Preorder My First Memoir, My Iliad Odyssey

My new memoir My Iliad Odyssey is available for preorder. Your signed copy will ship this summer. Order here.

Here is the blurb of the book:

At a dead end as a fiction reader and writer, Art Edwards found on his bookshelf a used copy of the Iliad, which he’d never read. He set aside two hours a week, Sunday from 9 to 11 a.m., for the slow, focused study of this cornerstone of the western canon. He would allow the process to take him wherever it would, whether that meant the ultimate answer to his reading and writing conundrums or the abandonment of the practices entirely.

My Iliad Odyssey reveals Edwards’s journey into the heart of Homer. Composed of a modern, at times humorous retelling of the classic work, each chapter prompts a look beyond Troy into some bigger, often personal aspect of Edwards’s life or the world around him. During his three years of meticulously reading the Iliad, he saw his mother pass away from cancer, resolved decades-long frustrations with his former music colleagues, and found a new focus for his creative pursuits. He went to the Iliad to save his fiction reading and writing life, but like any Greek myth, the rewards weren’t what he expected them to be.

I haven’t published a book for over a decade. This is a big deal for me.

What’s kept me from publishing a book for so long? A lack of enthusiasm about the process.

With each of my three self-published novels, the process held some magic.

With Novel 1 in 2003, it was my first ever book.

With Novel 2 in 2008, there was a sense that I could build upon the 500 folks who had bought Novel 1.

Novel 3 in 2014 was my first clear novel in terms of length (83,000 words). It was also my least autobiographical novel, and the first one I’d crowd sourced.

In each instance, there was a feeling I was getting somewhere by self-publishing my books. That feeling made it worth jumping through the self-publishing hoops to make the books a reality.

Since then, not so much.

I’ve finished three more books in the past decade. With each I wanted to take the step to traditional publication. You know, have someone write me a check for the rights to publish it and do the grunt work to bring it to life. I’d tried to entice traditional publishing with Novels 1-3 as well, but once that didn’t happen, I could find some consolation in self-publication. With these latter three books, I couldn’t find the part of me that might get something out of the process, so I didn’t do it.

But now I’ve found something that makes it worth it.

With my creation of the DANOTI approach, I’m excited again about self-publication. Why? Because it’s an opportunity to show myself and anyone who might pay attention what I really value about reading and writing. What I value is the special communication books foster from writer to reader. This is the communication process I discovered during my formative reading experiences as a late teenager and college student, and it’s the one I still practice today.

I wasn’t much of a reader in grade school or high school, but as a college undergrad, I took to it with the passion of a zealot. Reading for me was more than entertainment. It was a path to personal, emotional, and spiritual enrichment that I couldn’t get anywhere else. Reading books—important books—became my religion. I wanted to read all of them, or as many as my admittedly slow and poor reading skills would allow. I’m still that person trying to read all of the important books to get what I can from them.

Beyond what I’ve already written on the subject, I don’t have much to add about the narrowing of literary culture at he careerist level in the current era. It’s not the space I want my books to occupy, so I’m taking back my publishing process from the institutions of the field.

How?

My Iliad Odyssey is published DANOTI-style—or not caring about anything but communicating what I can to whoever might find my book. In short, I will adhere to the following principles during the process:

No careerism.

No ebooks.

No International Standard Book Number (ISBN).

Little marketing.

This approach will lead to whatever readership it leads to, and that will be enough.

So, I’m enthused again about publishing.

Help me make DANOTI a viable new publishing avenue. Preorder My Iliad Odyssey, and I’ll get your copy out to you this summer.