Promoting Dulcy's Hardcover

I hope you entered the new year merrily. For myself, I’m on the mend. Early last week, lab results indicated the infection was more serious than the doctor had originally thought. The e-coli urinary tract infection went into my kidneys and other parts of my body.

            Christmas weekend brought two days of intense pain in the right kidney. Then the infection traveled to my teeth. For seven days now all the teeth in my upper and lower right jaw have ached. Along with that I have an oral yeast infection called “thrush.”

            From what’s been said, I guess I should have gone to Emergency. I was so out of reality that it never occurred to me to get help. Now, twelve days after this all began, I’m determined to return to blogging. I’ll post today and start reading your latest postings this afternoon. I appreciate each of your comments on my Christmas posting and the one last week on this health problem. Thank you for your ongoing concern.

            Now let’s start anew with events surrounding the publication of A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story.  

            Just a reminder: Dulcy died July 6, 1989, and began giving me her book two days later. Jane Meara offered me a contract for the manuscript in July 1991. Crown, a division of Random House, hired Judy King to create the cover and the inside art.

            Sometime in the spring of 1992, Jane asked me for an author’s photo that would go on the back flap of the dust cover. I’ve shared with you that one of my friends, back in the spring of 1990, had encouraged me to put the manuscript in a safety deposit box for five years and then see if I could spin something golden from the dross.

            This friend stepped forward and kindly offered to photograph me by the backyard pine trees and at the Como Park Conservatory in St. Paul. On most of these portraits I’m wearing an idiotic grin, but one seemed promising.

The author photo from the hardcover of Dulcy’s book.

            Next, a Crown publicist provided me with phone numbers and addresses for bookstores, newspapers, and television and radio stations within the Twin Cities metro area. During September, I set up the following: readings and signings at thirty-six bookstores, five local television appearances on noon news and daytime talk shows; interviews with the three major newspapers; and a reading on Minnesota Public Radio.

            The most important reading to me was the one at the Stillwater Carnegie Library. On Saturday, October 10, 1992, over one-hundred friends gathered there to celebrate the publication of A Cat’s Life: Dulcy’s Story. That day was joyous.

Standing at the podium in the Margaret Rivers Room 

at the Stillwater Carnegie Library.

            Grinning, my friends listened as I recounted the story of how Dulcy’s book came to be. They laughed aloud when I read the story of Dulcy gifting me with a live chipmunk when we lived in New Hampshire. Their faces reflected empathy when Dulcy’s kidneys began to fail and she could no longer easily leap onto the couch.

Signing one of Dulcy’s hardcover books for a friend.

            After the reading, many friends purchased Dulcy’s book, the proceeds of which went to the library. The day was perfect—friends who respected and honored my love for Dulcy surrounded me and her book would help the library that was so central to my life.

            Life got busy after that. Truth be told—I felt as if I were riding a hot-air balloon above the St. Croix Valley. Possibilities stretched beyond my imagination.

                                                                        (Continued on Thursday . . . )