Exposing Myself in Public for Fun and Profit...And you can too!

Sorry about the click-bait, but desperate times call for desperate measures! Actually, I'm not desperate, I've just experienced little bouts of it lately. If you've ever had to market yourself or something you've created, you probably hear what I'm chirping. There is so much information out there that a person has to do some crazy stuff to get noticed by twenty people. (If she's lucky.)

I wrote this book. It's called

Death Becomes Us

. Perhaps you've heard of it. Just kidding. But now you have! And it's about death professions and social anxiety and let me be the first to tell you that trying to sell a book about death is hard, unless you're a mortician with thousands of youtube followers or a doctor or a celebrity. I'm just a chick with a pretty darn interesting story. Don't believe me, here's a review randomly selected from the 53 reviews I have on Amazon. (The fact that I have 53 reviews is kind of a miracle.)

It is fitting that Mrs. Skjolsvik should "kick-off" her idiosyncratic memoir on death with a quote from Woody Allen - "I'm not afraid of death; I just don't want to be there when it happens." She is certainly a kindred spirit of the film auteur/comedian's combination of naked vulnerability and abject neurosis. Skjolsvik follows what is initially a seemingly random trajectory driven by the task of completing her education. She discovers along the way how various people cope with death both in their professional and personal lives. All the while she grapples with her own fears, phobias and perceived shortcomings in a style that oscillates between honest confessional and conventional reportage. The reader will find himself breezing through amusing passages detailing the absurdities of Skjolsvik's personal travails then suddenly be confronted with a gut-wrenching account of a couple losing their child or a prisoner confronting his execution date. This a very affecting book and a genuine account of the author's ultimate journey in embracing death as a life affirming experience.

I know you might look at my book and think, darn that looks like a sad book. I don't want to read that, my life is depressing enough. But wait! Did I tell you the book will make you laugh? Mostly at me and my neuroses, but it will make you laugh! And who doesn't want to laugh, especially at me?

Which brings me to the exposing myself in public part...

I have social anxiety. I've done lots of

cognitive behavioral therapy

, which you can read about in the book. In a nutshell, in CBT, we do exposures, which is repeatedly doing the thing that makes you think you're going to poop your pants in public. After awhile, you prove to yourself that you are not in fact going to soil yourself, but are actually going to begin having some fun. Since the book came out, I did a reading and Q&A at the

Neptune Society

in Fort Worth. I did another at the

Bayfield Public Library

. I've been on a panel at All Con dressed as Ripley from Aliens.

See?

And here I am not dressed as Ripley, but looking quite serious.

And then I got wrangled into doing another reading at the Eastfield College Library with some other authors from the

DFW Writers' Workshop

and I lived! Hallelujah! So, this public thing isn't scaring me quite as much as it used to, which means...

I'm going places and I want you to show up so I can expose myself to you. With my clothes on, of course.

Coming up...

I will have a booth at the

North Texas Book Festival

on Saturday April 9. I will be selling my wares, along with tiny adorable book ornaments that I make by hand.

On April 21, I will be at the

Bedford Public Library.

The Bookworms chose my book to chew on and so I will be there to answer questions. It's open to the public.

April 23 & 24, I will be at the

DFW Writers Conference

selling books and I'll be on a nonfiction panel on the 24th.

April 29, I will be in San Francisco at

Books, Inc

to read and sign at 7pm. Please, oh please, show up! There will be wine and some kind of snack item and me exposing myself.

June 5, I will be in New Orleans at the

Garden District Book Shop from 2-4

. There will be snacks and wine and more exposing of myself. Please be there! It doesn't work if there are no people. Books don't care if you expose yourself to them.

There might be something in San Diego or maybe LA in May. I'm working on it.

So, there you have it. Please expose yourself to my book. You can check it out from the two libraries listed on this page.

Or you can buy it, which is even better!

So, do me a solid and write a comment below so that I know I'm not exposing my words to the void of the internet. It's okay. It's scary at first, but you can do it.

Monday Mourning

Today I am so pleased to have my friend Trayce Primm on the blog. Trayce is a hairdressing magician by day and a kick ass writer at night. Not only has she written a bestselling romance novel, she is about to have her second book, "Walk-in" published this November by Bellabooks. 

In addition to attending several of my

Death over Dinner

parties, she was one of my readers at the book launch at the

Neptune Society

. You can follow Trayce on Twitter @TPrimmWrites

DW: Who was the person who died?

TP: My mother. 

DW: How old were you at the time? 

TP: I was forty. 

DW: How old was she? 

TP: 73 

DW: Was it a sudden death or did you know it was going to happen? 

TP: My mom suffered from diabetes and heart disease resulting from the chronic damage. Mom had a heart attack and died in the hospital a week after. Her death was not unexpected as the last ten years of her life were one crisis after another but the end was still sudden. The cardiologist told us her heart was very damaged and that if she ever had a heat attack, she wouldn't recover. He was correct. 

DW: Were people supportive of your grief ? 

TP: I was the person who was calm and took care of arrangements and my sister, brothers, siblings, grandchildren, etc. I didn't cry. I told all of them and myself that I guessed I had seen her suffer so long that I was glad it was over. Mother was very religious and everyone seemed certain that she was in a better place. I had no real surety of that, but the whole script seemed to bring enough comfort I was glad to murmur consent. I was essentially numb. That's how I deal with pain. 

DW:  Is there anything you wish you had done differently with this person? 

TP: I don't think so. My mother and I experienced events and viewed the universe so differently. I loved her, but we had a difficult relationship. I was her caretaker financially and physically from the time I was a child really. Mother was bipolar so she was loving one minute, abusive the next. My one real regret was that it took so long to get her mental illness diagnosed that she only had a couple of years on the proper medication. 

DW: Was she buried or cremated? 

TP: Mother was buried alongside my father who died when I was two. They, three of my four bothers, and my sister( who is still here, happily) and her late husband all are or will be buried in an ugly little cemetery in an ugly little west Texas town. I shall not be joining them. 

DW:  Did you learn anything about the grieving process you'd like to share? 

TP: Only that I grieve more for the relationship I wish I had with her more than the one we had. One day six weeks after her funeral, I was driving home from work in five o'clock traffic and was suddenly so overwhelmed by her death that I had to pull off the highway because I was crying uncontrollably. I don't know how long, but a driver had pulled over in front of me and walked back to the car to see if I was okay, I told her my mother had died. She leaned in the window and hugged me, at which point I stopped crying. I don't feel I've grieved yet perhaps. This was in 1990-91. 

DW: Were any songs played at the memorial service that were important to the person? 

TP: I know the hymns that were played and remember watching everyone around me crying, but I don't think I heard the music at all.