I wrote a piece for RelevantMagazine.com about Dewan and Zhu Chun who I feature in WAIW?
Relevant Magazine is doing some cool things. Their next issue promises to be a good one. No I’m not contributing, but the issue’s theme is “Reject Apathy” which is a theme I can get behind.
The Beavercreek Books & Co. is one of the coolest bookstores I’ve been to. New bookstores tend to sacrifice personality for space and efficiency, but Books & Co. managed to pull off all of these things – lots of books, two marble-like staircases, a fireplace.
One of the many things the store has going for it is public relations director Sharon Kelly Roth. She brings in big time authors like, most recently, Greg Mortensen, and makes the not-so big time authors (ME) feel big time. I spoke at a podium using a mic. There was a projector showing photos from my quest. She introduced me using an introduction she had written. There were several posters of the book and me around the store.
I asked Sharon how many people came for Mortensen’s talk and she told me it was around 800. Twenty came to my talk, which was pretty good considering the weather. In many counties around Dayton it was actually illegal to be on the roads. During a level III winter storm warning, if a cop sees you on the road, you can get a ticket. While 780 more people attended Mortenson’s talk, I doubt there was one of them who thumbed their nose at the law to be there.
Thanks to all who came!
Below is a pic of me and Christine Martinello, author of Momager. I first met Christine at the Erma Bombeck Writers’ Conference in Dayton. The last time I saw her, WAIW? was an idea.
….So please spread the word about my reading tomorrow at Books & Co at the Greene Shopping Center in Dayton. If you know anyone that lives in or around Dayton, demand that they come and ask lots of questions and buy lots of books.
I’ve got this sneaking suspicion that the snow and ice is really going to hurt the turnout. And that would be bad for my ego.
I had a great book signing in Union City this weekend. I got to see a lot of people I haven’t seen in a long time, which was awesome, plus they bought a lot of books - 33!
Tomorrow I’ll be at Indiana University speaking to a composition class in the morning and to the Global Village community from 6-8 PM at Collins Hall.
On Thursday, I’ll at Books & Co. in Dayton at the Greene Mall. Here’s the flyer they sent me promoting the event:
Reviewer Emma Jacobs doesn’t waste any time or, for that matter, the first two sentences before telling us what she thinks:
Kelsey Timmerman’s investigation into the underbelly of globalisation is moronic. I am not being unkind.
My favorite part is how she begins one paragraph, “His ignorance is occasionally amusing.” (Wait, is that a compliment? Did I charm her with my ignorance?) And then begins another paragraph, “Ultimately his ignorance is maddening…” (Darn! I thought I had her.)
I expected bad reviews (maybe not to this extent) and I’ve received one. No big deal. I don’t expect to be the first author ever to not receive a far less than glowing review. However, I do think the review lacked in a few areas.
The facts being one of them…
She writes that I’m a self-proclaimed beach bum. That’s wrong. I write about bumping into a former classmate who was working at Wal-Mart before beginning my quest and how he called me a beach bum. A self-proclaimed beach bum, I’m not.
Ms. Jacobs is dazzled by my ignorance when I ask a “twenty something” (her words not mine) Bangladeshi woman if she knew Gandhi. The woman is not a “twenty something” woman; she is, in fact, UN Special Envoy/Former supermodel/designer/sixty-something Bibi Russell. Still, I’m somewhat ignorant thinking that Bibi may have met Gandhi (Bibi was born a decade after Gandhi’s death), but not so ignorant that I thought anyone in their twenties would have met him.
I checked and both of these facts are quite clear in the book.
And speaking of the Bibi Russell/Gandhi mix-up…that’s called self-deprecation. If a reviewer doesn’t like the book, I’d expect them to use examples other than the author’s self deprecations. That seems kind of lazy.
Bowels or no bowels, I’m happy to have been reviewed in the Financial Times.
I’ll be doing a signing at the Union City, IN, Hallmark store this weekend. I expect a fairly decent turnout since Union City is my hometown, as much as a country bumpkin has a hometown. I even mention UC in Where Am I Wearing?:
I didn’t get my first pair of new underwear until I was five. I was a younger brother and younger brothers wear hand-me-downs, even underwear. I never had a pair I could call my own until Mom decided that I deserved a pair of Scooby-Doo Underoos for being good while she shopped in The Boston Store, a small family clothing store where everybody knew everybody and the store clerks knew how to measure and make adjustments. The Boston Store has since gone out of business along with the other department stores in Union City, Ohio, including Kirshbaum’s, Kaufman’s, and McClurg’s Five and Dime. They went under in the mid-1980s when all of the local factories started to shut down. Westinghouse moved their factory to Mexico, Sheller Globe downsized their production of plastic moldings for vehicles under the pressure of foreign competition, and the Body Company, which made chassis for step vans, was bought and lost the majority of their work to cheaper labor in the South.
Globalization came to Union City, a small town that straddles the Ohio and Indiana border. It took jobs. It took stores. Today, I’m not sure if it’s even possible to purchase a pair of underwear anywhere in town. You might be able to at Rite Aid, but they likely wouldn’t be comfortable or funny.
As if President Obama didn’t have enough on his plate…
“I beg US President Barack Obama to help Cambodian people find the criminals to bring them to justice,” opposition leader Sam Rainsy told a crowd Thursday at the spot where Chea Vichea was shot.
I’ve documented my obsessions with Indiana Jones here before. Richard Squires, a reader of WAIW? who is now a facebook friend, hooked me up with a great piece of photoshoppery. I plan on using this as my new bio photo everywhere. Maybe Wiley will let me use it on the WAIW? paperback…How awesome would that be?
Thanks Richard!
There aren’t a whole lot of ways for me to tell how my book is doing without bugging my publisher (and if you must know, both my publisher and agent are pleased with sales). So, one of the few ways I can tell is to check my Amazon rank, which has been anywhere from 10,000 to 300,000, but the rank can vary by 100,000 or so per day and really still doesn’t offer much insight.
In order to come up with some kind of benchmark, I started to check the rank of Joe The Plumber’s new book - Joe the Plumber: Fighting for the American Dream. I found that Where Am I Wearing and Fighting for the American Dream were waging quite an Amazon sales rank war.
At the time of posting JTP is ranked 263,000 and WAIW? is at 295,000.
To help you decide which book is for you, I’ve compiled a list of 8 reasons why you should buy JTP’s book and not mine. (I though writing the reverse would be the equivalent of voting for yourself as “Most likely to succeed.”)
1) You hate Ohioans with Southern Accents. We’re both from Ohio, but I’m from southern Ohio and have a bit of a twang.
2) You believe not paying taxes is a heroic form of civil disobedience. This makes Joe a hero and me just a tax-paying schmuck.
3) You’re brainwashed by the media and think Joe actually matters and represents something.
4) You’re addicted to plumber’s crack and goatees.
5) Joe is an American fighting for the American Dream and I’m just an American that traveled around the world wondering if the American Dream still exists, which, of course, is extremely unpatriotic.
6) You think that people who are referred to by their actual names are lame.
7) You think that educating the people about the coming television conversion from digital to analog is the greatest cause since ending world hunger. Much more important than educating people about the sacrifices made by the folks who make our clothes.
You prefer authors that don’t write, just like you prefer war correspondents that can’t correspond, and plumbers who aren’t plumbers, in these regards Joe is your triple-threat dreamboat.
From President Obama’s inaugural address:
And to those nations like ours that enjoy relative plenty, we say we can no longer afford indifference to the suffering outside our borders, nor can we consume the world’s resources without regard to effect. For the world has changed, and we must change with it.
hi@kelseytimmerman.com 
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