A Proposed Cover for "Century" novel...

Dazed signing planned...

Thursday, Jan. 20, 4 to 6 p.m., at the Bay County Public Library in the Community Room, 25 W. Government St., downtown Panama City. (Note: Library doors close at 5 p.m.) Refreshments will be served. I'll be a guest of The Friends of the Library. We'll mingle, I'll read, we'll tell stories, I'll talk about newspaper work, I'll sell books and sign. The book is Dazed and Raving in the Undercurrents.

Books are $18.95 plus tax
and are available from all major online booksellers as well as at The News Herald, 501 W. 11th St.

Tell your friends and neighbors. I'd like to fill the community room and run out of refreshments. And books.

Nice call yesterday...

...from River Jordan, Panama City native, now Tennessean, author of The Gin Girl (buy it, you'll like it), who had nice things to say about Welcome to the Dawning of a New Century, which she has finally been able to read. Thank you, River.

Many of her suggestions sounded similar to ones made last year by Bette Powell and instituted by yours truly, which resulted in a new "flow" of the stories/chapters/Dispatch segments and an increased presence of characters crossing over into each other's stories.

Some of her suggestions, for the record (as I recall them, anyway): She'd like to see more of The Centennial Man, maybe as a narrator of other people's stories, maybe earlier in the book; the changes of point of view and style from story to story (chapter-to-chapter?) were confusing and jarring, so making the narrator more clear from the beginning of each new tale would be helpful; not starting out with a newspaper column (already changed in the current construction); she's divided on the "Tempest" story and its blatant, possibly-confusing Shakespeare riff -- likes it, turned off by it, thinks an editor would either love it and embrace it or hate it and demand a rewrite -- so she can't decide what to do about it.

She had many good things to say about the residents of Century, or the characters if you will, and gave a detailed positive review of the work that I would share if doing so didn't verge on publicly tooting my own horn, which we all know should be done in private.

She wants more, which is probably a good sign. It's always best to leave'em wantin' more, right?