Category: Publicity

Hitting Pause Again

Nobody tells you anything about anything, am I right? I mean, I asked for free advice from somebody who didn’t know anything and got a ton, but it was all, like, useless. I’m actually kinda ticked…

Here’s something you didn’t know, I’ll bet. Or maybe you did know, and I am the one who doesn’t know anything. 

There’s a time of year to publish your book. Just like the little green leaves and the little buds and the birdies, yadda yadda yadda, there’s a season for your book. Can you imagine?

It’s all about the migration of people. 

You don’t publish your book at the beginning of July, for instance. Why? People migrate away from book-buying and go on vacation.

HOWEVER, you DO publish your romance in May or June, because it’s a good vacation read, and you’ll catch ‘em before they migrate away. Crazy, right?

You don’t want to publish at the end of the year. It’s the holidays and nobody’s buying books, unless you’ve got a bang-up Christmas or Hanukkah book or something. People have migrated away from reading and are all about fruitcake.

But you DO publish in January if yours is a self-help book. The people have migrated back to reading again.

My book, my original Phineas Caswell novel, a piece of historical fiction, is perfect for late August/early September, when the leaves fall and folks are ready to cozy up for a good read.

Won’t take it to the beach, won’t use it to better themselves, won’t enjoy it as a scary thriller. Nope. Historical fiction – the kids are going back to school, time to read a good, interesting piece of history. 

So, for all my book publishing plans, I have to hit the PAUSE button for a bit and wait for the year to roll around to the right spot. 

That’s okay, because I have a lot of work to do in preparing the marketing materials. But who knew there’s a CALENDAR to this stuff?

Well, if you didn’t, now you do. I didn’t, but now I do. 

Happy holidays, and put down that book. 

Moving Part 2: Hanging Around

Few things are more exciting than moving. Having a root canal. Brain surgery comes to mind. Taking a road trip with the in-laws that you just don’t like.

In our grand move across the country, we’ve had to  “spruce up” our fine old house of 30 years.

Now, sprucing up can be a relative term. Sometimes, it’s just a coat of paint in the dining room. Other times it’s a whole new roof that takes a small fortune to accomplish.

We had to pay a painter half of $16,000 for him to do – well, let’s just call it some touch up.

My wife wrote out a check for $8,000. But the pen quit on the first zero of the 8000. So she scrambled to find a new pen and finished the check.

The next day, we checked our bank account, and found that the $8,000 had been returned to the account.

What would you do if you were faced with a similar situation? Well, that’s exactly what we did: call the bank.

It was a tortuous call. Put on hold, transferred, put on hold transferred, transferred, put on hold. We finally reached the fraud department and were promptly put on hold.

While we were on hold, the phone we were using rang and a man came on identifying himself as Isaac from the fraud department. He promptly requested my wife’s social security number, which she quickly gave him. Then he asked for her birth date. 

I got all excited and made her hang up the phone before she gave out that information. Come on – there is no way the bank should be asking for your birth date!

I believe the man was honest when he said he was with the fraud department, but I’m rather certain HE was the one committing fraud!

So we had to call the bank again. Transfer, hold, hold, transfer, transfer  hold, hold, hold, and then we got to the fraud department where we were put on hold once more.

My wife sighed in frustration “I just want to hang myself!”

The fraud department finally got back on the line and told us someone had written additional zeros on the check to make it $8,000. We explained that that was us because the pen quit. The banker said “Oh. Well, the money is back in your account.”

To get the contractor paid, we had to rush into town, pull out $8,000 in cash and deliver it to the contractor.

Now, I don’t know if you have ever handled $8,000 in cash, but it is a bundle of 80 $100 bills. That is a wad of cash!

We felt like gangsters driving around with this manila envelope stuffed with cash. We met with the contractor in a parking lot, and handed over the dough, glancing over our shoulders for the Fuzz. The Heat. The Man.

When we got home, we saw we’d missed a call from the local police department. Uh oh, we thought. Busted! 

How nice is it that the cops call you before they bust down your door and drag you off to the Big House?

We called the number and reached a police officer at his home. He asked if we were okay. He said he’d been to our house, and no one was there.

He said that the bank had reported that my wife was considering suicide. He just wanted to make sure she didn’t go through with it. Well, sure, we said. I mean, that would be kinda bad…

So, we laughed, and explained that oh no, it was just frustration. He laughed, and then asked, on a private note, if that house was still for sale.

What?!? Why, yes it is!

Do you see how the world works? One door opens, another one closes before you can get your foot out of it.

The bank is happy. The contractor’s happy. The cops are happy. And our realtor has a new contact.

Did we get reimbursed for the time, the mileage, or the headspace all this took? No.

But it is nice to know that folks will check up on you if you say something that raises a red flag.

Sad that nobody can take a joke…

Fred Flintstone Calling

I’ve got this great idea, see. All’s ya gotsta do is get everybody in Uruguay to visit your site just once – they don’t even need to linger. That’s over 3.4 million views! Man, you are gonna rake in the dough!

So, the deal with Fred Flintstone – if you’re too young to know – was that he was a caveman, see, the head of a modern stone-age family. His wife, Wilma, and his neighbors Betty and Barney Rubble, lived in the town of Bedrock. A town just like yours and mine, except made out of rock.

It was a Hanna-Barbera cartoon series made in the early 1960’s and it was dopey fun.

Fred was every man’s everyman. He was living the caveman equivalent of the American Dream – good job, house in the ‘burbs, picket fence, nice ped-powered car.

A regular Joe, except that he had a penchant for making outlandish, foolproof plans to make a million clams. He was gonna quit the quarry and live the life of a millionaire, just as soon as his ship sailed.

“Barney boy, by this time tomorrow, we are gonna be livin’ like kings!”

Of course he never quite succeeded – Dino the dinosaur dog ate the proceeds, it turned out the ptero-chickens were all ptero-roosters,  Ann Margarock had to be in Rock Vegas on the night of the big event, etc.

At the end of every episode, there was Wilma, reminding him that he already had everything he needed right there in his little family. And he always sheepishly admitted she was right. “Wilma, you are the greatest…”

If you’re reading this, and I imagine you are, you probably have an inner Fred Flintstone yourself.

You’re thinking there’s always a chance, a long shot maybe, but a chance that this one, this stupid crazy-ass scheme, this could be the one. One in a million chance, but, hey, somebody’s gonna make it… Ten bazillion books get published and read every year, why not mine?

So, I recently gave up on my inner Fred. I was a little depressed, maybe. A little tired. I dunno.

I decided that this is the dish, this life o’ mine: this is my someday. Someday I’ll have a nice house in the ‘burbs and a pretty wife and 2.5 kids and a good job with a decent salary. Hey, I have all of that, so this must be it.

All righty, then, Fred. It’s been fun. Good luck with your crazy schemes. I’m hanging up the bronto-phone now – I gotta go mow the lawn.

So, I go and tell my wife, the very love of my life, that I’m hanging up my bronto-spurs, and quote that line from All Things Great and Small where Herriot tells a fellow that someday he’ll be a millionaire, and the fellow replies with “Nah, it’s not in the cards. Was I to be a millionaire, well, I’d be one already, don’t you see?”

My darling wife replies “well, let’s not be too hasty about that.”

Whoa, whoa, hold on, there. That’s a Fred Flintstone line, not a Wilma line! YOU can’t say I’m gonna make a million clams, because YOU’RE the voice of REASON!

Like a bolt out of the blue, I was gobsmacked, thunderstruck, and over the moon in a tizzy of heaven for-fend, she, she, she believes in my crazy schemes!

To quote Goofy, “gorshk.”

So, I’m opening everything back up – Skippity Whistles, California Air Museums, even hauling The Book in for a rewrite.

Do I have a plan?

Heck no! I’m making it up as I go! Never quote me the odds!

My wonderful wife, she, she believes in me!

Wilma: “Oh, Fred.” (Sighs and exits)

It’s Published!

What’s published, you ask? And by whom? Why, it, and by me!

So, I’ve been slogging through the demeaning task of writing query letters to literary agents. OMG, that IS a slog!

Acquiring a literary agent is a sisyphean task on a good day.

Okay, I had to go look up sisyphean because I’ve only ever heard it said. Sisyphus got condemned to roll a boulder up a hill, see, only to have it come tumbling back down, each and every day for all of eternity. One assumes getting it up the hill was a somewhat arduous task, sooooo…

Here’s a good literary put down:

Knock, knock

Who’s there?

To

To who?

It’s to whom, actually

None of this is the point! Here’s the point:

My newest novel, The Adventures of a Sawdust Man, is PUBLISHED!!!

Yes, I published it myself. No, it’s not Random House, or Penguin, or Disney.

Yet.

I’ve already sold three copies – and it’s only been up for two days. If you do the math… lemme see, carry the one… uh huh, yep. By my calculations, at this rate, I’ll have sold at least two dozen by the end of the year!

But of course, it’s not about making money.

Yet.

The thing is, even as I was writing those insipid query letters, I could see that no agent would touch my book.

It’s a fairy tale without any fairies. It’s a romance without any love scenes. It’s a tale of unrequited love that never quite gets resolved.

Who wants to publish that?

So, for my book to see the light of day, for it to get discovered as a valuable piece of the Canon of human literature, I had to publish it myself.

And I am so excited to share it with you! Here’s the link. Don’t pay the five bucks – set the price to $0 and have at it. And lemme know whatcha think!

Another reason that I’ve published the book is because I seem to have gone mad over the sound of my own voice, and my best friend and darling wife have both suggested it would make a good audio book.

Can you spell Podcast?

Thank you for traveling along with me on this wild adventure. Maybe, by publishing my work, you might be encouraged to publish yours? I truly hope so.

I wish you every success!

A New Venue

My wife is a remarkable woman. Beautiful, brilliant, willing to put up with me, and just full of genius-level ideas.

If you visit JohnDReinhart.com – it’s pretty easy: just click on the name up there in the upper left-hand corner. Go ahead and try it… we’ll wait.

Did you see it? No? It’s something different. Take another look. Dum-de-doo-de-dum, black seven goes on the red six… Did you find it?

(Aggravated sigh) Do I have to do everything around here? The name, down there in the middle – the name. John D Reinhart Creative.

Okay, maybe you haven’t been to my site before, so, okay, I get it.

Now my site is called John D Reinhart Creative – kind of flows off the tongue, doesn’t it? Maybe?

You see, the California Air Museums project has taken on a new life. In addition to visiting the museums, my wife suggested that I do video visits, interviewing the curator, or director, or an otherwise interested person. And, the interview will end up on the California Air Museums site, and on a California Air Museums channel on YouTube.

So, I’ve got this cool Galaxy Z4 fold phone that has an awesome, awesome camera in it and 500 gigs of storage, and I’ve got a pair of wireless lavalier mikes, and I’ve got the newest version of DaVinci Resolve to edit it all together. What are we waiting for?

Well, I kinda sorta needed business cards to hand to the person when I say, like, drop me a line or something, because that’s what savvy businesspeople do.

So, here I am in Adobe Illustrator, making this epically long list of all the creative things I do, trying to squeeze it onto this itty-bitty, 2.5×3 inch business card in, like, 3pt type, when the very love of my life says “You’re an idiot. Just give yourself a name that covers all that stuff.”

And, viola, an industrial giant is born. A nice set of 100 Vistaprint business cards for, like, 28 bucks, due to arrive in, like, two weeks. Like, wow. Business cards? For me? It’s so… creative!

What is curious is that I’ve always been creative, but had never given myself the title. Now that I have it, everything just seems to drop right into place.

The key finally fit, and the door finally opened.

And it’s nice to be home. I feel like Dorothy in the Wizard of Oz. All I needed was to wear a dead lady’s shoes.

Plus, I got cool business cards!

10 Ways to Make Yourself Feel Stupid

Well, the novel is in the hands of the lovely sister once more, and I do believe it’s for the last time.

While it’s out, I found a really quick and simple way to make money online. Ah, but there’s a catch…

There’s this site called Listverse, see, and they’ll pay you a hundred bucks to provide a list of, well, really, on any subject you choose. You make a list, write a paragraph or two about each item, list your sources, and submit it. They like the list and pump a hundred bucks into your PayPal account. Done deal.

Come on. You’re a writer. You know how this goes. It’s like shooting candy from a barrel, or something like that. Come on. Make a list, right now, of ten things you know about that would be interesting to somebody…

I came up with one topic. And I got, like, seven items. How about this? Ten Common Phrases that have Nautical Origins…

Well, let’s see, there’s “three square meals a day”, and “there’s keep your powder dry”, although that one’s not so common. Howzabout “you’ll have the devil to pay for this.” That’s a good one, except nobody ever says it.

Hmph.

I’m a smart guy. I really am. I don’t have a PhD or anything, but I’ve been to the doctor’s office. And I played Elwood P. Dowd in Harvey at the Santa Paula Theater Center with a really good actor who played a doctor. That should count… Doctor by extraction or something. Anyway, I’m not a total dope.

At least I didn’t think so.

But I cannot come up with a list of ten interesting things to save my life.

Ten Euphemisms for I Feel Like a Dummy.

Hey! I got one!