I find it difficult to conceive a readership profile for 'Charity' or Chris Cable's two previous adventures. Older men, I suppose, guys who still read. My pal Jeff is early-60s, watches TV half-heartedly, reads detective fiction (Hammett, Chandler, Kerr). How many of these old farts are there? -- maybe 20 million younger Boomers who still like to read books, of whom maybe 10% are libertarian and straight. That's a target group of 2 million. If I had CNBC and Bloomberg publicity, I'd catch 2%, sell 40,000 books. That is not a meaningful upside for book publishers. Not a big audience for movie adaptation, either. Old men? Are you kidding?
Well, think about it. It was written by an old man. The main character is a man, adult stories where he wins spectacular babes and never shuns a gunfight. If Chris was black or latino, it would sell like hotcakes -- except he's not an underclass urban antihero, he's Ivy League prep school and USMC straight white war hero. Slime from the hood doesn't stand a chance against Chris Cable's situational awareness and combat experience. That's the purpose of conceiving and/or contemplating a hero. I have to do both when I write novels, show the man in action. He has to be better than I am -- a hell of a lot better, yet human, vulnerable at times. Almost beaten, frequently confused and uncertain. "I don't know," is Cable's recurrent confession. That's why he operates mostly on intuition and a sort of relentlessness, maximum effort, as long as its takes to find an answer that makes sense, usually involving gunfire.
World travel, beautiful women, unlimited cash, multiple identities. Yup. Male fantasy. Only fifty years too late, like Fleming's Bond, although I like modern Chris Cable a lot better, the last handsome, dashing hero in an era of politically correct pussies. He emphatically does not give a damn about being nice, get the fuck out of his way, quickly please. It's a geniunely new story to tell, what it means to be armed and dangerous, completely independent, in today's lame brain gutter chatter about white privilege. There's no time to discuss it. Move or die.
I suppose a lot of fictional people, sometimes big crowds see Chris and his women in action, guns drawn, running, shooting when necessary. I never think of civilians or bystanders, never hear them unless they're making too much noise to hear anything. Frightened people run in circles and scream, scare each other, cause all sorts of chaos. Combat operators take no notice of civilians, try to avoid collateral damage but can't guarantee anyone's safety in combat.
Because that's finally what my stories are about, the courage to face evil and fight it. Not a bad thing to impart to future generations. I'd like to do that, if I can keep myself in print that long. Most likely I will not get a vote. Depends entirely on the merit of what I wrote.
'Charity' $0.99 on Kindle https://www.amazon.com/dp/B075KDPRJ6/
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