The analogy which is central to this novel first came to me while I was a student in Athens, Greece in 1972. I imagined how we are all scaling the same mountain, trying to reach the peak. But because we are in different places, our views may appear to be very different indeed. One person finds the climb quite easy. Another claims it is craggy and rough. Some say the mountain is steep. To others, it seems more like a plateau. At times it might seem we are not on the same journey at all.
In 1979, I took an experiential seminar called Life Dynamics. It turned out to be quite an eye-opener. One of the upshots of that experience was my Muse telling me to "go out and write THE book." I knew exactly which book that was, so I spent the next year and a half outlining the multiple plots which make up The Last Book's chose-your-own-story structure. This was by far the most difficult part of the writing. Creation of the initial text itself took six months. Work on the second draft, which I completed in a room rented just for that purpose, took me seven full days without a break. And the third draft was finished a few months later. By the summer of 1982, I had a finished manuscript.
Over the next two years, twenty-six publishers and one agent had an opportunity to help me bring The Last Book into print. Publishing was eventually undertaken by Metamorphous Press (Oregon, USA), and the book was released in both hard-bound and trade paperback editions in late 1984.
Early reviews were quite favorable, and The Last Book was distributed not only in the United States, but also in Japan. It was taken out of print in 1991, after seven years on the market. A revised edition was published by Universal Press (Seoul, Korea) in 1995, with annotation in Korean. Although copies of the original edition are now rather scarce, The Last Book can still be found in libraries across the United States (in Dallas and San Francisco, for example). It is also listed by Amazon.com under "Hard to Find" books (ISBN#0943920183).
Adding the full text of The Last Book to this web gallery is a bit more work than I can handle just now, but I have added a few sample pages here, and I will be adding more in the near future.