serializing my baby

On the Coast to Coast Walk near Patterdale, Cumbria, UK

There’s much good news: PBB hit #588 overall on Amazon Canada last night. My son’s team won a well-played game of Godball on Monday, and, after some struggles and fits, the boy aced his midterm exams and is poised for something close to straight As on his midterm report card. Delaney wants to win “that medal the man got for helping cool the earth down” (Gore’s Nobel Peace Prize). Erin was elected student council representative for her class (the new kid — I’m so proud!). Freelancing work is steady, the weather is brilliant, the trees are changing. We rafted the Chattahoochee River on Sunday. Becca is happy and well, and so am I.

So of course I’m here to whine.

After considering the manuscript of my book Northing at Midlife for a solid year, a publisher I admire and would have loved to work with has decided against acquiring it. They love it, it’s brilliant, the voice is unique and blah blah, the blah is blah blah blah, but “we couldn’t get it the attention it deserves in this crowded market.”

Damn!

While my agent continues to put his shoulder to the wheel for the book, I’ve decided to do my part by both reworking the manuscript and serializing it on this website. In the upper left corner of this page you’ll see a link — currently Northing at Midlife (1 of 88 50) — which will change roughly once a week as I move through the book. I justify it on this site because it includes a distinctly secular take on the midlife contemplation of mortality. If all goes well, someone out there will be the catalyst for getting it noticed by the publishing world before I so much as finish Chapter 2. Might that someone be…you?