A Century is Nothing

This is a camelo, Spanish for a tall tale.

Hello. May this find you well. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Omar. I am a Touareg Berber nomad from the Sahara desert in Morocco.

I am a blind prescient writer in exile.

This is my story about how I and other tribal members met a strange kind man named Mr. Point immediately after 9/11. He just showed up and the Sahara is a big place.

When others hear this tale they express disbelief. “How can that be?”

Living Baraka, a supernatural energy and magic power practiced by our people, his appearance was, shall we say, expected. He is a poet, shape shifter, cosmic comic clown and literary outlaw.

Now it happened that we traveled together just like you and I now and we formed a community. We shared many tales and I have taken the liberty of including them here with some of my own stories. We enjoyed amazing adventures together.

I confess this narrative is not linear. In a sense, this is for and about children: innocence, curiosity, empathy, and playful pure intentions. Children love inventing stories and hearing them.

Stories are essential like air and water.

My friend and I love to travel and besides calling the Sahara home I also inhabit a very real magical late Paleolithic Spanish cave in Andalucía. It encompasses 26,000 years of art and history. The word ‘history’ comes from the Greeks. It means story. This explains the title, A Century Is Nothing.

Someone in our tribe said, “Imagine the earth is 24 hours old. To see a perspective of how long humans have been around, imagine they’ve been on the planet for only the last 60 seconds.”

Marco Polo, a famous traveler near death in 1324 at seventy left his famous epitaph for the world. “I have only told the half of what I saw!”

Keep an open mind and fasten your seat belt as we may experience a little turbulence during flights of imagination grounded in invisible particles of reality. In the event of a water landing your heart-mind may be used as a flotation device.

We’ll meet again. May your journey be filled with loving kindness, compassion and authenticity.

A Century is Nothing

a Century is Nothing - backstory

In 2007, while living and teaching English in China he self-published A Century is Nothing, a literary memoir.

This after receiving fifty rejection letters from literary agents, "No thanks...doesn't meet our needs...it's not mainstream for the general reader...too many characters...too long..."

The first thing a literary agent considers when reading a query, synopsis and the first five pages is, "Can I make 15% on this?"

Traditional publishing is a casino. A crap shoot. 50 Shades of Gravy is a perfect example.

After research he selected iUniverse, a print-on-demand company in the United States of Amnesia.

Print-on-demand offfered publishing packages and he figured, "What the hell. Release the monster." He paid. 

They sent him an eighteen-page critique and structural suggestions. He implemented some and ignored others. He line edited the beast. He submitted a cover image and selected the design.

Six months later he received a hard copy in Turkey where he taught English. He opened the bulky brown envelope. The book slid onto the table. Thump!

The young Chinese girl's curious eyes stared at him from the cover. He'd made the image at a nursery school in a Fujian village. Her eyes said hello, I made it.

He felt grateful and elated. He turned pages, smelling paper, scanning ink. Wow, this is amazing. He also felt detached, knowing it was a deep letting go. It didn't belong to him now. It lived in the world. It was free.

The production company sent his friend in Amnesia forty copies as part of the publishing agreement. He sent them to friends so they could read adventures. The POD had served its purpose. 

In 2007, about a thousand years ago in the world of technology, E-book publishing was in its infancy. Now it's a viable alternative to POD and traditional publishers.

He canceled the agreement with iUniverse this fall and took control of the book. He printed it. He pulled out a red pen and slashed it. Into pieces.

In the process he created a smaller, lo-fat, slim version entitled, Subject to Change, his original working title. After revising (the party) he printed it, edited it again and published it on Amazon and Smashwords. Wa La.

He turned his attention to A Century is Nothing and repeated the process. Writing is re-writing, or polishing.

He created a 2nd Edition with a new cover image and bought ISBNs from Bowker. He published it on Amazon and Smashwords as a paperback and E-book at a reasonable price. It ain't about the money. It's about the journey.

No editor or POD is going to drink champange from his skull. 

When you come to a fork in the road, take it.

Now you know the process. 

If it meets your read needs review it on Amazon (good, bad, ugly) and drop him a line. Sharing is caring. Thanks.

Happy reading!