I GIVE UP.
Pictures of Buddy the Dog outdraw anything that I blog on this website or that I post on my professional Facebook page.
Most of my blogs and posts are about the Bible, Christianity, and other eternal stuff.
Pictures of Buddy the Dog, which I take with my iPhone, are pictures of a dog who poops in my back yard.
I’m trying to figure out why the dog outdraws the Bible.
And if I should change genres in my writing career.
Once upon a time I found myself standing at a book-signing event beside my sweet friend Wanda Brunstetter. She’s an award-winning, New York Times bestselling author who writes fiction set among the Amish. I don’t remember which book she was signing that year, but I’m pretty sure it became another bestseller.
I was signing Who’s Who and Where’s Where in the Bible, which went on to win the Retailers Choice Award as the best non-fiction book of the year.
These were giveaway books that Wanda and I were signing. The publisher was giving them away because most of the people at this event—an annual Christian book convention—were booksellers. Publishers wanted to put their books into the hands of these sales people.
Folks stood in one line to get a free book from Wanda, me, and two other writers—since we all wrote for the same publisher.
One lady got Wanda’s book along with books by the other two fiction writers. Then she walked right past me.
“Hey,” I said to her. “Those other books are about pretend stuff. My book is about reality.”
“I’ve got too much reality,” she said, as she kept on walking. “I want pretend.”
Dang.
If that had been a shootout, I’d have ended up gut-shot.
As far as I’m concerned, it’s established.
People want more fiction.
And more dog pictures.
I don’t think I can do fiction. My brain doesn’t work that way. If I could make stuff up, I’d be a preacher.
But I can take pictures of Buddy the Dog from time to time.
This Bud’s for you.
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