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I’m A Symphony Conductor!

Wednesday, August 13th, 2008

I feel as if I’m standing at the podium with baton in the air and I have an orchestra in front of me, tuning up.  Right now, it sounds rather awkward with uncoordinated bleets and blats going on and no music coming out.

That’s a snapshot of the status of my current dream production – this new book and its promotion. If every instrument harmonizes exactly, then I will have a book on Amazon.com and in hand by September 3rd when I take off for my first big promotional endeavor – the AARP Convention in Washington, DC.  That’s where I plan to network like crazy among all the youngest old folks (like me) that you’ll ever meet.  This is a huge 50th birthday celebration of the American Association of Retired Persons and it will be a spectacular three-day event.  So, I will be there trying to make some sort of a mark among my peers, all of whom are also highly-accomplished, memorable individuals.  How will I accomplish this?

1.  The big plan is simple:  Pass out lots of special business cards…..which I have just ordered online…5000 of them….to everyone whom I meet and chat with.  I love the card’s design and the fact that it advertises my book, not me, and will send people to my personal blogsite and to Amazon.com to order my book.

2.  But, for the moment, my heyboomers.com blogsite is getting completely redone.  Recently, I have lost two long postings to the blithersphere (the ether), so my blog designer is going to change things completely and to try to get the site ready for the big September 3rd deadline.  Will it be ready on time?

3.  I still have to get the headers and page numbers done on the book’s formatting and a PDF file produced so that I can submit it to the printer, Lightning Source.  In the meantime, my sister has just proofed the manuscript again and found lots more stray commas and things to fix.  She’s a crackerjack high school English teacher and I’m very grateful for her input. I’d rather have her catch the errors now instead of while she’s reading the published copy.

4.  Assuming that I can get these technicalities on the book interior cleared up by this weekend and can send the cover design template to my Argentinian cover designers, I can send everything to the printers by next Monday and they will send me a printed book proof copy within just a few days.

5.  Hopefully, that will be acceptable and I can order my first fifty books to send out for review and to solicit interview opportunities.  At that time, the book gets posted on Amazon.com for sale and I am in business.  This could all be up and running by September 1st and I’ll be ready for my big “concert” in our nation’s capital.

But, the success of it all depends upon many different instruments playing together – on the same song – at the same time.  So, we shall see.  Tune in three weeks from now and I will tell you if we made it.