I’m still broken but healing.

Physically, I mean.

The surgeon dislocated my right hip and pounded around the joint to replace the arthritis-wracked parts with high-tech titanium and plastic.

My mind’s still sound. Maybe sounder than ever – the soundest in my 68 years. Sounder and soundest are correct words, by the way. I know because I’m a writer. I throw words the way David slingshot the rock at Goliath, looking to take down giants and deserving small-time rubes. And, yeah, I know slingshot is a noun. I added additional power to its meaning because verbs matter. Slingshoot that, sucker.

Working on my federal government writer’s grant (Social Security) as well as a lifetime of savings and longtime investments, I have something important to say whether you buy and read my current novel or the next or the ones after that. Same goes for the short story collections I expect to one day get published so I can show up at libraries, bars, book clubs and anywhere else people gather to talk about books.

I’m out of day-to-day journalism except for this blog when I address local, regional and national current events that provide the shape of things to come. Thanks to Max Frost and The Troopers, a reference few people other than Painter and Rosen will get. Tomorrow is today, right boys?

Do I expect national acclaim from my novel and novels to come? No. Do I expect to make money? No. Lose money? No.

All expense incurred in the process of spreading the Gospel according to Corbett is well worth any and all expense. When Stephanie and I agreed to unleash “Blood Red Syrah” we did so with one caveat: Have a good time in the process.

Mission accomplished in the little more than a year since we unleashed the gruesome California wine country thriller on the world. That’s a trip, huh? You can buy my observations and analysis of California screaming anywhere around the globe where you can order online.

Am I having a good time?

Oh, yeah.

Do I wish more people knew about my book? Sure. Do I wish more people would take time to read my book? Of course. Hell, I doubt half my limited number and carefully selected number of Facebook friends (291) read the book. Am I angry about the slight?

I’m furious.

Ha.

That’s a joke.

Not reading a crazy good novel by a guy with whom they share a personal connection, however limited nowadays for most, is their problem. They have their own lives and screams. If I was inviting people to my funeral most of them wouldn’t attend. And I wouldn’t attend theirs. We live in a screwy social media world that by and large thrives on antisocial behavior.

 Still, I write.

My short stories are getting nuttier. I’m learning as I go. “Paddy’s Day in Trump Town,” my next novel, is in the planning stages of publication, dependent on what happens to Donald Trump in the next few months and to us as humans in the bold aftermath. I have three other novels in the hopper but on hold: “Dune Magic,” the “Blood Red Syrah” sequel, “Hoocha Weed Xpress,” a wild west 1800s dope smuggling saga, and “Swan Dive,” a South Florida escapade with exploding seagull drones my friend Dale Duncan should like immensely.

Still, I write.

What about advertising, reviews, and networking with the countless other writers who largely market their work themselves to limited praise and adulation?

No thanks.

I don’t play well with most people, particularly those in publishing authority whose rump I’m expected to kiss in exchange for adulation. Do I yearn for praise from a mostly unheard of legion of book reviewers that self-published authors and those of us published by independent small publishers depend on for exposure? That’s a game I’m not interested in playing. I was never much of a suck-up. Respect is different. Brown-nosing is a whole other kiss on the lips.

But anything can happen. Do I expect a major publishing house to pick up on my bandit flavor and rush me into print? I’m too old for daydreaming and don’t register on any mainstream publisher’s demographic scale for mass-marketed memoirs, thrillers or horror stories. My experience with book agents and publishers large and small left me feeling more of a literary outlaw than ever. Did the experience frustrate me? Nope. Rejection suits me.

While I’m confessing my sins, I might as well confess another.

I don’t like Stephen King. When I wrote “Blood Red Syrah” in 2016, I pegged the book as a psychological thriller. The story is much more than that and would have easily fit into a hallucinatory 60s and 70s West Coast scene. The book now stands as an instant counterculture classic meant for brain cells that still spark dissent. Not long ago, metal and horror fans started telling me I was writing horror, which I was – the horror of everyday existence. Their characterization led to King, whom I had never read until now. I picked up two used hardbacks at the Creature Features Weekend in Gettysburg where we set up shop and hawked my novel.

I didn’t like the Maine dialect or the hackneyed local dialogue in “Dolores Claiborne.” And, as the son of a Pennsylvania state trooper who grew up in and around a PSP barracks, I say King came up short in his predictable portrayal of Pennsylvania state trooper culture in “From a Buick 8.” The big gray hat strap lays awkwardly under the lip and on the chin, not under the chin, Mr. King.

So shoot me. I’d rather read my own stuff. I’d rather you read it, too. But that’s out of my hands. I’m looking forward to putting together an Irish tour for “Paddy’s Day” and turning loose my wicked prose on Wilkes-Barre’s Irish-Americans who take great pride in putting Trump in the White House.

I’m looking forward to hiding out at Frenchy’s Oasis Motel in Clearwater Beach, Florida, for the holidays, drinking and eating grouper and stone crab claws while researching with Raymond and Michael how to best blow up bogus birds on the beach.

My advice to you? Write for yourself if you’re a writer. Read for yourself if you’re a reader. Have a good time in the process. As Stephen King once said, “This is not a bad life.”

Let’s see what happens once I light my new black death candle and ask for help from Santa Muerte in exchange for my allegiance. I’ve already got back-up from Jesús Malverde. With Stephanie as my manager, I won’t ask for more than that.

I’m already rich beyond measure.