Carry Me Home November 23, 2008
Posted by The Typist in New Orleans, NOLA, Toulouse Street.Tags: book, Carry Me Home, Federal Flood, Katrina, Lulu.com, New Orleans, publish, Wet Bank Guide
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So, after much messing with the manuscript and a thousand delays (I had hoped to do this before rising tide, and now it’s nearly the holidays), I’ve put together a collection of pieces originally from my Wet Bank Guide blog and compiled them into a book, “Carry Me Home — A Journey Back to New Orleans.”
Many of the pieces were re-worked for a hard copy publication, and given the editing they needed. So many were originally written in the wee hours of the dark with on better proof than a spell check. I had the idea to collect these at about the same time I decided to close the Wet Bank Guide chapter.
I appreciate the advice I had from several NOLA Bloggers with experience in the publishing world. I decided (against their advice) to make this a self-published venture partly because of the amount of time it would have required to go down the traditional path. It would have been a very different project, and tied up my time looking back at the Web Bank Guide era instead of looking forward. Now that this is behind me I hope to have time to focus on other non-blog writing projects.
The book is available today at www.lulu.com. As part of the Lulu distribution system, it should hit Bowker’s Books in Print in about two to three weeks, and onlines retailers like Amazon and B&N.Com by January. I intended to hit the pavement to try to place it in independent local book stores as well.
Thanks again to all of the people who left kind comments or sent emails back in the days of Wet Bank Guide, and encouraged me to keep writing in that forum. A big thanks to author, blogger and Wet Bank Guide reader Michael Tisserand for the blurb and to Greg Peters, one of who’s kind links to WBG ended up as a blurb as well. If I left anyone off the blog list in back I’m sorry. At one point, I had to start culling names to keep the book at 160 pages after edits, as I already had an ISBN number assigned and could not change the page count.
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Mark, please keep me apprised as to any book signings or parties in the area. I’ll come by and purchase a copy personally.
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Thank you, I will. The local distribution campaign will kick off as best I can around the BiP turn around time and the holiday crunch at retailers.
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Excellent timing! I just purchased one for a Christmas present from hubby to me! (it makes shopping easier for him this way).
Thanks!
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Great effort! Can’t wait to read it.
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Congratulations, Mark. But… um… I’m pretty sure I’ve read most of it already.
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I don’t doubt that readers of Wet Bank Guide have in fact read them all in the past, at least in their original format. Part of my intent was to transfer the transient space of a free Blogspot account into something more permanent, at least for what I thought was worth saving. And I still think we need to find a way to archive dozens of Katrina-time blogs for posterity. There is a lot of information there. As I’ve said before, I think the blogs of 2005 and 2006 will be read 100 years hence by students of history as they today read the letters of Civil War era foot soldiers.
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Awesome! I can now add you to my collection of published authors, led by Hawai’i’s “Pidgin Shakespeare” Lois-Ann Yamanaka.
The world will little note nor long remember who was encouraging you to publish an actual book as far back as mid-’06, so I’ll just go ahead and remind everyone that it was me. Maybe I should get a job at Panasonic… just slightly ahead of my time.
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I’ll order a copy, but please don’t kill your Blog. I enjoy reading it.
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I’m not killing this blog. Wet Bank Guide went into quiet retirement last January, almost a year ago now. I know that some people who read it long ago won’t want to buy a copy. I’m always understood that. I’m trying to grow my audience a bit. Hell, even without a Pulitzer paperweight (as I heard Chris Rose once describe it), remember that 1 Dead in Attic is basically a compliation of his columns, and started out as a self-published book. I am hoping through marketing outside of the blog world to grow my audience a bit outside the online world.
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Mazel tov!
I will most certainly purchase copies for others, if not myself, ’cause them essays deserve a larger audience, for true.
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Well I am looking forward to reading.
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It will make a wonderful gift. Your comment (#7) gave me chills. You taught any to listen.
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Many. You taught many to listen.
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