From Women Writers, Women’s Books:
The last nine months have felt like one long never-ending sentence without commas or periods. One that has been filled with tumultuous waves of emotions, varying levels of anxiety, unexpected outbreaks of gut-wrenching sobs, as well as moments of rueful hilarity, all because of a pandemic that has upended our lives, taking with it an unfathomable number of them. And yet, here I am writing about a book that would most likely have ended up in my computer’s “drawer” if it were not for COVID.
I am one of the lucky ones. I have a roof over my head. Food in the fridge. And can work from home. I am also turning 83 and have COPD. In other words, from March until late June, I wouldn’t venture out. Couldn’t venture out for fear of being infected. And even when from my window, I could finally see more and more people donning masks, I walked outside with trepidation.
Like many of us, during the first month of the lockdown, I maniacally washed, or alcohol wiped everything that came from Amazon and Instacart. I learned how to shop for the week instead of for a day or two—something that takes extraordinary planning for a family, but especially for someone like me who lives alone.
I talked with friends on FaceTime. Read in fits and starts—my concentration sorely lacking. And I watched Cuomo on TV. The book of short stories about friendships that I had started late in 2018 and finished, or so I thought, in February 2020 I put to the side. While I’d shared some of the stories with friends, even had asked a friend to read through for typos, from the outset I’d had low expectations of finding an agent or publisher. No matter that when I told a writer friend I’d begun working on a story about a particular failed friendship, she suggested I write others. “Would make a great book,” she said. “Friendships are hot right now.”
I am not someone who writes daily. I write when I have something that needs to get out of my system, or when I’ve set a project for myself. My friend’s comment created that project. I would write about the various friendships I’d had—disguised of course—and some I could only imagine. And while, as I wrote, a part of me hoped that miraculously an agent would sweep the pages up into loving arms, I knew better. Knew what it would take to get a book of short stories onto bookshelves.
. . . .
The original story got tossed. Another went from 25 pages to three. I changed endings, deepened characters, even changed the name of the book. This went on until the end of August when I made the decision to self-publish. At 83, with COVID possibly around the corner, time was not on my side. Within a week I had signed a contract and continued my editing frenzy until finally, in November I pressed “send” and the collection was no longer in my hands.
Link to the rest at Women Writers, Women’s Books
The author’s book is titled What Would I Do Without You?: A collection of short stories about friendships
Unfortunately, although the paperback version of the book was published November 10, 2020, PG wasn’t able to find an ebook version on Amazon.
It appears that the author of the OP published through BookLocker, an assisted-publishing organization with which PG was not previously acquainted.
After a bit of grazing through the BookLocker website, PG did discover something he could agree with in a section of the website titled, Reasons Not to Use Us:
4.) We, unfortunately, don’t work with jerks. If you are a jerk, you’d be better served by one of our competitors. We prefer to work with professional individuals…who have manners.
Part of PG’s business philosophy is not phrased so well as BookLocker’s is, but does have the virtue of being shorter:
Don’t work with jerks.
Whenever PG has knowingly or inadvertently violated this policy, he has come to regret it, regardless of the amount of remuneration he has received for his services.
The problem is that, regardless of what PG’s spidey sense tells him about an individual, he has sometimes made a mistake and has ended up working with jerks.
He has concluded that a reasonable analogy can be made between jerks and fools per an old saying, sometimes described as Murphy’s Second Corollary:
It is impossible to make anything foolproof because fools are so ingenious.