Now what?

First things first. Huge thanks to everyone who ordered hard copy or Kindle downloads of “How to Live with a Ghost” when it was released earlier this week. Many of you have listened to me talk about this book for years, and it was your encouragement that kept me going when I felt trying to publish was like hitting myself in the head with a stick and then wondering why I had a headache.

The evening after “Ghost” trotted into the big, wide world on its own two feet, I faced a new reality. The problem with reaching a goal that you’ve dreamed about for years is that once you achieve it, you’re kind of left floating in the ether. The thing that consumed a ridiculous amount of my mental energy since some point in 2022 had been checked off the to-do list. What was next?

Sales and marketing!

 

 

I may have mentioned my publisher, Pearl City Press, is a small operation. I went into this knowing much of the sales would fall on my shoulders because they do not have the people-power to drive a big marketing campaign. Or a small marketing campaign. Or any marketing campaign. If I wanted people to notice “Ghost,” I was going to have to make it happen.

 

Much like the farm wife who wears the hats of cook, meals-on-wheels driver, pickup fetcher, gate watcher, parts runner, weather reporter, cow chaser, fuel dump operator, and wagon hauler, I stepped into the position of publicist, sales executive, and event promoter.

 

I was not cut out to do this. My degree is in journalism. For three and a half decades, I made a living reporting the news, not being the news. However, unicorn dreams and glitter rainbows aside, once you’ve published a book, the goal is to sell the book. Books, annoyingly, do not sell themselves.

 

Speaking of selling things, let’s step back a few years. I grew up selling Girl Scout Cookies door-to-door to our farm neighbors. I sold candy bars to raise money for my 4-H club, candles and jewelry to finance the high school Spanish Club’s trip to Spain, and magazines to support the junior/senior prom. I hated every minute of it. I was a shy kid. I did not want to talk to strangers, let alone try to sell them stuff nobody really wanted. Well. Except the cookies. Everybody wants cookies. Of course, they all bought cookies and candles and magazines because that’s what you did back then. Their kids had sold stuff to my parents, so when I showed up on their doorstep, trying not to vomit, they cheerfully ordered a token box of Thin Mints or renewed their subscription to Field and Stream.

 

This does not seem like a viable marketing strategy for book sales.
But yay, Girl Scouts!

 

Here I am, many years later, trying to capture the attention of book readers, book buyers, booksellers, and the media in a climate filled with thousands of other authors doing the same thing. This would be easier if I’d penned a best-selling, forty-seven-title series because name recognition is everything. You can walk into a bookstore and tell who the big-name authors are without having read any of their work. Their name on the cover will be larger than the title. 

 

But here I am. First-time author. Debut novel. Single book. Not even the promise of a series (more on that another time). Just me, dizzy with relief at this lone achievement and wanting to share it with the world. 

 

Well, look at that, will ya?

 What I’ve learned so far can be summed up in one word: networking.

 

I am calling in favors left and right, relying on contacts from my years in the newspapers, and thanking God in Heaven for a friend with a marketing degree who has given me some excellent ideas. She would cringe if she knew my approach is still more reckless than methodical, but I feel good about the results. 

 

And incredibly nervous because it still involves talking to strangers. Substitute “book” for “cookies” and it’s a flashback to the 1970s, clutching the order form in sweaty palms and trying not to mumble when I ask, “Would you like to buy my book?” Only now I’m holding a press release praising “Ghost” and handing out business cards and smiling in what I hope is a friendly and professional, not deranged, manner.

 

I'm fine. Really. Just fine. Delighted to be here.

Author events an exhilarating and terrifying concept. Some writers are naturally gregarious. I am not one of them. Put me ringside at an obedience trial and I can talk the ear off a total stranger, discussing the judge’s habit of running teams into the gate before calling the turns on heeling or the hysterically obsessive inspection of each exhibitor’s dumbbell. (Yes, I know the regs say the judge will inspect the dumbbell, but I’ve had several that made it look like the ceremonial weighing of the wands in “Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire.” But I digress.)

 

But ask me to speak to a room full of people who may or may not be expecting to hear great literary truths or just didn’t have anything better to do with their time that night and, well, it’s hard. I am not good at putting myself out there. I was raised with the belief that you shouldn’t attract attention to yourself. I suppose that’s a good approach if you’re a burglar. Not so much if you’re trying to sell books.

 

Anyway, I venture to say my initial — if slightly feeble — marketing strategy is going . . . maybe . . . kinda . . . sorta . . . well? I’ve got some book talks and signings scheduled in January. I even added a coming events widget to the right side of this blog so if you’re in the eastern Iowa area and there’s no Cyclone or Hawkeye basketball game on TV that night, you can get out of the house and beat that cabin fever. Come listen to me prove that I write better than I speak.

 

Also in the good news report, several local retailers have agreed to add “Ghost” to their inventory, and I’ve started the daunting process of contacting indie booksellers in the area. I say daunting in the bestest way possible. It means I finally have a finished product to share with the world, not just a sparkly dream.

 

One last thing, when you finish “Ghost,” if the spirit moves you, please leave a review on Amazon or Goodreads. This is the stuff authors live for. It helps boost sales and is helpful in marketing the NEXT book (hint-nudge-wink).

 

If I don’t get back to you all before then, I wish you all a merry Christmas and a blessed new year. As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author. 

 

Dog show packing Tetris

Now that the dust has settled on Raider’s and my 2025 obedience trial season, it’s time to review a critical element that can make or break the success of any team.

Packing for the weekend. 

 

If your non-dog-showing human partner has ever looked at the pile of bags sitting by the back door on a Friday afternoon and said, “You’re just leaving for the weekend, right?”, you understand. 

 

If the show site was within a two-hour radius, I used to be that handler who got up at the hour of stupid on Saturday and drove there from home to avoid hotel expenses. I would drive home again at the end of the day, fall into bed and get up the next morning to do it all again. Driving back and forth to shows eliminated the need for packing clothes, toiletries and other survival gear like four pair of shoes, five jackets, my laptop and forty-seven feet of charging cables. I told myself I was saving money, which was ridiculous, because people who do dog sports save money by living on ramen noodles and not buying their husband Christmas gifts. Sorry, honey. Love ya, but entry fees.

 

As the years and the odometer clicked by, I did the math and realized I was not, in fact, saving anything. Fuel costs, plus wear and tear on my vehicle as I racked up the highway miles, ate up the imagined savings earned by avoiding hotels and restaurant meals. 

 

Plus, as I—ahem—matured, I discovered I really disliked driving in the dark. Dark driving is rife with annoying things like deer. And other drivers.

 

With the decision to abandon my long haul, road warrior lifestyle and embrace the “get a good night’s sleep within twenty minutes of the show site” approach, came the need to become an efficient packer. Sure, I’d hotel’d it enough over the years to have a good grip on the basics, but I was not necessarily good at it. 

 

There is a fine art to assembling all of the stuff you need for a weekend on the road and packing it neatly into your car. And by luggage, I mean everything from that screen-printed canvas bag from a national specialty twenty years ago to the wheeled carry-on with its fancy 360 degree spinning wheels and titanium handle that could withstand being flung around by gorillas in a remake of the 1970s Samsonite commercials. (Yes, I’m that old. We’ve discussed that. Move on.)

 

Like everything else that comes with the glamorous dog handler lifestyle, packing is a minefield of overthinking. I admire the people who can throw a toothbrush and a change of underwear in a backpack and be away from home for three days without looking like a refugee. If I tried that, the only thing I’d pull off is the bridge troll look.

 

 

I've created a master packing list to ensure I don't forget anything vital. The essential categories break down as follows.

 

The dogs’ training gear bag: leashes, collars, dumbbell, backup dumbbell, toys, treats, brush, training journal, obedience regs, weekend judging program, etc. Basically, all the essentials you need at the trial. If you forget your toothbrush, you can go to Walmart and get another one. If you forget your custom-sized, hand-crafted, maple and cherry wood dumbbell, you’re screwed. The gear bag is the first thing that goes in the car.

 

The people bag: human clothing and toiletries. Regardless of the season, deciding what to take for a weekend means consulting multiple forecasts, tea leaves and a crystal ball. I end up packing more clothes than I need but hey, I like to be prepared. Husband points out I am prepared to not come home for two weeks. He likes his little jokes.

 

The dogs’ motel bag: dog food, food and water bowls, sheet(s) to cover the bed and/or furniture, entertainment items (toy, bully sticks, bully stick holder), poop bags, extra poop bags and anything that didn't fit in the people bag.

 

The food bag: snacks. Self-explanatory. Long trip? Lots of snacks. Short trip? Same amount of snacks. Possibility of getting caught in a blizzard on I-80? All the snacks. Don’t take chances.

 

The cooler: more snacks. And pop.

 

It should end there, but it doesn’t. 

 

If you’re showing in Utility, you’ll have an article bag(s) and/or extra articles. Extra dumbbell. Extra gloves. A full set of portable jumps, forty feet of ring gate and stanchions, platforms, props and the entire freaking kitchen sink for practice at the motel when the weather is cooperative. 

 

Now let’s talk about coats. Rain coat. Warm coat. Nanook of the North coat. Jacket for a chilly show site. Don’t forget gloves, scarves and hats. In an emergency, you could use your dog's Utility gloves. Make sure the set contains both a left and right hand. This will not work if you show a chihuahua. If the weather is atrocious and your dog is an itty-bitty or extremely short-coated, you will need dog coats as well.

 

Plus shoes. Everyday shoes. Trial shoes. Slippers for the motel room. Rain boots in the summer. Snow boots in the winter. My personal best for a winter show weekend was four pair of footwear to cover all conditions. Don’t judge. I can be cranky enough without adding cold, wet feet to the mix.

 

Back in the day, I traveled with a dear, dear friend who could not pack lightly to save her life. Actually, she did pack lightly. None of her bags weighed much at all. But there were A. Lot. Of. Them. I was never sure exactly how many of them there were because aside from her gear bag and people bag, the extras were Walmart bags and they all looked alike. Pretty sure she did that on purpose so I couldn’t get a firm count and give her a hard time.

 

We jokingly called them her subsidiary bags. In the tradition of Walmart bags (at least back in the days before self-checkout) they each seemed to contain only two or three items. Nowadays, the best thing about self-checkout is that I can cram a single bag with as much as possible because I am not making four trips to carry sixteen bags into the house when I get home.

 

But I digress.

 

Once, my subsidiary-bag friend, another friend and I and our dogs loaded up a Chevy Blazer (Blazers were a lot bigger back then) for a show weekend. In the interests of not having to rent a U-Haul for all our crap, we agreed to limit our luggage to one gear bag, one people bag and one small cooler per person, plus the necessary crates and chairs. True to form, Subsidiary Bag Friend showed up with a multitude of extras. There was a great deal of eye rolling, but down the road we went. I think we made her hold them all on her lap.

 

Another friend joined us on a weekend excursion and brought her clothes on hangers in a garment bag. She’s a breed handler, too, so we forgave her the reluctance to take chances with wrinkles. That didn’t stop us from teasing her mercilessly about her “ball gowns.” To this day, every time I put clothes in a garment bag, I think of the ball gown weekend.

 

 When I was showing Phoenix, the Farmer made a last-minute decision to go to the ABMC national with me. At the time, I was driving a Chevy Equinox, which was a cute little SUV that fit one woman, one Malinois, one Aussie, and all our stuff quite nicely. Squeezing in another human, his luggage, and a second folding chair was do-able but . . . snug. Then Phoenix won a lovely embroidered chair for High Combined. I seriously thought I might have to find someone to bring the thing home for me. 

Then I remembered a good friend and master vehicle packer’s advice: “You can always go up to the roof.” I wedged that ten-inch-wide folded chair into a nine-inch-wide space atop the crates and we were good to go. Never mind I needed a crowbar to get it out of the car when we got home.

 

These days, when I leave for a trial, my car is packed using a “last in/first out” approach. I’m OCD enough to put everything that goes into the hotel in one area and all the trial gear in another. Nothing rattles. Nothing tips over. I could slam on the brakes and there would be no massive load-shift, mostly because everything is wedged in so tightly it can’t move.

 

By the time I leave the show site on Sunday afternoon, my car looks like I drove past a garage sale with the windows down and people threw stuff into it at random. I’m just happy I can get the doors closed. 

 

Is it wrong that one of my goals for the new year is to master truly efficient packing? I’ll let you know how that goes.

 

IN OTHER NEWS

The final countdown for “How to Live with a Ghost” is officially on! Release date on Amazon is Monday, Dec. 15. Don’t know what to give that reader in your life? Feel like buying yourself a holiday gift after shopping for everyone else? Currently, you can only pre-order the Kindle version, but the hard copy option should show on the release date. Bless all you Kindle folks who have pre-ordered. Here’s the link.

 

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0G2KRCN38

 

 

As always, I invite you to follow me at my author’s page at https://www.facebook.com/melinda.wichmann.author.