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Sometime in 1953, I knew with unusual certainty what I intended to do with my life. I would become a writer.
I was then 15 years old, and the next several years were to prove eventful. I went to college, I got a summer job at a literary agency and dropped out of college to keep it, I sold two dozen short stories and articles to national magazines, and I completed a novel.
By the time I was 25, I had a wife and two daughters and a house in a suburb. I had published over fifty books. Most of these bore pen names, and for a time I resisted acknowledging my early pseudonymous work. Then, in one astonishing and feverish week in 1994, I recalled those early years in fifty thousand words of memoir.
A publisher contracted to bring out my memoir once I'd completed it. Instead I put it on a shelf and never looked at it again, and after a few years I bought it back from the publisher.
Early in 2020, I had a fresh look at A Writer Prepares. Then I went back to work. It would occupy me, off and on, for the balance of the year. By the time I was ready to stop, I'd written about my life as a writer well into 1966, when I'd completed The Thief Who Couldn't Sleep; it was the first of eight books I would write about a fellow named Evan Tanner.
According to A Trawl Among the Shelves, Terry Zobeck's exhaustive bibliography of my work, 2020 also saw the publication of my 209th book, Dead Girl Blues. It has been a long life, and seems to have been a busy one. A Writer Prepares is, for better or for worse, an undeniably curious book.
My wife, a casual student of hagiography, loves the story of the church officials who took a long-delayed inventory of their collection of relics. They were surprised to discover that they possessed not one but two heads of John the Baptist. How could this be? They considered the matter until the explanation became clear: one was John's head as a young man, the other his head as an old man.
A Writer Prepares, an examination of the first quarter century of a writer's life, is the work of two writers. There's the middle-aged fellow who wrote about half of it at a blistering pace in 1994, and there's the octogenarian who finished the job another quarter century later. The older fellow brought less raw energy to the task, and his memory is a long way from infallible, but one can only hope he's offset these losses with a slight edge in judgment, in perspective, in maturity. (I was about to add wisdom, but that might be a bridge too far.)
I suspect this book's natural audience consists largely of those of you who are already enthusiastic readers of my work. And it seems likely that the book will get a favorable reception from persons who are somewhere in the process of finding themselves as writers.
But I'm happy to let the the book find its true audience. A very comforting aspect of publishing A Writer Prepares now rather than twenty-five years ago is that I'm so much less invested in its reception.
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Like it was written by George Santos
Received an Advanced Reader Copy from a friend. I am an avid true crime reader and upon completion I question if the author is credible. The timeline does not add up for his age and the times of his alleged involvement in organized crime. Some of the things in the book he is alleged to have said and done I remember almost word for word from movies I had previously watched. He literally stole a scene from the movie the accountant with Ben Affleck and said that he did it. I did a little research after completing the book and learned that this author was also claiming in 2010 that he was a long time member of the Bloods Gang. That coupled with the above leads me to believe that it is nothing more than fantasy. Do not waste your time or money
Like it was written by George Santos
Received an Advanced Reader Copy from a friend. I am an avid true crime reader and upon completion I question if the author is credible. The timeline does not add up for his age and the times of his alleged involvement in organized crime. Some of the things in the book he is alleged to have said and done I remember almost word for word from movies I had previously watched. He literally stole a scene from the movie the accountant with Ben Affleck and said that he did it. I did a little research after completing the book and learned that this author was also claiming in 2010 that he was a long time member of the Bloods Gang. That coupled with the above leads me to believe that it is nothing more than fantasy. Do not waste your time or money
What a difficult story to tell. I appreciate the honesty and vulnerability. Definitely made me think.
I had hopes for this book but was not expecting what I would read within the pages. If your kink is deplorable grammar, incoherent sentences, and inconsistent messages, then this book is for you. At first, I thought the book I received was not the book I ordered. But as I dived in, it was very confusing. I would not recommend this book to anyone
There are not many reviews on the internet for this book. In researching the many stores selling the book, it was self-published which makes a lot of sense. The online description is written perfectly, so reading the actual book was very difficult. Pages two and three are written clearly as well as the table of contents. Pages 155 and 156 are also written logically.
It appears this book was written, then sent through a program like “Grammarly.” Once completed it seems it was published without being re-read or edited. The first clue was the title narrative that used “Has” instead of “As.” The table of contents is one page off from what it shows on pages four though seven. Many of the “q’s” are written as “[]”
Below are some examples of what was within the pages of this book written verbatim:
“Chains & Discipline/ Domination & entry/ Sadism & Masochism (BDSM) is a wide classification of bed room play.” Page 9
“When bringing up the topic of chains, you are actually asking a person to offer you their depend on, their flexibility, and also possibly their suggestion of security in exchange for sensual/sexual enjoyment, power-play, and also feasible re-evaluation of your very own connection.” Page 39
“Techni[]ue can take a selection of kinds and also be as easy or facility as you pick to (new paragraph) bargain for your details scenario” Page 52
“BDSM stands for chains as well as entry, technique and also supremacy as well as sadism and also masochism.” Page 125
“SHELF means Risk Aware Consensual Kink.” Page 130
“Approval is whatever.” Page 152
“your twist isn’t my twist, yet your twist is OKAY.” Page 153
“You can be a top, base, or button” Page 153
Good service, good book. Just what I was looking for! Thank you!