When I started this blog, I had a tidy little vision: twelve posts in twelve months, leading up to the publication of my book.
A year of gems, spilled on the page for your entertainment and edification. What a lark!
I didn’t write twelve months, and I didn’t reach twelve posts, but that’s hardly a shame. There are plenty of words in this blog, and the entertainment and edification aspects were oversold from the get-go.
Just Maria was published last Friday. (Hold for applause.) All that’s left to do is to ask you to buy my book.
So, friends, family, strangers: please buy my book.
For someone who has spilled so many words in shameless self-promotion, this is a surprisingly hard thing for me to say. When I call myself a reluctant pitchman, you’ll have to take my word for it. The blog has been fun, the website is cool, and seeing my name on the spine of Just Maria is a dream come true. But I have entered the task of selling this book with half a heart at best.
I want you to read my book, of course, and have my book, and even buy my book. I just don’t want to ask you to do it.
It’s unseemly, is what it is.
Pardon me if this seems disingenuous. If I was really all that reluctant a pitchman, I wouldn’t have built the website, made all those sad little Facebook posts, taken meetings with publicists, written this blog, or written this post. Perhaps it is better to call myself an ambivalent pitchman. Equivocal. Hesitant. Hypocritical. Choose your favorite.
I’ve thought a lot about why this is so, truly I have. I had another thousand words on this topic. I spoke them into my phone, transcribed them dutifully, and set about to editing. I made artful points about art, commerce, and ambition, complete with meandering digressions on music criticism, Lutheran humility, and the peculiar stench of desperation.
Reading back, I axed it all. Enough is enough.
Thanks for reading, thanks for being, and go get you some.
If you wanna.
-Jay
Just Maria is available now in paperback, hardback, and e-formats. Order now from Regal House Publishing, Malaprop’s, Bookshop.org, Amazon, Barnes & Noble, or wherever you get your books!
And leave a review on Goodreads!
