You may recall that last spring I awoke with the realization that I needed to buy a Sprinter van, convert it into a camper, then tour the nation to promote my new book, From Animal House to Our House: A Love Story. The van is nearing completion. And my publisher and I are working feverishly to book a 66-city tour. That’s what you can do if you are barn-storming a book tour in a camper van: go anywhere and stop anywhere. There are limits, of course. I mean, I’ve got to get back home eventually because I do have a wife, a job, and responsibilities. As it is, I’ll be on the road for 4 months straight. It’s kind of daunting. And the set-up for this thing is mind-boggling. The publisher has given me a dedicated media liaison who does all of the groundwork. Her work and mine combined amount to 8 hours a day, every day. This will go on for months.

You might wonder why it’s so time-consuming. Here’s our strategy: 1) we target the best-bet indie book store in a particular town, then we query the local historic and preservaiton socieites in that town to co-sponsor the reading. The historic/preservation socieites have been really enthusiastic about my visit because, as a licensed home-inspector and a hard-core Do-it-yourselfer, I am offering a lot of value for free: workshops, talks, slide-shows about my experience restoring our big old house and other stuff relating to restoration etc. Jill and I have been building our expertise on YouTube through how-to videos. And we run the Houselove website, which has a national readership. In other words, the book represents a convergence of other efforts and interests, which now all come into play.

2) Once we enlist the partnership of the local historic/preservation society in a particular town, we tell the targeted book store that we have local support. You’d be surprised how many book stores don’t think this is enough. Some want to know if I have family or friends in that town and ask for even more guarantees. You’d think it’d be a no-brainer to book me — and my general-readership book — in a small store when we’re offering so much (see items that follow). We enlisted the partnership of TWO historic societies for a proposed reading at Powell’s in Portland, Oregon, and still Powell’s rejected us. They said we would not draw enough.

I know times are hard. But short of signing an affidavit swearing that we’ll bring a tour-bus load of supporters, what more can we do? And what are the skittish book stores doing on that particular night if they’re not bringing in, say, David Sedaris? All we’re asking is that they give us some space, put the event on their calendar, and send the word around. We’ll do the rest. In the case of Portland, we are going to create an event for the two historic societies and, chances are, we’ll get more press than we would for a book store reading. But my preference is to anchor these in indie book stores because I believe in indie book stores. We writers can help — or try to help — indie book stores, but the indie stores have to be willing to give us a chance.

3) Once we have the historic/preservation societies partnered with the book store, we go to the local press to see if we can get a book review. Then we go to local radio and TV to set up an interview the day-of or the day before. Believe it or not, getting on local morning TV talk shows is not difficult because they’re always scrambling for material, especially if the topic — like old house restoration — has local appeal. Next, we search out the local book clubs and see if we can get them interested.

4) Then we post the event in the local media outlets and calendars. All told, this booking/PR process takes at least a month to work through for each city. And this has to be done at least 3 months in advance for every city. And we’re doing 66 cities. It begs the question: who has time for this? The answer is simple: NOBODY! I certainly couldn’t do it without my dedicated media liaison. And this kind of effort really doesn’t make sense for every book. It will work best for the general-readership book. From Animal House to Our House is a good fit because it has a love story and an HGTV/TOH angle and a David Vs. Goliath inspirational angle and an Animal House angle. I don’t know that I’ll ever have another book that hits as many targets. And, frankly, that’s a relief because it makes my head swim to think of doing this again.

5) Other promotional gambits involve my writing articles for old house magazines like Victorian Homes, present at DIY shows, and give talks at preservation conferences. Further, it helps to get home-town press interestedin the story with interviews and photoshoots. We have a magazine photographer coming over tomorrow for an all-day shoot. Local interest has worked well in my case: look for articles in the Urbanite, Baltimore magazine, and maybe an excerpt in Style. Then an appearance on Dan Roderick’s mid-day talk show on Feb. 2 (from 1-2:00 PM). And more, I hope.

In sum, the idea is to bring all of these forces together so that word-of-mouth carries the name of your book far and wide. Notice that I haven’t mentioned book reviews? Book reviews are the wild card in this game. For an indie-press book, you can never tell who will consider it worth a review. And that’s the primary advantage of having a big-press book: the big magazines and newspapers are much more likey to pick it up.

As for the 66-city tour, mine may be the last of its kind. The world is transitioning to something else when it comes to book promotion, although none of us knows quite that that something might be. I’ve heard people tout the podcast or the video-cast or the guest blog as the way to go, but can any of these virtual efforts truly replace the power and gratification of a face-to-face meeting with readers in a town you’ve traveled to for the express purpose of making something good happen when a writer meeds curious strangers?

If you’re interested in camper van conversions, here’s a video link to my latest installment on that project.

If you want to see the shape of the 66-city tour thus far, click here.

If you still haven’t seen the FROM ANIMAL HOUSE TO OUR HOUSE video trailer, you really must.

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Last week, Jill and I adopted a cat that was supposedly seven years old. Abandoned or lost, he had been out-of-doors for as long as a year. He was very underweight, his coat dull and matted. But he was in good spirits and very sociable. We didn’t want a kitten because we didn’t feel like dealing with kitten antics. And kittens are something of a gamble. With an older cat, you can see what you’re getting. Or so it seems.


This cat — we’ve named him Newton — was so calm and affectionate, we took him home that day. He didn’t mind the car ride and calmly watched the traffic. He seemed copasetic with everything — our dogs, our other cat, our routine. He found the litter box right away and later when he couldn’t make it to the basement, where the box is, he did his business in the bath tub. He slept with us from the first night. None of that I’m-in-hiding-for-five-days-in-a-closet-till-the-coast-seems-clear stuff for him. When he’s hungry, he paws at our knees. The minute we pick him up, he purrs.



As soon we got him home, however, we realized that he wasn’t simply underfed. He was, he is, an old cat. Much older than seven. After a couple of days, we realized something else: he’s ailing. So we took him to the vet. And, sure enough, Newton’s kidneys are going. This is common in old cats.


The vet praised us for taking on such an old cat. She estimates that Newton is ten. We grant that he may even be twelve. After she got the test results, the vet said, “You could take him back,” suggesting we’d gotten a bad bargain. True, we did not want an old cat, and especially one that needed hospice care. But, no, we’re not taking Newton back. He’s a great cat. Besides, he’s got nowhere to go.


Every day, Jill and I look at Newton sleeping nearby, then we exchange a sad smile and exclaim, “Poor Newton — he’s so old!” Then we think, Isn’t that just like life, to sneak in a sucker punch when you’re not looking?



Newton still has his appetite and now he’s on a special diet. When he stops eating, we’ll know that his time has come. That could be another month or a another year. We dread the day we’ll have to take Newton in, but we can’t regret giving him a home. Every evening, he sits between Jill and me when we watch TV. To look as us together, you’d think he’s been our cat for all these years. He’s adapted so quickly and easily, tolerating even the dogs’ nosy tail-end sniffs, it’s as though he knows he’s got to make the most of his time. We’re falling in love with him, of course. I tell Jill that this is not an occasion for sadness. We cannot let this break our hearts — because we’re giving Newton a grand time and enjoying his company immensely. And, in showing him all the good that love can do, why shouldn’t we celebrate?

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Cheetah, Tarzan’s chimpanzee sidekick, died today at the age of 80. Yes, it’s remarkable that a chimp could live to be that old. But more remarkable is Cheetah’s legacy. Bear with me. Cheetah was the first famous friendly ape. He introduced generations of children to the notion that 1) animals can be our allies, 2) our primate cousins are bright and should be given some consideration, even respect, and 3) we can love a creature that isn’t quite human and isn’t quite animal. In many respects, Cheetah was one step away from ET and R2-D2.


We Baby Boomers grew up watching Tarzan movies on Saturday morning TV. When we played “Tarzan” in our back yards, many of us took the role of Cheetah and channeled the wild, monkey-smart side of our selves. This helped us become more empathetic. It made many of us into animal lovers. Ultimately, playing Cheetah embued some of us with the kind of humane optimism and feeling that gave rise to PETA and other animal rescue societies. If most people today find chimps and their brethren cute, Cheetah — and his many successors in film — was instrumental in shaping their perception.


It wasn’t always so. With the discovery of the “new world” in the early days of exploration (1500-1700s), monkeys fascinated Westerners, who brought them back as curios. But the great apes, like chimps and orangutans, were always considered suspect. Edgar Allan Poe’s short story, “Murders in the Rue Morgue” (1841), features a killer orangutan, for instance. Never mind that you would be hard-pressed to rouse the ire of any orangutan (a thoroughly peaceable tribe), unless, say, you stole its banana. When white explorers disovered gorillas in “darkest Africa,” in 1847, these apes were considered to be man-killers, based solely on their fierce appearance. It is but a short hop from this early perception to the 1933’s film King Kong, the sad tale of a giant ape taken captive and ill-used by Westerners.


As sympathetic as King Kong was to the great ape, the movie nonetheless perpetuated the myth that apes are killers — a myth that movie makers exploited fully in a spate of killer-gorilla films of the 1940s and 50s, like White Pongo (1945) and Bride of the Gorilla (1951 — starring Raymond Burr of “Perry Mason” fame). Cheetah’s kind and humorous example stood in opposition to all of this. Cheetah often saved the day, braving great danger (lions!) to carry his message home. Cheetah was always good for a smile and a friendly pat of your hand.


It is rumored that, in real life, Cheetah was something of an asshole. So it is, and has been, with many Hollywood stars. It is rumored too that this incredibly long-lived chimp was not the real Cheetah. No matter. Whether this now-dead chimp was the true Cheetah or a pretender, we acknowledge today that Cheetah is gone. In doing so, we acknowledge that Cheetah made a different, helping us humans think more kindly of our extended primate family and, in turn, of all creatures who, from distance, look not quite like us.

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We’ve just finished restoring Jill’s office. You may remember that our house was a fraternity for ten notorious years. Jill’s office was one of the less-destroyed rooms. It was notable, though, for its wall-sized painting of a rebel flag. It’s also the only room with a big arch, which was crumbling. We had stabilized the room but weren’t sure what we’d do to make it the showcase room that Jill wanted. I wasn’t eager to work on her room because one of the things she wanted was to rehang the door to the porch so that the door would swing from right to left instead of left to right. Have you ever tried to re-hang an old door? Oh my. Our renovation work on this room took six months — three times longer than we had planned. But that’s the way old-house rehab goes. If we didn’t think we could get such work done quickly, we might not be so quick to start it. So, always we dream of things being fast and easy, even though — deep down — we know it won’t be so.


It’s the same kind of hope that keeps people buying lotto tickets. You might get lucky! If our species didn’t believe in luck, there would be too many things we’d never try. So we moved Jill out of her office and into the TV room way back in March. Then I stripped the woodwork in her office. I’ve said this before, and I’ll say it again any time the topic comes up: I’d rather do sit ups, hundreds of them, than strip paint from old wood. That said, I’ve gotten really good at it. And we’ve arrived at a method that works well at restoring wood — which you can learn by watching our very popular Youtube video: “How to Strip Paint From Wood.” Stripping wood is like long-distance running. You’ve got to hang in there.


After stripping, then refinishing the woodwork, including the room’s original oak mantel (Jill’s not allowed to do paint-stripping any more for health reasons), we went after the wallpaper. Victorians loved their wallpaper — and they wall-papered everything, including their ceilings. We’ve got the stuff all over the house. We advise that you don’t go after old wall paper until you absolutely have to. Life is complicated enough.


Then there was lots of plastering, then new electricity, including a pair of antique schones over teh fireplace (don’t forget, the Victorians had very little use for electricity). Then refinishing the floor and the radiator, then hanging the porch door so that it opens from left to right instead of right to left (so that Jill can get a breeze at her desk), and then reinishing and installing antique crown molding (a pile of which we found incredibly cheap at a salvage warehouse). And installation of Jill’s cool library ladder (which she found on Craig’s list, of all places). Then, at last, the fun part: building stuff.




I built two window seats, which Jill helped design. Her designs always demand much more time than I want to take. In this instance, she insisted on having faux doors to make the seats look more antique. I built it to her specifications and, as usual, I must admit that she was right. After that, finally, I got to put together the ten-foot-long, eight-foot-high Victorian display cabinet that Jill had found at a local auction. This is something Jill does to make my life more exciting: she finds interesting architectural artifacts at local auctions, then comes home and says, with much excitement: “Guess what I got today!” At which point, I draw a deep breath, grip the nearest solid object, and utter: “What?”


Once, when Jill and I were at a big outdoor auction, I turned my back for a minute and the next thing I knew she had bought a big, iron-frame Victorian fish tank. It now lies in pieces in our basement. She can’t bring herself to sell it and suggests that we could use it as a terrarium. The Victorians loved terrariums.


The display case is cool but, like the acquarium, it was in pieces. I’ve never been a fan of puzzles but, in the case of furniture, I kind of like trying to figure out how the pieces go together. The display case came together nicely. Jill uses it to show off her considerable Steiff toy animal collection. Seems to me you could display anything in a cabinet like that — old socks, say — and it’d look good.


Now, Jill has a showcase office. And she’s feeling a little pressure because she says she’s got to keep it neat to do it justice. This makes me laugh because we’re not neat people and my little cubby hole of an office, on the third floor, demands nothing of me. Which is why it’s always a mess.

To see more of JIll’s way cool office, click here: Jill’s Victorian Office!

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When I began teaching a course called “Writing for the Web” three years ago, I pictured myself scrambling to keep up with my plugged-in, tech-savvy students. I was sure I was in over my head. So I was stunned to discover that most 20-year-olds I meet know very little about the internet, and even less about what they need to do to become effective communicators online.

The media present young people as the audacious pilots of a technological juggernaut. Think Napster. Twitter. Facebook. Given that (according to the Kaiser Family Foundation) the average 18-year-old spends almost eight hours daily immersed in media, we oldsters tend to assume that every other teenager is the next Mark Zuckerberg. Aren’t kids crazy about downloading music, swapping files, sharing links, texting, and playing video games?

But video games do not create savvy users of the internet. Video games predate the internet and have little to do with online culture. When games are played online, the computer is no longer an open portal to the world. It is an insular system related only to other gaming machines, like Nintendo and X-box. The only communication that games afford is within the closed world of the game itself–who is on my team? At their worst, games divert children from other, more enriching experiences. The internet’s chief similarity to video games is that both are siphoning off audiences from television, which will soon reside exclusively on the internet. As a delivery system for TV, film, and games, the internet has proven itself a premier source of entertainment. And that’s all that most young people know about the internet.

Why wouldn’t we educate students in more sophisticated uses of the internet, which is commanding an increasing amount of the world’s time and attention? I’m not talking about a course on “How to Understand the Internet” or an introduction to searching for legitimate research-paper sources online (though this is useful, obviously). I’m talking of the need for students to understand and produce texts online–essential skills for life beyond college.

Look at the strategic plan of any American college and you will find an emphasis on helping students “meet the demands of the information age.” But walk into many college classrooms and you will see only a single computer at the front of the room. In most cases, that computer functions as an overhead projector. Where are the computers for students?Apparently, many professors believe that students’ ownership of computer notebooks and pads somehow guarantees that students will learn all they need to know about computers. But who is teaching students how to write, say, a marketing report or an historical overview for an online readership? I am surprised at the number of my colleagues who prohibit the use of computers in their classrooms because they fear that students will “surf the web” during a lecture.


The absence of computers in the classroom sends the message that computers are ancillary to learning. This misconception of the computer is due, in part, to the fact that the majority of faculty are Baby Boomers who didn’t need computer technology to succeed as professionals. That’s why most university professors have not integrated computer use into their courses.To most of them, it seems, the computer is a fancy typewriter, a means of sending memos, and, generally, a distraction. Students write papers on their computers, but those papers are handed in as hard copy. Never mind that the world outside of college does very little business with hard copy. In short, there exists a huge divide between the college classroom and the world outside, where work and life thrive on the internet.

Presumably, we want our students to have an impact on the world. But how can that happen if we don’t teach them how to use the primary tool that would make that impact possible? To be fair, there are some important developments taking place in the Digital Humanities movement, which aims to expand the notion of “legitimate” research by including nonlinear sources, such as videos, digital images, and hyperlinks: why not augment texts with digital tools? There are also a number of professors of Composition and Rhetoric who are teaching digital literacy. But such efforts remain marginal. One of my students recently wrote, “The world is moving closer and closer to being a completely technological place, and those who don’t understand it are going to be left behind.”


It seems clear to everyone that our increasingly technological world demands technologically adept citizens. Start with the simplest act of online communication: e-mail. Recent studies have shown a significant decline (59%) in e-mail usage among teenagers (Pew internet & American Life Project, Comscore Media Metrix report, Neilson report).Why? E-mail is for business, not entertainment and socializing. Young people have abandoned e-mail for text messaging. I often hear faculty members complain about the ineptness of student e-mails—whether as queries or as a means of presenting proposals—but very few professors seek to rectify the situation by teaching effective online communication in their classes. They don’t seem to understand that emails are as important as more formal correspondence, even though, ironically, the professors’ own daily use of emails underscores this fact.

How can discipline-specific computer teaching begin? Let’s start with the fact that every academic discipline makes use of databases. Do your students know how to access these databases? Do they know how to write articles of their own that might appear in these databases? Are they aware of the ethical dimensions of placing information online? Those studying social work, for example, should know that all client records and reports can be subpoenaed. Social-work students, therefore, need to be aware of confidentiality laws. These students also need to know that any report submitted online will remain online forever. There is no such thing as expunging a record from the internet. This is just one of countless examples of internet protocol and online constraintsthat impinge upon a student’s understanding of a particular field of study.


Nearly every discipline now has an online journal and may also have blogs and special-interest web sites. Until quite recently, online literary journals were considered inferior to their print counterparts. That’s no longer the case. My students should be reading online journals, but they should also understand how an online journal differs from a traditional print journal. Online journals make use of multimedia—video, audio, photos, chat rooms—that are not available to print journals. The rhetorical package online is very different than in print. My students hope to write for online journals—in addition to or in lieu of print journals. They may also have an opportunity one day to manage or edit an online journal of their own. If they have not studied the medium, if they have not written in the style of online journals, if they have not analyzed how online journals are keyed to rhetorical aims that are specific to the internet, then they will be unprepared for the field they hope to enter after graduation.


American colleges and universities send 1.7 million graduates with bachelor degrees into the world each year (National Center for Education Statistics).Why would we not give them every advantage? As we help students strengthen their knowledge and ability to write, read, and communicate effectively, we must prepare them for the online cultures that will be central to their private and professional lives. Undergraduate writing majors at my university end up in a variety of fields, but they share at least one thing: much of their work finds and defines itself on the internet – that’s where the readers go; that’s where the markets reside. If using the computer to write, read, and produce texts is not yet central to their identity as professionals, it will be soon. It should be central to their education, too.

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