A Friend Read my Book and Laughed and Laughed!

If my book was a sad tale and I wanted to evoke sympathy for my struggling hero, that 'Laughed and Laughed' response would have worried me. But "Dog Buddha's Thoughts" is a humorous tale about Buddhism from a naughty, slightly snarky hound named Buster the Dog, and I'm thrilled with the response - Laughter is the best medicine for this author's self-esteem!

So the reader of my book loved it and found it hilarious, that is certainly a good first step! This book isn't 'out there' yet, but it is due to be launched on July 29, at the P/A Hotel in Gawler, during the Adelaide  Plains Festival of Words. This Festival is an important part of my writing life, and an important part of the writing group I'm President of, Adelaide Plains Poets Chapter and Verse.

And this funny book is "Dog Buddha's Thoughts" which I now know as the third book in the Buster the Dog series. When I wrote the book that I now call the first in the Buster the Dog series, the book that this whole blog is named after, "Dig It! Gardening Tips for Dogs", when I wrote that book, I had no idea of it going as far as it has, I just wanted to have a little bookish fun with my artistic friend, Ally Hean.

The first book has sold well enough that I keep on needing to order some more copies of it, and the second book, "Doggone It! Mindfulness from a Dog's Point of View", has been selling copies every now and then too. I've been happy about the books selling, of course, but I have a funny feeling this third book will out sell the first two, and who knows, may actually make money into four figures, rather than just three figures ... Books are strange things, readers of books can be strange too, and you never know what people might want to read ...

Anyway, I have this set of three books, I'm getting ready to launch that third book, in a fortnight, and it's all fun and games. I just have to get the final editing of the book done, and corrections sent off to the printer, and all will be good. I imagine before next weekend, my car/office will be loaded up with the copies of "Dog Buddha's Thoughts" and my nerves will have begun upsetting my tummy! Nah, I'm not nervous, I've done this heaps of times, what could go wrong?

Hmm, I could get the books and my car could catch fire, I could crash into a bank and my car could be take by the police, I could suffer from amnesia and forget who I am, someone could say all of these Buster the Dog books are totally stupid and I should be ashamed of myself for selling them, cats could finally take over the world and ban books that are nasty to cats. Or cat owners all over the world could lobby and do the same thing on behalf of all cats. Or I could suffer from an acute case of low self-esteem and crawl into a small hole and refuse to come out again ...

I am a writer. I have sold my books. Some people have enjoyed my books. Some people have even found my books inspiring and have been helped by them (not any of the Buster the Books). I am aware of my ability to make others feel better about life, and smile. I am a writer, I will launch this new book and people will smile. Life continues to be good ...

The Poll Results are In!

A little while ago, this site ran a poll, asking for votes on the subject on whether dogs or cats are the best. Not surprisingly, the result was 100% in favour of dogs being the best.

I write 'not surprisingly', but to be honest, with only two votes, one of them being from the creator of this book, and the blog set up to promote the book, it was always going to have a result like this. I don't know who the other vote was from, but it they've been on this blog, it's not surprising they like dogs, is it?

So this can be looked at as an experiment in social media, an example of how you need to be careful with statistics, or a failure I suppose. You could also look at it as a little game I was playing, experimenting with the tools easily available, and just looking into whether I had many people interacting with my site. Hmm, that is the same as the first-mentioned thing, just stated diferently I suppose.

But anyway, I think the question of which of something, whatever that 'something' is, will always depend on who is being asked the question. No-one can ask absolutely everyone a question, one can only ever go by the results obtained. And of course, as I've shown, the results obtained can depend on many things.

So the next time you read the results of a poll, please think about the results, and how they were obtained. If you agree with the result, you're more likely to believe in the poll, if you don't agree with the result, you're probably more likely to cast doubt on the poll.

We're curious things, aren't we, people?