Post-Launch

Well, my book was released into stores earlier this week and I have barely survived the experience. The website was launched a week earlier, on Earth Day, and today is the first chance I've gotten to take a breath. Contrary to a lot of typical author experiences, especially in the case of prescriptive non-fiction, I used no ghost writers or assistants. I wrote and kitchen-tested everything, both in the book and on the website. On the website, all the content, layout, edit, audio, video and more was produced by me (except for the coding and CMS--I can't do everything! But they can: http://www.antagar.com). So, blogging regularly was hampered by the need to focus on priority deadlines. But now I expect I'll be posting here a bit more regularly.

This past week was pretty crazy: Down to Philadelphia in the dead of night to do a live TV spot on CN8's Your Morning to promote the book; organizing the launch party scheduled for Monday; dealing with last-minute site glitches; and attending to my regular client base. One of the highlights of my week was being taped for several on-location segments for a Japanese television program called Cool Japan, which will be broadcast on June 16 on NHK TV (if you get Japan-US TV on cable in the US, you can catch it there). I've done a lot of work in Japan and love the culture--the program focused on this. It also stars my dog, Yoshi-kun (above), who is a Japanese shiba ken, so I'm glad I can finally indulge my fantasy of becoming a crazed stage-mother by pimping my pet! He's going to be a STAR!

On a more serious note, I'll detail some of my adventures as I go through the publicity sausage-making machine, and I'll be able to finally fill you in on the making of the book and site--two endeavours to which I believe a lot of people aspire, but never grasp what's really involved. It was certainly an eye-opening experience for me.

And on a more entertaining note, I'm going to post pix from past and upcoming parties. So stay tuned and please let me know what you think. More soon...