Earl Yorke

I would first like to say that I never intended to post this here, but I understand that the purpose of a personal weblog is to tell the story of one person… ups and downs… good and bad.

Those of you who read my posts regularly will recall my mentioning that I was going to give a copy of “The Dominance Flush” to local writer, Paul Mann to read over and offer constructive criticism. I did this more than three months ago, and instead of giving me any kind of specific things that could be better, Paul told me that the manuscript was “unreadable.” This has hung in my mind like a bee circling my brain and stinging every time I think about my work. Recently, however, I have killed that bee… I’ll explain…

First let me elaborate for a bit about Paul Mann. He was, for some time, a hero to me. He was one of the few writers in the world who was able to get his work printed, and this amazed me. For a number of my teenage years I attempted to get my work into the hands of this strange man, but he would never touch it. He wouldn’t even give me any advice in regard to developing the plots of different manuscripts I was working on. His withdrawals were a mystery to me then, although the reason for his behavior was always right in front of my face… Paul Mann is bitter. Despite its quality, His work failed to sell when it was published, and I have come to believe that this is why he decided to make such a comment that would obviously break my spirits. Perhaps he was trying to spare me from going through what he did, or perhaps he was jealous… I will never know.

I can thank my wife, Dina, and Jeff Greenfield for helping me to overcome this. Their unwavering faith in my work and constant reassurance of its quality has helped me to get past Paul’s comment. I hope he is reading this so he will know that I will never give up!

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