How not to announce your new book

The publication of a new book is exciting for an author and thanks to email you can tell all your friends, acquaintances, and anyone else who has managed to land in your address book. Our publishers encourage us to use social media to help get the word out. We’d probably do it even if they didn’t. It’s easier then yelling from a rooftop. At least I thought it was. I have been trying to use social media, who isn't? I made a fun book promo for my new book and posted it on youtube. I joined twitter – although I prefer reading other people’s posts than posting myself, so I don’t know if that counts. I facebooked (now a verb, right?) and then I sent out a big spam-like email announcing the birth of my lovely new book, But I Wanted A Baby Brother! Only to discover that my announcement came through in code.  It has what I wrote, then the computer translation of what I wrote. It looks bi-lingual. This, I'm sad to say, is my new book's birth announcement:  

The Men in Shorts of Martha's Vineyard

The sun has reappeared, and those men, the ones with the legs showing, the ones that walk around all winter long wearing shorts, finally look less conspicuous. For reasons I don’t understand, there are a number of men that live on this island that seem to have an aversion to long pants and winter coats. My husband Chris is one of these men. I wish I could say I have achieved acceptance and a live and let live attitude about this, but I cannot.

It drives me nuts when Chris wears shorts in the middle of winter. My stomach turns when he goes to work without a coat on. Half the time I’m wearing a coat inside the house and when I go outside, the Michelin Man looks underdressed compared to me. Honestly, when Chris and I go out together during the winter, it looks like we’re on a multi-latitudinal date. I’m walking down the street at 50º and he’s at 30º. You'd think that I'm up in Montreal and he's in Florida.

There’s a whole group of them. I’ll call them The Men in Shorts of Martha’s Vineyard. I often wonder if they are secretly in cahoots with one another or perhaps in a competition. They are not, to the best of my knowledge, doing this to raise awareness for a cause, although I sometimes wonder if the Chamber of Commerce might be using them to promote tourism in the off-season by trying to lure visitors here with the promise of a men in shorts sighting.

I know the men in shorts own pants. I’ve seen them wearing them once or twice and I look longingly at the pairs in Chris’ drawers, wishing they would move out of his drawers and onto his legs. See, here is a pair of his pants.

But today the sun is out and The Men in Shorts of Martha’s Vineyard suggest the promise of spring. Spring! Today I can't wait to see The Men in Shorts.

Lost, again.

I lived in Boston for seven years and spent six of them driving around lost. For the better part of that gas-guzzling period, I searched for street signs that weren’t obscured by an intrusive branch or obscenely large leaf and groused about ending up at Logan airport on my way to a movie.

Admittedly, I am a self-diagnosed directions dyslexic. However, I suspect I wasn’t the only one hopelessly trying to navigate my way through Boston’s web of one-way streets, all seemingly heading in the same direction. While I have a remarkable ability to get lost almost anywhere, Boston poses challenges even for those gifted souls endowed with an internal GPS system. Ask anyone that has spent time driving around Boston. I’m confident that I’m not the only one who has wondered how they ended up in Medford on their way to Cambridge, or more importantly, why they can’t seem to find their way out of Medford. (After unexpectedly driving around Medford for several hours last year, I became rather fond of the city and decided I could be happy living there, assuming I never did find my way out.)

After I left Boston, I moved to Martha’s Vineyard, which is an island. It’s difficult to get lost on an island, even for me, which means that I have more time available to do other things. The problem, I’ve discovered, is that on Martha’s Vineyard there isn’t a lot to do in February. Lest you forget this reality of living in a tourist destination during the off-season, just go to town and the signs readily remind you.




Yes, even the restroom is closed.

It seems like a good time to start a blog.

The internet is open.