NOTES ON THE LITERARY LAPSES

I'm hearing a lot about confusion in the relationship between the dead man and his coroner.  Should I have put more emphasis on their physical resemblance without giving away the plot? Like, yeah . . .

I think I got the all-important  feeling of "place" right, painting a tableau  of San Francisco's Inner Mission District, but fell short in placing the story in a time frame that defines  the action. I got the phases of the moon precisely correct but left it to the reader to figure what year it was. Duh!

Here's a big mistake: You don't hear about Barlow's abandoned  novel until the very end of the book. Even a hint or a minor mention of it would help foreshadow the denouement, particularly where the medical examiner's office is concerned. My bad.

Gee, I left out the giant Ikea store on the northern rise of the Grapevine, a landmark of realism and orientation.

The "fugue."  I didn't give the reader a chance to think about that as an explanation for the dead man's state of mind. Darn!

Consider the novel. Under Construction.

I LIKED IT, BUT . . .

Seems I went overboard with the cryptic nature of the  narrative. The feedback I'm getting from people who've actually read the book has been generally  positive, however,  there seem to be a lot of "buts" following the initial praise..  Very often the qualifiers are about the plethora of typos and dropped . . . in the the text. Ooops! I dropped the word word.

I'm very grateful when my friendly critics cast aside their fear of hurting my feelings to make valuable comments that point  out serious flaws or confusing passages in the narrative. One very useful comment, which gave me an idea of the  scope of problems in the book, was "I liked it a lot, but I didn't understand what the hell was going on half the time."

Did anybody get it?
Barlow dies on  The Day
of the Dead in 2003.

No doubt I'll be  skewered if the book ever gets reviewed.  But I'm already resigned to that likelihood. I'm my own harshest  critic, and maybe with help of my readers I'll get it right when I rewrite the electronic edition on Kindle.

Will that matter? The number of people who read hard-copy books is shrinking rapidly theses days, I am told. But I have to wonder whether  digital literature is going to take it's place. Who's going to read a novel on their smart phone?

ARRGH!

I've been going bananas the past week trying to update my moribund website to reflect recent developments in my literary work. As a result I've afflicted upon myself a bad case of chronic computer  burn. This term is not listed in the DSM - yet -- but the condition is prevalent among those of us who don't have the skills to navigate "user friendly" computer applications. (the next stage is clinical computer rage).

The plan was to make my website something potential readers could consult before squandering their money on a copy of My Life as a Cadaver. My original journalism website, karlschoenberger.com, had for some reason degraded itself to the point where images had disappeared, page elements had scatter ed across the home page, and some of the links to other pages misfired. The Start Logic web-builder did everything in it's power to stop me from repairing the damage and uploading new files and photos.

I turned to a secondary domain where I had started a new website for fiction, but the Network Solutions' web=builder was even worse.  You're supposed to  be able to drop files into the template you're working on but it would't let me perform this simple function. I phoned the tech-help number twice, but each time I waited a 30-40 minutes  before they cut me off, saying the phone number I was using couldn't access the call center.

Luckily, I know some guys out there who calmed my nerves and pointed me to better, newer do-it-your-self web-builder sites. But I've decided to avoid tying myself in knots again. I'm working with a professional web designer who's going to hold my hand while I try a new web-hosting service. Wish me luck. In a couple weeks keep an eye out for
kschoenb.com. Raw Fiction and Non-Fiction.

A SNEAK--PEEK Inside the Book

It took me six years to write this book. My friends and family all thought I'd gone over  the deep end but I finally finished the fifth and final (for now) draft.  Now that it's self-published and shining I can show everyone what I've  been working on all this time:


  All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy. All work and no play makes