Swan Song II

Dear readers,

Sadly, for the second time since I’ve been writing a weekly newsletter, I am once again putting it on hold for a while.

I say “sadly” because frankly  it’s been fun to spout off every Monday about some pet peeve or other without being interrupted.

But the downside is that I am a one-person operation (except for my wife, Sue, who edits everything I write).  Otherwise, I do all the research, all the writing, all the rewriting (I do a lot of that), and so it takes an enormous amount of time – which I don’t mind, but since I offer it free it pays no bills.

So, I’m stopping for now and will focus on selling my books, and reading books again while relaxing, something I’ve been missing.   Four of my books are posted on my Website, and also below, and I have two more that are being prepared to be introduced.

But before I go, I want to offer my sincere thanks to you for reading my rants.  I especially want to thank those of you who have taken the time to offer your comments and ideas, favorable or not.  After all, there’s no point in writing if nobody reads what you write, and there’s no way to know if anybody’s reading unless they tell you.

I will not be gone forever.  Indeed, I intend to pop in once in awhile with some deathless prose on this or that subject, or just to say hello and remind you I am still here.  But not every Monday.

In the meantime, here are the books I’ll be selling, with brief descriptions of each and ways how to buy them if you are interested.

• The Year 2020: A Day-by-Day Diary of a Debacle. (2021) $4.99. I spent 4-6 hours a day, every day, from Feb. 23, 2020, through Joe Biden’s inauguration on Jan. 20, 2021, compiling the day’s most important news events and condensing them into a readable format.  My original idea was to journal the presidential election, but two days after I began a new virus was revealed that threatened to engulf the world — which, of course, it did.  The resulting book, which is a day-by-day focus on the covid pandemic and the Joe Biden-Donald Trump presidential campaign as they developed, is gargantuan — 174,000 words covering 600 typewritten pages.  But there is and can be no other book like it, and it is bound to grow in value as the years pass and today’s and tomorrow’s children want to know what that horrid year was like. 2020 is currently available only in ebook formats, including epub, which is supported by many apps and devices such as Apple Books, Barnes and Noble Nook, Kobo, Google Play, etc.; mobi, for Amazon Kindle apps and devices; pdf, a fixed format good for printing; lrf, a format for older Sony reader devices; pdb, a format for Palm OS devices; and txt, which contains no formatting.

• The Gospel of Yeshua: A Fresh Look at the Life and Teaching of Jesus (2001).  This is a fictionalization – not a novel – of  “the most beautiful story ever told.”  It is the result of a year-long up-close and personal examination of the life of Jesus the man – not the Messiah.  Although it was published by a small local publisher, it drew strongly positive national reviews by mainstream clergy and secular sources alike, including, among others, a starred review in the American Library Association’s Booklist magazine.  Michael J. McManus, ethics and religion columnist for the New York Times news service, devoted an entire column to suggesting his followers read it for Lent. It is available online via Amazon (Kindle edition) and Goodreads (multiple formats).  Signed copies of the print edition are available by sending a check  for $18 (S&H included) to Skip Johnson, P.O. Box 30732, Charleston, SC  29407-8777.

• Timeless Perspectives on Events, Science and Religion: Select Essays from Onward|Upward. (2023)  $2.99. I wrote a weekly newsletter in 2021-2022 titled Onward|Upward that, like this one, focused on current events with some forays into gee-whiz science and religion.  This is a collection of some of my readers’ favorite posts, as judged by their reactions.  It is currently only available as an eBook (multiple formats: epub, mobi, pdf, lrf, pdb, txt, html) via Smashwords.

• A Charleston Primer for Yankees: History with a Southern Accent. (2010)  I wrote and self-published Primer  to  give those not familiar with this city’s incredible history, especially tourists, a chance to learn it in one or two sittings.  My purpose from the beginning was to compress the story into a short, accurate, readable and inexpensive narrative that will reach as many people as possible.  The book, which was edited for accuracy by an officer of the South Carolina Historical Society, is currently available online via Goodreads (multiple formats).  Signed copies of the paperback edition are available by sending a check for $8.00 (which includes S&H) to Skip Johnson,  P.O. Box 30732, Charleston, SC  29407-8777.

I will have two other books coming online in a week or two.  One is Offering, which is a tightly written collection of religious and secular thoughts that I wrote during my year-long study of Jesus, and the other is  LifeLines: Stories from Along the Way, a book of vignettes that I believe everyone who has reached senior status should write.  More about those later.

But for now, so long.  And again, thank you.