R.P., our editor, suggested last week that I combine some of these meaningless Down the Road a Piece articles into a book. The idea isn't new, but I appreciate his confidence in my doing that. A few others have also offered that suggestion.

Ideas for columns come from strange places, and maybe some day before I'm 99.5 instead of my current 29.5 some of them will become books.

Books, remember them? Those hard- or soft-cover piles of paper fastened together at one edge so they won't fall apart while you're reading them at McDonald's -- or wherever might be your place to read, such as on a commuter train as I did while a student at a much younger age or a subway or my commuter bus to Jackson Lab in Bar Harbor.

I've always been a sucker for books, beginning when I was a tiny tyke in Pennsylvania. I recall those Christmas trees under which Mom and Dad had wrapped six or eight kids books for me to read, The Black Stallion, Laddie of Sunnybank, Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, Brighty of the Grand Canyon, The Hardy Boys, and lots more.

What I loved about books then, I still do. Their smell, their feel, the promise of excitement and adventure.

Not being interrupted by ads.

By the end of Christmas day, I usually had one almost read.

I remember being sick in bed one day during my junior-high-school days -- remember junior high, which evolved into middle school -- and writing my first short story. I made sure no one read it.

It was years later before my first short story, another one, showed up in a magazine. That excitement was as great as those first books under the Christmas tree.

This column is online. Doesn't smell or feel quite the same. I still get that amazed feeling when a reader e-mails me that he or she enjoyed -- or didn't -- some piece I wrote. I suppose it really doesn't matter that it's online. What matters is that somebody reads it.

That first sale came when I was teaching, and I was writing short stories to teach kids in the eighth grade to read. I had sent out many manuscripts, all of which had come back. The rule was that you submitted 20 manuscripts before one sold.

I now have two book manuscripts under way and a third, which is the idea proposed by R.P. But selling books I think these days is a lot harder. It is my understanding, correct or otherwise, that a few corporations have purchased most book publishing companies. It is therefore my deduction, correct or otherwise, that if one publisher turns it down, the rest of those owned by the corporation that owns that publisher likely will too.

I know this isn't totally true. The woman, whose name I see in the newspaper -- print newspaper -- a lot and on TV ads for the movies made from her Harry Potter book series sold hers. If I remember what I read, she was going for broke when that first book manuscript sold. I don't recall her name without looking it up somewhere.

That sale had to have been because of good reader-gripping writing.

Many books today are written by -- or ghostwritten for -- the rich and famous, a sleazy politician perhaps, and which are spoken for before they are even written. For some reason, people like to read or at least buy books about those writers -- or non writers. Publishers buy them because they sell.

I wouldn't spend my money to buy a book by or supposedly by a sleazy politician. Why would I want to read the story of ideas stemming from sleaze? I don't know why people want to read such stuff, but they apparently do.

I do buy books, though, books that interest me. Most are fiction. A few are of historical characters.

But books and articles, even columns, come from ideas. People sometimes ask me where I get my ideas.

The answer to that is easy. I don't "get" them. They usually just jump out at me, waving their little idea hands in my face and yelling, "Hey, see me, see me?"

Why do I write about the outdoors? I try to be in the outdoors a lot. I love the outdoors. And when I'm in the outdoors, I'm quiet enough to think, to receive impressions. Or see things happen or experience them, such as those famous moose encounters.

No, I'm sparing you those this time around.

I once met a hiker on an Island Explorer bus I drove. He and I got to know one another, and he eventually suggested I write about my former occupation, the one from which I retired. From that hiker, an ongoing manuscript, How to be a reporter in Maine and retire in Poverty, sprung to life within the computer.

Hey, why not? The old writer's rule is if it interests you, the writer, it will interest a certain number of other people.

I don't know where Stephen King gets his ideas. I suspect it is from just watching people and exaggerating a truth a bit until it becomes a horror. From my own watching of the people species, that guess makes sense.

For example, there was that lady the other day....no never mind her. But you've seen that lady or man or kid, and it struck you what might happen if their situation were changed just a bit or exaggerated some.

My own experiences have -- and in some cases haven't -- led to writing. I once observed an optimistic Christian boy who told me and the youth group "I" was leading that if we started out for a certain mountain trail for a hike we'd scheduled, the dark skies and rain would clear. They did. It was a great little hike, and became a short story.

There was a night I'll never forget, when our two Labs got to barking, and I went out with them to see the object of their noise. They looked toward a five-foot tall evergreen shrub at the corner of the house, a dark corner. I looked two and saw a pair of eyes a little over five feet high looking my way. I looked for a few moments, then called the dogs and went back into the house. What I saw I didn't understand, and that frightened me. A story! I never wrote that one.

What if it was a monster? What if it had eaten me and the dogs? (Couldn't write it, then.) What if it were a buck deer? Not as exciting. But what if it were a ________? You can go with that one.

What about faith? Christian faith? Think about that. What if that lowly preacher, who prayed so hard for basic income while he struggled to begin a tiny church in a remote mountain town, succeeded? Faith rewarded. What if that same preacher had to return to the job he had left because of a lack of money to begin that church? Faith. The other side of faith. This idea came to me from watching one or two ministers, who never were able to get their financing together.

I wrote a version of that once. It didn't sell. At least not yet.

Where did I get the idea for that murder mystery about pirates and treasure on the shore of Somes Sound, a so-called fjord on Mount Desert Island? I read in another book once about a legend of said pirate and treasure. I've researched it since but never found anything stating that a pirate ever even sailed into Somes Sound.

But I've also never read that idea in a novel. So mine is halfway or two-thirds of the way done, depending on what may happen to the characters in that manuscript.

Selling a manuscript can be hard, partly because of that corporation's owning and controlling so many print publishers. What about paying someone to publish your manuscript? I know of a couple of writers who have done that. One eventually made some money after being her own marketing agent and visiting lots of bookstores. (Of course, now the number of bookstores is declining, partly due to growing online readership.) The other just spent her money and ended with copies of her book, a few selling or being offered for sale here or there.

They call that "vanity press," paying to have yours published. It used to be a definite writer's "no, no," because it was expensive and seldom paid the writer much. Then along came self publishing with the development of computers. Some follow that path. Others self publish their books online. Does either pay? I have no idea. Never been there nor done that?

Doesn't seem right to me. I remember all those commercially published books under the Christmas tree.

Milt Gross can be reached for corrections, harassment, or other purposes at lesstraveledway@midmaine.com.

Milton M. Gross Copyright 2011