Oh My God, Were I near you, I would knock you over with a hug, and you’d need a bucket to hold the tears, because you have gone around and checked on the Xanga community and listed so many of us who hit the day, the year, the hour when good writers — probably. “Great Writers,” of this age have the chance, almost less of a chance, of finding a national, much less, international audience than a tadpole with a lottery ticket.//I hold my book, and I treasure it — An award winner in San Francisco’s book festival, but you must have followed my column, for I am telling people who want to head toward self-publishing that we are standing alone. Just think that John Edward’s lover, the on going secrets of low life’s of Washington who have crucified the constitution, stalled the average American dream, or helped young men and women to be shot to pieces over the past dozen years; this is our new literature.I used the most known of known publishers, and everybody is your friend while you are writing, but in a million publications, because every one can do it – Publish for a price, I can only tell younger people, talented people, that it is the big lie that you can break out with your book. I hurt for the writer on Xanga who wrote that at about 22,000 per year, he could take care of his family with the advent of E-book. And we did not see it coming so fast. The latest are all of the classes on how you are going to break away from the pack, race like a unicorn, and climb the magical latter to sales. Oh children! This is another way people say they are helping, but what kind of numbers are we talking about here. Sometimes, I think I should ask for a place on a freak show, join a circus, and show people what it looks like to be naked at 63, and for an extra dime, I will model a push up bra for those who paid to see large older breast hanging over a new bra like frosting on a cupcake; Then would there be a chance of finding some readers — “Look at the fat mama; you got to take a look at this BJ – I’m gonna pitch in an extra quarter, for she will stand up and waddle on those degenerated knees of hers!”That, when the chips are down, is your chance of getting a novel that will pay back anything which you put in to it, but I will look at the classes, because these folks tell me that there’s a chance, and they know the way to get your E-book on the market. However you get it there will be because you have worked your buttocks off, caught an eye of mercy, and you will have fifteen minutes of fame. “My Life With Charles Manson,” has a far greater value in money than any good writer among us.”I think I saw the light the day I passed, “Dog Earred books in San Francisco, and classics, even John Grisham books were on clearance for $2.50 cents, so where does that leave any of us, and if you do not think newer additions were on that rack; You are sadly mistaken. How can we compete with that? The E-book folks already have, “Rent a book,” and people are happy if they get a thousand hits in a month, for those who have moved ahead of we newbies will come out with at least twelve thousand dollars a near, and which month has your book, my book got a thousand hits?You have put in to words of truth what I cannot. You have seen the devaluation of literature as we have ever known it, and for every book store that closed, for every library which will close in small communities, for the writers like us, I am asking each of you to examine your hearts and to know there are authors out here who deserve your time and even your money, but the book burning has started, and the fire is hot over the coals, and paper burns. Soon we will have the first E-Book Awards going from city to city, so celebrate while you can that if it is not apparent to most Americans that each book they thumb through on their e-reader, the flame gets higher, and we who waited to this day to publish, the young people coming behind us who treasures literature and truth, another writer even way better than I stand back with remorse unable to recall a day when to be an author meant something that led people with their children to a happy book store, but soon writers will catch on, and we too will distance ourselves realizing that we are not big enough to do anything about what was once a treasured gift, that book which you had awaited for until a holiday, an anniversary, or your birth day. I understand the need to save dollars, and I understand the convenience of scrolling through books, but you can do that until hell freezes over, and it will never have that warmth of a real book chosen just for you by an author who has a message bigger than a TV news magazine, and broader than everything, a book that transcends the essence of time which people can look at and love again long after the owner of that book has made their journey in the world of real books.It is about money, and rest assured that all leads to the top, and the amount given back and what it cost you even to purchase your very own book, most likely, will never ease its way back to the writers who cherished their labor and who became ancient once the first e-reader came out. Thank you for what you have shown, that we are not alone, that we feel pain, and that we know that this is the level of destruction that changes the globe. Did the billionaires count the cost to humanity? Let us hear from you if you did not have the plans for all of this change a decade ago, so we would have known that we were in water to deep to cross over.Thank’s again, Barbara Everett HeintzBook, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” Amazon/Kindle Ready/Create Space/ Award For Biography/Autobiography – San Francisco Book Festival 2012 (Firs Honorable Mention, out of how many?

Dear Friend,I am absolutely without words to describe the kindness which I feel you are doing for so many of us.  My book hit a new level when it placed in San Francisco and won the First Place In The Hollywood 2012 book Festival.  I have degenerative osteo arthritis, but when I arrived in Hollywood, went to my spacious room at The Hollywood Thompson Hotel where the first Academy Awards were held; I was so joyful that I could have danced along the street in front of the Chinese Theater where you keep looking down and see the stars of all of the classic actors Hollywood ever knew — This woman born on Sand Mountain in Alabama on the coldest of January days.// You do this with such zeal and kindness that I am convinced that you should turn  a   an an an avocation into a vocation., and I confess that I am a computer idiot, and people will hate me for suggesting this, but I believe you are on to something here, and I for one would appreciate a reasonably priced way of getting my book the next rung up, and I would be willing to put some money in to having such a web page support.// My family is going to fix my Xanga header for me, for Lord it is embarassing, but when one is 63 years old — This is all Greek to me — all of computer use; And Facebook used to seem easy, and now one gets bundled in groups, liked so near and so far, and I have no time to be a Facebook person anyway.  Right now, I just want to make our immediate family which includes eleven of us now all set for the Holidays.//I asked one guy who is supposed to be a computer genius if he would even give me a clue as to what one might should conceive of doing in the ad world; and he just blew me off. // People at the Sonoma Book Fair said that my book cover would end hands down with the cover, and all it took was two photographs of my parents, mixing them together with my theme of Pinkhonoeysuckle, but believe me I was given no cut rate  on what the design turned out to be.// But I only had two laminated, and my husband said th size and the cost ran in to about thirty four dollars each;  So I would have to charge exorbinant fees to regain the investment in cover design from Xanga which was as I described, much less going to Kinkos and getting them laminated.  We wound up with two nice pieces of art which I believe I am going to present to each of my brothers and sisters when we all get together again; Fat chance of that happening with the eight of us as siblings.But Bless You! Until after I have some surgery — real in the hospital surgery on December 11th, I have no time, but you could message me on my Xanga site, and tell me what you think you might could do and how much it would cost me.  I need something, but right now;  From my hearth and heart to yours;  Happy Thanksgiving;  And let us pray that a mid-level movie person comes along, for that was part of The Hollywood experience was that it would be easily be respected by the media for film or documentary work.Let  me tell you all that, if you are going to putblish; Do not put in one dime you cannot afford to lose — Not because you are not a good writer, but Hollywood, escept for some of the major screen producers, are looking for cheap to produce, grabs in the  kids and then the parents must escort.  A whole line of toys will be produced to go with quickied, filled with special effects films, and as far as them being interested, I have said that Mr. Spielberg does a great job using stories from The Hollocaust, so we have quite a few serious, beautiful stories about the Holocaust.  Mr. Clooney is good, and seems to enjoy using some of the Kentucky wits as he did in, “Big Brother Where Art Thou,” but Sundance is not a place for book selling, though I may stand in the snow of Utah and beg to have someone listen to  me, and ask who will tell the stories of the mid century southern diaspora to the rust belt?  Who will tell about me and about my mother, or about the Father we learned to love, for he was so proud of us;  But I will tell everyone of you; Love it; Be prepared to lose, or just keep going after those who have found some success, and even with them;  It is like the couple who has a good baby sitter keeps them so busy that everyone else knows they may as well not ask for help to go out to have dinner together//  People stake their turf, and if we have an ice storm in which we loose our limbs waiting for some director to come along; Then what we have is a hope and a prayer, and I thank almighty God that once, just once;  I knew what it felt like to throw my soul in to the beautiful work of those who came before me.I think of book people as, “People of substance,” for I never knew how danged hard it was to write one until I realized that I had to start out looking up words like, “Pagnination,: paragraph stops  all those things which used to take millions of hard workers and and it took one book of overspending until we get the a place where we answer, “Yes, I would love to be the writer who tells a story, helps the poor, and whose book would bring the famous people to their knees. But message me if you have some ideas, requests a reasonable salary, We, many of us could use the help.I caan reassure you that miracles are few and far between, and if one of us makes it, then we need to throw one heck of a party and invite the Xangans in.  Bless your house, and wow we awair Christmas.Blessings, and Thank you as we enter Thanksgiving, and the thrill of The Christmas Lovingly, Barbara Everett Heintz, “Pinkhoneysuckle,” on Amazon — Kindle Wedding — An Elated Spirit Who Was Honored In Hollywood — First Place 2012 in Hollywood, Ca. Book Festival