This Thursday October 3rd, direct from the offices of Grassy Gutter Press, the independent publisher of all seven of my novels, I’ll be reading a short selection from THE PORCH ROOF CLASSIC, my semi-autobiographical coming-of-age tale set in a small Western Massachusetts town in 1970. The three video readings, running on three consecutive Thursdays, can be viewed on Facebook, YouTube, TikTok and will be linked on this page that day.

It’s long been sage advice to “write what you know”, and it was fun to weave a number of my adolescent memories into the story of Joey Tosh, a bullied 14-year-old who with the help of a new female friend, spends the summer growing the guts to fight back by challenging his nemesis to a no-holds-barred Wiffle ball game. Five esteemed published authors have already praised the book, and many who enjoyed my recent podcast version can now order the slightly revised, limited print edition here.

I won’t deny it: My novels are on the quirky side, and do not easily fit into predetermined market categories agents and mainstream publishers tend to look for. It’s the main reason (other than my innate impatience) why I’ve continued to launch my books independently. Marketing your own stuff ain’t easy, and last night I had to delete the Grassy Gutter Press Facebook page I created years ago after discovering that a tsunami of disinformation trolls, ads, and random postings from non-members had taken over my “news feed” there.

After sending out numerous unsuccessful queries for The Porch Roof Classic, I did manage to get it into the hands of a reputable New York agent who had shopped around an earlier novel of mine decades earlier. One week later, he sent me a nice rejection letter that said “I wouldn’t know how to best position this in today’s marketplace.”  Stories featuring “underrepresented voices” on a personal journey, usually diverse women or LGBTQ characters, have been the book industry rage for years, particularly in the perceived “young adult” category. To paraphrase Seinfeld, not that’s there’s anything wrong with those, but I just happen to be an older white guy with a story that ANYONE who grew up in the 1970s can relate to, especially longtime baseball fans, and felt it was more important to design the book myself, talk my talented illustrator friend Jennifer Field into doing the cover, and get the thing out there the quickest way I could to let the readers decide. 

So if you need an enjoyable, nostalgic escape—and who doesn’t?—from the current toxic news cycles and dark forces creeping over our world, check out the comic innocence of THE PORCH ROOF CLASSIC!*

*By the way, the sequel will be the book that agent shopped around back in 2007—as soon as I rewrite it and make it even better.