Reply With QuoteCongrats Tim, that's awesome!
Dopefiend_HCI_0209 by tim_elhajj, on Flickr
In the spirit of, it's not really a watershed moment in my life until I share it on Quarter to three, I wanted to pass along that I wrote book! My very first one! It's a memoir about my experience getting sober and finding a relationship with my oldest son, and it's titled: DOPEFIEND: A Father's Journey From Addiction to Redemption.
Some of you who have friended me on Facebook may already know about this. :) I wanted to share it with everyone else and have a place to discuss the publishing experience, which is pretty interesting, and my experience creating the book and shopping it around. I've been enjoying some of the other writing threads, including the all purpose and the self-publish threads, and think it's always helpful to know more about the industry. I hope it's not in poor taste to start a new thread for this, but I have been literally waiting for months to do just this. I had originally intended to post when the book officially launches on September 15, but I am getting too impatient to wait much longer.
Gah, duty calls. Have to post this now and come back to share more later. For now, my big message is: I'm so excited! And I wanted all of you guys to know about it!
Congrats Tim, that's awesome!
Congratulations Tim!
Awesome! Is there gonna be a Kindle version?
Congrats on both counts Tim.
Thanks everyone! Much appreciated. And I am told there will be a Kindle version, but I don't see it on Amazon yet.Originally Posted by Talisker
That's really incredible! Great job not only publishing but also in getting sober and reconnecting.
Wow, that is cool. A getting sober story from someone I do, sorta kinda almost know would make it all the more meaningful.
My backlog is growing just from Qt3 denizen offerings.
[Insert "This explains a lot" joke here] ;)
Tyler, you're probably the one person on the board who I feel as if I can relate to enormously. Weren't you the person who posted about needing to make a big career change? Didn't you tackle going back to school to become an accountant, getting a degree, and then going out and getting a job in your new field? You basically completely reinvented yourself. That's what I'm talking about.
Awww. :)
Yeah, I did all that and got my CPA certification and have now been in my new field of auditing for 5 years. You had a few more obstacles it sounds like, but it is not easy at our age no matter the circumstances.
You look back and say, how the fuck did I do all that?!??!!
Dang, that's crazy, 5 years? I remember when you were posting about that stuff, back in the beginning.
To not derail: Congrats on the book, I do need to pick up some books, this is now on my list.
Grats Tim, that's fantastic.
Congrats, Tim, on both the book and the recovery.
Yes you did, young man! :)
Congratulations Tim!
Congratulations Mr. Elhajj! That is awesome. Just pre-ordered!
Last edited by RepoMan; 08-17-2011 at 10:29 PM. Reason: They're Watching, And They Don't Understand
You guys are great! Thanks for all the support. I really appreciate it.
Once Amazon starts to allow reviews, I'll organize a contest to see who can create the funniest, most outrageous review. Or maybe the review with the most inconspicuous* use of in-house Qt3 jokes. I'll set up a poll and we'll vote on the results. I'll sign books and send them wherever the winners want.
*Don't want to terrify the publisher (what's with all the penis jokes?)
What jokes?
Ha, ha! Thank you, Rob.
Location, location, location!
http://dopefiend.telhajj.com/2011/11...-barnes-noble/
Hahaha. Nice! Your book is faced front too.
Congratulations; looking forward to hearing about your next project.
Congrats, man. Well done.
Yeah, more congratulations! Didn't click on the thread the first time :)
Nice!
So I bought this book and the first thing I noticed was the prominent front cover "Hey buy this book because I am also an author and we all need to eat, you fucker" blurb was by a person named Dinty Moore. I don't know about you, but there is one thing I associate with Dinty Moore, and that is this:
Yes, TimHajj's book has been endorsed by a patch of beef stew on the front cover. Wonderful.
The second thing I noticed is that the book is published by a company called "Cultural Recovery Press", and their logo is a big "CRP". I don't know about you, but the one thing that comes to mind when I see the letters CRP is... you know what, you don't need a picture.
Oh, and here is the book:
That other book underneath is about the history of beers & booze in Milwaukee and has nothing to do with drug abuse or recovery, so please disregard it.
I give this book a score of 2½ dildos.
I know Dinty Moore. I met him in a bar in the Times Square Hilton during the 2008 AWP Conference. At least... I think it was during the 2008 Conference. It might have been during the 2007 Atlanta AWP Conference. He's a good friend of my thesis adviser and a well-known Creative Non-Fiction dude (I think he's on the staff of the Ohio University Writing Program).
Having said that, I'll keep an eye out for Dopefiend. I dig some addiction/redemption centric memoirs.
Dinty W. Moore is on the staff at Ohio. He's also written a few books, sits on the board at CNF, and has been published in some of the biggest and best little magazines. He edits Brevity, an online literary magazine I've tried to emulate with my own venture into the wilds of literary publishing.
I've yet to meet him in person, but we've talked on the phone a few times and he's helped me immensely with my writing. The blurb for DOPEFIEND was his most recent kindness to me. I really think the world of the man. I had to laugh at the picture of the can of stew. That was my first thought when I heard his name, too. Ironically he was not named for the stew, but after a comic strip character in Bringing Up Father.
Raife, thank you for buying the book!
Now that you mention it, I do have some stuff to say about publishing and CRP. I am very grateful they published my book, and I feel like I've learned a ton about publishing that I had no idea about before and would like to pass on. I had always meant to use this thread to discuss my experience, and I hope to do that sometime this week.
Last edited by TimElhajj; 11-06-2011 at 09:36 PM.
That's a nice cover.
I hope you know I'm just harassing you, Tim. Congrats on getting published, although I may recant that after I read the book.
I'm kidding. Maybe.
I really like the cover, too. I had prepared myself for the cover negotiations to be a debacle, but I loved it. Bright and colorful, but still a little edgy. And best of all, it has my name on it. :)
Here is the last thing I learned about publishing and I bet some of you may already know this, but I only learned it in the last few weeks. The editorial people at the press that you work with don't select which books will be published by the press. A board makes all the selections. They assemble the board specifically to keep the selection process isolated from the editorial process. None of the editorial staff sit on the board. You send your proposal/ms into the press and maybe they vet which ones go to the board, or have some sort of minimum bar of competence level that they impose, but that's it.
This type of separation can lead to misunderstandings when the book finally does get into the hands of the editorial team. I had to fight back suggestions that would have made the book less of a narrative and more like testimonial, or an exemplary, didactic experience. Yeow! Fortunately, I feel like I got 99% what I wanted from the book, but I had to work hard to keep the vision alive.
I feel good about what we came up with. If you don't like it, Raife, I will have no one to blame but myself. :)
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