Several people have asked me to collate all my stories into some sort of anthology. I find this flattering - it still surprises me when I get replies or even PMs about the stories. That’s why I keep writing them, so you’ve only yourselves to blame.
Anyway, stuck in the house this afternoon, after a brief MUni ride in the snow, I sat down and used the search function, and identified all the posts that I think generally fall within the heading of “stories” or “ride write ups”. That excludes technical stuff, arguments about religion and the death penalty, and brief acerbic comments about my fellow man.
All copied and pasted onto one Lotus document, they make 179 pages, although that will edit down considerably, as I have started a new page for each “story” and there’s a lot of white page!
Even scanning quickly through them, rather than reading them properly, was mind numbing - lots of repetition, as you would expect of reports of rides along broadly simlar routes over a period of 3 or 4 years.
If there is a demand, I will try to produce an edited document, keeping the original text as far as possible, but tidying up spellings and puntuation, and pruning the excessive repetition. The result of this would be a document with about 50 - 100 pages of text, so quite a big job for me to do, and for you to read.
----- Original Message -----
From: “Mikefule” <Mikefule@NoEmail.Message.Poster.at.Unicyclist.com>
Newsgroups: rec.sport.unicycling
Sent: Tuesday, December 27, 2005 5:55 PM
Subject: The Mikefule Anthology
>
>
> If there is a demand, I will try to produce an edited document, keeping
> the original text as far as possible, but tidying up spellings and
> puntuation, and pruning the excessive repetition. The result of this
> would be a document with about 50 - 100 pages of text, so quite a big
> job for me to do, and for you to read.
>
> Be honest, is the demand there or not?
>
>
> –
> Mikefule
>
Demand, I would think so: I had even considered gathering them together
myself, together with many of the replies, into one document to make it
easier for me to re-read them. I would certainly download the collected
works, I might have to translate from Lotus to something I can understand.
I don’t think you really need to spend time tidy them up, most of us
appreciate that the odd typo creeps in from time to time. Some of them can
even be funny… In the days of DOS it was very easy to mistype something,
often amusing that you would rather not have your mother reading…
A Mikefule tale is one thing to look forward to at the beginning of the week
when work needs several spoonfuls of sugar.
Nao
The human race is a species so incredibly intelligent that it has invented
Gods to explain anything it does not understand…although my friend Dave
said no amount of Gods will ever explain how a bra can be removed without
disturbing the T-shirt. I told him the process is called a Moebius strip.
The other side of the T-shirt remains unreachable.
'Twould only be in electronic form. The economics and logistics of hard copy for such a widespread but small distribution would be far too much for a bear of little brain like me.
Probably it would go out as a pdf file, but that’s a decision for later. I may even do it in batches of 10 stories or something.
I’d certainly like a copy. make certain that you do the proper all rights reserved thing.
It comes to mind that it might make a good book someday. There’s a book called “never too late” about a cellist and his everyday experiences playing and memories about learning. He’s not even an excellent cellist, just a man who loves playing and having it be a part of his life. Also a David Sedaris book called “naked” (its an autobiography not a ceks book). is a series of anecdotes that relate the maturing perceptions of the author as he comes of age.
Your essays remind me of parts of these books becasue they shedlight on unicycling, life where you live, and you!
You might consider how these could be compiled into a document that shows a progression, has a gestalt that might interest a publisher. They are well written and a nice read. Try them out on some folks who aren’t unicycle riders, I bet you find they will be delighted as well.
I’d be interested in reading that Mike. Mainly for the earlier posts from before I started reading the forum.
Some of the routes are quite similar as you say (I’ve got a pretty clear picture of that suspension bridge over the canal in my mind) but your writing style is always entertaining to read so it doesn’t really matter.
lets you put a book online for people to order hard copies.
You can set if you want royalties or whatnot, and hence set the price (over and above the minimum cost for printing).
It’s free for the author, the website takes part of the book cost for printing costs.
They’re proper books. If you pay them $150 you can get an ISBN, and into wholesalers in the UK and US, so people can buy them from a normal bookshop. If you don’t, people have to order them from lulu.com.
Great stuff Mike. Being a relative newcomer to both the sport and the forum, I missed a lot of your write ups. I enjoy them immensly and agree with others in this thread that even non-unicyclists would enjoy the stories. It might even give them an appreciation of the abuse we sometimes receive from the general populace and perhaps make them think twice about making some wise crack.
I know that without a lot of extra effort from you that this project of yours will fall mainly on the existing unicycling community however, for the uninitiated, perhaps a preface and a glossary of some common terms (Coker, UPD, etc.) would be helpful.
My main aim is to share the fun with the people in this community. The stories were written partly for my own enjoyment, and partly because I started to get requests for more. I feel like I’ve made many friends here, even though I haven’t met most of you, and I would not wish to exploit this forum for financial gain. Unicycling gave me a focus at one of the most difficult times of my life.
I think if I were to write for the non unicycling community, I’d need to tone some of it down, and probably mix and match the real incidents into a longer story to give it some semblance of a plot.
If the pdf I’ve posted attracts interest in this forum, I’ll probably tidy it up a bit more, add some of the later stories, add more commentary, an index and, as you suggest, a glossary of terms.
