. R.I.P.