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Sunday, April 1, 2012

April Fool's Anniversary


Today is not only April Fool’s Day. It’s the 29th anniversary of when I bought Nilson Brothers Garage from my boss who was the older of the two original brothers. I’d worked for him since 1976 when my auto tech instructor at Chabot College, the younger Nilson brother, convinced him he needed me. Luckily after a quick interview he thought he needed me too. So, on April Fool’s Day of 1983, I became the owner of Nilson Brothers Garage. I’ve always thought it was the perfect day to have it happen on, because of the twists and turns of the automotive repair business. Tomorrow starts my 30th year as owner, and I have a real simple wish for the day – that I won’t have to clean graffiti off my building.  :)

Writing this weekend went very well as I will definitely be over 22,000 words on my sequel to DEMON. I also finished scanning and fixing a bunch of old family photos from the 1930’s to the 1980’s for uploading to Facebook for my family. They’re spread out all over the country so that’s the place where we stay in touch. It also brings up another interesting trend I’ve noticed while querying my most recent two novels. Many of the agents now require in the submission guidelines on their sites that authors include the social networking sites they belong to. It makes sense to me since I see a lot of marketing and promotions going on in all the social venues. Facebook and Twitter have become avenues for readers to interact with the authors of the books they read. Goodreads is another venue which previously wasn’t a networking site as such. They’ve expanded with forums where readers can interact with authors along with posting reviews. Only time will tell if all this social site networking will be reduced to unending spam wherever you go.  :)

Happy April Fool's Day!

8 comments:

Charles Gramlich said...

I saw you'd uploaded photos to Facebook. Cool. Congrats on the anniversary. Let's hope the grafitti folks don't strike.

BernardL said...

Thanks, Charles. I'll find out this week whether we have the police working on our side. I mentioned the anniversary because of the April Fool's Day connection. I always thought it was neat, but my wife thought it was bad luck. :)

Jordan Summers said...

Congratulations! :) Fingers crossed that the taggers forget which way to point the can and get a face full. ;)

As for the social spam, isn't it that already? *ggg

BernardL said...

Thank you, Jordan. Yeah, that would not make me happy on Monday to see the gang-banger had come back for a repeat. Facebook has been a great place for exchanging photos with family for me and keeping in touch with guys I played football with long ago, and a couple I was on the USS Ranger with. There is a lot of marketing going on, but I don't mind it much. It is social spam, but from long range. :)

raine said...

Happy anniversary, Bernard! :)

BernardL said...

Thanks, Raine, and no graffiti this morning. Yay! :)

Rick said...

Man, you are cranking out the words!

BernardL said...

Yeah, Rick, not at a Nora Roberts pace, but pretty good for me. :)