The Russians are big on book clubs as well, and they seem to love mysteries and thrillers.

I've got a big backlist, in case they're interested.

It's mostly science fiction, but they're big readers of that, too.

Mo' readers! Mo' countries! Big MO for you! Great news.

I hope they like my Russian surname. Maybe they'll think I'm a local boy.

Wishing you much success.

Well, it was Russian for congratulations when I pasted it!

It's all Greek to me, anyway.

I looked at your blog and web site earlier and noticed that you went to Indiana University. I'm currently going there except I'm not a traditional student. I'm a 39 year old junior.

When I was younger, I was an English major at Wright State University in Dayton, Ohio. Now I'm a business major. I've been writing for a while as a hobby. I've never tried to sell a story. You can find a lot of my short, short stories right here at DU. I just write for fun most of the time.

I was a math major, physics and astronomy minor at IU. I have very fond memories of the place for a number of reasons, the most important one being that I met my wife there. This was in the 1960s.

When I started writing seriously, the only respectable way to publish was via traditional publishing houses and magazines. I went that route. Nowadays, though, I'm self-publishing everything. After decades of dealing with agents and editors, I feel that I've done my time. There's no reason for you not to put your stories together into collections and publish them yourself as e-books. Print versions, too, if you want.

Another DUer was going to help me publish an e-book of short stories. I've got it together and was in the middle of editing it, but just set it aside for some reason. I have continued to write short stories. I'm not sure what my problem is.

Putting your work out there for the world to see.

But it's so much easier now than it was in the past. Formatting and uploading the files is straightforward. Covers are fairly easy to create in Photoshop or Gimp. You can avoid the pain of query letters to agents entirely.

What a coup--or whatever the Russian word for coup is!

I've been on your website often and your writing journey is impressive and inspiring. I grew up in the Denver area, now writing a novel set there in 1913-14. Doing lots of interesting research about my home state, much of which I had learned back in junior high Colorado history classes (requireds).

Best wishes!

Denver history is fascinating. I hope to use a lot of it in a novel myself some day, probably a long time from now.