Oh, good

Excellent. I found an error in Partners in addition to a typo. I misspelled Wienermobile, had the i and e transposed. The other error is GIGANTIC and it justifies no sales, all "friendly" reviewers so disgusted that they'll bail out and refuse to read such incompetence, because Kyle lights two cigarettes in the space of three or four minutes. How absurd! How ridiculous! -- despite the fact that I've done it. Marlboros gutter and die in an ashtray if you aren't paying attention. Two cigarettes in four paragraphs is stupid, an error that I failed to catch, like the Wienermobile typo.

Whew! What a relief. Now I can go with the flow. No book sales, no reviews, obviously bum work, two blunders in 68,000 words. Besides which, it's overpriced. Independent novelists can't sell paperbacks. You have to give away your work for pennies on Kindle, 35 cents for a paid download, nothing for Kindle Prime or whatever the hell the scam is called, fractions of groats per pages read, divided by a million other hapless chumps who worked 1000 hours to create something that no one wants to read. I don't know why I try.

I should hire somebody in Bangladesh to write books, pay them $200 for a novel, put it up on Kindle, as stupid as possible, M/M gay bullshit or fantasy vampires (ooo! both! fag vampires!) Makes no sense to write anything myself, takes months, costs a fortune to buy Oscar Meyer cold cuts and bread, splurge on cheese and coffee once in a while, to be humiliated by a typo and an idiotic continuity error that a copy editor would have caught, saved me from slipping on a banana peel in the heat of writing Kyle's first murder.

Shit.

You want to know the truth? The real truth? -- I don't want a copy editor, don't want anyone to touch a word of my work, don't want a publisher, don't want to do any more publicity or book signings or radio interviews. To hell with it. I sell no books, and I refuse to jerk off on Kindle or Smashwords or Ingram again. I don't care whether people read my stories or not. Tom killed my appetite for "feedback." He liked the opening, then farted on the felonies. Two or three chapters were enough to turn him off.

The prospect of writing another novel is forbiddingly immense, like Everest or K2, undefined months or years to top everything I've done before, to sell no books, to die at the keyboard from a stroke or a heart attack. How smart is that? To prove what to who? I already know that I can write. That's not a sufficient reason to waste another year, lose another tooth, freeze in winter and swelter in summer, begging neighbors for day labor to pay for food that I fucking hate, never any whiskey, no restaurant meals, no car, no book royalties, no book reviews.

There's a Facebook group of novelists, allegedly. It's the second group that I've joined and tried to participate in. The first one was chock full of illiterate imbeciles from black Africa and India. The new group is worse, chicks winning hundreds of five-star Kindle reviews for pink cupcakes on their book covers, cute little smiley author photos, Barbie and Ken stories.

I cannot justify it, will not do it, refuse to write another novel. Forget it.

That raises an interesting and important question. What can I do in life? Where would I be welcome? It's certain that I wouldn't be welcome in Los Angeles or New York or Wisconsin or Germany or Costa Rica. No one is welcome without money. There are no foundation grants for bad tempered white filmmakers, no teaching jobs for unlettered old men.

Eeee. The only place I would be welcome is in prison. Obviously, the best thing to do is find an all-white jurisdiction, commit a serious crime, make trouble in court, and have the book thrown at me. Denmark would be ideal. Maybe hitchhike to Alberta.

Pending imprisonment, starting today, a hunger strike. No more Oscar Meyer. I hate the fucking shit.