Hello

Opening Day is just around the corner and so, not at all coincidentally, is the official publication date of The Utility of Boredom. The book, and the baseball season, debut on Monday, April 4. I mean, technically, the first regular season games of the 2016 season take place on Sunday, April 3, but that’s just evidence of Major League Baseball’s ceaseless tinkering in the interest of drawing more viewers. Real Opening Day is on a Monday. It begins with a parade in Cincinnati. Children skip school. It’s wonderful.

Not that I won’t watch Sunday’s games. Baseball is baseball.

It wasn’t a terrifically hard winter here, but none of them are easy, and Opening Day, like Easter, is a harbinger of the season’s change. Winter is gone. That gets me excited every year, but the prospect of having a book about baseball out in the world is a unique thrill, and it makes this spring feel bigger than most.  So yeah, I’m excited. I’m excited not only because I’m proud of the contents of this book — which I am — but because the book itself is, frankly, gorgeous. It’s a lovely object. When I opened the box pictured up there above this post, I gasped. I mean, the mock-ups I’d seen were great, and I knew it was going to be a good looking book, but I wasn’t ready for the real thing. I mean, it has a scorecard in it. A real, usable scorecard. And the edge of the scorecard is perforated, so you can tear it out, take it to a game, and actually use it. I wrote a frivolous love letter to baseball, and the folks at Invisible made it into a real, practical, usable thing.

To reiterate: I am excited. The snow is gone. The baseball season is about to start. The book comes out on Monday.

I hope you’re excited, too.

And if you’ll forgive the crass commercialism of the following, if you are excited, I could use your help. If you do obtain, and read, and enjoy the book, if you think it of value to other readers you know, please tell them. Tell the world. Having watched the process with my first book, I can tell you that such things do help. So share, link, review, talk, whether on your social media platform of choice, or an online retailer, or a site like Goodreads. And this goes not just for my book(s), but any others you might read as well, especially if they’re the product of independent publishers. Same goes for art of any kind, truthfully. It helps.

Thanks, and I hope to see you soon, somewhere.

/a

PS — A great way to let Invisible Publishing know you’re excited about the book, in addition to ordering it, is to enter their Utility of Boredom Blue Jays Tickets Giveaway.  You get a shot at free baseball tickets, they get an idea of just who’s into the book. There are no losers in this scenario. You have until the final out of the Jays-Rays game on Monday, April 4 to enter. Get on it!