THE BOOK - LEVEL HEADS XE
In this blog, I'm going to write a bit about each story in "Level Heads XE: The Deluxe Edition." It will introduce you to the content and also give more information about the stories. The quesion I'm asked most often is this: Where in the WORLD do you come UP with this stuff? In the book, each story is followed by a page or three that answer that question. But I'll elaborate here.
To start, we'll talk about how the book was named and a bit about its cover.
The book opens with "The Haggle," a very humorous story about a self-absorbed young man who is out to buy a truck. Everything else in life - his very-pregnant wife, his irritable bowel syndrome and his job - are secondary. He's in that "buying mode" and nothing is going to stop him. "The Haggle" was inspired by a recent truck purchase I'd made myself but I won't elaborate on that here ... more on that later.
To save money, I bought the standard edition of the truck, the "SE." The "XE" is the deluxe edition. Since the story opens with a humorous tale of a truck purchase, I thought it only fitting to label the book the "XE edition." It's that simple.
You see, this book writing stuff is not rocket science.
Another story, "The Long Flight" is set aboard an intercontinental flight from New York to Amsterdam, hence the airplane. Yet another story, "The Heat Pump," deals with a man whose only joy and companion in life is his brand new heat pump. The heat pump pictured on the cover is the actual heat pump that sits outside my house, photographed with a Canon Digital Rebel SLR.
And the man on the cover? As you may have noticed, he's the same man on my home page (www.jimwcoleman.com). His name is Ralph Evenson. When coming up with ideas for the cover, I needed to find a rough-and-tumble tough guy with whiskers, tattoos, etc. When I ran into Ralph at work, I just knew he was it! With great fear and trepidation, I asked him to model for me. (Go ahead...you ask a big tough guy to model for you and see how far you get thrown across the parking lot!) In all actuality, Ralph is a giant teddy bear with a big heart. He drives a big truck and works in the Bremerton, Wash. area. Say hi to him if you run into him in a grocery store or a neighborhood saloon.
Your best bet is to buy the book today because otherwise, this blog may ruin some of the surprises for you. I would recommend reading my future comments about this book AFTER you read the book itself. That way, it's like coming back for seconds after a perfectly delicious meal. Oh, and after you read it, it's very helpful to go to amazon.com and leave a comment about the book for others to read. As the author, I thank you in advance for that.