He Had me at Rustlers

My agent is trying to peddle a collection of Flash Fiction. For grown-ups. He suggested that while we wait to see what the NY houses say I might take a look at some places that don't bother with pages and covers. So I went into the land of e-books. Kindle and Amazon. That kind of thing.

The title of this blog comes from the precis of an e-book about two city slickers who struggle to open a vegan restaurant outside Tucson and are stymied by homophobes and rustlers. God, I can hear the dialogue now: "Put down the gluten-free waffle, you snivelin' cur. We've been watchin' this here buffet table all night. Now skedaddle! Before we fetch the powdered sugar and run you out of Rancho Delicious on a rail! Well, maybe not a rail. That's uncomfortable. All right, we'll call a gol-darned town car, but you're leavin'!"

I know, I know. You think that pretend-quote is just me being me. Not so, amigos. There's a lot of that in the world of e-books, but they're not kidding.

You might Goggle a few e-book sites and see what you think. The upside is publication (of a sort) and 50% of any sales. The downside is the company your book might be keeping and checks for $9.75. And I wonder if easy e-publication is a kind of gateway drug to dumber and dumber books. Why write well when somebody will accept and put up for sale almost anything?

I'll bet I'm missing something. I'll bet there's a cool e-site somewhere with a selective editorial board, good writers and checks in at least the hundreds. If there is, I'm sure we'd all like to know about it.