Seems like as good a time as any.

Truth is, I like my kids, and being outside, and teaching, and watching the Swedish “Wallander” DVDs, too much to blog consistently with my non-writing time. Always have. I never wanted this space to become a desperate collection of every nice thing someone said somewhere about The Book of Bunk (apparently, we all have Facebook for that), or a place to answer criticisms. I’m already halfway through the next book, as close to a flat-out, messy, wicked, gleeful B as this b is ever likely to try, and I’m having a blast, even if that book is already mutating into yet another something else. One more Glen book. Then there’s the half-finished YA trilogy about domestic terrorism. That ghost story novel that’s most of the way done, and needs to be got right once for all. The teaching novel I’m told I’m uniquely poised to produce, for which I have a damn good title, anyway. More stories, of course.

So. Not necessarily or even probably the last post on this site. But the last Bunk post. At least for a long while.

So where does that leave us?

At the moment, The Book of Bunk seems to have set up camp in a slightly disappointing but curiously appropriate netherworld. The few people who’ve read it seem to like it. A lot. It apparently launched in a uniquely timeless week that assures it will never qualify for any Year’s Best or Notable Books list, even if someone wanted to put it there, because everyone’s already rushed to print their 2010 selections, and it isn’t 2011. Except maybe in your Bunk County. As exemplified in the post below, a couple major websites and publications have decided not to review the book based on its limited run. The major presses are, at least for now, balking at publishing a bigger paperback run because there aren’t enough reviews. 22 and Catch. Amazon.com currently has it listed as Temporarily Out of Stock, even though I’ve been assured both by them and by my publishers that it isn’t. There’s one lovely customer review up (thanks, Kay). 0 of 1 people so far have found it useful.

But it exists. I’ve seen it. I’ve held it in my hands, and I’ve seen it in others’ hands. It’s there if you want it, and are willing to hunt just a little.

For this incarnation of the blog, I wanted to tell at least a bit of the story of this book’s creation. Or create its myth. Because for this book, the book is its own creation myth. Or the creation myth’s the story. And I thought it might be useful (and maybe a little cathartic) to share it.

I’m going to leave this blog up. As a crude, hand-drawn map, if you will, to Bunk County, if you ever want to mount a search. A road trip guide–like the Federal Writers’ Project guides themselves–to a county that was never there. Unless you find it.

You won’t find me there. But if you do go looking for Bunk County, and if you locate it…

Send me a postcard, okay?