Ghost Ranch Story for Christmas Giving?

I have not updated about Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch recently because I haven’t had much to say. Sales are still slow, although a few miraculously happen here and there.

Should I accept a talented friend’s offer to help me develop a website, at little or no cost to me? They say that’s a good way to attract attention and maybe sales. I have never been very good at intentionally attracting attention to myself, perhaps because my height does that for me fairly automatically. But my height doesn’t help in getting my book sold. Besides, I am not so tall as I used to be.

I did place small classified ads in Presbyterians Today and Presbyterian Outlook just in time for holiday gifting. We will see. Advertising costs, and since I am taking no profits from any sales, I absorb all costs myself…well, Maxine and I absorb them ourselves, to be perfectly honest.

I sent my first gift from sales to Ghost Ranch. I was happy to do that, although I must say communication with the ranch about my book has been a challenge. (Communication with Ghost Ranch about almost anything is famously difficult.) I have been assured that copies of Ghosts and Gold are now on the shelves of the Trading Post, and am waiting to see if they decide to publicize it. I hope they do, since there are few visitors there these days, but I can only wait and see. I have no idea when I will be able to go there again, which is very distressing. I love the place.

Something caused me to check with online retailers to make sure Ghosts and Gold is still available to a worldwide readership. bookshop.org and Barnes and Noble are carrying it, as is Amazon. The first source is my preference because sales through it support local independent book stores. That’s very good. But honesty compels me to tell you that Amazon has cut the price substantially, WITHOUT EVEN ASKING ME! IMAGINE!

Amazon also reveals that Ghosts and Gold has been numerically reviewed by two readers, one of whom gave it a 5, and the other, a 1, resulting in an average rating of 3. Which is…average.

I am not sure what to make of that, except that you might want to consider giving a pretty good book about ghosts in a desert as a holiday gift. What could be more representative of 2020?

Thanks in advance.

Sales are slow and slower…

Not unexpectedly, sales of the paperback edition of Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch slowed considerably after the first month’s burst. I think I’ve pretty well run through my friends and family, and that’s okay. I understand that. I am grateful to everyone who bought it, and hope you enjoyed it.

(I do not know about the sales of e-books. The printer I worked with does not get information on those sales, so I have to wait for the likes of Amazon and Barnes and Noble to tell me, and that may take weeks.)

Of course, my greatest prospect for sales seems to me lie in being able to get it on the shelves of the Ghost Ranch Trading Post, and in the ranch itself promoting it a bit. This is a niche book, aimed at the tourist trade, at people who want a souvenir of their visit to the ranch for themselves or to share with others.

I could not have chosen a worse time to publish Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch. There is no regular programming at Ghost Ranch this summer, and only a hope that it will resume in the fall. The ranch is open for tours, trial rides, and day visitors…if you are a New Mexico resident or an out-of-state visitor who has quarantined for 14 days. The effectively kills my market.

I hope, for my book’s sake, and even more for Ghost Ranch’s sake, that we can move beyond this most difficult time soon.

Progress Report

I am grateful to everyone who has purchased a copy of Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch. At this point I am sure most of those purchases have been made by friends, but hope the book might gain some traction with others in time. My marketing budget is tiny, so if you’ve read it and liked it, please recommend it to someone else who might appreciate it.

Barnes and Noble has it available as a NOOK book, but so far the e-version is not available on Amazon. I will check it again in a few days and see if it’s there; if not, I will have to figure it out. bookshop.org, which supports indy book stores, is offering a discount on the purchase price, so please be sure to check there if you want a hard copy.

I’ve been aware of strange pricing options on Amazon, and they’ve hit my book. Amazon itself offers it new for its asking price ($11.99), but if you want you can buy it “used (nearly new)” from a site called “californiabooks” for about $28. What is that about? Do they sell lots of books that way? Does the author/publisher get more money when they do? Any explanations for that phenomenon?

Finally, a friend, whose husband is now receiving palliative care, wrote to me: “Your book has provided much needed moments of wonderful memories as I sit with (him) and makes me want to return at the first opportunity. Well done!”

That may be the most moving “review” Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch will ever receive. I am very grateful.

Vulnerable!

Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch will be available one week from today, May 19. It may be pre-ordered now on Amazon and elsewhere, and some dear friends have told me they’ve placed orders. (Thank you!)

I am very excited and very nervous, as I am sure all authors, particularly first-time-being-published authors, must be.

It would probably help if I were not self-publishing Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch. That would mean that someone else thought it was worth publishing. But anyone can self-publish, and almost anyone has. Though I have asked for, paid for, and received wonderful help along the way, and have received some deeply-appreciated encouragement, the book’s words and photographs are mine alone. The book stops here.

I am excited because I am extremely pleased with how the book looks. I am anxious because I know you can’t judge a book by its cover…and judgment can go every which way.

I am excited because something with my name on it is out there in the world for people to purchase. I am nervous because people are and will be (I trust) spending their hard-earned money to buy a thing for which they have at least modest expectations, which this book may or may not fulfill. And I have always had difficulty dealing with the possibility that I might disappoint others’ expectations of me.

In putting a book on the market, I am asking people to trust me. To trust that they will find it worth their investments of money and of time. To trust they will find it at least interesting if not moving, and that through it they may imagine and even feel something new to their experience. Being human, I hope for a few nice comments/reviews. Being human, I hope I’ve sufficiently steeled myself for those that may not be so nice. Publishing a book makes me feel incredibly vulnerable.

But here’s the deal: this is the book about Ghost Ranch that I want to write and publish. Every word and every photo says, this is Dean Myers’s story of Ghost Ranch. No matter how it fares in the world, it is a story I want to tell, told the way I want to tell it. This certainty makes any sense of being vulnerable worth it.

A gift to the giver

Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch is not primarily about me or what I have done at Ghost Ranch. It is about Ghost Ranch itself, as I have experienced and come to know it personally. It is, I suppose, an example of creative nonfiction, that writing genre that channels factual information through an admittedly subjective lens.

I took part in my first writing workshop at Ghost Ranch (or anywhere else, for that matter) in the spring of 1999, during one week of a greatly-appreciated three-month sabbatical from my pastoral responsibilities at the Church of the Western Reserve. Ina Hughes was our group’s convener and mentor. I could not have chosen a better person than Ina to lead a workshop in creative nonfiction.

That week changed my life in many ways. After years of writing to satisfy the expectations others — teachers, congregations, God (?) — I was suddenly freed-up to write to fulfill my own expectations. Ina and the class encouraged me to think I might have some aptitude for such writing. I’ve worked at developing that aptitude, though not consistently.

Several years ago I began to write short stories. I started my first, The Owl, at another writing festival at Ghost Ranch, I think in 2013. Writing workshops I’ve done closer to home have all been helpful…but none like the ones at Ghost Ranch’s writing festivals, because of the place, because of the people.

Thus, the emotional drive behind Ghosts and Gold. Ghost Ranch has given me so much, and I want to return something to it. That is why I will give all of the net proceeds of the book’s sale to the ranch. (I am absorbing all costs associated with getting it edited, designed, and printed.) I do not expect my monetary gift to amount to much, but maybe the book will encourage people to come to Ghost Ranch themselves. That may be worth far more.

Right now, Ghost Ranch, like so many other places, is closed to the public. They are hoping to be able to offer at least a partial summer schedule. It is likely to be a difficult year for the ranch in almost every way, and it is not the kind of summer for introducing Ghosts and Gold I had envisioned. But maybe it will help fill a need for those who love the ranch and will not be able to visit it in person in 2020. Maybe the timing is better than I’d hoped.

Which way is up?

On my first visit to Ghost Ranch in 1984, my sense of direction there got completely turned around, and I have never gotten over it. Having been raised in the great plains, tamed as they are by their enormous mile-square grid of roads, I almost always was sure which way was north. But that doesn’t work so well in places like Ghost Ranch (or Pittsburgh, where I lived for 15 years). No such grid of roads could discipline such locales.

I could blame my confusion on the map they give you when you arrive. Because, on that map, instead of up being north, up is west. Which may explain why I cannot get over the feeling that, when I stand on the front porch of the dining hall, I am facing northwest. But I am not: I am facing southwest. No matter how often I turn that map a quarter-turn so up is north, I cannot shake my original certainty about direction. Even knowing that the rising sun shines on Chimney Rock and the setting sun illuminates Kitchen Mesa does not shake my conviction.

Facts are stubborn things. But in this case, not stubborn enough to convince me which way is north at Ghost Ranch. If I get some directions wrong in Ghosts and Gold, it’s not because I didn’t try to get them right. It’s so darned hard to get something right once you’ve got it wrong. And if you do finally realize your mistake, you tend to want to blame someone else for your having made it. It’s the map’s fault! I am not the only person to realize all of these painful truths, am I?

Speaking of mistakes, there were three mistakes in the proof copy, tiny ones. Three little words—one word missing, two just plain wrong. I found two of them, and Maxine found one. No big deal, but I am getting them fixed. The finished product will be too nice to publish it knowing there are mistakes in it that I knew about ahead of time.

When it all started

When did my passion for Ghost Ranch begin?

In a way, it began before I ever stepped foot there when, in 1964, I made my first trip to the American Southwest. For two weeks that summer, a group of us from Coe College worked at and around the Presbyterian Mission at Ganado, Arizona. We did not stop at Ghost Ranch. But something about the southwest’s landscape both appealed to me and repelled me, given my green-fields-of-Iowa upbringing. I knew I would one day return to that part of the world.

Twenty years later, I accompanied the senior high youth of the First Presbyterian Church of Sterling, Illinois, on a service project at Ghost Ranch. I was their pastor. I have pictures of us loading stones into the bed of a pickup, I believe to be used to line the drainage swale that runs between the ranch parking lot and administration buildings. We also worked in the garden. And we hiked some of the trails. A death in my family resulted in my leaving early, but I was hooked.

Ten years after that, I convinced our family it was time for us to make our own journey to Ghost Ranch. The four of us—Maxine, Elizabeth (17), Rebecca (14), and myself—piled into our Plymouth minivan for a three-day drive from northeast Ohio to northern New Mexico, squeezing in a little sight-seeing along the way. The excitement and anxiety grew as we came closer to our destination: What it would really be like at that place? How would be be housed? Would I pay a high price for forcing Ghost Ranch upon the rest of them for our family vacation?

It began badly, stoking my worst fears. We were assigned a room in Corral Block. One room. Linoleum floor. Two bunk beds. Ancient dresser (maybe there were two). A wooden chair (or two). Single light hanging from the middle of the ceiling. Fine sand everywhere. And, of course, a communal bath to serve all of Corral Block, out the door and who knows how many steps from our room.

I feared for my life. I went back to registration and asked if there were any other accommodations available for a couple with two teen-aged daughters. Nope. I returned with the bad news and we unpacked what we could and prepared for our first walk to the dining hall. It was a rough night.

But here’s the magic—or the spirit—of Ghost Ranch. Twenty-four hours later, no one cared about where we were lodged. We’d all enjoyed one of the best days of our lives, and were captivated by Ghost Ranch and all it promised us. We’d begun to make new friends, been awed by the surroundings, challenged by the programs we were in, and we’d hardly seen each other for the entire day, which was pretty great after three days of minivan togetherness. At the end of the week, it was hard to leave Ghost Ranch.

That week was unique bonding experience for us all, and we have recalled it many times. That summer of 1994, Ghost Ranch became a integral part of who we are as individuals and as a family.

Ghosts and Gold goes to press

This has been the week -- this holy, COVID-quarantined week -- that my book, Ghosts and Gold: My Story of Ghost Ranch, went to press. I have ordered the first copy for myself so I can review it.

It's been a long journey about a place that is from where I live, yet close to my heart. No small part of that journey has involved learning how to self-publish. Fortunately, I've received good and willing help every step of the way. 

The purpose of this blog is to tell you about the book and all that's gone into it, why I've invested so much of myself (and my substance) in it, and, when the time is right, to encourage you to get your very own copy.

I tried to name this blog simply ghostsandgold, but that name is not available. Another blog begins with those words; its last entry was 2012, and it had one follower. I hope I keep up a little better than that, but readers of my other blog know my posts are not very regular. But I am motivated for this one!

For now: welcome to mystoryofghostranch!