OK, let’s be honest. This is a filler blog post. Or is it?
I’m working on a five-part series that will start Monday, emerging from the phrase, “Thank you, Lord, for this most amazing day.” I have a poem already locked and loaded for Sunday. So what do I write for Saturday? (As I type this, it’s 9:30 a.m. Friday and I need to leave the keyboard shortly.)
The post office tells me my first copy of The Man Who Was Thursday will be in the mail today, and I’m looking forward to that. Our story thus far: I have become a huge fan of Christopher Morley’s 1919 classic The Haunted Bookshop, and one of its features is that bookshop owner Roger Mifflin keeps spouting names of great books he recommends. After sampling a few of those books, I realized Mifflin/Morley had great taste and took it upon myself to launch “The Roger Mifflin Collection,” new editions of those early 20th century gems.
After publishing the first three, the pandemic reared up (yeah, that’s the ticket, it had nothing to do with procrastination or inertia) and it has taken me awhile to get to the fourth. G.K. Chesterton’s bizarre “nightmare” is probably the best-known of the Mifflin books so far, judging by the number of other public-domain editions I found when I DuckDuckGo’d it, but those other versions won’t have three 1908 reviews or my sterling book design along with the Roger Mifflin seal of approval. So if you want to read a very intriguing stand-alone by the creator of the Father Brown mysteries, the Mifflin edition is the one for you.
Next up is The Demi-Gods, another quirky book, by James Stephens, along with a little piece by me about how the book was almost lost when Stephens left his hand-written manuscript behind at the early 20th century equivalent of his local Starbucks. Look for it next month.
As for books with my name on the front cover, it’s just occurred to me that my expanded versions of the 2010 book Refuse to be Afraid left the little 96-page original behind, so I’m dusting off that manuscript and reproducing the edition that started it all, for folks who have even less time to read but need to hear the message.
And I promised Jeep Thompson and the Lost Prince of Venus would come out in 2021, so I have four months left to keep that promise. My goal is to have it in time for you to include it on your Christmas list, or sooner.
(It has occurred to me on multiple occasions that maybe I should promise a date more precise than “in 2021.” Let me get back to you on that.)
OK, that’s 450-ish words, and it’s time to go. What should I use for a photo for this thing? (Looks up) I know!