Writing "Outtastatahs" Produced Surprises

My new book Outtastatahs: Newcomers' Adventures in New Hampshire produced  surprises - a few for me, the author, and a few for other people. First, I was surprised when folks who bought the book asked me to sign it. Huh? I had never been asked for my autograph, so I found it a strange experience.

Oh, I had published work in the past, but not the sort of thing others wanted  me to  sign. When I was a college teacher, the results of research I conducted appeared in academic journals. Typically, journal articles are dense, complicated, hard to understand and very, very boring. It's as if academics attempt to impress one another with their intelligence by making their written works as complex and impenetrable as possible. A few are simply classified as KBTG by perplexed readers - known but to God.

Well, given those circumstances, it is certainly not the case that an adoring public would want wonky professors to autograph these incomprehensible research tracts.

After I retired, I started writing columns and blogs for local Seacoast newspapers, and have continued to do so for the last 13 years. It took a while for me to cleanse my writing of the stiffness and wordiness of academic writing, but I've made progress. Nobody wants to read with the morning coffee something that appears to be the technical instructions for constructing a three-stage rocket.

At the same time, columns tend to arouse emotions. Some readers  might very well want to throw fruits and vegetables at me, and, thus, very much  prefer that I not send them an autographed copy of my latest article which has given them acute indigestion.

But, books are different. It is traditional that authors sign books they have written, so I do it to the best of my ability, trying to pen something that will be meaningful and memorable to the person who bought Outtastatahs.

Now, it's the public's turn to be surprised. First, Outtastatahs is not a foreign word. It's the way some native New Englanders pronounce "out of staters."

Second, most authors make very little money for books they have written.   For every Dan Brown, who has become famous and very wealthy by writing novels, there are thousands of aspiring writers (like myself) who make very little, if any, money on their books.

The same is true in many of the arts. For every Broadway or Hollywood star, there are legions of acting hopefuls who subsist by waiting tables, parking cars, or cleaning houses. I'm not about to become your waiter, but I write because I like to write, not because I expect to get rich. So, if you buy Outtastatahs: Newcomer's Adventures in New Hampshire at River Run Bookstore or Amazon.com or BarnesandNoble.com, don't expect that you will soon thereafter see me cruising by you in a new Mercedes or Jaguar. Just look for me bouncing along in the same old,  beat up Honda Civic.

Sometimes, people wonder where writers get all their ideas, readers feeling that they could never be so prolific. You may be surprised to know that I never have trouble finding material for columns or, in this case, a book. Local selectmen's meetings, deliberative sessions, town committee meetings, and other community events are a treasure trove of unintended humor which I have tried to capture on the pages of Outtastatahs.

So, life is full of surprises, and some are discovered in the course of writing a book.