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["Don Bowen" <don.bowen AT earthlink.net>]

> (hey,
> Gene, how often do literary agents going knocking on doors offering
> contracts to nobodies who have never written anything but some commentary
> in student law journal?)

My son got his first book deal after a casual conversation.  The publisher
emailed him a couple of months later.  He picked up an $8000 advance for
that.  It was not a book destined to become a best seller.

"Rebuilding and Modifying your Manual Transmission" by Robert Bowen

(somewhere in that book are several pictures of my hands holding various
transmission parts in my friend Richard's shop)

The same publisher left Motorbooks and is now working for another so he gave
my son another call and that resulted in a $12,000 advance for a book that
he just recently finished.

>Nice "work" if you can get it but not my idea of WORK!
Writing a book is hard work.  My son now has two behind him and a friend
just published her book "The Beaded Sphere" by Judy Walker.  I know the work
both put in the books and it is not easy.  Don't dismiss the writers work
just because it is mostly cerebral.  

Not every contribution to society requires hard physical labor and getting
ones hands dirty.  Maybe no one should be a president unless they have
rebuilt a tractor hydraulic system or two.

Don Bowen  KI6DIU
http://www.braingarage.com/Dons/Travels/journal/Journal.html