Digressions: My Life in 500 Words or Less

This blog is late. I’ve been a little distracted.

Last Wednesday I found out my book of short stories was published by The Heartland Review Press. It had been in the works since last year.

“A Fable of Freedom and Other Stories” came into being as the result of discussions I had with Mick Kennedy, the editor of The Heartland Review Press. I’ve known Mick for many years. I’ve been one of his readers for fiction submissions to The Heartland Review.

In the fall of 2016, while I was working at The News-Enterprise, I interviewed Mick for a story about the then-new press. Mick later told me he wanted to publish a collection of my short stories.

When I eventually regained consciousness, we began to make plans for the book in 2017. I selected several stories I had published over the years, but I also included one I hadn’t published yet, the title story.

Since I knew Mick had several things going on, I didn’t make much mention to friends and family about a publication date. I completely understood delays were possible.

Mick kept me updated on the progress and got feedback on various choices. Things started coming together in the past couple of months. Then last Wednesday Mick called me with the news that “A Fable of Freedom and Other Stories” was available at Amazon and Barnes & Noble.

It’s totally surreal to go to the website of a major retailer and see your work displayed there for sale. I think I’m still in shock.

But I also knew I had work to do.

Not only was the book now published, but Mick had arranged for a reading at Barnes & Noble here in Elizabethtown. The open mic event was a week and a half away from the day he called, this Saturday from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. That meant in addition to posting on social media announcements of the book publication, I need to create and post an announcement of the reading.

I had to confirm a few details of the event before creating the announcement, though.

Then yesterday — Monday — as I was working on putting together the open mic reading event announcement, a copy of my book arrived in the mail from The Heartland Review Press. I definitely had to get a photo of me with my book. Then, of course, I had to post it.

Sometime at the end of last week I checked my blog schedule and erroneously thought Monday was not a blog day. When I gave it more thought and re-checked, I discovered my error, but it was about 10 p.m. Monday by then.

So the experience has been a good news/bad news scenario.

The bad news is that my blog is late. The good news is that the tardy blog is because I have a published collection of short stories that has been getting my attention.

Maybe that’s more like great news.