Sell'em!!

I haven’t written a word in the last three days. Blame it on the fact that I haven’t had a strong internet connection so I could not have made a blog entry, but that is a lame excuse. The truth of the matter is I am a little scared. In fourteen days from now I’ll fly to Houston for my last scheduled book signing at River Oaks Book Store, a rather upscale store in an upscale shopping area and I’ll find myself spending an hour and a half in the middle of the afternoon hoping someone will show up. If I am lucky four gray-haired ladies with twenty dollars to spare will accidentally drop in and one might buy The Last Voyage of the Cosmic Muffin after I tell her my story because she’ll be more impressed with my escapades than the book itself. At the end of the afternoon, I’ll thank my host Mike Jones, collect $11.34 for a book I bought for $5.60 and won’t even think about the financial loss because it is too much to bear. Later, I’ll spend that much on the tip for dinner with Nancy, my friend from the Peace Corps. While I am hardly in the same league as Bill O’Reilly and won’t even pretend to be, he’ll get 850 people to show up for a book signing for his new book Culture Warrior. After four months, I still have 850 books to sell.

I did sell two books on the beach yesterday. It was kind of cool to walk down the beach and see someone reading a copy of my book. Eight hundred forty-eight more to go.

But I won't sit here tonight thinking, “Shit, I should have never published this book.” I won’t sit here and regret the fact that I spent the better part of the year working on writing, marketing and promoting my first book. I knew it would be hard. And it was. But I did it. Only thing I’ll never be able to say is, “I should have written a book.”

So what am I scare of? How will I keep 20 boxes of books stored in my parent’s basement from getting that “smells like a basement” smell?

Oh-oh, I know. Sell’em!!