We’ve all heard that old saw, right? The one that says that if something ain’t broke, you just don’t fix it? Well, that’s fine, and true enough, but what if something is broke? Eventually, I guess, you bite the bullet and reach for the sledgehammer. Or, in this age of cyber miracles, you push the delete button and go back to your drawing board. That’s sort of what’s about to happen to my brainchild, The Cat Chronicles: Stories, Poems, Photos and Essays About Cats and Life: the figurative plug is being pulled. 

            The book, if you’ve read the blurbs, or the press release here—or perhaps even the book itself, is a collaboration that my sisters Vicky and Stephanie and I took great pride in crafting. The stories, essays and poetry revolve around cats that have touched our lives in some way, and include the trials and tribulations of being teenagers dealing not with boy problems, but with lion problems.

            We’re not at all biased, of course, but we love the book. We love the stories, the adventures we shared, the cats we remembered, the nightmares we can still recall—and I think the quotations that pull the book together, contributed by Vicky are a stroke of real genius. 

            So what’s broke?

            Well, the format doesn’t seem quite right yet. We’ve had sales—marginally—as an e-mail. Now, any writer might sell fewer books than he or she would expect, hope, demand—supply your own choice of verb. To complicate matters, we had some technical matters with the book being sent in a timely manner to those who purchased a download, and we didn’t want to inconvenience anyone who purchase our wares. Somehow, for a book that means so much to the three of us, it just seems prudent to try other avenues. We’d debated actually going with traditional publishers first, as a matter of fact, but were convinced by someone who had seen the idea that it might work as an e-book. And, at some point—it might. But for the moment, it hasn’t done what we thought it should.

 

            For those who have purchased it—mil gracias. If you didn’t yet, it will be back in another of it possible nine lives. Maybe it will just need a second one—who knows? Cats & Company, at RioRendezvous, will remain, although apologetically behind the times until I am swept away by energy. That has happened yet this year, but I continue to be hopeful. When that tidal wave of enthusiasm happens, I will update every page at RioRendezvous—really I will. Until then, I really will plug away in bits and pieces, and post announcements of what’s new here or there. (Good heavens, I sound like Dr. Seuss—too much first grading, I fear!)

            RioRendezvous aside, Cat Chronicles will return when it is “fixed,” perhaps with a new poem or quote, probably with a new picture or two—a stray Siamese snoops around the house now and again and is quite photogenic, though we worry about him coming by since the street is a death trap—and my sisters and I appreciate both your past and future interest in this project that refuses to just slink off and be gone.