As expected - the weekend and other responsibilities threw a grenade in the work shed. What's man to do, but brush off the dust and get back on the horse. Let me backtrack a little though because there are some important events that became part of the process.
The flyers: I didn't know quite what to expect from them but so far as I can tell, at least half of them disappeared from the show at the weekend. I didn't stand and watch people picking them up but I am assuming one single person didn't simply take a fistful and deplete the stock. That's a good amount and hopefully, some of those people have made it to here when they didn't previously know it existed.
Also on that note, some of the guys who work back at the day-job office didn't have a clue I did anything at all like this, so we'll put that in the win column. My mag publisher picked one up too, saying the cover was really good - which actually meant something to me because he's the man responsible for making me look good in the distant past with other things and I love his own work. so we'll put that in the win column too.
When pressed by one of the office staff on the books subject matter, I showed her a story on my phone (The Advantages Of Having A Thick Coat Of Fur) and she began to read extracts of it out loud. I was badly prepared for this and she made it sounds filthy - picking up on keywords like 'pants', 'bath' and 'being naked' like some kind of triple-x search engine. So there's a lesson for all of us. No matter what you write, once you release it, people will make it their own and tell other people their opinion of it... which also happened. Another staffer came over to see what she was reading and then there were two people who thought it was some weird dog-porn-bath story.
What did I learn? Choose your extracts carefully? Don't show people random items on your phone out of context? Maybe - but mostly, what I already said. They will make of it whatever they want. You have zero control. Get used to it.
On returning from the exile of the weekend, I came back to find a message from an author I had contacted to see if he would look at the book and perhaps write something enticing for the cover. I am playing this down here. I say 'an author' but he happens to be my favourite living author. I won't disclose who it is and fire all of my guns before the time is right - it's enough to say that this tiny message made my day/week/month. File under pending for now.
That's good enough for Day Ten. The work haze is starting to clear enough for me to see where the saddle is now to jump back on it.