OF COURSE YOU DID

Local Hero

Last August Ann noticed a small item on her Edmonton Journal feed. The paper was set to launch a column on the local literary scene. I made a note of the writer’s name and his e-mail address. Of Course You Did had been available since July. I’d not been comfortable arranging a formal launch, masked inside an enclosed space amid this pandemic. I needed some publicity beyond Facebook.

I dislike doing readings and public speaking in general. I always feel like Big Joe Turner’s love child: shake, prattle and droll. The irony is after nearly 30 years in advertising, self-promotion is anathema. Charlotte Bronte scribbled, “I’m just going to write because I cannot help it.” Whatever messes I’ve made in my life, I’ve always known my creative impulse is pure, I simply hope to be read.

Because I’m too pedantic and persnickety about language to reach out to anyone unless they need a hand, I instead contacted the columnist – following a week’s girding, working up the nerve to steel myself for yet another rejection. His reply was encouraging because I was surprised to receive one: “No promises.” Fair enough.

In mid-September Of Course You Did was the subject of a complimentary albeit brief review in the newspaper’s “Book Marks” column. My novella was described as “twisted time travel” which played out as “a tragedy in three acts.” I thought maybe I could leverage (pardon the ad jargon, the word I really should use is “exploit”) the positive notice with bookshops which are understandably reluctant to stock titles by poor-selling unknowns. I sent out some feelers. With Canada’s largest chain I was up against throw cushions and votive candles; I lost.

Last weekend’s Journal declared Of Course You Did “one of the most memorable books of the year.” My strange little story was “both heartwarming and gut wrenching.” I’d somehow managed to scribble one of the local literary sensations of 2021. I felt good that Saturday morning, something like a slough shark in a rain barrel. I experienced about one fine hour of exquisite egoism. Ann said she wasn’t sure she could stand the company, her domestic proximity to celebrity – a fair comment from a very patient person who read and corrected six drafts. I replied we might have to renovate the house so my head could fit through the door frames; as it was I was trapped in the kitchen. That was just as well because the breakfast dishes needed washing and the food scraps bucket under the sink needed emptying. And anyway, the song on the radio was still a baddie and outside the low, late November weather was still sun-proofed. Besides, those worrisome prostrate dribbles of mine aren’t going anywhere any time soon.

Still, ‘tis the season. I can’t think of a better Christmas gift for a loved one than a slim volume of fiction by an obscure Canadian writer and a regional one at that. Of Course You Did is available in three formats from multiple retailers including Amazon, Apple Books and Barnes & Noble; the book is also available to the trade through the Ingram wholesale distribution company. But, wait! There’s more! Check out www.megeoff.com.          

           

meGeoff has been your most unreliable, unbalanced and inaccurate alternative source of tentative self-promotion since 2013. My novella Of Course You Did is widely available. Visit www.megeoff.com to find your preferred format and retailer. Relentless repetition is “frequency” in ad jargon.