Carnage, and a link for the book.

So I just finished this week's column. I think it turned out pretty good. It's about carnage. Well, not exactly about carnage, but, well, you'll see when you read the column this week.

Hey, which reminds me. The next column comes out on New Year's Day. Don't forget to read it, k? I slaved over the darn thing for half my day today. The least you can do is act like you're reading it. Heck, just pop the page open and leave it open while you go walk your dog or something. Nobody will know.

Oh, and in other sweet news, the book is now available online. If you buy it at Booklocker, which is the self-publishing service that I used, I actually make a little more scratch off of it. You also have the option of downloading it as a PDF.

If you buy it at Amazon, on the other hand, you can potentially save yourself some shipping costs by making it part of an order of $25 or more. Plus, while Booklocker provides a great publishing service and all, their online bookstore is very no-frills, if you catch my drift. Either way, I'd be honored and thrilled if you bought the book.

The internet is quivering with anticipation. Or something.

So this morning I filled out yet more forms related to the publishing of "Acoustic Kitty." The good news is that the book should be available to buy on Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and other online booksellers, very soon. Maybe even by right after Christmas. So that's pretty sweet.

The downside appears to be that every time I fill out one form, I find another waiting for me. It's the print-on-demand industry's equivalent of a clown car. Except the clowns ask you really hard questions, like "How would you describe your book? Answers cannot exceed ten words."

Yeah, ten words. They really made me summarize the plot of a 288-page novel in ten words. And see, unfortunately, this is where my novel is, I think, a little lacking. It's hard to get someone excited about it in ten words or less. Like, if my novel were a movie like "The Departed," I could have written "Undercover cop tries to stay sane while infiltrating the mob." Ten words, and you want to read more, right? Well, I would, because I love mob/crime fiction.

Here's how my ten words worked out: "Mixing cats and microphones isn't as fun as it sounds." See what I mean? Those ten words really aren't...hello? Are you still there?

Hello?

Drat.

About the novel

Okay, so as I may have mentioned in my last post, I've written a novel. I'm actually quite proud of it. It's called "Acoustic Kitty." I'd love to be able to tell you that it's being published by Random House, but if I did, I'd be lying to you like a dog, 'cause it's so totally not being published by Random House.

For that matter, it's not really being published by anybody. I'm in the process of self-publishing it. Self-publishing, in case you aren't familiar with the term, is what you do when nobody else has much interest in publishing your novel. I sent queries on "Kitty" to around 50 or 60 literary agents, and barely got a nibble. It's hard to tell whether they thought my synopsis was terrible, or simply that the novel, which is just as odd as my Fringe columns, didn't fit into any of the established literary genres. Breaking into fiction writing is just as daunting as I expected it to be. If an agent is going to take a chance on a new author, he (or she) wants to feel like he's repping a sure-fire success. He isn't interested in gambling.

So, since I couldn't get an agent to nibble, I'm trying Option B: self-publishing. Essentially, I paid a service (Booklocker.com, if you're curious) to make the book available for purchase. It's up to me to market the thing. But that's okay, because I have a bit of a secret weapon in this fight: you. If you like the Fringe, you'll like "Acoustic Kitty." I'm sure of it.

Hopefully, if enough people buy and enjoy "Kitty," I can get a real publisher - are you listening, Random House? - interested in publishing it "for real," which would mean two good things for those who buy this first edition of the novel. First, it would mean that the edition you bought would instantly become unavailable, and therefore nearly as valuable as, say, a Hardee's Monster Thickburger. Second, it would mean that my next novel, which is already underway, would also see the light of day, and be much easier to find and buy.

So, if you're a fan of the Fringe and want to see more stuff from your favorite completely unknown writer, get your grubby hands on a copy of "Acoustic Kitty" once it's ready. I really think you'll like it.

Okay. Enough of that for now. Fear not, this blog won't just be about me shilling novels. I'll also make with the funny here and there, I promise.

More details on where you can buy the book are on the way soon. Catch you later. I'm gonna watch the rest of the Rams game. They're actually giving the Steelers a game tonight. Crazy.

Return of the Blog

Hi, kids!

Yer Daddy is back online with a brand-spankin-new iteration of BobWritesStuff, the official blog of me, Bob Rybarczyk. In case you don't know me - and really, if you don't know me, you aren't missing all that much - I'm the author of Suburban Fringe, a weekly humor column that's been running in the online edition of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch since 2001.

I have a couple reasons to resurrect this blog, which I wrote for a while in '06 but then ignored with reckless abandon after a while. First, as goofy as this sounds, people have asked for it. I know, I don't get it either. Second, and this is the somewhat more exciting reason, I've published a novel, and I've actually been wishing for a little while now that I could find the time to blog about that entire process, because it has been really interesting.

Anyway, if you've stumbled upon this, please feel free to drop me a line and let me know if you enjoy it. Or even if you hate it. Or if you just want to send a filthy joke.

Party on.