Hello again blog faithful, and let me begin with a sincere apology. I did not get my weekly installment posted yesterday, on what is supposed to be Thursday Blog Day. To compound that mistake, I actually had some of it written on Wednesday (I trashed that and am starting over here) because I knew what was in store for Thursday and was afraid I’d never have a chance to write. I was correct, and I missed the mark. I hope it was worth the wait, but that’s not for me to declare or decide.
I guess if you were a newspaper editor and you missed your deadline so badly that the Thursday paper never came out, you’d be fired on the spot and escorted from the building. Since this blog is more a vocation than a job (and if it was a job it would be an unpaid volunteer position) I think I’ll refrain from terminating my own employment, but I will try very hard not to let this happen again (at least anytime soon.)
Before I get into the important stuff, which is all “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” related thanks to last Tuesday being the one-year anniversary of its publication, I’ll bring you up to speed on the Orlando trip and the fun here in Woodbury for the last 48 hours. Let’s start with Orlando…
The bad news about the Orlando trip was that they were stuck in a weather pattern that pretty much had rain and thunder passing over the central part of the state the entire time we were there. The good news about the trip was the fact the rain didn’t matter. We had a fabulous time with Todd and Angie in their new house and got spent three and a half days with Kitty and the babies, Stassi and Bella. All of it was marvelous and we were smiling the entire time.
The girls are at an age where they’re walking all over the place, starting to spout short phrases and words. They call each other “Sissy” and even were calling me Bob-Bob before we left. They’re even attempting to string sentences together, although many of them sound like “Yo-di-yo-di-oy-oy-oy cute!” or “ya-ya-odie-odie-thank-you!” It’s hilarious, and they are too cute for words. We got to attend one of their swimming lessons, and that was a fabulous thing to see. Living in Florida, and having plans to add a pool to their new home, it’s a great idea to get the girls in the water as soon as possible. If you’ve seen any of those TV documentaries where instructors literally toss newborns into the water, you’ve seen how their natural instincts take over and they keep their mouths closed and swim to the surface. The older they get, the more they lose that prenatal instinct, so getting them into the pool this young is a real safety thing. If you can get them acclimated at this age, they’ll be swimming for real by the age of three and never in danger.
They’ve only been going to the lessons for a few sessions, so it was amazing to see them push off from the edge and swim toward Jamie, their trainer, with their heads down, kicking with their little feet. He’s fantastic at what he does, and he takes everything very slowly, making sure they’re calm and understanding of what they’re doing. I was so impressed, and was wishing my parents had done that for us. We played in pools when we were very young, in the shallow end mostly, but I didn’t take dedicated swimming lessons until I was 12, and because of that I’ve never been much of a swimmer. These little adorable munchkins will be swimming for real very soon.
We ate well, we laughed constantly, and we played with Todd and Angie’s full zoo of pets. Multiple big dogs and too many cats to count (OK, I can count to four) plus a little turtle Angie rescued. The dogs all think they’re puppies (they’re not) and the cats all love to sit on laps and have their heads and chins rubbed. Then you add in the two girls and there’s always action going on somewhere in the house.
They also had Hulu on their TV, so one night after the babies were in bed, we asked if they wanted to watch some episodes of “The Looming Tower.” That, of course, is the Hulu series about the buildup to 9/11 and it features a certain guy I know playing the Afghan ambassador. We’ve been too busy to get it set up on our theater screen, so we hadn’t seen any of it yet. I can’t tell you how surreal it was to watch my talented friend Buck Hujabre appear on screen with Alec Baldwin, in multiple scenes. We ended up binge-watching until 2:30 in the morning the first night, and then watched a few more episodes the next day. It’s an intense series, and one that certainly still brings back to vivid life the memories and feelings from that time, plus it exposes a lot of the miscommunication and infighting that really had a lot to do with how it all ended up happening. Plus, Buck is in it. Amazing.
Bottom line: We had a wonderful time. I’m really glad we went, and the girls are growing so fast and changing so much I think it was important to be there and witness it. No matter when I see them again, I can guarantee they’ll be speaking in sentences that feature real words and genuine concepts. It’s a great age to watch them develop.
Once we got home it was time to get ready for our next adventure, which involved hosting some fun family members (Barb’s side) for a couple of nights. On Wednesday morning, Barbara’s brother Jim, his wife Deb, their son JT, and his girlfriend Rachel all landed at MSP and made their way to our house. That was easy for us, but not for them. They live north of Denver and had a “first thing in the morning” flight, so a 3:30 a.m. alarm was necessary in order to get to the Denver airport on time. We just had to get up and be ready for them by 10:00 or so.
JT and Rachel spent much of the day with us before heading up to a lake cabin her family owns, up north of Brainerd, while Jim and Deb hung out with us and took over one of the lower level bedrooms. On Thursday, Deb’s two brothers arrived, as well, and it was fantastic to have so much energy and laughter in our house. When it’s just the two of us plus the boyz, it can get pretty quiet around here. It struck me, over the last couple of days, that it’s probably too quiet, when we fall into our routines of work, eat, watch TV, go to bed. Day after day.
Just an hour ago, they loaded up the crew cab truck Deb’s brothers drove here, and headed north. First stop: Pick up JT near the cabin and drop off Deb so she can spend a couple of days there. Next stop for the guys: International Falls, then a crossing into Canada. The final leg of their trip is a float plane flight to a remote lake in Ontario for six days of fishing. The Walleye and Pike don’t know what they’re in for.
Their trip is absolutely NOT “glamping” (the new term for glamorous camping). They’ll get flown in and dropped off at the lake, will eat and sleep in a cabin with no running water and just rudimentary electrical and propane stuff (and yes, the no running water deal means there’s an outhouse) and for a week they’ll fish, cook said fish, and eat said fish. I’m not sure such a deal would be for me, but the guys’ excitement this morning, as they prepared to go, was infectious.
And at dinner the other night, Jim almost ordered the Walleye on the menu before he said, “Maybe I’ll just get a burger. I think I’ll have enough Walleye over the course of the next week.”
Great fun in Orlando and great fun here in Woodbury. Family time is a fun time, and a priceless time.
And now to the important stuff.
Yes, Tuesday was May 22, and that brought back a whole flood of memories and emotions for me. Even at my advanced age, a year is still a big piece of your life and so much happens in that 12 months. Looking back over the full year “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” has been out, I couldn’t help but see it as actually an interconnected trail that spanned more than two and a half years, going back to the day in 2015 when I committed myself to tackling this. What a ride it’s been. What a journey. What a life-altering dive into what I could do and what I could accomplish, rarely sticking my head up out of the water to see where I was or how far I still had to go.
I’m still mesmerized by the fact I could actually do it, and that the “plow forward” mentality that became such a central theme in the book wasn’t something I was planning on writing about at all, but instead was something that came to me (clear as could be) as I was writing it. To that end, there was no bigger “plow forward” thing than the actual writing of the book itself.
I had no idea how to do it when I started. I had no clue how long it would take. I wasn’t sure how to structure my days so that I could maximize the daily hours where the writing was at its best (you have to “warm up” your brain before you dive in). As for the editing, I knew I’d chosen the absolute best person for that, and Greg Halling not only showed me the way he taught me more than any teacher or professor ever could have, and this old dog learned a whole curriculum of new tricks by just watching Greg’s input and thinking, each time, “I see what he did there and that’s better than what I originally had. From here forward I’m not going to make those mistakes.”
I learned every single day. It was part writing and part school. It was exhilarating, and even now I miss it. The process was so big and important and central to every thing I did, for 365 days. One year, to the day, diving in and putting more sentences, more paragraphs, and more chapters on the screen. That’s amazing. I really do miss it, because it was that special and it felt so important for me to do it. I tried to never let the doubts creep in, about “Will all this work create something good or will it be terrible?” I tried, but the best way to conquer those fears was to realize I wasn’t writing it for the masses. I was writing it for me. If it turned out to be a somewhat entertaining tale, and a few people liked it, that would be awesome. If not, I still had to keep going every day to get it done.
I’ll never forget the day in late October of 2016 when I put the final period on the final chapter of the full first rough draft. It was just another day. I’d just spent yet another four straight hours writing, folding my brain into the words that were appearing on the screen as if I wasn’t even typing at all. And I finished that final sentence and thought “That’s enough for today” before I stood up. And then it hit me. I’m done! I think I almost hyperventilated.
Of course, Greg and I were a long way from done. My writing work was also a long way from over. It took another two months of diligent work to get it into shape, trim it wisely, and smooth out the rough spots. We didn’t smooth out all the rough spots, and I know this because on any given day I’ll play the masochist and pick it up and read a chapter. There are a number of things I’d like to go back and fix, but we gave it everything we had and in many more ways than I can count, I’m proud of it. I’m damn proud of it.
If I had no idea how I was going to write the book, I was 10 times more clueless about getting it published. That part really intimidated me, but just like it was with the year of writing I had no choice but to dive in and learn it on the fly. The year of writing would’ve been horribly wasted if I panicked and chickened out on the publishing part. Thanks to Outskirts Press, and Todd Myers’ incredible cover art over the world-class Mark Rebilas photos, we not only got it formatted and into shape, we even got it done ahead of schedule. On May 22, it was born and made its appearance in the real world. It was no longer a bunch of Google documents and words on the screen. It was a book. One year ago, it was a book.
Once it was out, it was time to put the PR and publicity effort into high gear and in the person of Elon Werner I had the best in the business representing me. Such a whirlwind of interviews, shows, podcasts, newspaper and magazine stories, and “appearances” on the P.A. system with Alan Reinhart at NHRA events. Book signings, autographs, comments from strangers who read it and loved it, and so much more. It was never overwhelming and never a hassle. It was incredible.
And it’s still going. Not at the “best seller” pace I was stunned by right after its release, but at a steady rate that still makes me shake my head on a regular basis. For instance, from Day 1 we’ve typically sold the Amazon Kindle versions at about a 5% rate compared to hard copies. People still like books in their hands, apparently. We had solid Kindle sales for a couple of months, with my royalties popping up as direct deposits in my bank account, month after month. For most of 2018, it had slowed to more of a trickle, but just in the last seven days we’ve sold as many Kindle versions as we’d sold in the prior three months put together. No, I don’t have any idea why or how that happens. It’s just one more thing about this whole process that baffles me while it also warms my heart.
When I went on Facebook a couple of weeks ago, to announce that I’d be willing to part with about 2/3 of the remaining inventory I have here in my office, at a discounted rate compared to Amazon, I didn’t know if even one person would respond. Yesterday, I took yet another package to the Post Office, to mail out another signed copy. I’m down to one case left, not counting the books I’m holding onto for further promotional purposes. I think Barbara is happy to see the stack of boxes get smaller and smaller. I know I am.
Also, yesterday I noticed that I’d gone from 26 Amazon reviews to 27. It was another humbling rave, and we’re now 27-for-27 in terms of reviews that are 5-Stars.
On Tuesday, when I was looking back over the year that followed that fateful morning when it went on sale, I dug back through these blogs to find the one I wrote that week. It was fun to read, and easy to sense exactly what I was feeling that morning. It’s here:
https://www.perfectgamefound.org/the-blog-weve-been-waiting-for/
I’m still not convinced it’s actually as good as it could possibly be, but I know for a fact I gave it my best effort and all my focus. The guy who couldn’t pay attention in class all the way through high school somehow managed to stay totally engaged and dedicated to the project for a full year. I think I surprised myself. I know I’m proud of that.
And gosh, I can’t really fathom who among you, in the group of folks who actually read this blog regularly, might not have bought the book or downloaded it yet, but if that describes you I’ll be bold enough to say this: “Hey, I took the plunge to write it. Maybe you can take the plunge to read it!”
So that’s it for this week, albeit a day late. We’re going to try to relax for the weekend, after so much hustle and hubbub over the last week, and then Barb’s off to London on Monday and I’m off to meet her in Amsterdam on Thursday. I promise I’ll get next week’s blog posted before I board my overnight flight.
As always, if you read this blog and liked it, please share those feelings by hitting the “Like” button at the top. The more “Likes” the merrier.
See you next week!
Bob Wilber, at your service a day late but it was worth the wait.