A deal on a non-railroad book

[ezdays]

OK, this may be a bit self-promoting, but by golly, I’m proud of the fact that my wife has her book published and I want to tell you about it. About 15 years ago, she started on a book about her early life, growing up in a large, very poor family with an alcoholic father in upstate New York. The book is called, “Mama’s Diamonds”. She finished it and put it away, where it sat for 11 years until I was able to convince her that it was worthy of getting published and offering to help her take that last step. From Sept. through Nov. last year, we did the final edit together. Our oldest son (aka: “Hobbs” on the old Gauge) designed the cover while I put the book in its final form for printing. It was released for publication in Dec. Although there’s a steam engine on the cover, the book is not about trains. If you look, there is a single light in the baggage car, and that’s significant to the story.

You can preview the book at her publisher’s site: http://www.lulu.com/content/4942425 If you click on the “>” above the cover you can read several pages of two of the chapters, plus a poem she wrote that is also significant to the book. We are waiting to see if some of the booksellers like Amazon.com and Borders pick it up, we should know sometime in Feb. But in the meantime, the book is available from either the publisher or us. The list price of the book is $21.95, but I’m going to make a special offer to members of this forum that they should find hard to refuse. Send us a check in the amount of $18.00US and we will send you a personally autographed copy by the author. No sales tax and we pay the shipping to the continental US. Just PM me and I will send you our address and who to make the check or money order out to. We will only charge the difference in shipping to countries other than the US. I can let you know what that will be when I PM you back so you can decide if it’s worth it. Amazon will surely discount the book, but they’ll charge for shipping, and their books won’t be personally autographed either.

Oh, before anyone asks, Emcie Day is her pen name, or nom de plum, and is derived from the her first two initials, M and C. Look, you don’t argue with some crazy writer who wants anonymity. Just so you know, all the stories in the book are true, some are funny when you see what the kids go through to help make ends meet, then there are a few parts that will tug at your heartstrings. I love the book, but I also love the woman who wrote it, so I’m kind of biased. You’ll have to decide for yourself.