Four days for free at a resort on the Oregon Coast with my cousin? Why not. I pack for summer sun, sandy shores, and swishing surf.
But this is no picnic, I learn upon arrival. This is a VIP art show and auction. Oops. Oh well, I’ll put on lipstick and wear my scruffy jeans! At my age, who’ll notice?
At dinner the first evening, a lady seated across the table is eyeing my name tag—I don’t think she notices my tee shirt—and says, “Are you somehow related to the person who wrote The Book?”
Linda Cutler tells me she is lives in Port Angeles, the town where I was born. She has read Sticks, Stones & Songs—The Corey Story, and loved learning the history as my family lived it, many decades earlier. While reading, she explains, she encountered the name of one of my high school classmates, whom I had honored for winning at debate. “Roland,” she continues, “now gives powerful sermons when he speaks at the Jewish services I attend.”
Still grinning, Linda turns to those around the table and begins to extol the merits of this book about her community and her people, written by this author at her table—whom she is meeting for the first time.
As an author, it is gratifying to hear affirmations from hometown readers, especially when one meets them in far-away places.
However, a question sometimes rises from within, “How do I get Sticks, Stones & Songs to an even wider audience?”
Marketing types tend to answer, “You must optimize the internet. You must maximize social media and have a presence wherever people click.”
They begin to explain………but my eyes glaze over and my mind meanders off. Enter Ashley Johnson who knows exactly what they mean. Already she has built a Facebook page for the book and updated the website www.eleanorcorey.com with features I think you will like. On the website, I hope you will check out the Events tab to see the upcoming opportunities to join me for more Corey tales and to meet other members of the family.
If you are on Facebook, and have not yet seen the new “Sticks, Stones & Songs—The Corey Story” Facebook page, we invite you to check it out. Perhaps you can "Like" or “Share” the page with your friends, or even add a review. In this way, you can help us encourage a new wave of readers—readers like my friends Glenn and Linda from the VIP art show and auction.
Coming soon: On the radio with Todd Ortloff of KONP.