Before finding this out, I phoned to ask Create Space whether it was possible for them to ship directly to Europe, because a wholeseller wanted to distribute Keep This Quiet! outside North and South America – contacted me with the request. However, wholesellers take a huge percentage. So I’d need cheap shipping. That’s when Create Space told me  about this new deal: that they’d just concluded it YESTERDAY. Talk about walking in on a negotiation.

It means that if Keep This Quiet! in the Waterstone’s bookstore in Brussels sells out, it’s easy for them to reorder. For the wholeseller this won’t work, because his commission is too high.

So make a wish – or ask a question - and you never know what you might find out, in this smaller and smaller world. Everyone’s connected. Even print books. They’re crossing the barriers, just like the e-books.

This news, though unreported on at large, shows that Amazon is quietly making expansions of its own while Facebook goes up for its first stock options.

Welcome to the new people who signed up here as a result of the 2-page interview in Beat Scene and the review in Rain Taxi Review of Books. I will try to get more – interesting – blogs written up shortly. There’s been a lot going on  – which I’ll report on. For now, just a note with this update.

Meanwhile, hello also from Hans. That is not me holding him, by the way.

“Three men, embodiments of three different dimensions of the late 1960’s Zeitgeist—wispy dissolution, language-charged intellect, and Gonzo persona-building—are brought together by Harrell to invoke a world of passion and commitment, the world she had always hoped she would inhabit. Keep This Quiet! is at once noisy, sensual, and word-drunk, as well as quietly intimate and full of Harrell’s wonder at her luck. While most readers will come to this book for the Thompson content, in truth all the portraits here—all four of them—are compelling and often touching.”

Before that, I read every single word, wondering whether at the next word the axe would fall. But it kept on being positive right to the end – in such a discerning manner re all three of the men. Wow.

I am also still celebrating Rory Feehan’s review at his site, and the blurb I received from Michael Simmons yesterday, after which I couldn’t resist e-mailing him to ask what investigative journalism story did he get an award for. Turned out it was complicated. My phone rang. He’d rung up to explain in person. But that story is for another day.

I can’t thank everyone enough who has supported this book. Remember, it’s in stock on the shelves of Quail Ridge Books & Music in Raleigh. Also at Amazon, B & N, etc. Thanks for celebrating with me!

“Funny, intimate HST biography, that is also (as Terry Southern would say) quality lit.”

I’m going to include Michael’s e-mail signature, as it’s highly interesting to check out some of the links if you haven’t read his work. He contacted me for a review copy because of having read the little description Paul Krassner wrote about meeting me with Hunter (taken from KTQ!), which will appear in High Times soon. Bio:

“As leader of the band Slewfoot, Michael Simmons was dubbed ‘The Father Of Country Punk’ by Creem magazine in the 1970s. He was an editor at the National Lampoon in the ’80s where he wrote the popular column ‘Drinking Tips And Other War Stories.’ He won an LA Press Club Award in the ’90s for investigative journalism and has written for MOJO, LA Weekly, Rolling Stone, Penthouse, High Times, LA Times, CounterPunch, and The Progressive.”

My experience of him is that he’s a very nice, approachable, funny person.

So who knows. Maybe a reader there. In any case, nice dog moments. And visions of that little dog (and his five buddies) in shows - who knows, maybe in Best of Breed. Really cute.

When I saw Hunter – the first day we met – at the What’s My Line panel show, he was (now that I think of it) probaby the mystery guest. The mystery guest was famous. The others had an occupation the panel had to guess. I liked the show as entertainment, but when it came Hunter’s turn and the panel had to guess who the “real” Hunter S. Thompson was, and then he stood up (a scene that is beautiful now on YouTube), it was quite significant that the mystery about him was who he was. The more you think about it, the more funny it becomes, like a real joke. Anyway, Rory Feehan’s new review of Keep This Quiet! appreciates the fact that I found this question significant and probed it. Indeed I did, all the time I knew him, as I’m always interested in meeting “the real” person. In this case, in particular. The review by Rory is very insightful and well written. His pieces always are.

Then I went to my ballet class and for the first time one of the songs was “When Irish eyes are smiling.”

Other news in this line: I’ve just prepared a review copy requested by a journalist who’s quite well able to do a review of this book. He has somehow seen his friend Paul Krassner’s short review that will come out in High Times in May. And he wrote Krassner to ask for my e-mail address, or e-addy. If all goes well, that will result in another review. Meanwhile, Beat Scene should be coming out about now. I’m waiting for my copy in the mail. Will really enjoy looking at the whole magazine. It’s because of it that I discovered Charles Bukowski, whose poems you can read at http://www.bukowski.net/ and whose books you can buy at Beat Scene. At the Bukowski site I started reading under “Words” here.

He called himself  “the last of the poet recluses,” and that brings to mind  Mircea Ivanescu in Romania, whom I knew well. If anyone was a poet recluse, he was. He has just died and news of him has popped up all over the web. Even in  England, I found that one of his books – lines poems poetry – is available in English through the Univ. of Plymouth Press: http://www.uppress.co.uk/ivenescu.htm. This short, gentle man with the stooped back, who had a big, ironic smile and kept his telephone number secret, who had no computer but used an old typewriter, is apparently now pretty widely in the news:

“Ivanescu’s poetry represents the achievement of a little known master. Centring on a wide cast of characters, including his alter ego ‘mopete,’ Ivanescu’s idiosyncratic, lyrical sensibility offers allusive, comic and elegiac meditations on our common lot.”

Once again, I feel lucky to know these people in the post. And many many others.

Memoir of The Revolution, March 5, 2012 By Blueboy

This review is from: Keep This Quiet! My Relationship with Hunter S. Thompson, Milton Klonsky, and Jan Mensaert (Paperback) Memoir can be so intimate a narrative form. Margaret Harrell’s story is intimate and revealing, as she shares with the reader her affair with HST and details of his early writing career. Her writing surprises with turns of phrase and paragraphs that unfold in unexpected ways. Her aliveness and depth of experience come through. As the copy editor of HST’s first book, Hell’s Angels, and a fine writer herself, she recounts their unique relationship from a feminine perspective, different, I think, from other women he knew, and further different from the male perspective which has been more commonly reported. She contributed to HST’s initial success in bringing his words to print, a task for which I am personally grateful. She extends her unique insights into two other relationships she recounts with the poet Milton Klonsky and the poet-artist Jan Mensaert. The book recaptures the intellectually rich revolutionary spirit of the period 1963 to 1970 of which we hear much about but today find elusive to actually enter (or reenter). What I missed of that then is in some measure gained as this book invites the reader into her experience in the literary heart of The Revolution. The rarefied ether of her emotional world surrounds the three men of genius Margaret was involved with and the volatility of their collective egos on her is formative in her life’s search for meaning, love, and deep inner peace. A memoir this sensitive and well written is a gem.

I wish I could pop over to England – wander through a London store and look at the copies standing on a rack. There are many interesting items in this 68-page magazine. I am looking forward to receiving a copy in the mail. The website home page explains:

“The magazine BEAT SCENE is the magazine of the Beat Generation. That’s Jack Kerouac, William Burroughs, Allen Ginsberg, Charles Bukowski, Richard Brautigan and co. For those that don’t know us – we are a paper magazine – 68 pages at present – devoted to the Beat Generation and associated writers, artists, musicians and whomever. We have been publishing for nineteen years and the magazine has grown in that time. We consider it primarily an information magazine. We list addresses, web sites, publishers etc. Consequently we try and publish interviews and features by and about those writers we rate highly.”

So that’s it. If 2012 goes on like this, I’ll be happy.

The dream gave me lots of energy. And I sat down to work on the snags in volume 2 of KTQ. Kirkus Indie just posted a review for KTQ 1. An online description of the terrors of this journal writes: “As the scrappy runner-up to PW[Publishers Weekly], Kirkus has long had a reputation for lively, unpredictable reviews that are sometimes outlandishly harsh.” Authors await them in some trepidation. In the case of KTQ, it was primarily quite positive.

Kirkus defines the audience helpfully: “Memoir will likely please Hunter S. Thompson fans and appeal to readers with an interest in the beginnings of the post-modern era or the personal sacrifices involved in bringing serious written work to fruition.”

Also: “The reader comes to feel an affinity with the trio of writers in their attempts to achieve their iconoclastic visions of success, glimpsing them as individuals beyond their work, seeing how they think. Their genius, for Harrell, consisted of their being wholly themselves.”

Well, not “consisted of,” I would say. More like ”depended on.” Hooray for Kirkus for liking the book! And not giving me a heart attack. And here’s a toast to this very special day.

One opening the review created for volume 2 is to quote from the 3 writers’ work. This will be possible in 2, after their careers took off. On the other hand, anyplace I can remember or took down conversation, I consider is a rare advantage.