Cocktails, Anyone?

Years ago when I was an age group competitive swimmer, after a long and hard race I was always utterly exhausted both physically and mentally. I had done all I could do. In swimming a 200 meter individual race, it’s just you. There is no team. Every third stroke, you take a much anticipated breath. Head down again, you churn the water with three more strokes as you dream of the next breath. Swimming is the only sport in the world where your parents will scream at you telling you to not breath. Breathing slows you down. I would also remind them that breathing keeps you alive, but I digress. Finally, hanging on the end of the pool at the end of the race, you can catch you breath a little before you hoist your tired body out of the water.

I just handed my manuscript of JD and Me: Bad Ideas and Poor Judgment over to my editor, and I feel like I just swam 200 yards using the butterfly stroke. I am out of breath but my shoulders don’t ache. My soul is worn out. My mind is tired.

I like to believe that I write fun books. Just because there are fun stories in it doesn’t mean it was easy to write. The first book, Me, Boo and the Goob: A Southern Adventure, took forever to write. I labored over it for about five years. Then, having completed the manuscripts, I struggled, eventually failing to find a suitable editor. I relied on beta readers and friends for editorial suggestions. I churned through an enormous number of versions of the book before I gave up and published with more than its share of warts.

Being somewhat wiser this time, I have successfully engaged a professional editor with a good history in the industry. She has JD and Me: Bad Ideas and Poor Judgment. She’s working on it as I write this, and I feel like an expectant father in the waiting room at a maternity ward. I’m sure I’ll hear back from her when she has something for me to work on.

In the meantime, I’m working on the marketing plan. I know so much more this time around. The book launch will include a lot of activity on social media, as sell as some special deals on my website. I’m going to do a ‘first 100’ deal of some sort. Swag…I got the message. There will be some swag. Of course, there will be book signings at bookstores. Doing a book signing in Jonesboro will be the kick off of the whole thing.

My brain is tired. I just got the ‘boys’ through high school. If any of you know me or knew my parents, you probably already know what my college years were like. I know that has to be the next book. If my poor sainted parents thought they had suffered when I was in high school, college was a whole new nightmare. I think the next book will start with the story of when I fell out of an airplane.