Launch

The Seal Cove Theoretical Society launched today. I hear a faint fanfare, muted by distance, and drowned out the white noise of modern life (politics, COVID, and the avalanche of email). The SCTS (as I’ll refer to it here to save long repetition) was my attempt at an ensemble piece. I’m a great admirer of Alexander McCall Smith’s 44 SCOTLAND STREET series, which rotates through about a dozen characters like interweaving warp and weft. I had a devil of a time trying to make all of the character arcs resolve at the same time. It effectively stalled publication by a year. Of course, no story is really done. The author could keep on tweaking it into the grave, but at some point, you just have to cut the umbilical cord and say “The End.” The strange thing about this story is that this morning, the morning of the launch, I awoke with a conviction of how I could have made this a better book.

In retrospect, I would have cut the characters of Wexler and Rosalind, and I would have cut out the party. Doing that would have made it a novella, and would also have made it a somewhat predictable sweet Romance. Would that have been better or worse? Either way, I think it would have been more satisfying for the majority of readers.

This launch has been a bit of a disaster. This is the first book with which I’ve “Gone Wide,” which is to say I’ve gone to wide distribution instead of going exclusively with Amazon. Sales of my other titles have dwindled on Amazon, so I thought it best to try wide distribution and see what came of it. As it turns out, sales of my earlier books have picked up. But this launch of SCTS has fallen painfully on its face. If I were 30 I would be panicking. However, I’m of the ancient regime and really have nothing to lose. Win or lose, everyday above ground is a winner for me. I hope I don’t disappoint you, dear reader. I’m doing the best I can.