Charley Warady

A little background first. I wrote 5IVE SPEED over a year ago, I think. I did the normal thing of sending out massive amounts of query emails to literary agents both in the United States and the UK. I received more than a few requests to read the manuscript and I sent them eagerly. The reviews were stunning and no one was willing to take it on. They said they couldn’t pigeonhole it. It was going to be a hard sell because it was very funny. Brilliantly written, but they wouldn’t know what shelf to put it on. And on and on.

There was a lovely agent in London who adored the book and she took it on. She said it was going to be difficult but she’d give it a shot. She said it was the best book she’d read in quite a while and deserved to be sold.

It wasn’t. The UK publishers all told her what a wonderful writer I am but the book is too American for their market. I let it drop.

My favorite book ever is CONFEDERACY OF DUNCES by John Kennedy Toole. He couldn’t get it published so he killed himself. His mother wound up getting it published. I briefly considered this route, but quickly realized no one cared about me enough to actually try to get 5IVE SPEED published after they cleaned up the mess that was once me.

Kindle offered an alternative solution.

Amazon offers a self-publishing system for Kindle/iPad/etc and marketing tools. After reading and researching about this method, I figured, what the hell. I still love the book and I’m still convinced that after people read it, they’ll love it, too. Then they’ll tell everyone else to read it. Why was I letting agents and publishers get in my way? That’s so twentieth century! Everyone is using an e-reader these days. I can’t believe I read books before I got my Kindle. Plus, I’m selling the damn book for about half the price of a movie ticket! How could you not buy it?

For those that don’t own a Kindle or have the Kindle software on your computer or still want to physically turn pages, I’m also producing a paperback that will be available in a couple weeks.

And for those that have read thus far and keep saying, “So, what’s the damn book about?”, here’s the description from my oh-so-many query letters:

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It isn’t until he meets his son’s future in-laws that he realizes he is tired of a three speed life. Time to move up.

Everything is perception, to be a soul-mate doesn’t always happen first time around, and illicit affairs are not always one-sided.

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Your next question is probably pertaining to buying it. You can buy it on the Amazon site and you can also get it by going through my Amazon Author’s page

Buying my book will not only make you laugh (and maybe cry a little, and maybe receive a message), but it will make a statement to the Old School literary world that the reader is the thing, and the new media don’t need them anymore.

Thanks for your support.

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