STRIKING IT RICH WITH J.K. ROWLING

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As many readers of this blog know (gee, I hope there are many readers!), I self-publish eBooks.  I have even gone so far as to enter the fray between “legacy” publishers and Amazon. I won’t go into my position again, since I am tired of checking under the hood of my car for bombs wired to the ignition. (Actually, having Sicilian blood in me, I just send my wife out to start the car.)

But some people believe that I don’t like print books! Nothing could be farther from the truth. I love print books. I’d probably be living in a three-bedroom condo but for the fact that one of those rooms is full of freakin’ print books. (I also have two Kindles, a Nook, and various iPads, Androids, computers, laptops, etc. with reading apps on them; they don’t take up much space.)

I love the luxury of pulling one of my favorite Spenser or James Bond novels off a shelf and getting a transfusion of colorful writing. And as for more recent influences, I’m certainly don’t have a mindless antipathy toward legacy authors, as long as they haven’t turned into a publishing copy machine like you know who.

Take Robert Galbraith , whose debut thriller, The Cuckoo’s Calling (Mulholland Books) introduced British private eye Cormoran Strike, a disabled war veteran down to one leg and one client who unravels a twisty murder mystery amid a world of depraved rock-stars and their leggy, luscious and lustful supermodel girlfriends.

The writing is superb, and evocative: “She looked away from him, drawing hard on her Rothman’s; when her mouth puckered into hard little lines around the cigarette, it looked like a cat’s anus.”

Good Lord. Needless to say, I couldn’t put the damn book down.  Galbraith has since followed this tour de force with two more best-selling Cormorans and it’s not likely he’s struck out (ouch!). Not bad for a guy who is really a “gal”-braith -- J.K. Rowling, of Harry Potter fame. I can’t even begrudge this zillionaire entering the already glutted thriller genre. She’s a genius, and I love her new “potter-mouth”. No one can curse like a Brit.

Good writing will be here forever. May the best man, woman or pseudonym win!

Well, I have to run. My wife is just about to start the car and I want to go to the back of the house.

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