Call it Love Released, Back to Real Live Authors and Other Stuff...
Well, we are back! It's been a long haul on so many fronts to get to where we are, and with the pandemic, I feel this thing is not done yet, not by a long shot. In any case, I'm hopeful the vaccinated outnumber the non-vaxxed, and as we get out and about this fall and winter, we'll be able to make all this work.
So, what's been happening? Many things, and let's get right to one of the good things:
It's almost time! Tomorrow I'm headed to Altoona for the 9th incarnation of Sci-Fi Valley Con! The Blair County Convention Center is the place once again for a whole lot of people...authors, artists, vendors, costume makers, cosplayers, actors and a lot of things I can't begin to describe.
I'm just excited to be out and about again. What has happened in the past few weeks? Well for one thing, this:
Need I mention it? YES.
"Call it Love" has been released, finally! The second in the Sweet Dreams Series brings us up to date with Aki and the gang. You can buy this and all my other works right here on the website, either through SunburyPress.com, Amazon, Kindle, any way you wish.
Actually, I've been making a point to say, order it from your favorite local indie shop! Support those folks, please!
Aki is growing up, for certain, and she's learning more about her powers of time travel. She is aware, however, that she cannot go back in time and change the past. She cannot make things "right," and it cannot help real world issues. Aki now faces one, and what will happen?
I am feeling really good about how this one has turned out, and it augers well for Book 3, which will not be out till next year.
But yes...back out among the peoples...I made my first appearance in almost two years at the Chocolate Town Book Festival, at the Hershey Public Library last Saturday...
For once a not-bad selfie. The event had an okay turnout, and it was nice to see old friends, and meet new ones. My thanks to the friends who came to support me, and buy some of my books, always nice.
The library is a cool place, and Aly, Rita and the group all did great work to set up the event. It's in a very nice area, but I felt a bit out of the way for some...the good news, the festival moves to downtown Hershey in 2022. A better chance for more authors, more traffic, and so forth. All good.
Now, I'm preparing for Altoona, and for what comes after that. I don't have a lot of appearances beyond these, but I'm constantly looking for them. We were talking, some of us, and our books are really still in search of their audience. I think we all do eventually find that audience, hopefully in our lifetimes.
2021 has finally started to feel like a year for once. I'm still dealing with insurance stuff from the disaster that hit my house in '20, and while there's some small things to do, I'm pretty happy with where we are.
I remain required, at least a little bit in the radio business, that industry dinosaur that seems on its last legs, but will not die. Which is a good thing, because I have no other skills that translate to income...yet.
My Radio PA job is intact, my work in Lebanon is somewhat intact, the Senators want me back next year to do games, and I've added another job to the list. This week, I became the morning news guy for WHLM Radio in Bloomsburg.
There are some flips and twists to how we deliver content, be it, news, music, or whatever in recent decades, but we do our best. I filled in for Mark Thomas, a longtime former colleague back in the day, when he was away. Mark has decided to hang up the headset, and I was his pick to replace him. Thankfully, HLM feels the same way.
This is a not unfamiliar ground, I've done morning news for years in different forms. This is good work, requires some thought and some patience, but I feel I can bring my skills to it. Radio is not the same job, day in and day out. You might think so, but if it ever got to that, it's time to find a new job.
The challenge is different every single day. That's why I think I've stayed in it 37 years or more. As much as we all bitch about owners, general managers, consultants, sales people (and they bitch about us!), we all still love what we do, and we find ways to remake ourselves to stay in it.
There is not much in the way of younger folks heading into the medium, although they are doing it in ways that are new, or newer to me, such as podcasting. We are still in need; the old school ways of broadcasting won't die, because the human element is required.
I didn't do this to get rich or famous, although we all dreamed a little bit about that.
It's funny, how I have gotten so many compliments and congrats from friends on this new venture...I'm not moving up there, no need, and I still make a difference at every place I work. This is what I do--I'm a jobber, that guy that gets into the ring on the house shows and makes the big names look good. And I get paid for it.
Cases in point: while in college, I juggled three professional radio jobs, at different stations, different places. I spent summers filling in, and full time called, checked in, and checked me back out.
I made rash moves, some of which cost me, but if I didn't do them, my career never would have gone the way it did. In Boston, for ten years I bounced around a lot of stations. I never had a union contract, never was on a big station, but I found plenty to do, different formats, different jobs. I deejayed, produced, did news, managed, a lot of things. It's what you do.
I went back to Maine for a couple years, then came to Pennsylvania, bounced around, then to DC for some great years at XM, before the Sirius buyout. In and out of full and part-time, and I am where I want to be, with Radio PA, and these other places. Jobs like these don't tie me down, they let me make my own hours at times, and I can write.
Writing is the next frontier for me. I've spent 14 years seriously banging out books. Five are now published...five! How many have only one, and how many don't have any?
If anything, I'm proof you can write your great creation, your big story, your memoir. As a friend once said, you do great things by doing them.
