A very tough loss

On 11/11/10, I've blogged about a young woman who suffered an aneurysm and died. She left twin girls age of two and a grieving husband. On the same day, my long time friend, a fellow book club member, and a book lover, Don Eric Mitchell, died. He was 48 years old, and he was biking his way back home from work ~5:30 pm at night in Napa. His death stunned me, and I'm not sure I'm quite over the shock, yet.

The only thing I have to say about Don is that he lived his life the way he wanted to live it. He traveled widely. He was an avid outdoors man who enjoyed life, along with whole lot of books. His death taught me even more strongly to pursue my dream of making a living as a writer. I want to die doing what I love. The consolation I have is that he died bicycling, something he loved little less than reading (I could be wrong here). May he rest in peace.

Since I made the decision to return to work, I haven't been very active in trying to schedule book signings, book talks, etc. It's not the most comfortable thing to do, standing in middle of the bookstore prominently chatting up to people you've just met. I also have a fear of scheduling a book talk and no one showing up. Yes. It did happen to me in my hometown library. Besides, I'm not a natural self-promoter. I'm an engineer/writer at heart (both of which don't bode very well for self-promotion). There are moms at my children's school whom I talk to all the time, but know nothing about my book or the fact that I'm an author. I've learned that unless you're a tireless self-promoter, self-publishing probably isn't really for you. I'm not planning to self-publish any other books anytime soon. I need to digest and analyze all the lessons learned data. BUT Don's death has made me even more determined to put the time I need to put in to see my next book succeed in the traditional publisher setting.

So, in memory of Don, I'm going to blog about Lessons Learned: Agents in the upcoming blogs. One of my life's goal is not to make same mistake twice. You'd be amazed at how many different mistakes I can make....