DONALD WILLERTON
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      • 1. Ghosts of the San Juan
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      • 10. War Train
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    • Outlaw
    • The Lady in White
    • The Captain's Chest
    • River of Gold
    • War Train
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Willerton Blog

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HEARING MY WORDS

8/20/2023

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​When I decided to self-publish my new book last year, I viewed it partially as an adventure: having done everything myself a decade ago, what had changed? Was it easier or harder? More costly or cheaper? Would I do it again? I included not only doing the marketing (which I’ll talk about in a later blog; it’s not going well), but also publishing my book as an audiobook, if it didn’t cost too much. The only data point I had was a previous estimate from a company in Santa Fe who quoted $10,000 for Teddy’s War, which had about the same number of words.
 
Giving you the current status first, I just signed a contract with an experienced voice actor in Alaska to produce an audio file of Death In The Tallgrass by November 1st, for about $1200. When I have that file, Audible (a subsidiary of Amazon) will freely make it available for purchase from Amazon, Audible, and Itunes. I have no control over the price and won’t know until after it comes up. Audible makes their money off the deal by keeping a healthy chunk of the sale amount.
 
I only began working on this a week ago and it’s been a pretty exciting process.
 
Producing an audiobook is provided by a company called ACX, which stands for Audible Creation Experiment, also a subsidiary of Amazon. My book had to have been published in Kindle format, so that I could use the same file to submit my book to ACX.
 
Using a page created for me by ACX, I typed in the title of the book, the author of the book, my budget range, and a short description of the book. In that description, I named some of the characters and described what I thought they sounded like. I didn’t think I had good enough descriptive words, so I said Harry was like a young Tom Selleck, Alice was like a Melissa McCarthy, and Charlie Goodnight sounded like a fat Tommy Lee Jones. It seemed to have worked pretty well.
 
I narrowed the potential audience of Narrators-for-hire by requesting a male voice (my book uses a first-person male to tell the story), chose “storyteller” from a long list of “voice styles”, and indicated a budget range of $50-$100 per finished hour, which is an hour of reading the final edition of the audiobook.
 
ACX used my word count (105,635) to estimate that it would take 11.4 hours to listen to the final audiobook. It takes 3 to 6 hours of work time to create one finished hour of properly recorded, edited, and formatted story. Different Narrators use different levels of time and effort in producing their final product and earn it back by adjusting their cost per finished hour.
 
I provided an “audition file” of 2 to 3 pages excerpted from my book. Those excerpts featured scenes of dialogue between different characters to help the Narrator know what would be needed in terms of the voice, style, pace, intuition, and interpretation throughout the story. I chose five scenes, each of a paragraph or two of dialogue or monologue by four different characters.
 
After broadcasting my request for a Narrator (taken care of by ACX), any Narrator interested in voicing my book sent ACX an audio file of them reading the audition file. ACX takes care of the communications and all I had to do was sign into my account, go the auditions page, and listen to the different auditions received. It was very easy.
 
In addition to hearing my own words read by the Narrator, I could click on their name and go to their “profile” page. From a listing of finished books they had narrated, I could listen to excerpts. Between those excerpts and my audition file, I developed a good sense of how my book might sound with their voice.
 
I sent out my request on a Friday, and within two days, I had eighteen different Narrators respond with an individual audition. It was pretty exciting to hear my words come to life.
 
I listened to each audition three or four times, eliminated the easy ones (i.e., the Narrator sounded too old or was too tenor), and then did a side-by-side comparison until I got it down to four candidates. It was not easy.
 
I wanted, in particular, to judge how much a Narrator changed his voice to present different characters, and how much “acting” was done as opposed to “narrating”. Only two out of the eighteen had great variations in their voices; one Narrator actually provided a female partner to read the female parts. My final selections all made small changes in their voices for the different characters. Their changes in pitch, pace, enunciation, and pauses were enough to hear and imagine each distinct character.
 
After picking my final Narrator and confirming they were available in the right time frame, I filled out an electronic form with only 5 questions (including price and due date). ACX sent the form to the Narrator. When that form is approved, my next step is to choose a 15-minute segment from the book, submit it to the Narrator, and have him read it in the voice and style that he has chosen for the whole book. He will record the 15-minute segment, send it to me, and I will iterate with him until I am satisfied. I will approve it when finished.
 
After that, it’s off to the races! When the whole book is finished, I will have two chances to read, comment, and ask for changes to any part of the audio, hopefully honing it to be perfect, and then his job is finished. He will give me a final version of the audio file and I will submit it to Audible; it should be for sale within 24 hours.
 
I hope this all works and from what I’ve seen so far, it will. Everyone concerned seems to have the process down and are working to produce a professionally-done, significantly-good product. It takes a long time to produce an audiobook, so I’m content to wait a couple of months to have it done well. 

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WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

8/4/2023

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​In a previous blog, I told of finding seventeen errors in my Word document of Death In The Tallgrass as it was being converted to an Amazon file that was ready for a book printer.
 
I hired a company to do the conversion. We iterated by them sending me a pdf file of the converted Word file that I would then read for any needed changes. If I found errors or changes, I sent them a message giving the corrections needed. By iterative improvement, the final pdf had no errors or changes, and I promptly approved that file. They then converted that file into Kindle format.
 
I proceeded to send the final pdf to Amazon to be used in printing the book.
 
Except that I didn’t. I used their first pdf file by mistake, which means that all paperbacks printed in the last week contain those seventeen errors.
 
Don’t ask me how this happened. I’m at the point in my life where major screw-ups are surprising but hardly require explaining. I believe I can trace the chain of events but it stills ends with me being completely responsible. And ashamed; I only had one thing to do and I messed it up.
 
I was reading a copy I had ordered for myself when I noticed errors that I remembered correcting. Looking at the files on my computer, I realized what had happened and quickly sent the correct file to Amazon. With remarkable foresight on Amazon’s part, it was easy to replace the faulty file with the good one. From now on, all paperbacks printed will be sourced from the correct file.
 
The Kindle version was not affected. It was automatically generated from the final converted file.
 
I now need to replace all the copies of Death In The Tallgrass sold in the last week. I know a few of the people who bought copies, but having announced the book by using this blog, I don’t know everyone.
 
I strongly believe that every buyer deserves the correct copy, and I have a strong desire for all copies in circulation to be what I intended. Some errors concerned format changes that you won’t notice, but a few errors will be irritatingly noticeable and could ruin the reading experience. To make amends, I am offering a deal and am hoping that buyers will allow me to do this:
 
  1. If you have a copy of the book ordered between July 28th and August 4th, send me your email address at Willerton@comcast.net.
  2. I will send you a question asking that you identify a particular error. If you find it, that will confirm you bought a corrupted copy
  3. Reply to me and I will send you a $25 eGift Card from Amazon that allows you to order a new copy. You should destroy the old one.
 
This is a lesson concerning self-publishing: there is only the author to blame when things go wrong, and only the author to fix the problems.

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DEATH IN THE TALLGRASS     ON AMAZON!!!

7/30/2023

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​My latest novel, Death In The Tallgrass, has been published and is available on Amazon.com and through the Kindle Store, in both paperback and eReader formats.
 
You can see the book by holding the cntrl key down and clicking on the following link:  https://www.amazon.com/Death-Tallgrass-Journey-Through-Frontier ebook/dp/B0CCZK8H5G/ref=sr_1_1?crid=VV58CG3RZH4W&keywords=Donald+Willerton+Death+In+The+Tallgrass&qid=1690732116&s=books&sprefix=donald+willerton+death+in+the+tallgrass%2Cstripbooks%2C119&sr=1-1
 
By the way, I’m having my website worked on and it still lacks some of the correct links.
 
This book is dedicated to my brother, Keith. He died from Covid in December, 2020. My submission package for the new novel was accepted and published last Friday, July 28th, which would have been his 74th birthday.
 
He would have liked what I’ve written. It features the countryside he loved best – the lofty peaks of New Mexico and Colorado, the Panhandle of Texas, the Canadian River valley, the Palo Duro Canyon – and highlights some of the history we grew up with. He would be delighted to find he was the model for one of the book’s characters. Those of you who knew him won’t have a lot of trouble identifying the character.
 
Among his many talents, Keith had a phenomenal memory. He specialized in jokes, humorous tales, and biographical details of various people, and could go on for hours as the center of entertainment. He also appreciated road trips. Our biggest trip together was in the 1980s, beginning with me picking him up at the Albuquerque Airport, then winding our way up through the Jemez Mountains towards the road to Bloomfield. We took a left somewhere along the way and visited Chaco Canyon.
 
For those who knew him, you can well imagine his disdain of sleeping on the ground in a crowded two-man tent. Even with air mattresses, he suffered while I laughed at him. In his sleeping bag in the morning, he looked like a beached whale on a mattress gone flat during the night. It was inevitable that our last evening of the trip found us next to the railroad tracks in Durango, waking up to 2 inches of snow. I think he was ready to go home.
 
From Chaco Canyon, we went to Mexican Hat, through Monument Valley, and over to Lake Powell. In Bluff, we stopped at Sand Island on the San Juan River. It serves as the launch point for raft trips going down the river. Getting the contact information from the bulletin board led to my almost 30 years of rafting adventures down the San Juan, the Rio Grande, the Chama, and the Gila Rivers.
 
Keith went on only one rafting trip. Surviving near mental collapse and a near-death experience, rafting dropped off his to-do list and we stuck to wheeled adventures afterwards. It is a major regret of mine that we did not visit the Grand Canyon in his last years. He asked but I felt it involved too much driving. Why I had gotten so old, I don’t know.
 
I miss him far more than I expected. He preferred comfort over stress, but he absolutely loved being in the semi-wilderness areas we experienced. He loved Hemingway, Roark, and Larry McMurtry, and even my Mogi Franklin mysteries. I’m sorry he’s not here to enjoy Death In The Tallgrass.
 
The picture I’ve attached is from an overnight trip to the Conejos River valley in Colorado.
 
If you read the novel, I’d appreciate a review on Amazon. It is easy to do. Go to the review section near the bottom of the book page, to the button on the lefthand side that says “Leave a customer review”. Click it and you’ll be led through all you need to do. Reviews are everything for getting me visibility in the Amazon system.
 
You need not worry about what to say or how many words to use. I’ve seen one-word reviews as well as multi-paragraph essays. I just appreciate knowing people have read it.

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FROM MANUSCRIPT TO SUBMISSION

7/17/2023

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​I began writing my Mogi Franklin stories in the late 1990s for fun and something to keep me creative. By the mid-2000s, self-publishing had come into its own and Amazon launched Createspace, a service for authors that provided the ways and means for writers to self-publish their books and have them placed on the Amazon and Kindle sites for sale. Createspace even provided authors with an “author site” that allowed us to submit, price, adjust, and manage our book sales. I still use mine.
 
Createspace prompted me to set a goal of having my Mogi books published and available in a bookstore so my mother could buy copies before she died. I taught myself to take a finished (self-edited) story, written in Microsoft Word, reformat the text for the correct paperback size (I chose 6” x 9”); determine chapters and chapter headings, section breaks, page numbers, titles, and copyright information (it was not easy); use my own photographs to create the front, back, and spine of the cover, with the help of Photoshop; and give Amazon the correct descriptors of the book for marketing, including the words and word phrases for the search engine.
 
I submitted everything through much the same interface I described in my last blog, and, waiting a week, suddenly had a paperback copy of my book in my hands. The cost was minimal, only buying the ISBN and paying for copies of my books. Amazon also offered converting to the Kindle format for free, so my books magically appeared in electronic form. Woohoo! In 2012, my mother bought a full set of my books, and died a few months later.
 
Createspace was replaced by Amazon KDP, which offers the same level of services to DIYers.
 
Around 2013, I signed on with Terra Nova Books, a small family-owned book publisher in Santa Fe. All of the Mogi Franklin books were redone – editing, compositing, new covers – and published under their imprint. Terra Nova uses a book distributor, so my books were not only available through Amazon, but through bookstores, big retail stores, and other publishing outlets. I went on to publish three standalone novels with TNB, along with four more Mogi books.
 
This last Spring, Terra Nova Books was sold to different owners. The publishing house will remain in Santa Fe, and I will renegotiate the contracts for my individual books so that I remain with the house. I still own the copyrights, but I want the house to continue the business end of distributing and selling.
 
Not having previously worked with the new owners reinforced my desire to self-publish my new book, Death In The Tallgrass. I had decided in October to not publish with TNB because I honestly wanted to find out how the self-publishing environment had changed and to share my experiences through this blog. I was also embarrassed to submit a manuscript for a third time, having already had it rejected twice.
 
What I have found is that self-publishing is a whole new world compared to my first experiences. The services provided to self-publishing writers (which now includes Amazon/KDP) cover the spectrum of everything that a writer might want or need: idea creation, development and planning; writing education and training; manuscript help that includes multiple levels of editors, designers, reviewers, proofreaders, and manuscript preparation; a range of artists and cover designers for developing the cover and the interiors of complicated books that include many illustrations, tables, and charts; and the publishers, printers, distributors, and marketers who will get publications on the shelves and in the media. In addition, there’s a large number of videos on YouTube that cover every aspect of the self-publishing process.
 
Of course, every service provider wants money for what they do. Never equivalence self-publishing with choosing a cheap route. You can still do most of it by yourself for a minimal investment, but the professionals have a clear and typically insurmountable advantage. You get what you pay for.
 
For Death In The Tallgrass, having spent two plus years writing the novel, I started my self-publishing effort in January of 2023, buying an “Editorial Review” from a professional editor who lives in Jerusalem. I found him through Reedsy (look up Reedsy.com), a full-service organization for self-publishers. I reviewed the resumes, accomplishments, and costs of nine other candidates before choosing him. He did an extraordinary job and made a major difference in the quality and focus of my story. I repaired the manuscript, skipped hiring a “line editor” because my first editor had done such a thorough job, and hired, also through Reedsy, a “copy editor” to go through it, looking for contextual, grammatical, and logical errors in my sentences. She lives in South Carolina, and was also excellent. She made a major difference in the quality of my writing.
 
I skipped hiring a proofreader, convinced that I had surely caught every mistake, and hired, again through Reedsy, a professional artist and cover designer to create my cover. She lives in Connecticut, but has won cover design awards in New Mexico. I’m very happy with what she did.
 
I hired a company called Word2Kindle to convert my Word document into a Print-On-Demand formatted file (a pdf) and a Kindle-ready formatted file (an ePub). I have no idea where that company resides. They not only converted the text but added chapter headings and highlights, corrected my title and copyright pages, unified the font and font sizes throughout the book, and set up the correct page numbering. I’m due to give the final approval on Wednesday, and I am very happy for what they’ve done.
 
And, by the way, in doing the conversion, seventeen embarrassing mistakes were identified and corrected, most of which were missing words in sentences. That’s what I get for skipping the proofreader, but I at least found them.
 
I’m expecting the self-publishing part of my writing adventure will have taken seven or more months and about $6000. For a three-year project, that’s not bad. This is about twice what I paid Terra Nova Books for any previous novel, but is less than the typical $10,000 that other self-published authors swear to be an average cost.
 
Of course, I’m not finished. After my book is published, I still have marketing costs to come. I hate marketing and always left it to my publisher, and, consequently, got little from them except frustration and an occasional penny. Doing it myself, I hope to learn what the choices are, what the cost tradeoffs are, and keep up with the statistics to understand what works and what doesn’t.
 
I also plan on offering an audible version of the book, which I’ve never done before. This should be quite an adventure, but costs a lot. There’s a company in Santa Fe who will provide narrators at an average of $1000 per finished hour. For my book, that’s about 10 hours, which translates to $10,000, which I won’t afford.
 
However, I can use a company that provides electronic translation with AI-driven voices for considerably less. You give them a sample text and they’ll provide you recordings of the text using a number of different voices, which you then choose for reading your book. I’m not exactly sure if I’m going to like this or not, but I’ll give it a try. I can always not do it.
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MAKING MY BOOKS VISIBLE

7/11/2023

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​If you browse for books on Amazon, using the search line to type in descriptive words such as “historical fiction” or “romance” or “motorcycle maintenance” or “crime thriller using Artificial Intelligence” or “World War II weapons using sonar”, Amazon will present you with a selection of books that it thinks match the words you typed in.
 
If you don’t find something interesting, you can cycle through more pages of suggestions, or, if you want, type in different descriptive words and search again.
 
In doing your browsing, you are using a “search engine” developed by Amazon that prowls its massive databases of book information until it has focused on what you are interested in, based on its interpretation of the words you typed in. The more specific the words you use, like “World War II weapons using ground-based sonar units along the coast of Belgium in 1939”, the more likely the search engine will zero-in on books that will provide you with that information.
 
If you already know the book you want, you can use more specific words, like “Teddy’s War, novel by Donald Willerton”, and the search engine will take you directly to the page where you can buy the book, which I highly recommend.
 
When the search engine doesn’t find any books matching your criteria, it does the best it can to deliver what you asked for.
 
But you will never see all the books that fit your criteria, because of the sheer number of books involved and because the search engine is designed to not only match the criteria, but to also identify those books that have an established popularity with its readers. It feels obliged to give you the “best” book on what you requested based on how other people liked it and would recommend it.
 
On the other hand, if you type in “middle grade mysteries for boys and girls”, you will never be presented with the books of the Mogi Franklin Middle Grade Mystery Series, no matter how many pages you look through. That’s because the search engine uses an algorithm that factors in the number of searches for those books, the number of books sold, the rankings or ratings, the number of reviews that makes them competitive against other middle grade mysteries, and a truckload of other considerations. None of my Mogi books have anywhere close to the numbers required to achieve even being mentioned.
 
My books are not alone. Many books are invisible to Amazon book browsers, and are, subsequently, likely to never be bought. They all sit languishing in a vast wasteland of the underexposed.
 
One of my objectives in self-publishing my new book is for me to learn how Amazon uses its search engine to identify and manipulate individual books. Specifically, as the author and publisher of a book, I want to know how much influence I have over book browsers seeing my book for potential purchase. How do I get my book to be visible, and how to I keep it from becoming invisible?
 
What I have found so far is that I have considerable influence in avoiding the Amazon book basement and can even resurrect books already there, if I pay attention to the rules of the game, understand how the search engine works, and use time and effort to identify and implement a strategy.
 
A lot of the selling potential of an Amazon book is managed before the book is published. When I have the electronic files for my new book in hand (one file for the interior of the book and one file for the cover), I will go to the submission forms on Amazon/KDP (I’ve rehearsed this) and fill out information about my book that will not change: title, subtitle, ISBN, and category (fiction or nonfiction, children’s book, crime, history…).
 
I then fill in a large block of text that provides words describing my book, typically the back cover blurb for a fiction book, but it can be different. There is a maximum number of characters or words, so it has to be complete but efficient. These words will be digested and fed to the search engine.
 
I then provide up to seven word or word phrases that describe the content of my book (the form provides seven text boxes for typing them in). For example, I will provide something like the following for my new book:
  • Western historical fiction adventure, tragedy, and romance
  • Literary coming of age saga for Young Adults
  • Supernatural and suspense thriller
  • Great Plains, Texas, Native American, Comanche history
  • ….
 
Every word and every combination of words are critical and meaningful because they become direct inputs to the search engine. Several YouTube videos describe how to construct the phrases, what words to use, and the various rules of what and what not to do. If you break any rules, Amazon can refuse to publish the book.
 
After completing that section, I fill out more forms, including the pricing strategies for the different markets of Amazon around the world, and then do the actual submission of the book files. There are four pages of information to be completed.
 
Everything so far is fairly static information; it doesn’t change much. Now, however, having submitted my files and ended up having a true paperback version (or Kindle version) of my book in my hot little hands, Amazon begins gathering dynamic information: who purchases the book, the number of sales of the book, the sales fluctuations of the book, the price fluctuations of the book, the reader book ratings (one through five stars), the reader reviews of the book, the market demands for the book content, feedback from bookstores, marketers, and a slew of other sources that, more or less, characterize the satisfaction of the buyers or readers of the book. That satisfaction is directly linked to the economic viability of my book: does it sell now and will it sell in the future?
 
Without question, reviews of the book submitted by readers are the key component for determining if the search engine scores a book high or low. Across all Amazon products offered for sale, the user/buyer feedback provides the most important quality descriptor for the book. How many of us read the comments provided by reviewers in order to make our decision to buy something? Well, we’re right up there with the rest of the world.
 
This is why you hear repeated solicitations for book reviews from authors like me. My books on Amazon have lived or died by reviews or the lack thereof. A few of my books have zero reviews (reviews by friends and family are recognized by Amazon and are discounted), which I believe is not due to explicit quality, but to the fact that random readers don’t know they exist.
 
The static and dynamic information represent an incredibly large amount of data. Does Amazon really pay attention to all of it? Isn’t that a lot of work? The answer is yes, it does, and yes, it is. Amazon puts considerable work into making the search engine as efficient as possible, as fast as possible, and is constantly refining its techniques and protocols (loosely referred to as SEO, Search Engine Optimization). A lot of the data association is done using AI (Artificial Intelligence) software.
 
None of this is inherently evil or manipulative or exploitive; it’s just simple capitalism. Amazon is doing what you want it to do: find good products by reputable providers (as determined by user/buyer feedback) that are likely to be your best choices from among many choices; maintain quality, vibrancy and consistency in the midst of active markets; and then monitor the products as well as possible.
 
Within it, as an author and publisher, I can affect the sales of my books by writing the best books I can, choosing and managing my search words wisely, soliciting as many reviews as possible, getting my books known to Goodreads and other book-related media organizations, hiring marketers, being active in cultivating more readers, and building a long-term audience who will influence other generations of readers.
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A NEW NOVEL IS COMING

6/25/2023

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​In 2012, I self-published The Lady In White, which was the sixth novel in the Mogi Franklin Mystery Series. It would later be republished by Terra Nova Books in 2018.
 
A major plot element involved a large, ornate family home built in 1870 near the confluence of the Mora and Canadian Rivers in northeast New Mexico. After living in it for a couple of years, a 10-year-old son of the family was kidnapped by Comanches and was never heard from again. By the time Mogi becomes involved, the house is haunted by the ghost of the mother, while the ghost of the son returns to help solve the mystery.
 
In 2014, I self-published Smoke Dreams, my first adult novel; it remains one of my most popular books. The story used the same family home, in the same setting, with the same backstory concerning the kidnapping of the son, but takes place in modern day. The house, in this case, is not haunted, but is possessed by a spirit, while the modern-day owner suffers mystical dreams of the kidnapped son.
 
It was my first adult novel, and I paid a professional to edit the manuscript before it was published. The editing made a tremendous difference in the quality of the story.
 
In 2020, being restricted by COVID, I wrote a sequel to Smoke Dreams, again featuring the house, the setting, and the son, but continuing the life of the son as he grew into a huge Comanche warrior, survived the Indian Wars, and returned to work at a cattle ranch. At the time I started writing, I had not imagined what other things might happen to him, but was looking forward to finding out. I also decided to self-publish the book to see how much the independent publishing environment had changed and to report my experiences through this blog.
 
In June, 2021, I submitted a final draft of the manuscript to an independent editor. The title was The Biggest Cowboy In The World, and if that sounds familiar, it’s because I used this blog to tell of my writing experiences. Unfortunately, my efforts seemed to be all bad and eventually led to a sad demise; the manuscript was scrapped. To remind you, I had a manuscript of 147,000 words that was hated by the editor; a second edition of 107,000 words that was just as bad and was withdrawn before a second round of editing; and an eventual slamming of a virtual desk drawer where I threw the manuscript, embarrassed and depressed that I had written such crap.
 
I resurrected the manuscript in 2022 and used a new writing process to reframe and retell the story. I will be publishing the result in a few weeks. It is now a genuine adult western historical fiction novel that tells the saga of a family crushed by betrayal, tragedy, and romance. An artist in Connecticut produced the wrap-around cover, while I worked with one editor on the East Coast, and another in Jerusalem. If nothing else, I’ve learned that the self-publishing environment is far different than it was in 2012.
 
I’ll relate my experiences in rewriting the story in future blogs, but want to repeat this quote from one of my editors:
 
“This is a beautiful, smart, engaging, enraging book. It is gentle and thoughtful and fierce. The characters and their relationships with each other are extraordinarily well-drawn. The various settings are vivid. These were real people in real places living real lives. Your work was a true pleasure to read.”
 
Maybe after all my attempts, I finally got it right. I am self-publishing the novel on Amazon/KDP and it will be available in both print and ebook around the middle of July.

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THE SALT MARCH

3/5/2023

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​Researching the salt mines in Europe, I found several articles dealing with salt in India. Along the west and east coasts of India, extensive low-lying marshes are flooded by the sea during the monsoon season. When the seawater evaporates during the summer, large salt pans are created that hold thick layers of salt. Many years ago, if you lived near these salt pans, you could gather all you needed, and then sell or trade the remainder.
 
Then someone figured out that if everyone had free access to salt, someone else was losing an opportunity to make money. Therefore, for the past 5,000 years, India has suffered in one way or another from the objective of making money from its naturally abundant salt.
 
In particular, the governing of India by the British in the 1700s created a seriously onerous situation where overlords made it a law that indigenous residents would be taxed for salt, resulting in, first, the British East India Company having a monopoly on the manufacture, sales, and possession of salt, and then the British Government, itself, to use the continuing monopoly to make up to 10% of its Indian revenue. Eventually, the law made it a crime not only to make salt, but to even possess it without having bought it from the government. The annual cost to a family for salt was two-thirds the average family’s income.
 
The history of British salt in India is involved in the particulars, but it brought about one of the most famous non-violent acts of civil disobedience by a nation: the Salt March of 1930, led by Mahatma Gandhi. That action and subsequent actions around the production of salt would eventually add momentum to India becoming independent of Great Britain.
 
From 12 March to 6 April, 1930, for 24 days, Gandhi led a march from the town of Sabarmati Ashram to the town of Dandi, around 240 miles away. Beginning with 78 trusted followers and ending with many thousands, the march brought world-wide recognition of India’s oppression by the British government, and would lead to large scale acts of civil disobedience against the salt laws by millions of Indians. The Salt March culminated with Gandhi walking into a salt pan at 8:30 in the morning, gathering a lump of salty mud and boiling it in seawater, and then raising the handful of salt that he had made high above him, declaring that he had broken the law. He then implored all his followers to likewise begin making salt along the seashore.
 
Gandhi kept the British government fully informed of what he was going to do – before, during, and after he had done it. There were no covert actions; he wrote articles, had letters published, sent telegrams, held interviews, and met daily with reporters, all telling the same story: salt laws were unjust, it punished the Indian society at the individual level as well as the national level, it hurt the poor worst, it kept the Indian economy at the mercy of the British government, and it was a crime against the very society who should be benefiting from their natural resources.
 
The British reacted in royal fashion by arresting Gandhi and 60,000 others. They passed more laws, including censorship of correspondence, as well as the clamping down on newspapers reporting the incidents. They also reacted with force, the most famous incident using machine guns to slaughter 200-250 non-violent and unarmed protestors in Peshawar’s Qissa Kahani Bazaar on 23 April, 1930. One British Indian Army soldier, Chandra Singh Garhwali and some other troops from the renowned Royal Garhwal Rifles regiment refused to fire at the crowds. The entire platoon was arrested and many received heavy sentences, including life imprisonment.
 
Less than a month later, another non-violent action was planned as a raid on the Dharasana Salt Works in Gujarat, south of Dandi, where Gandhi’s walk had ended. It ended with British soldiers senselessly clubbing non-resisting protesters until “…in two or three minutes the ground was quilted with bodies…The police became enraged by the non-resistance…They commenced savagely kicking the seat men in the abdomen and testicles. The injure men writhed and squealed in agony, which seemed to inflame the fury of the police…The police then began dragging the sitting men by the arms or feet, sometimes for a hundred yards, and throwing them into ditches.”
 
The story of the brutalities appeared in 1,350 newspapers throughout the world and was read into the official record of the United States Senate.
 
Nothing changed. The salt laws remained and no major policy concessions were made by the British until the 1950s. However, world opinion increasingly began to recognize the legitimacy of claims by Gandhi and the Indian Political Party. It was a significant step in Britain ultimately surrendering its control of India.
 
Thirty years later, the significance of the Salt March was still being felt in America:
 
“Like most people, I had heard of Gandhi, but I had never studied him seriously. As I read, I became deeply fascinated by his campaigns of nonviolent resistance. I was particularly moved by his Salt March to the Sea and his numerous fasts. The whole concept of his [truth force or love force] was profoundly significant to me. As I delved deeper into the philosophy of Gandhi, my skepticism concerning the power of love gradually diminished, and I came to see for the first time its potency in the area of social reform.”
 
                                                Martin Luther King, Jr.
 
 
 
 
I’m taking a vacation with my family in a week, so will not be posting blogs on the next two Sundays.

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IS HISTORY REPEATING ITSELF?

2/26/2023

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​USA TODAY ran an article on Friday that told of Russian President Vladmir Putin’s program of placing war-displaced Ukranian children either with Russian families or into camps for the purpose of converting them into Russian citizens.
 
A State Department-funded report estimates that as many as 6,000 Ukrainian children have been sent to at least 43 re-education facilities that stretch from the Black Sea coast all the way to Siberia.
 
Michael Scharf, a human rights lawyer who tries cases at the International Criminal Court, said the real number of Ukranian children being relocated is likely closer to 400,000 children, based on “numerous reports of Russian forces seizing children from orphanages, schools, and hospitals in areas of Ukraine under Russian occupation and transferring them to Russia where they are sent to foster families to be transformed into Russians.”
 
Getting a firm grip on the actual numbers is complicated because Russia has refused to permit the kind of independent centralized registration system that’s required by the international laws of armed conflict to track and protect children in war zones.
 
The article draws parallels between Putin’s actions and Hitler’s efforts to convert non-German children into German citizens (who could then be drafted as soldiers or workers). In October of 1939, with the invasion of Poland, Hitler created the office of the Reich Commissioner for the Strengthening of German Folkdom, with Heinrich Himmler as its head. Its aim was to help resettle the newly occupied territories with a German population. They found in Poland, however, an abundance of children who resembled the ideal Aryan German—blond hair, blue eyes, a similar length of the nose, the thickness of the lips, and an erect posture. 
 
To reconcile this problem, the Nazis propagated the idea that these children were actually descended from German blood. Therefore, these children should be taken away from their Polish parents and repatriated to German families, that the children could be “returned to the Fatherland.” This was not only true of Polish children, but of any Aryan-looking children from Czechoslovakia, Slovenia, Hungary, or other recently German-occupied countries.
 
Between 1939 and 1944, approximately 200,000 Polish children were stolen by the Nazis and sent away to be “Germanized”. Using a list of 62 physical characteristics, children were identified, photographed, and analyzed, and if the children were found to be suitably Aryan, then those between two and six were sent to maternity, or Lebensborn, homes in Germany. After their adoption by a proper SS family, the children were provided false birth certificates with new German names and birthplaces. Children not found suitable were sent on to concentration camps and gas chambers.
 
The goal of the German parents was to erase any trace of their native heritage and reshape them as loyal Nazis. They were taught to speak German (if they spoke their mother tongue they were deprived of food or whipped with a strap), forced to wear uniforms with swastikas, sing military songs, and were taught Nazi beliefs. They were also forced to endure countless hours of drills and marches to destroy any sense of individuality.
 
Older Polish girls with Aryan characteristics were sent to SS maternity homes where they became “breeding material” for SS officers.
 
Putin’s program is less selective and he is no longer limiting the program to displaced or abandoned children. He’s even using one of the same ploys that Hitler did: Ukranian parents are being tricked into signing consent forms for their children to be sent to summer camp facilities to be “out of harm’s way”, while Himmler sent notices to parents to bring their children to the local train station at a certain time to go on a holiday to “improve their health”. The children never returned from their holiday and there are still thousands of them or their descendants who live in Germany today unaware of their true identity and heritage.
 
Putin’s purpose for Ukraine, however, seems to be the same as Hitler’s for Poland. Secretary of State Antony Blinken made this statement: “It…speaks to the fact that President Putin has been trying from day one to erase Ukraine’s identity, to erase its future.”

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THE SALT MINES OF POLAND

2/19/2023

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​Outside of Krakow, Poland, are the Wieliczka and Bochnia Royal Salt Mines, the oldest tunnels of which were dug in 1248. Close to one another, they are an official Polish Historic Monument and a UNESCO World Heritage Site. My photos show the largest Wieliczka chamber, located about 800 feet underground, plus the dining hall as it was being prepared for a banquet. Except for wood pilings and the electrical parts, the wall, floor, ceiling, candelabra, staircases, statuary, relief panels, chapel niches, and tunnels are carved entirely out of the vast layers of grey-colored rock salt.
 
You can rent the facility for weddings and receptions. The chapel is often said to have the best acoustics in Europe and many musical recordings have been done there.
 
The maximum depth of the tunnel system is a little more than a thousand feet, there are 178 miles of tunnels and chambers, and it was a full-blown enterprise producing commercial quantities of table salt until 2007. There is still enough mining activities to provide tourists with token salt containers and chunks of rock salt in the gift shops above ground.
 
There is also a large brine-solution lake where guided tour boats are available, but swimming is not allowed. The water is crystal clear and the level of quiet is impressive. The typical guided tourist route is 2.2 miles in length, so it is not a casual walk; lots of descending stairs. There are statues, vignettes, and salt relief panels along the way. There is a special statue of Karol Wojtyla (later, Pope John Paul II) in the chapel, who attended it’s dedication.
 
In the nearby Bochnia mine, which has only 2.8 miles of tunnels but descends to over 1500 feet, a small town has been created out of its tunnels and chambers, and is open to visitors. I did not tour that mine. A three-hundred-bed sanatorium is currently operated there, plus fields for playing volleyball, basketball, and handball. There is also a restaurant and conference rooms; I don’t know how bathrooms are handled. The air stays a constant temperature of 57-61 degrees Fahrenheit, with a relative humidity of 70%, and is recognized for its purity.  
 
The beginning and end of my tour involved riding an (old) industrial elevator. The cars are a steel-mesh-enclosed five-foot square box, not much more than six feet tall, and the operators cram as many as eight or nine people inside at a time. It provides a nice level of excitement. About 1.2 million people visit annually.
 
During March and April, 1944, the Nazis used the Wieliczka chambers for an armament factory. Several thousand Jews were transported from the forced labor camps in Plaszow and Mielec to an above-ground labor camp in St. Kinga Park, with about 1700 prisoners being used in the mine itself. However, manufacturing never began as the Soviet Army soon occupied the area; the Jews were relocated to factories in Litomierzyce in the Czech Republic and Linz in Austria.

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MAD KING LUDWIG II - PART TWO

2/12/2023

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​Being as different a king as he was, Ludwig II had few friends inside his own government. In particular, the ministers of the realm, whom he had inherited from his father, were seriously offended by his behavior and his refusal to pay attention to them. Although he had paid for his pet projects out of his own funds, by 1885, the King was 14 million marks in debt, had borrowed heavily from his family, and rather than economizing as his financial ministers advised, Ludwig continued to pursue his further opulent designs without pause; besides the four castles he had already begun, he had four more on the drawing board. He demanded that loans be sought from all of Europe’s royalty, while still remaining aloof from the matters of state. Feeling harassed and irritated by his ministers, he let it be known that he was considering replacing them all.
 
The ministers feared that he would actually do it, so they decided to find a way to declare the King mentally ill, which would render him unable to rule. Between January and March of 1886, when Ludwig had ruled Bavaria for twenty-one years and was only forty years of age, the conspirators assembled a “medical report” that included a litany of supposed bizarre behaviors: his pathological shyness, his avoidance of state business, his complex and expensive flights of fancy, sloppy and childish table manners, and sending servants into foreign lands on “research trips” to verify architectural details of buildings.
 
The report was finalized in June and signed by four psychiatrists, the main one being Dr. Bernhard von Gudden, the head of the Munich insane asylum. The report concluded that the King suffered from paranoia and was incapable of ruling. Interestingly, three of the signers had never met the King, while Gudden had met him only once, twelve years before. There was no examination.
 
Ludwig’s uncle, Prince Luitpold, kindly let it be known that he would take over the government if the King were to be deposed.
 
At four in the morning on June 10, 1886, a government commission arrived at Neuschwanstein to deliver a document of deposition to the King. Having been warned an hour earlier, Ludwig had them arrested at the gates and imprisoned until later that day. In spite of the King not being officially deposed, the government issued a news release declaring Luitpold as Prince Regent, which made him the ruler of Bavaria. King Ludwig protested with his own news release, but most of the copies were seized by the commission and the populace remained ignorant of the happenings.
 
On June 12, the commission succeeded in capturing the now non-king Ludwig, taking him to the Castle Berg for confinement. That evening, on a private walk around the castle’s lake with Dr. von Gudden, Ludwig and his psychiatrist both disappeared. Their bodies were found the next morning in waist-deep water. Ludwig’s death was officially ruled a suicide by drowning, despite an official autopsy indicating that no water was found in his lungs. Gudden’s body showed blows to the head and neck, with signs that he had been strangled.
 
Ludwig was officially succeeded by his younger brother Otto, but since Otto had been ruled insane three years before (by Dr. von Gudden), Prince Regent Luitpold continued to rule until his death in 1912, at age 91. His eldest son, also named Ludwig, took over, officially deposed Otto, and declared himself King Ludwig III of Bavaria. He would rule only until 1918, when the end of World War I declared that Germany would no longer have monarchies.
 
Prince Regent Luitpold, needing money to finish the castle, began charging visitors to see Castle Neuschwanstein in August of 1886. Since that time, more than 50 million people have walked through the halls, becoming one of Bavaria’s biggest tourist attractions. 

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