Barbara Gregorich

May 1, 2024

Newsletter #81 — Five-Star Seal

 
Readers' Favorites Reviews  — Some time in March I submitted Exit Velocity to the Readers' Favorite site for three reader book reviews. They promised I'd have the reviews by mid-May. And, it's the policy of Readers' Favorite that if a book receives a five-star review, then the author receives a Readers' Favorite seal which she/he can put on their book or web site or banners or T-shirts. Wherever. 

While Phil and I were on vacation in mid-April, Exit Velocity received its first Readers' Favorite review: five stars. This entitled me to the Readers' Favorite seal, which I downloaded and began applying to things. Also, I will receive two more reviews. When all three reviews are in, the reviewers will post them on the sites I requested: GoodReads, Amazon, and BookBub. (Amazon, though, won't allow any posting of reviews until publication date, June 4.)

Note: As I was composing this newsletter, a second review came in, also five stars. I like the second review even better than I did the first one. And I'll post links to one or more of them when they're on GoodReads.

Trip to New Orleans — Phil and I took a week-long vacation to New Orleans, not just because people need vacations, but because we needed a vacation after all the Exit Velocity work and before the final push. 

First we drove to Memphis, which occasioned our singing Guy Clark's song, "Baby Took a Limo to Memphis."   Then, somewhere along the way, we started talking about the song "Hal-an-tow,"  which commemorates Flora Day. This holiday originated in Cornwall and has been celebrated throughout the British Isles for 800 years or more. It's very much like our May Day, welcoming in the summertime. Phil and I really love the rocky version by The Oyster Band.  

From Memphis we drove to Lafayette, Louisiana, and from there to Avery Island, which is the home of tabasco peppers and the production of McIlhenny Tabasco Sauce. We took a self-directed tour of the museum and the factory and then took a drive through the island gardens, which included huge stands of bamboo, the first cultivated in the US, and the largest growth of bamboo in the US.

From there it was on to New Orleans (of course we sang the Jimmy Buffet tune, "The Battle of New Orleans," which he wrote to help teach history to his students). In Nawrleans we walked along the river front, took a fantastic flatboat tour into swamplands (saw a 19-foot alligator, plus many smaller ones), and visited the New Orleans Jazz Museum. So many songs we didn't know which to sing, though we leaned toward Fats Domino's "Blueberry Hill."   

The trip was fun, educational, and utterly relaxing, which is just what we needed. Now: onward to the last five weeks of pre-pub marketing!

September to May —  Back on September 1, 2023, when I began to work on publishing and marketing Exit Velocity, I knew that the reactions and responses would, for the most part, arrive between April 15 and June 4. This meant I would be working blind for 7.5 months, trusting that some of what I was doing would eventually bear fruit.

The fruit started arriving on April 15, when we were on our New Orleans vacation. During the five days we were there I received questions for an author interview with Deborah Kalb; I received the 5-star review from a Readers Favorites reviewer, which entitled me to that seal I mentioned above. And, unrelated to Exit Velocity, I received a request to speak on women in baseball in Rockford, IL, in November or December. (Requests always come in when one is on vacation!)

Each of the above was a wonderful response and made me very happy. But each also meant I would have to adjust my schedule, squeezing in more work. Just downloading the seal, for example, and figuring out all the places it could be used might take  a lot of thought and effort. (Because nothing on the web is ever easy.)

As a result I felt the need to eat more beignets and drink more chicory-laden coffee in the mornings, and eat more crawfish étouffée each evening . . . which meant I enjoyed the vacation even more!

Video — My second video is Crochet in Exit Velocity. I had hoped to make four in April and four in May, but I now have to use my marketing time in other ways. 

Setting— In my April 15 blog post I write about  press kits. I used to write my April 15 blog, but thanks to friend and fellow writer Carol Saller for alerting me to the fact that a blog is not a post. A blog is the entire web site with all one's posts on it. Of course, now that I have been corrected, I see the term blog post everywhere. Why didn't I notice this before????