Caturday Blogging/Open Thread

     The little beast does have his moments.
     Mrs. JP and I are just now gearing up for our annual Easter dinner (Thanks, again, to Uncle Sam and SNAP, without whom we'd be fighting the stray cats in the neighborhood over the field mice).
     Meanwhile, underperforming idiots like Vernon Wells and Tony Romo get multi-year zillion dollar contracts and contract extensions while Mrs. JP and I can't even get minimum wage jobs cleaning up dog shit in Buddy Dog kennels (No joke. We actually tried and failed in 2009).
     I published another book this week, The Misanthrope's Manual, which, like my two novels, is taking off like a lead balloon. It's on both Kindle and a physical Create Space edition and they're going for $2.99 and $2.31 respectively (and that's at cost, with no royalty involved). At over 500 definitions, that comes out to about half a penny a belly laugh, folks. You're not gonna get a better deal than that unless I gave it away. And if you have no problem handing a billionaire like Jeff Bezos another $200 he plainly doesn't need for a Kindle Fire, you should have no problem paying less than three bucks for a brilliant work of satire that contains all sorts of political jibes never before seen (I take a lot of potshots at Rush Limbaugh).
     In fact, I'm going to do something that no other author on the planet earth will do and show you a screengrab of my sales figures for this month:

     No doubt, this will provide transient fun fodder for my various stalkers and critics and not a little bit of Schadenfreude. These so-called sales figures are not reflective of my talent as a writer. I'd had a lot of my dictionary's definitions published back in the 90's in a prestigious magazine and I've been able to pitch my two novels to publishers and got them to read them (in fact, Eric Burdon of The Animals read part of American Zen and, according to a mutual friend, he said the Immortals had reminded him of the first band he was in when he was 14). Plus, you may remember just this past week, I was interviewed by British novelist Nick Stephenson, who'd privately told me earlier this month that AZ made him want to rewrite his upcoming novel, Departed. Plus, we're collaborating on another novel, something neither of us have ever done.

     So, obviously, these sales figures aren't predicated on talent as much as my utter inability to overcome the strenuous and lively apathy that everything I write seems to attract these days. Authors pimp each other's books on Twitter and Goodreads all the time yet never seem to recognize that I even exist. I have always had a greater instinct for publicity than a talent for it.

     So it's time for some crowd sourcing. If you're on Facebook, Twitter, Amazon's message boards (which banned me for life almost two years ago), Linked In, Google+, Goodreads or anywhere else where you can reach readers, if you still refuse to buy or cannot buy any of them, please put in a good word for my dictionary, American Zen or the The Toy Cop.

     And until those royalties start trickling in, Mrs. JP and I are almost out of funds and could use a helping hand pretty soon.