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I Paid $100 an Hour For Publishing Advice So You Don’t Have To — Final Lush Years pg167–168

Colorful companion to my memoir The Incompetent Psychic

Mernie Buchanan
3 min readJan 8, 2021

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Benicia State Park 2015

1993

Although by this point in life there wasn’t much I loved, my dog and my best friend together were enough to boot my hungover butt out of bed for an early walk. Mostly it was my dog Rosie.

Dry marsh grasses and reeds rustled in a chilly breeze off the water. A raven squawked and Bett mentioned it was the winter solstice.

“Cool. We should do something,” I suggested. “How about I buy a tarot reading. Are you around this afternoon?”

We finished our walk and I went home to work doing whatever it was I did way back before affordable personal computers… probably something with a typewriter and a fax. Then Rosie and I headed over to Bett’s. — End of Chapter 8

Here at the halfway point of the manuscript I started looking into the book industry. I hired an expert in the New York corporate publishing world for a two-hour consultation (all I could budget at $100 per).

The manuscript still needed another year of work, but the expensive expert’s questions were insightful and to the point. Her comments were stringent. She said people don’t care about a memoir…

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Mernie Buchanan
Mernie Buchanan

Written by Mernie Buchanan

Seeking sunnier landscapes I left Woodstock NY for Tucson where I'll teach painting & finish a scifi novel. Images are my originals. Links at mernie.com

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