After my two weeks of de-stressing, I can feel my engine revving up again. With all the good intentions a new year brings, I plan to be mindful of the signs along the road that spell “stress.” Mindful and skillful at navigating around them. Show them who’s boss.

Check with me in a week or two and ask me how I’m doing.

While my spirit is high I have jumped back into bookland with both feet and so far it feels promising. On my plate are some gems like: The Whitehouse Boys (the true crime memoir), The Vigorous Mind (it’s out now for those of you who were waiting), Zig-zagging (the Ziggy cartoonist’s memoir) and  Act Now! (Mr. Ginzu knife’s story). The Mary Jo Buttafuoco memoir in August. (oooooh. can’t wait for that!)

How about this for a title: “Does This Pregnancy Make Me Look Fat?” (coming in fall)

Love it.

Today I did what all good publicists do. I threw boxes and boxes of publicity spaghetti against the wall, the media wall, that is.  Not without targets, not without direction. But since I will be hard-pressed to follow up on many of my solicitations, it feels like a lot of far flung pasta.

Press releases  emailed to Burrelle’s mailing lists. Program pitches to Oprah, Larry King Live and Regis & Kelly.  Internal announcements designed to get the sales team revved up, too.

If I looked at the odds of my profession,  I’d assess that a sane person would look for work elsewhere. If I bought into the statistics game, I wouldn’t even bother trying.

The dire reality: add up the number of media venues that host authors or talk about books (few, do), subtract the air time or print space given to celebrities with books (snarl), veteran bestselling authors, and what is left for the first time or second tier author?

We just mustn’t think that way. No publicist would get out of bed unless they were solely shepherds of the mega-stars.

So, push on we must, one press release in front of the other. One radio show echoing the last. Another author blog tour and yet another blog ad campaign. Another ad in Radio-TV Interview Report.

Something will catch on.

We have even less control than this time last year. Because, even if we get lucky and find our authors hawking their books on the telly or in some magazine, our public is petrified to part with its dollars.

Obama save us.

How we, as humans are lucky, is that no matter how famous an author is, how many times an author has been on the NY Times bestseller list, the price of books will always fall into an egalitarian range of affordability. There are no Chateaux Margaux, or Don Perignon priced books.

They’re all supermarket grade Chianti.

Thank goodness for that.

The perfect accompaniment to a bowl of pasta.

p.s. fall brings another book from Crazy Aunt Purl herself, Laurie Perry, “Home is Where the Wine Is.” If that doesn’t spell bestseller, I’ll eat my pasta, raw!

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