Documenting the Revolution

Duer, D. (2022, Dec. 8). Baker (Jobs of My Youth #5). David Duer Blog.

Here, a friend of mine tells about his experience at Morning Glory Bakery. All true, too, I believe, even the part about his having a crush on all the women he worked with. I think he gets more details about the place right, and I think that kind of documenting is good. Someone should write a serious, non-fiction, true account of the whole blessed story.

But if all one does is capture the magic of working and living down in that basement restaurant/bakery, that's still enough. It was special, a special time in this world.

Kindle Special

Tall Corn State
Kindle Special
Sun. Jan. 16 - Sat. Jan. 23
https://www.amazon.com/Tall-Corn-State-Iowa-Story-ebook/dp/B08XQ9612R

Good publicity

An excellent review of Tall Corn State, by Livi Brooks, whose blog I greatly respect:
https://livibrooksbooks.wixsite.com/website/post/book-analysis-tall-corn-state-by-thomas-leverett

ped mall

My friend Jeffrey Morgan says this picture is proof that we were the first musicians on the ped mall. Some people have pointed out that sometimes people would actually be in the fountain.

In those days I wasn't really very good at the banjo. Michael McCandless was a well known fiddler, though, and had a lot of friends. I'm not sure what happened to him.

Lest you think we were a real band, we weren't. We were just messing around.

update

It's been almost six months since the book, Tall Corn State, was published. I can say that in most ways it was a success. It's true that I didn't make a lot of money, but I don't think anyone who is totally indie can expect to, and for my purposes, the fact that it was widely read and is still being read is pretty good.

I like the things people say about it, and I like the reviews overall. It gives me confidence overall in going forward with my second novel, which I believe will be about Texas, unless I get a little sidetracked. I am getting a clearer idea of what I want with all novels.

One way I've failed miserably is in developing this site. I'll explain why below - it's basically because I've been busy - but I had intended to make this site a spot which is adequately linked to the book, and shows a number of promotional pictures of Tall Corn State and pictures of Iowa in general. What happened? I just got busy. This site I will develop better as the first phase of promotion winds down.

The first phase was, in short, getting everyone I could to read the book once. The most successful way I found was to find authors who wanted others to read their work, in exchange for reading others'. I could do that, I figured, and to that end I set about reading all kinds of stuff and guaranteeing that Tall Corn State was read and reviewed.

You begin approaching the big leagues if you have five, ten, fifteen, even twenty reviews. The truth is, I'm not in a position to decide what "big leagues" are - it seems a lot to me to know that I have what I have. It's also important that poeple by and large liked my book.

You will, too, if you got this far and still haven't read it. It's just a novel about Iowa, and the experience of a guy, me, who arrived there one day. One day in the middle of a flaming youth. The book does have a sense of humor, I promise. Find it here.

Tall Corn State: An Iowa Story

A lively personal novel with Actualist poetry, jumping trains, & unrequited love.

On Amazon
paperback $6.99 + shipping
kindle $6
kindle unlimited free
and ACX, narrated by Donald Davenport

Welcome!

I published the novel Tall Corn State on Amazon this year (2021). It was a success but only in my own limited view of it; I knew by experience that if you drop something in the Amazon sea of self-published works you'll get a small bump from your friends but you'll drift pretty quickly into obscurity. I thought it was a good novel and I was proud of it. It was very personal and difficult to publish for that reason only. But now here I am today, still hoping people will read it.

Forthunately I have generated lots of pop art publicity for it, as Iowa was always somewhat on my mind anyway. I'll put that pop art here. I left Iowa to go to Korea and from there, never really went back to live, though I tried several times. Instead I ended up in Illinois, then Texas, and now finally New Mexico, where I am writing and reliving old times.

I hope you enjoy this blog. I will link it soon to the book itself and will announce here when the audiobook becomes available. And any old thing I have to say about Iowa, that will probably end up here too. There was an older Tall Corn State blog, on a different web system, but I figure this is part of my writing business (tlevsp), so I put it here. This system is mostly my writing-related blogs.

Thanks for coming! Hope you read the book!