Fat Budge, Skinny Budge

Several years ago, feeling suave and sophisticated, I decided to publish a book on Amazon.com. At the time not only were all of the cool kids doing it, but it just sounded like fun. I mean, I'd be a (self) published author! How cool would that be?! Unfortunately, my plan quickly ran into a snag when I realized that in order to publish a book, I'd have to first write one. Distraught by this revelation, I frantically scanned the hard drive of my computer, hoping to find some manuscript that I'd at some point written but had long since forgotten, but to no avail. Left with little choice, I was forced to call upon the can-do, never-say-die attitude that's made this country great and do it the old-fashioned way, by which I mean cheat.

Not wanting to invest the time and effort into writing a book from scratch, I took a bunch of old essays and blog entries, cleaned them up a little, and compiled them into a collection. Problem solved! I had a book! (A cheater book, yes, but still a book!) Happy with my ingenuity, I then published Who Says You Shouldn't Smile Today? which quickly went on to sell upwards of eight total copies! Success!

This project was supposed to be my one and only foray into the self-publishing world, mainly because it'd been a total pain in the you-know-what. You see, even though most of the writing had already been done, self-publishing Who Says You Shouldn't Smile Today? was way more work than I ever expected it to be. Besides putting the book together, I also had to edit it, obtain a cover for it, re-edit it, write the promotional blurb for Amazon.com, re-re-edit it, and – worst of all – compile it into a viable e-reader format, all of which took a staggering amount of time. So, once I'd finally finished, I had no intention of ever repeating that horrible process.

However, deep down inside I was never really 100% satisfied with my efforts. Sure, I was technically the author of a book, but it was really more of a bolted-together, Frankenstein's Monster of random essays than it was a work with any sort of cohesive narrative. This always bugged me, and every now and again I'd toy with the idea of writing a real book from scratch, despite the fact that it would mean even more work. However, since I could never come up with an interesting enough topic to write about, it wasn't something I strongly considered.

Until that fateful day when I suddenly had an idea.

At first I tried to ignore it, mainly because acting upon it would mean I'd have to devote a lot of long nights and weekends to writing, which would cut deeply into my treasured free time. However, I subconsciously knew it was what I really wanted. I mean, if I went through with it, I'd no longer have to consider myself a cheater author! (Also, it's not like I was doing anything useful with my nights and weekends, anyway.)

And so, sometime last summer, I allowed myself to put together a rudimentary outline. At the time I pretended I wasn't yet fully committed to the project, but I now realize that I was only fooling myself. The decision had been made, and it was going to happen whether I liked it or not.

With the outline complete, I got down to some serious writing. It was agonizingly slow work – mainly because I spent most of my time distracting myself with random videos on the internet – but eventually the chapters began to come together, and late last year I finally found myself with a finished first draft of an honest-to-goodness book!

Now, I'll spare you the rest of the details, as I'm sure you've already figured out that the point of this blog post is to advertise my new book, which I've just published on Amazon.com. It's called Fat Budge, Skinny Budge, and it's about health and fitness. So, if it sounds in any way interesting to you, click on the image below and check it out.

As for me, I'm so sick of writing and editing that I never, ever, want to self-publish a book again. Still, that's what I said last time, so I guess I should really keep an open mind. I mean, if this thing does really well and happens to sell nine or ten copies, you never know what might happen next!!