An Unusual Book

As you probably already surmised from reading this blog, I like to browse the Internet and keep up with publishing news and stories. I came across an article on a Mobile, Alabama, writer who published with iUniverse. So, I started reading the story.

But by the end, what I found most interesting was not the author’s advice on getting published. That was the usual stuff:

(1) Don’t be a snob about writing. Don’t look down your nose at romances, children’s books or mysteries, or any genre you don’t happen to fancy. Keep an open mind.
(2) Have a place of your own to write every day. And be selfish about taking that time for your writing; then go there and do it.
(3) Write more for others and less for yourself. Keep your audience in mind all the time if publication is your aim.
(4) Only send your best work out and, again, only that work appropriate to that publisher and audience.
(5) Watch out for author intrusion. Get your self out of the way. Let the story tell itself.

What I found most unusual is what this author, Maurice Gandy, actually wrote. Not a novel, not a mystery or a romance or a sci-fi. Gandy wrote a 374-page allegory in verse. Yeah, you read that right. He wrote a book “about searching for the perfect wave during the turbulent 1960s amid a cast of characters including the Duke of Tan, Macho Peaches and Coyote Conquistador” in verse.

Concerning the road he took to publication, the article in the Baldwin County Now said:

Gandy’s description of that path — the experiences 40 years ago upon which it was based, the eight years of journals as raw material, the writing of a lengthy narrative told in rhyming verse, to selecting a “hybrid” or “cooperative” publisher, then editing, seeing it published and now marketing it — kept his audience of several dozen people rapt and entertained.

I imagine it is an interesting story. But I’m still flabbergasted by the 374-pages all written in rhyming verse.