HUBRIS–excessive pride, arrogance, self-importance, pomposity, and more.
Well, I’ll tell you a story about my recent, sort-of-warranted put-down.
My sister and I vacationed a couple of months ago in West Texas. Our hotel had a flyer lying around on the check-in desk for a local author reading and book-signing. Why not! we said. Let’s support the local author.
Turned out the local author didn’t need our support, he had what looked like the support of the whole tiny town we were in. He gave a great reading, we were welcomed very graciously by the other attendees, and we bought his thirty-dollar book.
The event was held in their tiny, tiny library. On the way out, while everyone else was still in with the writer and quaffing wine, eating snacks and buying books, I had the neat, self-serving (see hubris definition) idea of offering paperback copies of all my twelve novels to the library. Free. No postage charges or anything.
They hedged pretty nicely about it, but then declined. No books get added to their stock without going through a rigid gatekeeper process that requires at least one review by some publication like The New York Times. Well, that alone disqualifies me from this library, and all others, from here to eternity. Reviews are near to impossible to get for self-published, just-for-fun books like mine.
Came back home to find a review from famous science fiction writer Cat Rambo of my walking, talking, murdering macadamia tree short story collection. My sister wanted me to send it to the aforesaid library. Nah. But here it is for you.
From The Green Man Review:
Along with the furry fiction, I wanted to point to an indie humorous horror collection that is one of the most specifically themed I have yet encountered, Ill Met by Moonlight by Gretchen Rix (Rix Cafe Texican, 2016), which features evil macadamia nut trees, including “Macadamias on the Move,” “Ill Met by Moonlight,” and “The Santa Tree” in a lovely sample of how idiosyncratic a sub-sub-niche can get. The production values of this slim little book show what a nice job an indie can do with a book and include a black and white illustration for each story.
So there!
You can find my books at https://amazon.com/author/gretchenrix and at Smashwords, Nook, and Bookpeople. Plus downtown in beautiful Lockhart, Texas.
WHAT I READ THIS WEEK: Obscura by Joe Hart. Treasure Island by Robert Lewis Stevenson. The Chronological Man: The Monster in the Mist by Andrew Mayne. Banker by Dick Francis. Jack Daniels Stories by J. A. Konrath.