A Roomful Of Monkeys is the comic novel I’ve thought about writing for years. I like humor. I like satire. I could sustain both for about 600 words, as a newspaper or magazine column back in the good old days of newsprint. (I loved it when my words would dissolve into a  gray film on your fingertips.) But I never could see myself sustaining my particular brand of nonsense for 40, 50 or 60,000 words or more.

  Whether by pure accident or the result of a personal dare with myself, I wrote a 20,000 word novella sometime in 2014. To my great surprise (and embarrassment), it was accepted. Embarrassed, because it was in a sub genre of romance writing that I found disreputable. My goal was to establish a foothold in that market, and step my way up to a more reputable Nicholas Sparks type of stage.

  Eleven titles and three years later, I was still mired in the mediocrity of erotic romance. I taught myself a lot about plot and narrative, but as publishers pointed out, my brand of May-December romance was not what their readers were looking for. What they were looking for was not anything I was interested in writing.

  Carolyn passed in 2017, and I began a widow’s blog that morphed into a travel blog with Carol Madigan. That also failed to find any traction commercially. And then one day I started a narrative, that was followed by another day and then another. The writing flowed and seemed to have its own energy. I got up each morning and wrote with an enthusiasm I hadn’t experienced since writing my vagabonding memoir An American Walkabout back in 2010.

  Carol read the manuscript of A Roomful Of Monkeys and pronounced it “a romp.” That’s exactly what I was looking for, and sent it off to one of my old ebook publishers, who promptly accepted it. Its “Hello World” debut was this past Friday.

  Right now, you can download it from the publisher’s website at www.extasybooks.com. It should also be available at Amazon in the coming days.

  So, if you were ever curious about what is actually rattling around in this brain of mine, A Roomful Of Monkeys might just be the book for you. You might say, “Hmm, not much,” or “Boy, talk about making chicken soup out of chicken s@#t!”

  But I think you’ll find a chuckle or two and maybe more. And if you do like this one, just know theres another coming right behind it. Enjoy.