Why thin air?

I sell the majority of my books at craft shows. Often a shopper will stop to study the banner that hangs along the front of my table, then ask the question "Why Thin Air Books?"

Good question.

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I created Thin Air Books to market my self published books after a group of other writers came to the conclusion that books sold better if they came from a publishing house. There are a number of reasons why I chose the name that I did.

When I started Thin Air Books, I lived in Albuquerque, New Mexico.

While Denver is known as the Mile High City, Albuquerque is also a mile above sea level. The air up here is pretty thin. It is even thinner on the top of the Sandias, the mountains that lay just east of Albuquerque. I used a picture of the snow covered Sandias, taken from my backyard, as the backdrop for the banner on the top of my website.

Since then, I have moved into those mountains. I live at nearly 8,000 feet - in rarefied air, indeed. The air is thin and dry enough that it cools off quickly at night. A bazillion stars spangle the heavens on a clear night. From my balcony I can see the lights of Santa Fe, and the Sangre de Cristo Mountains beyond.

The view from my balcony.

I do not pull my stories from thin air like a sleight-of-hand magician. The original concepts may come from my imagination, from an offhand comment in a conversation,  or a single photograph, but I engage in a lot of research before my stories hit the market. For Swan Song, for instance, I had to follow the most current research on Neanderthal development and culture. Although

 the Neanderthals have been long dead, who they were and what they were capable of is currently a topic of hot debate among scientists. The research was interesting and evolving as I wrote. I also researched Beowulf commentary, recent terrorist activity, and date rape drugs. Authors have to know a lot of strange things if they want their books to ring true.