Fragments From Floyd

While the grass has already spurted up higher than the mower can cut, the garden fence needs mending where the deer have done body-slams against the wire over winter, and the windows need the washing away of six months of Goose Creek dust, the book project continues to whine for its share of attention. Why can't they make an April and May in a BiggieSize! so that there is enough time to get everything done! I love spring, but it comes too fast, and asks too much!

Some new twists along this purported slow road:

~ As of yesterday, it looks like the books will ship on April 28. This is good, but sooner would be better. There is a book fair in Roanoke for which the deadline for review copies is May 5. Might not make that one. Good news, too, that it might well be that the tile will be down in the new addition in time to hold a pallet of books! Now I know why "we" needed that new room.

~ Thanks to readers near and far, some ideas for possible placement in Roanoke, Lynchburg, Richmond and along the parkway--and even in England--are waiting for the books in hand to act on. Do keep sending tips about book stores, interest groups, libraries and other venues in your area where Slow Road might find the appropriate audience. Thanks, y'all!

~ Here's a site that is using pbwiki to create a database of published authors. The Book Web Warehouse provides authors with their own web pages to promote their books. There is even a "readers comments" page associated with the author pages so readers can discuss the book. Of course, my links point back to the pbwiki I have had set up now for some time, with a few bells and whistles added recently, including the potential for unlimited COMMENTS on each page of the site (see the COMMENTS button in the banner.)

~ Serving Suggestion: send the link or the file for the Slow Road bookmark (image, left) to someone you know who might like to know about the book; or print it out (I created it three-on-a-page to go on card stock and fit in a brochure display) and hand it to a co-worker, neighbor or family member. Heck, hand them to total strangers and make a friend, I dunno.

~ Anybody ever sold anything using Google Base? For the heck of it, I set up the book there. I have no idea that this will reach anyone at all (how many folks go shopping for "Virginia, essay, memoir, Floyd, blueridge" (my keywords) and buy a book from an unknown author? I guess we'll find out, but I think I pretty much know the answer.

~ Contractions. I feel like I'm birthing a baby and it just won't quite come. Conception and gestation are past. We've gone full-term and it is due time for delivery--to see if the little embryo has grown to a neonate with all her little fingers and toes; to see if she looks anything at all like I hoped she would; to know if she will be bane or blessing to this quiet life. Her godparents, the Muses of Floyd County, hope she does them proud. But we'll welcome her, regardless, the offspring of one man and the place he has grown to love.