Okay, so I finished the story “Coons in the Corn,” which I was writing and releasing in episodes on my Notes of Blue FB page. It’s about a man in Rosine who has a raccoon problem that he sets out to fix.
There ended up being 25 episodes released over about 30 days. I enjoyed it tremendously, and it seemed my readers did, too. I’m fairly certain it’s something I’ll do again someday.
But first I’ve decided to self-publish this one. It will be my first novel, 80-90 pages long.
This is not what I set out to write. I was thinking of a short story, but before I knew it “Coons in the Corn” had reached novelette length and then novella length. It now sits at roughly 17,600 words, which is the length of a short novel.
I plan to keep it in episodes, but I’ll call them chapters. In fact, I’ve named each one, where before they were simply numbered. Oh, and I broke a couple long ones in half, making the total number of chapters 27. Here are the chapter titles:
Happy as a Coon on a Roasineer
Red and Bone
Sham
Sold!
Ira James and Vivi
Charlie Rust
Bait Corn
The Chase
Nightcrawlers
Chemicals and Radiation
Sycamores
Old Man Canler
The Beech Log
Buck Fever
Lost in Caney Bottoms
The Caney Haint
Pitiful Whinin’
The Chopping Block
Here, Red! Here, Bone!
Jerry Clower
Pawpaws
McGrady Creek
Beaver Dams
Pop!
The Good Book
The Shed
Forty Acres
This publishing process will take a while. I have lots of editing and revising still to do because I wrote it so fast.
There are some major questions to ask and answer, like do I want to stick with the dialect. Trying to capture the sounds and patterns of a character’s speech by using particular spelling and word choices is not an easy task.
I also will have to decide which self-publishing company to use. Some to consider are: Kindle Direct, Draft2Digital, IngramSpark, Lulu, BookBaby, PublishDrive, etc.
For the book cover, which is extremely important, I’ve asked my cousin Gabby, who is gifted artistically, to come up with something. All I’ve given her is a color palate and a generic image to work with.
The image I’m after is a cornfield at night with raccoon eyes looking out. Think of a painting of this image with lots of eyes:
I’m grateful for all the comments I received, either on FB or in person, as I wrote “Coons in the Corn” almost daily. I appreciate the support.
Stay tuned!
