Goodbye folios, hello book!

When I started working on SASM, an e-mail address was created just for SASM correspondence. So how was I supposed to know my publisher was sending e-mail to another address, one that never gets checked? Blah.

He's busy e-mailing me threats of sending the book out without a foreword while I'm busy trying to contact him in other ways ... but he won't pick up his phone, answer his door, or reply to e-mails in a timely fashion (or at the designated address). Very annoying, that. Good thing he's a nice guy. :)

Anyway, this has been sitting on my desktop for a week. Paul and I had been bandying about various purposes of a foreword. How do you introduce a book as varied as SASM? How do you say what you need to say without overwhelming the short stories themselves (some of which are only 30 words long)? He and I came up with an interesting take on the foreword ... resulting in this:

Foreword
Four Words

Within these pages, you’ll find sordid tales of murder and mayhem. Double takes and double crossers. Cheating spouses and haunted houses. And, of course, a few squirrels thrown in for good measure.

No allocution would adequately express how much can happen in a thousand words or less. So instead of a foreword, I’ll take a page from these authors and condense my thoughts into four words:

Destruction! Seduction! Obstruction! Deduction!

If that doesn’t set your chair on edge, nothing will. Happy reading!

LKCS
June 2005

Well, I think it serves its purpose. Lord knows nobody is paying $15 to listen to me blather on in a book. Instead they just come here and listen to me blather on for free. ^_^ So, how does it sound? Better sound okay, because I think the book's on its way out the door now. (Chucky threatened to send it without the foreword, but if I know him as well as I think I do, it's on his desk, buried under a pile o' submissions.) Peace, kids.