Um, Wanna Buy This.?

I suck at self promotion.

Don’t like it. At all. It feels weird and explains why I was so bad at getting raises all those years and why I have never, ever received a Mother of the Year award.

But since being a DIY author is a one-person operation, I need to pimp publicize myself, so that means press releases and signings and hopefully, pllllleeeease, people come.

I’ve been hesitant to do too much because ya know, life is busy. People are busy. There are basketball tournaments and dance competitions and baby showers, so who has time to come to a book signing? Even if you really, really like the writer and want her to succeed and don’t want her to have a bone-rattling, weepy meltdown a la Holly Hunter’s character in “Broadcast News” because only two people show up and the only reason they’re there is because they got confused and thought they were in line for free food samples.

Folks have been offering all kinds of advice on whom I should talk to and how to really get my book out there, but I gotta say, I feel like I’m good, like I’ve already made it.

A dad from school, whom I don’t know especially well, took the time to single me out and tell me how he swiped the book from his wife and was really enjoying it and that I was hilarious and seemed like I’d be the kind of person who’d be fun to hang out with. He was nearly covered in blood and guts for his kind words because my heart nearly popped out of my chest. That was probably the nicest thing anyone ever said to me — the previous best compliment came from my then-2-year-old son telling me that I smelled good — and because I am who I am now those nice words fill me with incredible self doubt that people will meet me IRL and I will let them down by not being a laugh riot (“Well she wasn’t funny at all! Was her book ghostwritten?!” Did you read that in Jim Gaffigan voice? That’s how I hear it.).

I am so, so grateful every time people post on Facebook that they bought a book or when my friends text me selfies with it. And, I’m both embarrassed and tickled by this wonderfully done piece…

I also feel compelled to do some behind-the-scenes explaining of the, ahem, scandalaundrous photo…

• It was taken in our very purple laundry room. It seemed like such a fun, happy color at the time we spruced it up. Seeing it in print, now I have my doubts about it…
• No. 3 very thoughtfully left lots of piles of CLEAN laundry all about, so that made things easy. (In the interests of full disclosure, I will admit to often making judgment calls about whether or not certain items of my children’s clothing really do need to be washed.)
• I own a tiara (don’t all moms?) and debated offering to pull it out, but photojournalists don’t like faking up pix, which is why I have all those chins.
• And because I really feel like my shoes deserve a closeup of their own…