Hey! I'd like you to listen to something
My audiobook is out now, which is super exciting. I think it sounds really good. If you’d like a copy to listen to in exchange for an honest review, respond to this email and I’ll have one sent along. I also likely will stick the first couple chapters on the podcast feed (another good reason to subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts).
I’m proud of the story and I think I did a pretty good job reading it. Writing is really my main thing, but the fact is that a lot of people would rather listen. That’s not exactly right. I think I mean that there are way more non-readers out there who burn through books anyway.
For example, one of my brothers has listened to as many (or more) books than I’ve read, but I always kind of thought of that as an anomaly. Clearly, I was naive.
It’s a bias of mine, but even though I’ve been doing podcasts for more than a decade, I always thought of them as fundamentally different from my writing.
When I launched the Bagel Manifesto Podcast my “readership” nearly doubled. I don’t know why it took me a decade to start making audio versions of my work, but these short audio essays have taken off in a surprising way.
It told me that as many people were interested in listening to my work as were interested in reading it, so now I do both.
This week I wrote and talked about the end of the mask mandates.
The idea behind this manifesto is to deal with losing the culture war, and this is a huge loss. I remain absolutely baffled that it has come to this, but I also remain baffled that people will pay full price for toasted stale bagels.
Go figure.
The Next Big Project
Dragged Into the Light gave me something of a Cassandra complex, so I’m going to dig into something a little further back in time. Don’t worry. There’s an unsolved murder and land fraud, but it mostly is going to be about how awfully we treat children in need if their parents claim to be religious.
Call me Mr. Sunshine.
There will be another documentary about Sherry Shriner coming out in the next several weeks. I’m in it again. I’ll share the date and channel when I know for sure.
I’m also working on an audio commentary track to go along with the Dragged Into the Light book or audiobook. I expect to put that out as a paid download sometime in early April.
It will include context and characters that would have made the book twice as long and convoluted. There are so many cool things I left out in service of the story but that (if you were drawn into it) I think you’ll get a kick out of.
Everything is always going to be announced first here, so please consider subscribing if you haven’t already.
Do your best not to let the ugliness bully you into feeding it. I’ll try and do the same.
Keep the Faith,
Tony