I want to tell you more about this book. It isn't big or fancy. It doesn't have backing by a major house. It's the underdog book. It has no marketing machine or massive print run behind it.
Yes, this book has endorsements from Charles Mudede and other Seattle luminaries. Yes, it's been designed and edited to within an inch of its life by high-level professionals. But in the ways that matter, it is small. Handmade. Homemade.
You know that I have an agent in New York, and that he and I continue to explore the route of interesting a major publisher. Even if that does happen someday, the result will never replace this book- and I don't just mean that another book won't feature the stories within this one, although that's true. There won't be a replacement of what this book means to me, and why I want to offer it to you.
It was created by artist and craftsman friends in close collaboration, on a scale small enough to not require major compromise. Every aspect of this book is exactly what my collaborators and I wished to create. If a New York book were to happen, it'd be the equivalent of dinner at a fancy restaurant. Sure, those are nice, but that's not what this is. This is people in rooms late at night, still plugging away for the passion of making something good. Knowing they're going to lose money on this, and time, but what besides would you spend those on but your passions? You do it because it's part of who you are. No, this isn't a fancy dinner.
This is a home-cooked meal.
And no matter how many fancy dinners you have, you know the things that make a home-cooked meal precious. The intangibles. I want to believe we've captured something of the spirit of that, thanks to the grassroots approach we've taken. I don't expect this to be a popular book– we just don't have the finances to go there– but it will as ever be a unique one. These are the stories your bus driver friends, public service and customer relations acquaintances will nod their heads over, and add onto. The ones that tell us the shape of life in the urban now, the stories I personally selected because they're close to my heart.
The book will be available at my show this Saturday, for $20. After Saturday, providing we find a venue, it'll go up to $25. Skip a couple coffees and that breakfast sandwich, and stop by this weekend. Take home the armchair version of all those beautiful little moments I see out there in the street, in the dark nights, night after night. The moments that make me love humanity.
Let's make this home-cooked meal the little book that could.
Details and location here.