Wow! I am humbled by the response I have had since Tuesday when I announced to the world that I think I’m a writer. I truly appreciate everyone who has responded to my Facebook Author page and written words of encouragement.

Since that time, I have fielded two questions probably more than any other. One, what is it about, and two, is it any good. Let me quickly address the latter. I’m not sure I am the best person to ask. Not that I’m unfamiliar with the book, but rather because…

I honestly don’t know.

I mean, the natural human being who has been working on this project for over a year and a half wants to scream, “Of course it’s good. It’s better than good. It’s amazing.  Best book written in decades.” Because I learned that if you are ever going to have the hutzpah to actually finish a book, you really have to believe you’ve built a better mouse trap.

On the flip side, nobody is a harsher critic of my work than me. (I am sure this statement will quickly be outdated once the Amazon reviewers get a hold of it. I guess that’s assuming any Amazon reviewers ever read it.) So when I go back and read what I’ve written, I often shudder in horror at the absolute atrocity of words I somehow thought looked good together on the same page.

So, to help give people a more balanced (and less schizophrenic) idea of the book’s merit, I will try and get one or two of the people I had assist me in editing to give an honest critique. (Unless they hate it, in which case they are banned from the blog and heretofore dead to me.)

As far as what the book is about…I have to admit that’s almost as difficult to answer as the other question.

The problem is, people legitimately want to know, but they really are looking for an extremely abridged answer, and I don’t know how to give them one.

So, I’m going to end up leaving that job to the publisher and their blurb writers. They have to be able to do a better job than I’ve been doing. What I am going to do, is tell some stories about how the book came to be and try to help people get a sense of the book without giving too much of the plot away. There is nothing I hate worse than picking up a book and reading the dust jacket, thinking it sounds like a great book, only to discover that the dust jacket told me the whole story. It’s infuriating.

So if you are one of those who would prefer to just hear the blurb…you are free to go. On your way out, let me throw the small print at you one more time.

This book is amazing. Please tell all your friends about it and have them visit and “like” my Facebook Author page. Look for it coming in August 2013. The Reluctant Blogger. Yada yada yada, please buy it.

There, everybody good? Fair warning, if you stick around, you are likely to suffer through the small print one more time. But I mean, come on, you had to know that was part of the deal, right?

Anyway.

Since I have already taken so much time setting this up, I will start today with a tease and then finish the story on Monday. For making everyone who hung around wait, I will promise not to mention the small print until the end of Monday’s post. Deal? Cool!

The tease is this: the book I wrote and the book I set out to write ended up being two entirely different things. I’ve been told you are supposed to start with an outline and chart your book chapter by chapter before you ever start writing so that you don’t screw it up too terribly bad…Yeah, I didn’t do that.

So on Monday, I will share the title I used originally and why, by the end of the project, I was the only one among my peeps who thought it still fit.

Once again, thank you all so very much. A person’s dreams rarely come true without the help of others. (And thus concludes the Walt Disney portion of the post.)