Waterfront Property Online

Whew! I finally did it. Waterfront Property is now available as a blog.

Almost a year ago, I decided to put Waterfront Property online. I didn't want to re-self-publish and shopping for an agent is hard. It seemed such a waste for it not to be available, though. The revised form addresses the major criticism of the earlier book: that it was "too preachy." And I tweaked some characters and plot elements. I'll keep shopping this and other manuscripts from time to time, but in the meantime, here's Waterfront Property. People can read it and click on an ad to "pay" me if they like it. I can look at my Blogspot stats to see if and how many people are "buying" it.

Now, dear reader, a special request: if you're reading it and you see a typo or have a question, will you please let me know? Maybe I didn't catch all of the Marysville to Mathews transitions ... it's hard to revise a book I've read so many times.

This need for critique and editorial feedback is the reason why I will never self-publish a print version of Waterfront Property or any other book again. Take note, aspiring writers: you need help. Copy and content editorial review make a book better and more commercially successful. Don't self-publish!

Waterfront Property was my first book and I felt passionately about its message. The very first literary agent that I contacted wanted to read the manuscript! Instead of mailing it, my sister, my daughter, and I took it to her New York office and had a great girls weekend in the Big Apple. Unfortunately, the literary agent didn't like it enough.

I sent queries to about fifty other agents and got a few more readers, but no one wanted to represent it to publishers. My sister -- a librarian, who should be qualified to say that it's readable, even if she is my sister! -- encouraged me to self-publish, so I did. I sold about 500 copies.

But I got a little concerned when I received feedback that it was "too preachy." All of the real estate agents in Gloucester and Mathews hated me. Although it was the "Read it Mathews" book for 2005, the Mathews Public Library doesn't own a copy today. Hmm. Well, there were some problems, I admit. I canceled the contract years ago, but Amazon still seems to be recycling the original 500.

If I had found an agent who liked the sustainability message, maybe she could have helped me tone it down and make it more commercially viable. The book is a fictionalized version of my own environmental epiphany and it all takes place right here in Hampton Roads, as John Quarstein might say. The main character decides to stop over-consuming and start living more sustainably.

If we put aside the literary merits of the book for now and just consider the message, I think that the book was a little ahead of it's time. I started to think about my incomplete Waterfront Property blog while reading the 2010 State of the World and decided to get back to the unfinished blog, to get it up and running. I wonder if seven years will make the content sound less preachy and jarring? The movement to replace the environmental decline message with a sustainability message that is more personal has been an objective of many who understand the importance of increasing awareness of current environmental stress.

BTW, I thanked the author of Affluenza in the acknowledgments. His Google clipping service picked it up. In response, I received an e-mail from John de Graaf this morning, which was a great stroke. He is working on a new initiative, Susutainable Seattle, which I was happy to hear about and will consider more as I work with my Master Naturalists' sustainability book review group. He wrote a chapter of the 2010 State of the World about shortening work time.

I particularly liked the faqs on the Seattle site, "is sustainability just a new buzzword for the environmental movement," "what are the stakes if sustainability doesn't catch on," and "what can we do to make an impact." Good food for thought as we frame our local sustainability message. Should we adapt the Gross National Happiness index to the Historic Triangle or Greater Hampton Roads area, as Seattle and other cities have?