1. This book needs some people to say sexy things about it (or me) for the cover. Ponder over whether such people exist and draw up a short-list of people I know, or semi-know, to ask them if they would "be so kind...". If feels odd - particularly as I'm doing it solo but then, I don't suppose it would be any different if there was a publisher in the background. The illusion of a third-party being able to help out if I run into a hole in the road should not exist, so I press on, create a short-list of authors I really like and have spoken to at least once in my life and ignore the fact that it's pretty windy up here on the edge of the cliff.
2. 1000 flyers arrive while I'm out with the dog over lunch - decided that these guys looked like they meant business and I was correct. Delivery driver hides them in the recycling bin and sticks a note through the door to tell me so. A delivery driver with common sense? More like him/her please. Slice the box open to find 1000 exactly as intended flyers all cut to size and ready to go. The process of doing this and their arrival is a feeling far superior to typing a 140 character tweet or having to face the indignity of creating a facebook page. I sacrifice five of the flyers. I stick one on the fridge to see if stands the test of time, one on the kitchen cupboard just because I want to - the dog took the other three and chewed them up because I left them on the corner of the table.
C'est la vie. Hopefully he has gotten it out of his system. This is the flyer:
3. Call the day-job boss and ask if it's OK to distribute flyers at big event over the coming weekend. I kind of assumed it would be but assume nothing in everything you do. When you do, that's when goats come and bite you on the ass. Thousands of people who (presumably) know what I do on a monthly basis is called a Gift Horse and I should brush his teeth. Damn - there I go assuming something. Well OK, some things you can assume without any harm actually coming from it...
Let's move on.
4. Decide to do nothing more with this for the rest of the day but make sure that all the things I've done so far won't fall apart while my back is turned.
5. Rustle up a calendar for next week to stay on schedule. By 'calendar', I mean 'stick a lot of post-it notes to the kitchen cupboards' because you can't hide from them like you can a calendar on your phone or machine. This is because human beings remind you frequently that you have put post-it notes all over the kitchen...