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Confession: I never was a Boy Scout (though I do have a vague memory of being a Cub Scout - or maybe that's confused with tagging along with my sisters' Brownie Troop to go to the Wonder Bread factory that made your whole soul smell like hot, sweet dough!) I am thrilled to announce I have been asked by BOY'S LIFE magazine to write a short story for them.

The significance is two-fold: A) They asked me out of the blue (which is way better than sending hundreds of SASE submissions and keeping your fingers crossed) and B) it gives me a great mid-winter push to jump into the creative water with a "small" idea, something I can have a blast writing without the heavy baggage of hundreds of pages and plot details*!

(*this is not to diminish the difficulties of writing short fiction - which I know is no picnic and I have nothing but praise for anyone who can master telling a great story in mere pages)

So now I get to let my mind wander into strange and funny territory and then pitch a few ideas to the editor...I'm thinking something with Giant Bugs.....

I'll keep ya posted.

And in a totally unrelated burp: I just LOVE this animated video of the They Might Be Giants song "The Mesopotamians" - ya gotta love these guys!!! And a major shout-out to DRAWN for giving me the link to the animated genius of David Cowles.

Hey there. So today is the day my novel - Why Is Crater Lake So Blue? - is officially released, although that really doesn't mean anything in this weird, small-publishing world.

Amazon has been selling copies and I know a couple bookstores in the Northwest have put some copies out. There's even one copy in the Burnside store of Powell's Books - the biggest independent book store in the world - in Portland, Oregon.

Wholesalers are really in charge (a loose term) of how your book is distributed - or not - to the resellers. For example, if you check out Border's website right now you'd find my book in the database but it wouldn't include the cover photo and would be calling it a paperback rather than what it is - a hardback. At B&N, no photo, wrong ISBN number, no description. At Powells, no image. That's so sad to an expectant author but in the long run it's just exasperation rather than a huge problem. I think.

And at Amazon this morning they say the book hasn't been released yet despite the fact that they sold books last week. What it means is they ran out of books and they don't know where to get new ones.

All this is due to something happening on the other side of the country. The NY wholesaler who distributes the book to the giant wholesaler - Ingram - doesn't have the final paperwork settled on. Thus all this database stuff is in disarray. At least that's what I think is happening.

I won't know for sure until I start calling people Monday morning. Sheesh. And then the book tour starts Saturday in Klamath Falls, Oregon. Can't wait to find out what will go wrong there.

So you want to write books?

Michael LaLumiere
http://www.whyiscraterlakesoblue.com/