Bob Waldner

Little-known fact: when I was a kid, I played the trumpet.  Badly.  I suspect that most of my schoolmates won’t have any memory of me playing it at all.  I was in the orchestra, but I always contrived to blend in with the rest of the brass section.  If my mistakes were heard at all, at least the audiences weren’t able to pin them on me.  Music lovers will be glad to hear that I haven’t touched an instrument since 1991.

I bring this up now to illustrate the kind of person I’ve always been when it came to creative endeavors.  I was never, ever going to be the guy that stood up and asked the conductor to give me a solo.  I wasn’t gonna sing.  Or dance.  Or draw.  Or paint.  Or try out for the school play… you get the idea.  I was afraid to try anything that I might mess up…

The notable exception to this came in the realm of sports.  I can’t realy explain why that was the case, because it’s not like I was a world-beating athelete.  I would describe myself as solidly “competent” at most of the usual sports.  I could catch and throw and run without tripping over myself, I guess, but I never had that spark that you can see in really talented players.  I had some good moments here and there, and my share of failures, too.

For some reason, though, I was never afraid of looking bad when I played sports.  The idea of striking out in front of my teammates never fazed me  in the way that the prospect of getting up on stage and being in a play, or giving a speech, or anything like that, always had. I suppose that we all have our comfort zones, for whatever reasons.

I’m obviously thinking about this kind of stuff because something in my make-up has changed.  I wrote a book, splashed my name in big letters across the cover and asked everyone to check it out.  Given the way I’ve seen myself in the past, that seems like a pretty massive departure for me.  I suppose it’s as simple as saying that I finally got comfortable enough with that aspect of my personaility to put it out there without worrying about falling on my face (I mean, I know that I might fall on my face, and I worry about it, but I can live with the risk).

It took me forty years to get here.  I’m not sure whether I should be bummed that it took so long, or just happy that I managed it at all.  A little of both, probably, but mostly the latter, I think.  And who knows?  By the time I’m fifty, maybe I’ll try to start a rock band…

“Consensus” and “internet” are two words that don’t find their way into the same sentence very often. I know this because, as I’ve embarked on my publishing adventure, I’ve had to look a lot of things up. Usually, the process goes something like this: (1) I formulate a question (e.g., “One or two spaces after a period?”); (2) I find an authoritative-sounding answer; (3) I feel good about following the advice I just found in step 2, until (4) I click on another link, hoping to confirm what I’ve already been told, only to find an equally authoritative-sounding argument in support of the oppposite conclusion, which leads to (5) I spend another hour clicking around, trying to find an unimpeachable source, or at the very least, figure out the majority/better view.

I suppose that’s the nature of the beast, and it’s not meant to be a complaint.  Without access to the vast store of knowledge that’s out there in cyberspace , I wouldn’t have had the first clue about how to publish my book.  Being forced to view one’s findings through a discerning lens is a small price to pay for access to such an incredibly valauble pool of information.

There is at least one issue, though, on which everyone’s views seem to align:  the need for authors to have blogs.  Intuitively, this makes sense.  If one is going to hold oneself out as a writer, then one should write whenever one can, and get those words in front of as many eyeballs as possible, right?  I think this goes double for novelists, who might take months or even years between books.  If a blog can help keep readers engaged with, and interested in, an author, then it’s certainly a worthwhile exercise.

You might wonder, then, why I would hesitate for even a moment when it came to starting a blog.  I could point to my historic aversion to new technologies (and yes, I realize that blogging isn’t on the bleeding edge of computer use in 2014, but you have to realize that I am still not completely used to having a cell phone, either – my history of late adaptation probably deserves its own, separate post), but that’s not the reason.  My real hang-up is with presuming that anyone would want to read what I have to say.

That may sound disingenuous coming from a person who is trying to get you to purchase his 105,000-word novel.  Publishing anything entails some degree of hubris – as an author, I am asserting that I’ve written something that’s worth your time to read.  But saying that about my book is different than saying that about my blog.  I can explain why you should read my finished story a lot more effectively than I can tell you why you should care about my views on current events, or what I had for breakfast on any given day.

With that in mind, I’ve tried to give some thought as to what this blog will be.  Honestly, I’m still not 100% sure.  I can tell you that it’s not going to be about my day job.  There are many websites/blogs out there that chronicle the wonderful world of lawyering, so I’m not going to re-invent that particular wheel.  I also don’t see it as pulpit for me to spout off on news/politics/current events.  There are lots of places on the internet to debate taxes, health care, guns, or whatever else floats your boat.  All interesting stuff, for sure, but not what I want to focus on here.

So what will this blog be about?  Certainly, I want to talk about the writing and publishing process, not only with respect to Peripheral Involvement, but also with an eye toward future projects.  In the coming days, I’m sure I’ll be sharing my experiences from this week’s book launch.  Each step is a first for me and I’m learning on the fly, and I’m pretty sure I’ll have some things to share.

Beyond that, I plan to write about whatever I think is interesting: observations, experiences… whatever comes along, really.  I guess we’ll see where that takes us.

Thanks for taking a look!