Why do they say “shameless self-promotion”? At least in my case, it should be called “shameful self-promotion” because I feel deep shame.

Roughly 37 minutes ago, I experienced a dramatic lurch in my world that left me wondering if the reality itself had lost its moorings.

Following my morning habit, I had obtained a cup of coffee (black, tepid) and a piece of industrial bread (storebought, white) and returned to my futon (pathetic), whereupon I began my morning rounds of reading the news and engaging in other depressing, time-wasting, yet entirely unavoidable distractions. Like I always say, life is too short to not sleepwalk through it.

My readings abide by an inflexible pattern someone with OCD would be envious of. The subjects align perfectly with the ones pop psychologists say people should absolutely avoid to prevent clinical depression: 1) Facebook, 2) email, 3) Yahoo news (Trump outrages, mass shooting o’ the day), 4) a rousing 6-minute battle on Clash Royale. These whilst assiduously avoiding the Walt Whiteman biography on the floor next to my futon I started weeks ago (now on page six). Number 5 on my list is checking the sales of my two novels on Amazon KDP. Today, as usual, no one had bought either (although someone had read 31 pages of The Rabbit Skinners (mystery-suspense!) on Kindle Unlimited, bringing me a profit of something like .000000000000000034 cents), but something else happened, this quite unusual. The price of The Rabbit Skinners (mystery-suspense about a superhuman ex-FBI agent afflicted with Meniere’s Disease who has to battle vicious racist child-nappers in a small Arizona town and also wrestled with his own demons and secret past!) had somehow, mysteriously, become 99 cents, but the price of the book is supposed to be $4.99!

WTF! I shouted (I literally shouted the letters: W! T! F!). I almost catapaulted from my futon to rouse my wife and son in the adjacent room (this is normal housing arrangement in Japan, don’t worry) and maybe call the fire department too. Had physics been breached? WAS THE WORLD COMING TO AN END?

Then I remembered today is the start of the Kindle Countdown Sale I had set up. The book was selling for 99 cents because it was supposed to sell for that price.

So all is right (or at least normal) with the universe. Don’t panic. Chill. No monstrous nano-particle mega-pullulations assimilating every terrestrial molecule and swarming life out of existence or tearing asunder All We Have Ever Known to be True.

The Rabbit Skinners (Kindle version) is on sale for only 99 American cents from April 4-11.

I wish I could edit this post better, but I need to prep my lessons for the start of Spring 2018 classes tomorrow!

***

“Eidswick (The Language of Bears, 2017) portrays his protagonist with great depth; Strait is a stoical combination of grit and emotional vulnerability. In addition, the author artfully raises provocative questions about the fraught relationship between race and institutional power. Finally, there’s plenty of gripping action here, cinematically depicted.” – Kirkus Reviews