It’s been two years in the making and I can’t believe that I’m such a big slacker, but you can now order a copy of my book. Within the next few weeks I’ll also make Hamburger Heart available on Kindle and record the audiobook version. The most difficult thing about this whole process was the level of introspection required to write the story about what already happened in my life, of which I am now doubly over. I highly doubt I will ever make enough money to recover the costs, but thankfully, I wrangled my manuscript until I felt like having it printed.

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0GTMBS88M

I’ll be posting some snippets and profiles of the personalities in my book. For everyone that was waiting, thank you for your support. I’ll reach out to the folks I have a signed copy for, but I certainly won’t hold it against you if you order another copy anyway. I receive a couple bucks from the sale of each paperback so I won’t be complaining. In the coming weeks I’ll also publish for Kindle and record the audiobook version.

Oh, and one more thing. The people mentioned in my book are referred to by generic nicknames. There are many people that are just as important to me as the ones in my novel that I chose not to write about because I limited talking about other people to the ones I felt were essential to telling the intended story of Hamburger Heart. I also hired a trusted editor to evaluate the fairness of my representation of the people in my book. Don’t worry, Hamburger Heart is no diss track.

Oh, and there are some pictures in the back. I know some of you just need to know and that’s okay too.

I ordered the first print, a proof so I can check out what the book will look like in production. If everything goes smoothly, I might make a few changes to the manuscript, go to print, and start taking orders for my book next Friday. I’ll start marketing the book in earnest once people can actually order a copy.

I will, at some point, order myself a stack of books to do autographs and short messages to ship out. A couple places will be getting a signed copy, mostly places that helped me with making this book happen – an editor, my coworking spot, a bar in the Colorado Rockies, my first cardiac rehab facility, a couple cardiologists, etc.

What I’d really like to say is that I’m looking forward to turning away from focusing so much on myself through the creative process, but it seems that something similar will continue in my marketing efforts. Hopefully it’ll be a much less narrow focus on myself as we go along.

I’ve completed my final creative draft and accept all of the literary errors and shortcomings of my work. Every time I read through the draft, I make about 60 changes and I still feel that I have some copyediting to do. I’m confident in the overall structure of the novel although I don’t believe most readers will understand the choices I made to the structure later in the book.

Still, I think the experience is complete. I’m navigating the world of self-publishing and am horrified to find that the industry of unique book identification is a monopoly. I’m somewhat mortified to learn that if I want to self-publish without random and odd restrictions, it’ll cost me a couple hundred dollars for a 13-digit identifier number and for one company to store just a little metadata in their database for books.

They weren’t kidding when they said that freedom isn’t free. The good news is that Amazon and Ingram will give you a free ISBN that you can only use with them, so there’s that. I’m looking forward to having a reader find something worthwhile in my story. This is a work that has been two years in the making so I’ll try not to delay any further.

Put together a WordPress site today. I’ll be using it to market my book and talk a little bit about both the book itself and the journey around editing and publishing, as well as to reach out to any potential readers. I’ve just finished my second draft of the novel and I can really feel the missing and disconnected stories, as well as the problematic character introductions where I talk briefly about a person that is very important to me, but not necessarily for the story or the reader.

I hope to have this thing published before the summer of 2026, so here’s to leaving evidence of my previous thinking to be held against me at a later date.