Of Cover Poses, Interviews, and Friends

HOME / Of Cover Poses, Interviews, and Friends

April 20th, 2022

Hey! I’m finally back at the blogging desk. It’s been a while and it’s been a whirlwind, so I hope you can bear with me.

I’ve been doing pretty much non-stop publicity for How Far? and it’s kept me hopping like the Easter bunny. TV interviews, podcasts, print interviews, tons of social media, you name it. Great stuff and huge thanks continue to head from me to my publicist Elon Werner. He gets frustrated when he can’t make EVERYTHING happen, but when he lines up a big hit he’s the hero.

On the air in L.A. The big time.

For instance, he lined up a segment for me on a huge TV station in Los Angeles, on their Sports Central show, with host Jill Painter. That was amazing.

My instructions before we began taping were “Just give the longest answers you want. Keep talking. We won’t know how much time we get to fill until the show sorts out, so we’ll edit it to fit.

Worked for me! I’ve never been afraid of the sound of my own voice. And Jill was fantastic.

I did a lengthy podcast recently with my longtime friend Susan Wade, who was a reporter for most of the years I was a PR guy in drag racing, along with the show’s host Anthony Caruso and that went great although it will suck up about an hour and a half of your life to watch the whole thing. Like the Energizer Bunny, we just kept going, and going, and going.

It’s here:

CapitalSportsReport

That show grew into a bigger deal when Susan then wrote about the new book and my career on her blog.

That’s here:

Thoughts Racing

Susan has always been one of the best reporters I’ve known, especially in terms of her very polished writing skills. I loved the story, and very much appreciate it. Geez, I’ve known her for so long I can’t even remember when we first met out on the NHRA tour. I think we were still living in Austin when I pitched my first press release to her and she immediately got it in a Seattle paper.

Here on the home front, we have a glossy magazine called The Connector that is mailed to thousands of residents here in the eastside suburbs of St. Paul, including Woodbury and all the neighborhoods that surround us.

Two issues ago, they printed a story on me as a “Featured Author” and told all their readers about the book.

For the most recent issue, they made Barbara and me the “Featured Family” and we were on the cover, with a lengthy story inside the magazine. Yes, Boofus and Buster got to be in one of the photos, because they are part of the family.

The photo shoot was done inside our home, because it was raw and windy day outside. That cover shot is us standing in front of our living room fireplace.

They spent about an hour shooting us, and then gave us proofs of all the shots they deemed usable in the magazine. We got to veto the ones we didn’t like and point out a few we’d really like to see in the story. It was seamless, and then about a week later I opened the mailbox and there we were, looking right back me. Very cool.

A happy couple with two furry and fuzzy kids

For the record, down below are two of our favorite photos from the magazine, including the one with our famous “children”.

I’m also currently working with the newspaper in Roseau and might even get a feature so big it fills a page. We’ll see, but any exposure is good exposure.

The writer up there in Roseau has been reading the book and said, and I quote “This is the greatest book I’ve ever read. If I ever write a book, I’d try to base it on your style of writing.”

Yeah, I’m patting myself on the back, but words like that from a longtime newspaper man mean a lot to me. We call it affirmation.

So, it’s all going well. I’m proud of it.

On a different front, we celebrated the retirement of one of our great friends from the old neighborhood recently. We all met at our favorite Woodbury bistro, Angelina’s Kitchen.

They walled off a whole private area for us and treated us like superstars.

Barb Meehan has worked a long and successful career at Wells Fargo and is now retired. We were all so happy for her and so proud of her.

Gifts were exchanged, hugs were shared, stories were told, laughs were loud, and the food was as good as it can be. Angelina rocks, and she came back to see us a couple of times.

Almost all of the old group made it, but unfortunately Neighbor Dave and Nichol couldn’t be there. Their little dog Bauer is really struggling and, as Nichol put it, “He had a really bad day. We just couldn’t leave him…” Bauer has had great life with a phenomenal family. He’s been one lucky dog. He’s brought so much joy to that warm and wonderful house on the pond.

Best. Friends. Period.

But this is what it’s all about. It’s why Woodbury is home. It’s why we bought this town home when we were still out in Spokane, because we knew we’d be coming back. We have the best possible friends in the world, here.

Sorry about the way the photos stack up in this blog. I’ve started making them bigger because we no longer have the feature where you can click on them to enlarge. They look fine on the original draft, and then I publish the blog and they’re all over the place. So keep scrolling. The group photo of us at the retirement party is at the very bottom.

So this wasn’t the longest blog ever, but it’s all I had the time and mental bandwidth for.

As the publicity effort slows down, I’ll get back more into the swing of things.

Hope you are all well. Take care of yourselves.

And, as always, if you liked this blog even a little bit, please click on the “LIKE” button at the bottom.

I’ll see you again soon!

BW