5/14/14

Dads Behaving Dadly

I wrote a story, a story that none of you have read.  I wrote a story for someone else.  I know, it's like I'm cheating, the infidelity is killing me.  But yet, it's exciting.  The sneaking around, the emails back and forth.  I may have worn a fake mustache when I was talking to the editors of a book I was asked to contribute to.  I like to entertain myself.  My alter ego is named Eduardo Hossman.  He's very sexy, slightly dangerous and all man.

Seriously though, I was asked to contribute some of my writings to a book called "Dads Behaving Dadly."  So I did.  And then the editors of the book liked what I wrote and decided to put it in the book.  Seriously.  I know, I'm not believing much of this myself and Eduardo certainly isn't believing much of it.  

But it's true, I have seen my name in the table of contents.  It's there, right there.  My story "Rocking the Mornings" and then my name.  I'm about to have something published that isn't on the back roads of the Internet next to the abandoned hotel website that you know has some sort of mega porn virus on it.  

Again, the name of the book is "Dads Behaving Dadly" and it's due to come out over Father's day.  

I'm terrible at self promotion, absolutely suck at it much to my wife's chagrin.  I don't know why, it's just the way I am.  I like what I write, I think I'm funny but I think I'm funny mainly in my own head.  It always surprises me that anyone else likes what I write, seriously what is wrong with you guys?  Baby Jesus judges you.  But not Eduardo, he loves you, he lives for you.  

I asked my wife how I should make the announcement that I have a story coming out.  She said that I have to mention the name of the book many times.  Dads Behaving Dadly.  Then I have to link the site.  Then I have to tell people when it's going to be available (Father's Day, 2014)  Then she said that I should create an alter ego with a Latin name and completely derail any and all previous information by making awkward jokes that no one is getting but me.  Dads Behaving Dadly.  

She didn't say that last part.  Hossmom is funny in 140 characters or less.  She doesn't tell a good story.  She doesn't get the set up, the build up to the punch line, the roller coaster of a narrative.  She's to blunt.  She's straight to the point and doesn't understand the dance a good story has to go through to make it memorable and somewhat decent that someone would ask you to write it and then put it in their book that is coming out on Father's Day.  Dads Behaving Dadly.  But she is a much better speller than me but at this point, my 8 year old daughter is a much better speller than me.  Eduardo and I do not like the spelling, it distracts from the process. 

Which means it is good that another person edited the story that I wrote for Dads Behaving Dadly, due out Father's day.  Here's their website.  Not spell checking took some pressure off me as I wrote it, sipping on whiskey and juggling chain saws.   

Actually, I wrote the story after I got out of the shower and I was naked.  Yeah, let that visual sink in.  Drink it up boys and girls.  That's not Eduardo's harry back your picturing, that's all Hoss.  

I wrote it then because that's when the idea hit me.  It was at night, no child was screaming at me or attempting to a throw hammers at my junk.  I was drying off and boom, an idea came so I sat down and wrote it and sent it off.  The editors had a heart attack with all the bad spelling and awesome grammar but after they were released from the hospital they decided what I did write was good enough for a book.  Yea I'm published, due out Father's Day 2014.  

Hossmom is in advertising though so her advice has been good in helping me make this announcement.  She says that I have to be informative.  I tried arguing with her and told her that I needed to be funny as well, Eduardo agreed.  I said that just being informative is not very fun to write and not very memorable.  I told her that sex sells so that as I was mentioning the story that I wrote for the book called Dads Behaving Dadly I would tell people that I wrote the story naked.  Sex sells baby.  She went to bed.  

Now she's not helping anymore and I'm pretty sure that I have crashed this informative announcement about my new book, Dads Behaving Dadly (Father's Day 2014), right into the fucking ground.  See what I did there?  I continued the roller coaster of a story by cussing and now I am edgy.  Eduardo said I should do that, he's edgy.  And Dangerous.  And all man.  Yup, this is going well.  There is no reason I should stop typing.  

I signed a contract to.  It was awesome.  I agreed to write a story for almost no money at all.  But I do get some money for the book, Dads Behaving Dadly (Father's Day 2014).  How much really depends on you people.  The book sells, I get more money.  And with that money, if enough copies sell and the editors get there cut, the other authors get theres, I might be able to go to Sonic and get a Milkshake.   The sweetest milkshake ever because it will be the result of my "publishing deal."  That's what I'm calling it now.  It's official, I'm an author.  I got paid to write.  When I do have to go back to work, many years after Dads Behaving Dadly has come out on Father's Day 2014, I'm going to put this on my resume.   You guys can say that you were there at the beginning, 6 or 7 years ago when I wrote about a flat tire at work in an email and sent it to my wife.  She said I should do this more often and thus the blog was born.  

And now one story, an unpublished brand new story, is appearing in a new book called Dads Behaving Dadly that will be out Father's Day 2014.  Buy a copy and I'll sign it for you because that's what you do when you have a publishing deal, you sign books.  I'll make it funny, something witty like "To Jim: may your travels never involve a broken toilet in a Mexican Slum."  

Or if you really want, Eduardo could sign it.  He signs in cursive. 



1 comment:

  1. Hi, Hossman. I'm pretty bad at self-promotion, too, but this is an attempt. You might decide to just delete this comment, and that's fine. Maybe you'll find this useful, at least. My kids and I created a YouTube channel on which we've posted 365 videos of things for parents to do with their kids when they don't want to just plop them in front of a screen, but they're running out of ideas. The activities require virtually no preparation time, won't make a mess or wear you out (though a lot of them wear the kids out, which is usually what we're after), and don't cost any money. Short videos (less than 2 min. long) demonstrate the idea, then get parents back to having fun with their kids. We also made a free Android app that lets the kids push a big green button to randomly select one of the videos so nobody actually has to make that dreaded decision of what to do.
    I hope you enjoy the videos and will consider sharing them.
    Here's the YouTube channel: http://www.youtube.com/user/tpmotd
    Here's the app: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=appinventor.ai_steven_thomas_stay.IndoorIdeas

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