Big day today: Dinosaur World, followed by Cosmic Bowling. Don't wait up for me!
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Saturday, April 06, 2002Thursday, April 04, 2002
Just watched: Brassed Off
In the CD player: Jo Stafford - Portrait Edition Box Set Not much to say tonight; I'm wiped out. Spent the whole night last night dreaming about book marketing. When I would wake up, I'd still be thinking about book marketing. It was maddening. I spent the day trying not to think about how to sell books. And we don't even have the darn things in hand yet. For those of you who are curious, we should have books in hand by late May, early June. Publish date isn't set until September. It's going to be a long five months. Wednesday, April 03, 2002
After retrieving the Sentra from Sam's this afternoon, I noticed that it's still making those annoying wub-wub-wub noises that indicate a tire with uneven wear. Of course, the sound is in a different place now, because that tire has been rotated to a different position. We've had these tires for almost two years and probably 40,000 miles or so – what's the usual wear on tires? I fear my neglect of rotation and balance, mostly due to the impossibility of receiving decent service at Sam's, may have doomed our tires to an early obsolescence. Next time we may buy our slabs of rubber from a smaller merchant closer to home, even if it means an extra $5 per tire.
Yesterday while trying on shoes at the mall, I got a call on the cell from Morris, our publisher in Nebraska. Not only did they receive our package on Tuesday as promised, but they had already opened it, gone through the cover art on disk, and called to iron out a problem. Their art department said that the cover looked fine (whew, I was worried about that part), but about those red highlights . . . . They wanted to replace the red color I specified with their own house red, which would save us $85. They described it as their "Nebraska Huskers" red. I describe it as my "saved me eighty-five bucks" red. The call got me excited about the book again. I had been depressed about shipping it off, in what I've been calling "a post-partum sort of way." Just to think that the ball was still rolling, that printed copies could be rolling off presses any day now put some zing back into my day. Got to get the adrenaline flowing for the marketing push. I've been in internet research mode for the last couple of days, looking for a real-world distributor for Reel Shame, but I've decided to table it in favor of concentrating on the Internet sales. The book is a creature born of the Internet, and if we can sell about 800 copies (I figure on giving away about 200 of them just for promotional purposes) in a year on the web alone (Amazon included), that will be a sign to us that the book is a worthy project. If not, we fire-sale the remaining books and move on to the next one. A failure to sell the 300 copies we need to break even is not a possibility I can discuss at this point. It's unthinkable. Reel Shame is a good book. I just need to get people who are respected in the field to say so. Tuesday, April 02, 2002
Tell it in pictures
 Sooner or later, every blog writer must fall back on a picture of a giant chicken to keep the reader's interest. Now is my time to shine. Sunday, March 31, 2002
Lots of stuff still going on with Amy & Tanya in town; had an impressive Easter dinner with an incredible Alton Brown-recipe ham and Jennifer's cheese sauce over broccoli. A full report of the weekend's goings-on soon.
Just for the record, Jennifer (Dudak) Holland's cheese sauce is approximately as follows: 1 large brick Velveeta, cubed 3/4 cup heavy cream 1/2 cup - 1 cup sour cream (to taste) Since Jennifer couldn't give me proportions I had to experiment, but this is pretty close to the stuff she served at Thanksgiving. We melted the Velveeta in a saucier and added the cream a little at a time as it began to melt, then stirred in the sour cream until it got as tangy as we wanted it. Note: this makes a huge amount of sauce, which was fine for our group and the three large stalks of broccoli we cooked (toss in boiling water for about 5 minutes and then rinse under cold water to stop the cooking process), but it might be a bit much for a normal dinner crowd. The proportions above are about right. |
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