If a behind-the-scenes tour of pulling together a 2020 style virtual book launch does not interest you, close today’s blog and enjoy few extra minutes in your day. Our virtual Book Birth Bash Party Friday, October 16 was held in the house-turned office-studio of Bayou City Press publishing company, which is owned and operated by Julie Gianelloni Connor. Read her summary of the event here.
The official publication date was October 12, 2020 – aka Columbus/Indigenous Peoples Day. We had hoped (I know, what were we thinking?) that by the 16th it would surely be safe to gather folks in person. Consistent with 2020, we had to limit the in-person crowd to family only, except for our gracious hostess Julie. Another disappointing turn of events, which rendered our dash to have books on hand for the book launch unnecessary.
A Few Folks in the Book Publishing Village
Originally I planned to introduce some of the folks who helped with the book by bringing them on-line, one at a time. My granddaughter Sarah Flores has considerable theatre tech experience and is now also a COVID-19 veteran at providing tech support for virtual theatre events. She assured me doing that would be an internet connectivity nightmare of gigantic proportions. Plan X (This year I’ve used up nearly an entire alphabet of alternative plans. How about you?) was to pre-record a series of interviews.
Publicist Ben Tanzer to the rescue. Over the course of a few weeks he set up interviews with eight special guests. We planned to give each guest four to five minutes. None of the interviews were that short. Sarah hasn’t fessed up to how many hours she spent editing them down to that length, but she managed to do it, with one notable exception, that I’ll explain in a new paragraph. While Sarah was editing, Ben was interviewing me for his This Will Change Your Life Podcast.
I wanted to run a contest to give away some prizes. Book launch professional extraordinaire Sandy Lawrence ran the contest portion and I assigned my daughter Carol Flores to collect answers as they appeared in the chat box.
New Old Family Friends
The last and longest of Ben’s interviews were with two special folks I met while looking for indigenous people to preview the book before publishing it. It turns out our ancestors met 400 years ago in Cape Cod. We met a few months ago. Ben did an amazing interview with William Guy, aka Po Wauipi Neimpaug, the Sagamore of the Pokanoket people, and his daughter, Tracey Brown, aka Po Pummukaonk Anogqs. The edited version is about ten minutes; the unedited version about twenty-six minutes. Both are available at www.HowWiseThen.com
The whole event is available on You Tube, with the link on the HowWiseThen website. There you’ll also find links to the other interviews and a couple of readings from the audio book which is in production.
Catch It If You Can Contest
In other breaking news, we printed a small batch of ARCs (Advance Review Copies), which were gone in a couple of weeks, but not without catching assorted errors overlooked in many previous proof reads of the manuscript. This, confirms my theory the best way to catch errors is to print the paper, article, or book. All the errors have now been found and corrected. We think.
We’re so sure we’ve found all of them that we’re going to offer you a chance to prove us wrong, and if you do, and you’re the first to catch one we missed and report it, you’ll win a $25 gift card.
How to Enter the Catch It If You Can Contest
- All errors must be reported by 11:55 December 31, 2020.
- You must first request a copy of errors already brought to our attention whether you find them in the e-book or the print version. To get this list send me an e-mail through https://www.HowWiseThen.com with “Catch It if You Can” in the subject line.
- State whether you caught an error in the print or E-book version.
- Document page number, paragraph, and line.
- State the error and what the correction it would be.
- Make sure we have your full name, e-mail address, and phone number in case we need to contact you.
On Our Way Rejoicing
To conclude the virtual event I wrote a benediction that I’ll leave with you as I close this week’s blog:
As we go our separate ways, may the Great Giver of all life guide our way, guard our hearts from hate, grant us courage to challenge injustice and compassion to reach across cultural boundaries.
May bonds of friendship prove stronger than fear of strangers. May we embrace our differences, make amends for past wrongs and resolve to respect the rights of those who look, dress, talk, and think in ways that are foreign to us.
May we work together to pave a path of peace and reconciliation.
It’s wonderful the whole event turned out as fabulously as it did. I enjoyed being a very small part of this successful launch.