I want to write a review of Hunter S. Thompson’s semi-autobiographical new book, Kingdom of Fear, but I feel I’m not worthy. So I’ll just say that Thompson still writes with his balls and leave it at that.

Douglas Adams died in 2001, and I’m still aggravated about it. Couldn’t he have waited to die until it was more convenient for his readers? In fact, while reading the introduction to The Salmon of Doubt, the untimeliness of his death rudely slapped me with a wet towel and made me cry.

The Salmon of Doubt is a collection of Adams’ work that was published posthumously. His publisher Christopher Cerf and his wife Jane Belson pieced it together from his many computers.

The resulting compilation is a must read for fans. On the other hand, any person who is unfamiliar with Adams’ previous work should not approach this book. It does not convey the man’s true genius even half as well as any one of his other novels. You would do Adams a disservice by judging him on the basis of this book alone.

I did have some reservations going into the book, which is lucky because it can be difficult to get into a classy book like this without making reservations.

Seriously though, I wasn’t sure I wanted to read a book that the author never meant for me to see. You’d never guess it, but even I don’t let anyone see my stuff before I revise it a few times. But, then again, once I’m dead I hope I’m too busy decomposing to worry about someone reading my unfinished drivel.

I’m not calling The Salmon of Doubt drivel. Not at all. In fact, a good portion of the book isn’t even unfinished. Part of it is made up of letters and essays that were published in magazines while the author was still with us.

Some of the essays relate to Adams’ devout atheism, others are about his love-hate relationship with computers, yet another is about his friendship with some neighbors’ dogs who “ignored” him when he took them for walks. All of these pieces are complete and stand well on their own.

Then you get to the title work. Adams’ had hinted that he intended to piece it into the next Hitchhiker book. He never got it to that stage in its development. It’s still a Dirk Gently novel, and it’s obviously not finished. It doesn’t even have an ending except that the words stop. Of course, that’s preferable to someone else putting forth a hack ending for Adams’ book, but it’s still disconcerting that there’s no conclusion.

Even so, this is well worth a read if you are a Douglas Adams fan. If you are not a fan already, start by reading The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy and read The Salmon of Doubt only after you’ve become a fan.

It’s easy enough to fall in love with Adams’ books, so becoming a fan is as easy as grabbing your towel and stowing away on a Vogon ship.

You’ll soon discover that there is nothing not to like about Douglas Adams - unless you count the fact that he left us too soon.

“I heard poppa tell momma, ‘Let that boy boogie woogie, it’s in him and it’s got to come out.’” - John Lee Hooker

I’m going to plug a book today. It’s called The Forest for the Trees by Betsy Lerner, and in it she provides advice for writers who have yet to be published. Whether I am a talented writer or an interesting one matters a great deal to me, I won’t lie about that. I would love to get a book published - I won’t lie about that either.

But, even if I am never lucky enough to get published or become accepted as a writer, nothing can change the fact that if I don’t write I become emotionally ill. Constipated, in a literary sense, if you will.

Therefore, even if you think I suck, I think I suck, or he, she and it thinks I suck, I will continue to consider myself a writer, because I can’t stop doing it without suffering the consequences.

I’m different from a heroin addict in that no one judges the heroin addict’s ability to shove the needle in his arm properly or says to him, “You call yourself an addict? Look at you. You have a healthy glow. Get outta here with that addict stuff. You’re a fraud. You’ll never be a Keith Richards or a Sid Vicious.”

Anyway, what initially attracted me to Lerner’s book was that she writes about the neuroses that all writers may experience in some form or another. She writes, “Writers love to worry. By their very nature they are neurotic…Some pick their skin, some pull out their hair or, in more extreme cases cut, burn or scar themselves. Many suffer from allergies, asthma, skin eruptions, rashes.”

I will not tell you here what neurotic things I do. There’s an icky list of them. But, hey, if you show me yours, I’ll show you mine.

Lerner also comments on the fact that many writers are hypochondriacs. I consider my hypochondria to be a blessing, because no one can prove I don’t have it, as is likely the case with the other 200 maladies I have experienced just during the time it’s taken me to write this post.

I am only halfway through reading this book. Hopefully, it will help me to see myself clearly enough that I might finally decide just what kind of book I’d like to write and, more importantly, what I could conceivably get published. My hope is that, once I get a book on the market, my husband will stop his constant nagging.

If you’ve read anything you found helpful relating to this topic, please share it here. I’ll be forever grateful. Blogging is a great outlet, but it doesn’t pay any bills.

Best wishes to anyone out there who has the writing monkey on his back but who hasn’t yet managed to put down on paper even a single thing that he might sell to a publisher.