A Word From Scott Carson

     Greetings and solicitations from Tribeca:

     This is Scott Carson, narrator of Tatterdemalion, the book what tells the true story of how Buffalo Bill's posse brought Jack the Ripper to ground. The bird who stuck my kisser but his name on the cover, Robert Crawford, likes to think he wrote the book. But, essentially, he was just a glorified stenographer. Scribes often get deluded like that.
     At any rate, Crawford's more savvy with this internet machine contraption than I'll ever be (In my defense, I was born in late November 1866). Ergo, he'd initiated an Indiegogo campaign designed to raise a subscription to assist in the production costs. Again, if you're wondering who the dickens I am, I'm the guy who invented moving pictures (not lantern shows) and put the kibosh on Jack the Ripper. If you want to know more about my past and see some pictures I took in the 19th century, take a gander at my Twitter feed.
     Now, Lord knows I ain't no stranger to money. My old man, after all, was one of Goldman Sachs' first employees, having worked his way up from messenger boy. My old lady hails from New Orleans and came from old money herself. But Crawford's been strictly blue collar and over the last five years, years before we became acquainted, he'd fallen on hard times. In fact, his finances are such that he would've made the perfect candidate for my friend Jacob Riis when we used to prowl the Lower East Side and photograph the indigents. The poor bastard hasn't even got a sofa, for crissakes. Three years ago, he tried another subscription drive through some place called Kick My Ass Started... No, Kickstarter. Sorry. Anyway, that endeavor went bust in a big hurry. So he decided to give Indiegogo a spin.
     Anyway, Crawford set himself a goal of $2500 and two months to make it in order to meet, as I'd said, some startup costs. This involves hiring an actress to narrate something called a "trailer", printing up copies to send to reviewers and critics, buying advertising services to publicize our book, et cetera, et cetera. Apparently, a whole helluva lot has changed since I was coming of age in New York City in the '70's and '80's. Back then, scribblers like my old pal Stephen Crane would serially publish their novels in newspapers (Witness The Red Badge of Courage and Maggie: A Girl of the Streets). In those days, there weren't any such things as literary agents (which sounds like a spy or provocateur who likes to read) and demographics and so forth. Nowadays, most writers need to concoct what's called a "marketing platform" and your more efficacious ones require some serious liquid capital.
     Which brings us back to Square One. Crawford already put the bite on a lot of you last week or so and some of you, he's happy to report, had responded in wonderfully pragmatic ways. But on top of keeping body and soul together, having to pay his slumlord every month, keeping Edison's electricity on, plus some recent problems with his 16 year-old horseless carriage what required the services of a mechanic, he's pretty strapped for cash and if I could help, I would.
     So that's where you kind folks come in. In spite of his delusions of being a novelist, he still knows how to turn a neat phrase once in a while and, considering the horse hockey I've been seeing in this century's book stores, I have to say he definitely deserves a leg up in this business. So please give my friend's Indiegogo page a looksee and make note of the perks he offers. And please keep in mind Tatterdemalion's not a one-off or what Crawford calls a "standalone." My adventures continued when I reunited with Buffalo Bill, Annie and Frank in Chicago during the World's Fair in '93 and again in New Orleans in 1918-9. You help Tatterdemalion make a big splash and get a real publisher and Crawford will be able to write his own ticket and finally make himself solvent so he won't have to put the arm on youse anymore.
     And he promises to be back in this forum soon caterwauling about the recent unrest in my old pal Scott Joplin's home state of Missouri or the nation's capitol or where ever there's buncombe and racist tension popping up. Which, nowadays, seems to be all over God's Creation.
     Farewell and Godspeed.