Humorist Robert Benchley once wrote an essay entitled, "Why does nobody collect me?"

Well, I can't compare to their output, or to Benchley's friendship with Ernie H., but I know where he's coming from when he finds his books in the remainder bin.

I was wandering through my local bike store over the weekend, only to discover that multiple copies of four of my five books were piled up in a galvanized tin tub, all with marked down prices on them.

For a split second, I thought about buying them all myself, but knowing that I have two girls in college and can't afford a new set of tire tubes, I had to pass on the opportunity.

But, then again, buying them wasn't the point.

Finding them in a galvanized tub was the point.

Four of the five novels in the series were piled into the tub, the covers somewhat worn, but still attached. I wasn't quite sure what to think. I know that I had taken a chance in book four, breaking the unspoken rules of plotting to push the story (and, thus, the series) in a new direction. It pushed the series in a new direction all right, it pushed it right to a natural end of the series.

Oops.

Well, it seemed like a good idea at the time.

Then, by the time I came up with an idea to continue the series, my publisher had been sold, the management changed and they weren't really interested in more bicycling adventures of Will and the rest.

Ah, well.

But all that is passed. About five years past.

The present stared me in the face. My books. My children, in a way, sitting orphaned in a tub, unloved, unwanted, unbought.

And me without the wherewithal to save them.

I turned my back on my own creations and walked out into the light of a Colorado Sunday afternoon.