Where is Spearfish Lake?

I get asked this question a lot. If you really want to know where Spearfish Lake is, it's about three inches behind my eyeballs. It's totally imaginary. It doesn't exist in the real world. Persons, places, and events are totally my creation and should not be assumed to have a basis in fact. That much said, there is a real world Spearfish Lake in Washington State, I think, but it has nothing to do with these Spearfish Lake stories. The fishing is supposed to be pretty decent, though.

If it were in the real world, where would it be?

You're going to make this difficult, aren't you? That's not an easy question. We know Spearfish Lake is in the midwestern northern forest country, which stretches from northern Lower Michigan up through northern Minnesota, and I've tried to include elements of each. If you absolutely have to imagine it on a map, put it around Iron Mountain or Crystal Falls, Michigan, with Green Bay being Camden. Now, Iron Mountian or Crystal Falls are not Spearfish Lake and never have been; it's just that if Spearfish Lake were real it might be located around there somewhere. Or it might not be.

Why are you putting this online for free?

Because I want to. I've been writing for many years for my own enjoyment, and I'd like to share that enjoyment with others. It's not totally free; the ads are on here for a purpose, and that's hopefully to cover the server costs. Beyond that, it's kind of like that dude with the guitar -- if you enjoy it, you are welcome to throw something in the gig bag. You don't have to; it's kind of an honor system. If you're too broke or too cheap to make a donation, that's fine -- you might click on a couple of the links in the ad boxes, because that adds to the kitty in a roundabout way. If you don't like what you've read here, fine. It's your choice. It's not like you've spent money on a book only to be disappointed in it.

Yeah, but free? Is it worth your time?

We'll find out, won't we? Actually we writers have it soft compared to cartoonists. We have hundreds of possible places we could sell our stuff. Cartoonists have only a few places, the big syndicates -- and if they can't make a sale there, until recently they just about had to give up. But in recent years we've seen an explosion of ongoing cartoons being done in the web. This is where the cutting edge stuff is being done today, not in your daily paper. In fact, what cartoons in the daily paper aren't bland, politically correct renditions of the same joke over and over? Web cartoonists get along with a combination of donations, ads, and store stuff -- T-shirts, coffee cups, and the like. Some are doing quite well!

The cartoonists are just the cutting edge, though. If you've taken any look at what's happening in the music industry, you'll see that CD sales from the big companies are down and continue to shrink. People download stuff off the net all the time, and it's changing the industry forever. The same thing is happening in the book publishing industry, although not as well developed yet. I'm not sure the donation/ad/store sales model is the best one for books, or is the way the industry is going to go, but at least the internet means that the publishing companies don't have a stranglehold on distribution any longer. What you get here is directly producer to consumer, the writer's and internet version of that busker with the guitar.

So you've got hardcopy books and stuff for sale?

Not yet, but it'll probably be coming along. Hardcopy books will probably be first, probably not the full list. There's a lot of 'we'll see how it goes' involved.

Why a serial? Couldn't you just put the whole book up at once?

I suppose I could, but for more advanced ad packages, hits are the name of the game. I intend to post updates every Monday, Wednesday and Friday. That means I'll probably be making the updates by hand late the night before, Eastern Standard Time. I may occasionally have to miss due to vacations or other commitments, but if so I'll make mention of it in the Newsbox on the main page ahead of time.