Chuggin' On

It has been quite a week for me as a new author in the land of make-it-up-as-I-go-along. Good things just keep happening from week to week with my book and the path it's taking me on. I'll break down a few things that, like the book itself, just seem a little surreal to me. I keep forging ahead with promotion and every once in a while someone or something bites. Here's my week so far.


  • The gentleman I mentioned a few weeks back who contacted me by email again. He asked if I'd meet him and sign a book contacted me again asking to have me sign two more copies for him for Christmas gifts. It's always a great feeling when someone comes back for more. I don't mean from a profit standpoint, though that is nice, but the fact that people enjoyed the book enough to want to share it with friends. These were Christmas gifts for two of his buddies.

  • I've seen on Facebook where a couple of people have shared the book with multiple friends. Again, hearing this is more rewarding than the money.

  • The Southeastern Wisconsin Festival of Books organized a photo shoot with myself an five other first-time authors along with the Waukesha County Executive, Dan Vrakas yesterday. We formed up in the County Executive's conference room and a photographer took a number of shots. The advertisement featuring the picture should come out in a future edition of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel an the Wisconsin Business Journal. Some nice exposure thanks to my writing instructor, Kathie Giorgio.

  • The Rochester Minnesota Library now has the book, and the University of Wisconsin Milwaukee library is considering it. A number of others have been contacted and/or are pending.

  • Tonight I spoke at the New Berlin Public Library's "Meet the local author" event. It was a lot of fun and turnout was as good as I could have expected, actually. I'm getting more and more comfortable in front of groups, so this went extremely well, I thought. People like to laugh, and my book has a lot of humor, so it always works out pretty well. Got some good questions at the end. People are so gracious. It is always incredibly humbling.
So that's the beginning of my week. All's good with Dirty Shirt. Now, I'm leaving for a few days on my quest to catch a very big fish. 

Blogging off...

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