My travel memoir, Away at a Camp in Maine, came out last July. I was amazed and humbled from the support and positive reinforcement I received from friends and family - it went beyond anything I had imagined.
Marketing to bookstores, gift shops, and kids' summer camps in Maine as a parting keepsake for campers (since Chapter 17 is about just such a camp on Crescent Lake) has gone harder than I expected. There is less interest, despite my sending hundreds of requests and emails.
The shelf life of a book, unless you're Charlotte's Web (!), is really only about a year or so. This spring, I wanted to give my little gift book one final push before I called myself "done" with it. What I found is that it was absolutely right to take a chance and a leap of faith and publish it in the beginning and it was absolutely right to give it a final push. For all of these things, I am so grateful. The kindness of others has touched me deeply and validated something that has been important to me all my life. From the bottom of my heart.....thank you.
• my book hit the shelves of L. L. Bean just in time for Memorial Day tourists - the Pulitzer in my world!
• July 15, I will be doing a reading/speaking/slide-show about the book at the Portland Public Library in their "local author" Brown Bag lunch series
• June issue of Down East magazine displays an ad for my book
• On a recent trip to Florida, I saw my book as a "coffee table book" in my relatives' homes.
• I was called out of the blue on a rainy Saturday a few weeks ago by a woman who bought my book at The Good Life Market in Raymond. She worked with my father-in-law many years ago and tracked me down. She loved my cover, the title, and the book itself. She told me she grew up on Watchic Lake and had "the leeches, the drowning boy," everything I described. Wow. She made my day.
Photo: my book on the shelves of L. L. Bean
