Reaganville was edited on our honeymoon. We were married June 23, 2007, at the Tri-City Church in Fremont, California, Sally and I.

It was edited in two weeks because PublishAmerica offers no editing in practice, just in advertisement. Do I bite the hand that feeds me? No! But PA has a program that edits that's more geared to cookbooks and ham-handed "who done its." A human editor I don't believe is present, or if there is, it is shopped out to Pakistan.

They offered me the service of editing, and I, as an artist, looked at their example of the service and declined. Simple decision of the author, that Sally and I would edit it. My Sally is the Comma Nazi.

About PublishAmerica, I can see where there is talk on the Internet blogs, and I do capitalize Internet because it is a place that exists outside of editing. It is a spill zone for unhappy people to gripe about my, thus far, fine publisher. PA had read my entire novel, every last bit, and fell in love with it. NOT! They, as best I can tell, are a gristmill, and I am but a lowly first-time novelist. Try getting even an agent unless you know somebody, and I am a vanguard, and they might not recognize that. The democracy of words does not exist, as you will not be read unless you are in prison or have some kind of extraordinary experience that involves terrorists.

Eventually, and in any case, this novel stands on itself, and if there are any snobs out there that will only dignify a book by pedigree, I must say to them that mutts are the smartest dogs and people out there, but sometimes not the most literary. I am literary, though, and I command my PublishAmerica mutt, a cross between a German Shepard and Welsh Corgi. Well, unless they screw me, I command them. They are the shadow government . . .

Yes, near San Blas, Nayarit, Mexico, actually in Los Cocos, while we loved our new designation as man and wife, in the tropical laziness and sultry dripping sensuality of the pace and beautiful village ambience, Reaganville was hastily but lovingly edited. Yes, Sally loves me, not from my words but from the fact that it is I. She confirms that only I have the guts to do something like burn every bridge that was created and setting it all adrift into the wind. Might my bridges have been built to a colony of rats? From releasing Reaganville, I released the author. My past is gone in fiction, and nostalgia is a poison that comes when adventure has gone. Reaganville is an adventure that spans two countries and 500 years, all revolving around another lowly thing like a first-time author: the guitar. I will call this a guitar novel, but I assure you that the guitar is like a coat worn in the cold: there is a person inside the coat that challenges that cold wind.

So PublishAmerica is the Democracy of the Words? Could it be that they are more progressive than the so-called progressive publishers, publishers that I have solicited, of course, without an agent (whole 'nother thing here)? Do they truly do the good, bad, and ugly? Is that not a democracy? Doesn't a democracy rip you off, so it seems? Not in theory but in practice, and maybe Reaganville has a bit for those who want to sing along with Spike, leader of The Sports Utility Vampires, at the decay of American civilization.

The SUVs is the token band in Reaganville. Decay is something the right and left of the political spectrum can agree on. We just think decay comes from stupidity and mindless materialism, and they think that Baby Boomers like myself and the main character in Reaganville, those of us with slightly hippie predilections are the cause because we are so relativistic and smart. We want everyone to be happy, and they want everybody to march in step and then be happy.

Reaganville will stand on its own merits, and that's really the way it should be. Know what I mean? If it doesn't get out there, it is not fully PA's fault because I knew I'd have to make it known as well. I read between the lines and careful wordings. After all, PA sells their writer's tips on marketing book, but we know they should give it away as a humanitarian act. Both they and I want to sell books, so they'll do next to nothing, and I will bop till I drop on this. Their nothing includes publishing my book for me to buy. That's okay.

They gave me a dollar advance! In some ways that's all they should give regardless of the toil of living a life to write Reaganville. I don't give a shit about a high royalty because I could sell zero books and an advance means nothing but debt. My next novel will bring an advance. Selling books is meaningful money that is beautiful, and I want some, and this is only a merit-based compensation. Do you remember, "Good job, Brownie" after Katrina? King George Dubya patting the back of Michael Brown, then head of FEMA, on his exemplary job dealing with Katrina and her aftermath? This is generally a merit-less society, but maybe a book lifts itself up on merit. Maybe a good book, like a good classical composition, is not what anyone even wants in North America? In South America they read.

Oh yeah, PublishAmerica's discussion group is monitored. That's for sure. It was when I was on it. I was monitored and taken down. Some Australian authors watched as I came on and, to their applause, doused an old cranky American fascist with his un-coolness. Skooby-doo-wa . . .

I was on there for a week or so, and the level of intelligence contained therein was exactly what I was told by the Australian author, Jennifer Scoullar, who has written the novel, Wasp Season, which I will tell you about later, as we're exchanging books.

But ladies and gentlemen, Reaganville is a hoot of a book. It is fiction but fostered by reality in such a way that time and place shift 500 years, and all the time it's about Internet dating. Surely I'm fooling you, right? Absolutely not! I am not not fooling you. Really, absolute! It is not science fiction, and Internet dating is a byproduct of really bad luck.

Reaganville is about a curse, but that is not important. We can sometimes be cursed by our times, and many of us should have been Soviet composers. At least they got paid for their work, but the curse of the American Dynamic Individual is ever so present in the twilight years of American civilization, and the Dream has lost focus. A 500-year old curse manifests in the American man who, unlike woman until more recently, is fodder and emotionally damaged because he is fodder. I only speak for men to women, and in Reaganville women have constructed a man's heart. Read my novel and see what you do, you beautiful creatures, you.

In Appreciation of Jerry Duncan

Reaganville, the town and not my novel, was the dream of Fresno, California District 6 Council Member Jerry Duncan. That city on the hill was his vision as District 6 overlooks the San Joaquin River and Ronald Reagan is an icon among conservative folk. Duncan recommended, to the Fresno City Council, that District 6 cede from Fresno because if you are not white you act white in this district and Fresno was a place for the other. This was just my feeling of his subtext living in this district, and Mr. Duncan, who wanted to dirty bomb liberals, as stated in an email after dirty bombing became a popular method of hating America by terrorists, was a neo-conservative terrorizing my family and me, as we were liberals. Yes, it was a joke, as he said, and surely so, because you could not rally all of the liberals into one spot for containment of that blast for anything except a free multicultural concert with a vegetarian chili cook off. Democrats are like cats and republicans are like cows. You could rally the conservatives easily though. Conservatives will come in droves to the trough to praise Jesus or to feed on hateful slop in copious amounts. They'd be more easily blasted, Mr. Duncan, but I love my less than liberal brothers and sisters. I only want to, in mass, put them to gentle sleep before, during, and after election time, maybe a week afterwards, and then us liberals could fix everything for them and then they'd wake up to a more beautiful world or Fresno.

Mr. Duncan is now running for mayor of Fresno burdened with his request that District 6 should cede. Now with his moral authority and steadfast clarity he will possibly lead Fresno into California and out of Kansas? Not! He has inspired a character and hopefully nothing more although I don't know who's running against him, and in Fresno it could be someone even worse. I'll let you know how this novel wedges itself into a mayoral race and what's the difference between a democrat and a republican anymore except trust. You want to trust one but can't, and the other you know you can't trust. The mayor job is not party affiliated but about as partisan as WWII.

Not in appreciation of Mr. Duncan

Reaganville begins with an extended metaphor about a man's heart being like a metropolis and women constructing it. I am sure that men are more complex than women in emotions because men have just been allowed to have them, relative to women. We can't control ourselves after our great example, John Wayne, died. Throughout Reaganville, this metropolis is being constructed and de-constructed by the pathetic relations that this man has with women.

There are also conversations with God and Jazz Republicans as if at a cocktail party, guitar lessons that morph into family life, and poetic interludes from a heartsick man.

There is Bumperstickerman, and a superhero can be found better on a street corner of the ghetto, who takes out his "rage against the machine" on the overabundant Hummer and four wheeled exaltations of mindless consumption, and the ghosts of The Grapes of Wrath mix with the Tule fog and hot tub fumes to visit Reaganville politicians.

I want to tell you that Reaganville is also a romance novel. Spike, the main character, lays The Slut for Jesus. She has lured him to San Francisco for conversion through sex, but I assure you that this is not a tawdry novel filled with pornography. Spike is Everyman for the Baby Boomer Generation, his story is the story of the American Dynamic Individual, and his sour relations with family and women, and the ever-present curse of The Poison Guitar, make for a highly unusual and groundbreaking read.

But seeing my Sally, with the work of my heart, the collection of my dark and bright feelings about life and love on this planet, editing it, and not running away, in Mexico, alone with only one credit card working, was romance supreme! I dedicate Reaganville to her and my father.

Next: Read the Prologue

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