The Front Yard War Available On Google Books!

 

That's the White House lawn in Washington DC USA in the summer of 2023.  It looks fairly Chemlawned to me.  I didn't see dandelions or clover on it anyway.  Maybe with a new, if slightly used, president in the house, the lawn could provide a nice model of organic lawn care for the nation.

Yeah, that's probably not going to happen.  However, you can read The Front Yard War now on Google Books.  Google even has a nice hefty sample, so you can read the first three chapters or so.  After that, it'll cost you $5 to read the rest.  $5!  Just $5!  I see people trying to sell ebooks for $10 or $20 even.  It's a digital file, dude!  It should be like $5.  We're not paying for printing or mailing it.  Come on!  So if you want to see some dandelions on the White House lawn, then read the book and then you can get fired up and write a letter to the president, or at least the White House landscaper. 

Based on the preview, the Google Books edition looks pretty good.  It's basically the same file as the regular epub, but of course Google or their coders get a bee up their bonnet and I had to change some code for no good reason.  I actually use Google Books as my main ebook reader on the phone, and the original file worked great.  However, the Google Books edition really hated the underlining code, despite it working perfectly fine in the epub and on their reader software, so I had to turn the underlining to italics.  Sorry underlining fans!  I think the underlining looks better as well, but that and a hissyfit over the type of center code was keeping it from popping up for sale, so I had to "fix" them.  The other amusing thing is that the original epub has 232 pages, but the Google edition has 357 pages, so despite the book description listing 232 pages, you get an additional 135 pages for free I guess.  Please let me know what's on them . . .

For now Google fans, of course, the book is still available directly from me for $5 as an epub or pdf (PayPal me at wredfright AT yahoo DOTT com--you'll figure out that complex human code) and at Amazon, which has a printed version as well.  Next up is Smashwords, who should get distributed to Barnes & Noble, Apple, and all the other major ebook retailers.  They apparently have a new print on demand branch as well, so we might see two different print editions of the book (in addition, to the cheaper alternative probably of just ordering and then printing out the PDF yourself).

The novel's funny and thought-provoking.  Given most if not nearly all of what passes for American literature these days, I can understand that people may not be into reading contemporary fiction, but you should give lit a chance again and give this one a read.  I bet you'll enjoy it.  It's not really like anything else out there.  I don't want to say it's better because art's an expression even the crass, commercial stuff in its way, but I wrote the dang thing and it makes me laugh out loud and I know what's coming and I didn't write it in a Mary Sue way, and it still makes me crack up.  Give it a shot!  In fact, take a shot or two while reading it; I bet it'll be even funnier!