Holy cow. I totally missed Thursday Blog Day, and I have no idea why. I knew it was Thursday, I had some notes written from earlier in the week to give me some starting points for subject matter, and yet as I sat down this morning to do some work on my new book project it finally sunk in that today is Friday! I had to go look at my blog page just to make sure I didn’t do it, and sure enough it was still last week’s installment. So, even at my advanced age, it’s not unlike falling asleep in high school math class and then waking up to find a whole new room of people around you, studying science. I swear I never did that, but I saw it happen to a few guys at St. Louis U. High.
After last week’s installment, all about matching faces to names, I’m going to do something I rarely ever do. I’m going to repeat the same theme for a second week in a row. Last week’s blog went over so enormously well, it seemed a shame not to do some more digging and find some more photos that directly reference portions of the book. So let’s get right to it!
Even before I wrote the first word for “Bats, Balls, & Burnouts” two years ago, I knew that it would be heavy on details and based around characters. After all, the fun is in the details and the wide variety and large number of absolute characters I’ve known or met, throughout it all, sometimes even baffles me. And, it wasn’t until I got started in the process, working with Outskirts Press, that I began to understand how photos can or can’t be used in a printed publication. The short version is that there’s a ton of paperwork and signatures involved and some of the photos I had could not be used at all. So, a lot of photos ended up in a file folder saved for those that didn’t make the cut.
This might not be the longest or the funniest Bob’s Blog I’ve ever written or will write, but it does rank in the top 2 percentile in terms of big news. It’s the answer to the question I’ve heard the most in 2017. The question is, “What’s next for you, in 2018?” For all but the final five days in 2017 I didn’t have a firm answer, other than “I’ve got some ideas, but nothing solid yet.” On December 27 the lightbulb went on, after my sister Mary asked me a half-dozen times “What’s your next book going to be about?” while we were on Kauai.