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What does it mean to be an “underground” author in the age of the internet?
Lately I’ve been reading a lot of and about Charles Bukowski. Largely ignored for most of his life, he submitted his rough, distinctly “low-brow” poetry to independent and small press journals. Through these he gained an “underground” following that slowly grew by word of mouth until other independent and small press publishing houses printed his works in book form for that “underground” fan base. Bukowski’s work caught the eye of other writers and musicians, mostly in the L.A. and San Francisco areas, until eventually he caught on nationally and even internationally.
But in today’s media world, what does it mean to be an “indie” author or to have an “underground” following?
This indie author, whom you are now reading, dear valued patron, has a substantial following, or, shall I say, a much larger following than I ever imagined would sprout from my initial blog posts about Lola. As I have explained in various interviews elsewhere, this compulsion, which borders on graphomania, came into being because, after a few months with Lo, I discovered that there was almost no literature out there about being in a relationship with a nymphomaniac. Since no one else was writing about it, I figured I’d toss my hat in the ring and give a first-person account of what it’s like — the proverbial trials and…