Shameless Self-Promotion and why I still avoid it.

Yesterday I was chided by a co-worker as we walked into one of the libraries I work for to start our day. She and I have worked together for at least two years  now if not longer and somehow she had never heard that I was a published author.

Keep in mind, this is a library. A place that could potentially carry my work and larger collections containing my contributions. Most of the people I work with know I'm a writer, although some of them may not know how much I've actually had published. Some of you are probably reading this in disbelief, thinking about how if you were a published author, everybody would know about it. I have no problem with that, it's just not how I have chosen to live my life.

I am by no means an extremist, however. I have a colleague from my old writing workshop days who doesn't tell co-workers anything about her secret identity as a published author. She prefers to keep the two parts of herself separate. I don't mind mixing them because, to my way of thinking, they aren't separate.

Being an author isn't a "side-hustle," that loathsome, ubiquitous expressions notwithstanding. It is the direct end result of being a writer. The author completes his or her work and sees it published and, gods willing, read by at least one dedicated, lonely individual out there living in a Unabomber-style shack, with apologies to The Simpsons. It is the final manifestation of all those undeniable creative urges we have felt since we can remember. The need to tell a story, to express one's self, cannot be reduced to a mere "hustle" to obtain extra cash. We'll leave that to dubious success stories such as the so-called "Food Babe and this guy.

So, when pressed to talk about my writing, a small part of me feels like a cheap huckster if I go too far, which I define as mentioning all the low, low prices my work can be purchased for if you just act now! 

What do I look like, one of those brazen self-publishing fanatics who fell for the algorithm-manipulating strategy of the mid-2000s?

I suspect my co-worker felt out of the loop more than anything else. When I told her I post on Facebook about my work all the time, she told me she only went on Facebook to read my bizarre, funny rants. I didn't have the heart to tell her she basically has seen my writing in that case.

However, in the interest of not alienating anyone who might be unaware of how or where to find the bulk of my published work, click this link.