Hi, Tom Bodavid here for Motel 1, talking about that trip back to the old hometown. You’ve been on the road three days with your wife and donkey, and your wife isn’t really up to traveling right now, so the only one who doesn’t complain is the donkey. He’s a good listener and doesn’t interrupt when you tell him what you think about Caesar’s census idea.

You finally pull into Bethlehem and look for a place to stay. Sure enough, there’s a Motel 1 right down the street. It’s not fancy, but there should be a corner to sleep in and room to park the donkey. Your wife has been looking pretty green for the last five or six miles, so you get a little worried when the clerk says you should have made reservations. Yep, everybody who ever said he’s descended from old King David is in town. David’s been dead for a few hundred years, and his kids had big families, so the whole town’s booked up.

They say when things are bad, you should cheer up because things could be worse. You tell this to your wife, and sure enough, things get worse. She says that you’d better find a room where kids stay free, because by morning you’ll have one. You find a place down the street, but you have to stay in the donkey’s room. I guess he had reservations.

The stable is dark and smelly, but it isn’t all bad. The animals behave better than some of the tourists. Still, you would have liked a nicer place to have a baby, but that doesn’t matter any more. He’s beautiful, and you both look at him a long time before you wrap him up. There’s something strange about putting God to bed in a feeding trough, but you figure He knows what he’s doing. At least this place is cheap. You’re both exhausted and lie down to sleep. This is tricky because the straw itches.

About midnight, you wake up. The stable smells worse than it did, and it’s crowded. You see a mob of sweaty shepherds who ran all the way into town to see the child. You thought the only kids shepherds cared about were goats. They’re telling a fantastic story about angels, and shushing each other so they won’t wake the baby. Your wife drinks in everything they say. Finally the last visitor leaves, some kid with a drum. His solo was nice, but the ox and lamb have been tapping their feet ever since and won’t shut up.

The alarm cock goes off, and it’s another day, and then another and another. You’ll have to go to Jerusalem in a few more days, so you go ahead and rent a house. It isn’t much, but at least the donkey’s out of the room. You’re beginning to wish you had stopped the newspaper delivery back in Nazareth.

After the Temple visit in Jerusalem, you think about home up north as you walk away from it, south toward Bethlehem. This has been a long, odd, and expensive trip. So you’re half awake and only half surprised when three rich foreigners pop in that night with gifts for the King of the Jews. You feel strange because you’re only a carpenter, not a king’s father. But the King trusted you with his son because you’re David’s descendant and the baby’s legal link to the throne. You wonder what Herod will think about that.

You ask the strangers how they knew where to find the baby. They show you a star overhead which they followed for months and hundreds of miles, ever since God told them, “I’ll leave the light on for you.”

(Author’s note: I wrote this around 2000. Looking back, it must have been the germ for Mary in Transit, which was published last year. D.B.)

I also finally figured out how to upload to Nook.  A couple of posts back discussed Amazon’s offer that would have kept me from doing so.

A local grocer has obtained enough petition signatures to force a referendum on a zoning change that allows Meijer to build a store in town.  I was on the City Council that approved the change.  Although I’m no fan of box stores, there is something called restraint of trade.  If you tell a business you won’t let them do something that is allowed by law, and especially if you let a similar business do the same thing a few years earlier, you are restraining trade.  In this case, the similar business was Wal-Mart.  Yes, it was hard on smaller stores.  Some people dislike Wal-Mart so much, they’ll drive twenty miles to a Meijer store in another town to do their shopping.

The grocer contends that Meijer will kill downtown stores and run other businesses out, reducing local tax revenue from newly vacant properties.  South Haven used to have four grocery stores.  This grocer eventually wound up owning three of them and closed the two within the city limits (including one downtown).  He expanded the remaining store right outside the city limits where taxes are lower, and included a bakery, pharmacy, coffee shop, video store, and gas station with its own convenience store, pizza and sub shop, oil change and car wash.  All of these compete against similar businesses that he doesn’t own, and now at least some of them will compete against Meijer unless the referendum passes.

He has a nice store, and I expect we will continue shopping there.  However, we buy most of our bread, meat, and produce directly from local farmers.  My coffee beans come from a downtown shop that buys directly from Honduran farmers at a higher than fair trade rate, and from other fair trade sources.  Directly purchased Nicaraguan coffee also is locally available.  Our last Thanksgiving dinner was nearly 100% local, except for milk and tea.  I don’t expect a new Meijer to change those spending habits.

The grocer is a nice guy and supports the community.  He gave one of his vacant properties to the hospital, and they converted it into a top-notch wellness and rehabilitation center that helps keep them in the black.  That was not good news for some of the smaller health clubs.

Where does one draw the line?  Maybe one doesn’t.

Six major publishing houses have been accused of collusion for setting minimum e-book retail prices.  This bars Amazon, for example, from selling their titles through Kindle for less.  Apple encouraged the new policy in support of its plans for an iPad e-book store.

Sounds pretty bad, huh?  Let’s look deeper.  Amazon has amassed an enormous collection of titles, sells some at a loss, and gives others away for free.  Want a book?  Click the button.  It’s yours, and you don’t even have to waste time entering payment information.  They already have that.  Want to lend it to a friend?  No problem, if you’re an Amazon Prime customer.  Prefer to check it out from the local library?  Absolutely.  You don’t even have to visit the library.  The library doesn’t have to buy one to put on the shelf and weed out later after the new wears off.  Amazon doesn’t have to worry about you visiting any other bookseller, electronic or otherwise, or even the library.

Then those pesky big publishers start demanding full price for their titles, and Kindle can’t undercut Nook, Apple, and anybody else who might like to market the same books.

Amazon wants more than e-book sales.  They would like the publishing business, as well.  How do I know?  I now publish through Amazon.  They have made self-publishing virtually free.

It’s getting harder and harder for little-known authors to catch the attention of publishing companies, in part because this is a bad time to be a publishing company.  My latest book, Dead Aggies Don’t Drive Trains, doesn’t fit the market served by the publisher of my other three novels.  So what did I do?  I bought a block of ISBN numbers, those barcodes that occupy books’ back covers.  An ISBN is essential if you want to sell through stores.  A local print shop quoted me a printing price.  Marketing will be up to me, and tax time will be a pain.  I am responsible for packaging and shipping, sales tax collection, recordkeeping, and so on.  That all has to fit around my day job.  There isn’t much margin between my cost and a reasonable retail price, so bookstores won’t make much money from selling the book.  If they think they can make more profit from another title, that’s the way they will go.  Don’t blame them.  They have only so much shelf space, and bookshops are not highly profitable.  That’s why so few are left.

I also decided to try CreateSpace, an Amazon self-publishing business.  There is hardly any cost, if you trust yourself as an editor. (They will edit, for a price.)  Your computer will walk you through the whole process.  Then you order a proof for a few bucks, revise if necessary, and click the button.  For a little more money, CreateSpace will sell through other venues besides Amazon.  Wholesale cost is way lower than the local print shop.  I don’t have to order inventory or even touch the books.  Shipping isn’t my problem.  I’ll get tax statements and royalty checks (if they sell), and tax preparation will be far easier.  I can even track sales statistics through Amazon Author Central.

There is a catch.  You get what you pay for.  I expect the books come out of some machine where you insert a file and it spits out a book.  Physical quality is not ideal.  Covers are not always printed quite squarely, for example.  I am expecting better results from my local printer, but I’ll get a lot less money and more pain for myself.  Then again, it supports a local small business instead of the Amazon book-spitting machine.

Those are paper books.  E-books are even easier, thanks to Kindle Direct Publishing.  You set your own market price, and you can double your royalty rate by allowing your book to be loaned.  Every time Amazon loans your book, it is one less potential sale by a competitor.

I recently received another offer from Kindle Direct Publishing.  I can make even more money, and all I have to do is grant Kindle exclusive e-book rights.  Not Nook, not Apple, not anybody else.

I don’t think I’ll take them up on their latest offer.  Although I haven’t marketed my latest through anybody else and don’t quite know how to, I’d rather keep the options open.  Monopolies tend to lose empathy for their customers and suppliers.  It might even come to pass that somebody else comes up with something that renders Kindle obsolete, so where would I be?

Publishing companies do more than just print and sell books.  They make them fit to print and sell.  They know the market, and they have access where independent authors do not.  Given the choice, I will opt for a publisher and a wider market.

We also ate very well.  Too well.  Meals are included in sleeper tickets.  Three squares a day, with dessert.  Free coffee and juice in the sleeper cars.

The hotel had a small casino, but we aren’t casino people. There is a way to gamble if you ride trains, though. Get cheap tickets, and ask if there are any available upgrades after the train is moving. If they aren’t already booked, you can generally get upgraded for less than full price. We had already gotten a 20% discount on coach fare to Whitefish, thanks to an Amtrak promotion, and we upgraded at full price to roomettes both ways when we made our reservations. Roomettes are cozy, to put it gently. They have two reclining seats across from each other, with room to prop your feet on the other person’s seat. We got a very inexpensive cash upgrade to a deluxe sleeper going west. It would have cost more with a credit card. Deluxe sleepers come with a wider bed, a third chair (uncomfortable, for people you don’t like), and private toilet with shower. One could get spoiled.

Here’s another hint. If you want a smoother ride on a Superliner, get downstairs seating or rooms. The view isn’t quite as spectacular, but they don’t rock as much, and you won’t have half the passengers walking by you on their way to the dining car.

Train toilets have improved since Lois and I started riding trains thirty-some years ago. They used to have signs forbidding their use near railroad stations. Why, you ask? If you looked into a toilet, you would see railroad ties through the hole in the bottom; that’s why.  Yes, they were cold in the winter.

The whole Michigan-Montana trip took 4-1/2 days. If a Coloradan or New Mexican were to take the train to Montana, it would require at least a week, because they would have to go all the way to Chicago or California and change trains. There is no north-south passenger service in between Texas and the West Coast. It’s a shame.

Last year’s 3,500 mile rail cruise through the northern US and Canada, including this route, planted the seed for my new book.  There are lots of railroad tunnels.  A few weeks after we returned home, I dreamed about walking along a railroad and into a tunnel.  It was too big inside, apparently for nefarious reasons, but I woke up before I could find out quite what they were.  It sounded like a great idea for a book, though.  I had never written a mystery, so I killed a couple of folks off and invented a villain, in that order.  Of course, I also needed good guys and some people who might be either.  There had to be enough clues to justify the conclusion, but not enough to make it obvious.  It’s not all that easy to plant a clue without it standing out.  We’ll see how well I did.  It was a fun project.

I moved the story three states south to New Mexico, which I know a lot better than Montana.  The new setting lacked a few things I needed, so I remodeled it somewhat.  The Continental Divide has shifted a bit, for example.  Did you feel it move?

My day job is sort of crazy right now.  Retirement is sounding better all the time, but it’s still a way off.  The story is about an older guy whose job disappeared, and an out-of-the-way place called Comunicado.

I’ll take a few copies of the book along.  Maybe somebody will buy one.  Otherwise, I’ll just show the books where they were conceived.

This may sound strange from somebody who just lost an election, but I prefer to leave office this way instead of being shot.  That’s how it’s done in some other parts of the world.

That is what I said at the end of the last local City Council meeting.  Come January, the winner will get my chair and the issues that come with it.  I had missed the filing deadline to be put on the ballot, so I filed an “Intention to Run” instead, meaning I would be a write-in candidate.  A few weeks later, another person decided to run his own write-in campaign.  He ran harder than I did, and more people wrote down his name than mine.  It was a civil, low key campaign.  After the ballot count, we shook hands and went home.

Maybe if I had put more effort into it, I would have won.  I’m not going to worry about it.  I prefer to leave it up to God and the voters, because it isn’t the end of the world for me or the community.  I don’t have all the answers.  Anybody who thinks he or she does, doesn’t.  For those reasons, I should not feel compelled to bend the rules, look for shades of gray, or destroy my opponents to support my causes.

The two most dangerous words in the English language must be, “If only…”  That expression can paralyze us with regret or, alternatively, push us into doing something foolish.  “If only” presupposes that we know what would have happened if only things had been different.  We don’t.  We paint the “if only” picture as if we could write the script without interruption, and as if all the actors would stick to the lines we wrote.  Forget it!  Did the cat honk up a hairball this morning?  I’ll bet you didn’t write that in.  Were you cut off at the traffic light this afternoon?  That wasn’t in the script, either.  So if you had really said such-and-such to So-and-So, do you really know how they would have reacted?

Every day is full of unexpected occurrences.  Some of the best things in my life have resulted from other things I would not have chosen.  I have lost jobs and gotten better jobs because of the losses.  Then there is that election.  I won’t have to schedule everything around meeting days.

What’s next?  Maybe I’ll get back onto the Heavens to Louie sequel.  I drafted the front and part of the middle a couple of years ago, but it sort of stalled out.  Count Otto’s Dragon and Mary in Transit took center stage instead, followed by Dead Aggies Don’t Drive Trains.  That may change.  Two of our sons were over today for Thanksgiving dinner, and we may have come up with an idea or two.

Projects may be dropped because they aren’t all that good.  People get excited by the discovery of an unknown manuscript or unfinished artwork by a master, but the artist may have shelved it because it didn’t seem to be going anywhere.  Schubert never finished his Eighth Symphony, but he seems to have stopped working on it six years before he died.  Why?  Who knows?  Maybe we should not call it his Unfinished Symphony, but the Abandoned Symphony instead.  Beethoven intended to write another symphony but didn’t get very far.  The so-called Beethoven’s Tenth is a modern compilation of bits and pieces he left behind.

Sometimes, though, you can resurrect something, making it better than it would have been if you plodded down the original path.  If I stall out on a crossword puzzle or a Sudoku, I often find it easy to finish if I leave it alone for a while.  The brain may need a while to get out of a rut.  Writing is the same way.  It’s difficult but helpful for the author to assume the role of reader rather than writer, but that may be easier to do if the story hasn’t camped out in the author’s consciousness for a while.

We’ll see.

The print version should be along shortly. It looks like there will be at least two editions: one print-on-demand via Amazon, and another locally printed set, so I can sign them.   I’m thinking about a large print version, too.  The story is about people who used to be middle aged, so maybe I can capture a bigger audience.

The local print shop does a nice job on posters, brochures, business cards, etc.. I stopped in on the spur of the moment a few weeks ago:

“You don’t print books, do you?”

“Sometimes. Do you want to see one?”

It looked fine. They quoted me a price, and I was no longer trolling the Internet looking for publishing houses.

I hate marketing.  Who do I think would be target audiences?

• Aggies, from any state that has Aggies.
• Train nuts.
• Whodunit fans.
• Old band members.
• Present and future geezers, codgers, coots, curmudgeons, et al.
• Folks who dream about chucking the job and hiding out in a valley somewhere.
• People who prefer a book they can leave around the house without fear that a kid will pick it up and ask, “Mommy/Daddy/Grandma/Gramps, what’s … mean?” just before the owner drops his or her teeth.
• Southern New Mexicans, because finally somebody wrote something about them.  I tried to paint the scene without stereotyping the people.  They are not all the same in dialect or background.   New Mexico, though, is very different culturally from Michigan, where we live now.  Maybe someday I’ll expand on the differences Lois and I have seen between here and there.

The book has changed some since I posted an excerpt a while back. Books don’t really gel until they’re printed. Lois has bled red pencil (actually a pink marker) in the manuscript from end to end, pointing out where things could be clearer, where I beat a favorite word to death, and so on.  She is very good at that.

This is my first crack at self-publishing.  There’s not much opportunity for unknown authors to get other people to pay to publish their work.  I did not have to pay to get the last three printed, but this one is a different animal.  The others were published by a Christian print-on-demand publisher, at their expense, but it would be a stretch to expect them to publish this one.  It isn’t anti-Christian, but it doesn’t quite go where Christian literature generally goes.  People die (they do that in whodunits), and not even the good guys are quite on the up-and-up.  The writing style hopefully is close to old novels where the plot had to carry the story, before authors discovered four-letter words, graphic sex, and explicit gore.  Think a radio play, not television.

“Self-publishing” in this case means more than paying somebody to beat a manuscript into a book.  I write the story, format it, get ISBN numbers, etc., and take it to the local printer.  He has done books before.  If he has good suggestions, I’ll probably take them.  The cover pictures are mine, too, by the way.

I also expect to market in electronic format.  We’ll see how that goes, too.  The software so far has not been fully cooperative.

Speaking of Christian books, I entered “Mary in Transit” in a Christian literary competition.  It didn’t win.  On a scale of 10 (as rotten as possible) to 100 (perfect), the five reviewers ranked it 98, 96, 95, and 38 twice.  I think that means it was well written but offensive to some.