For the first time since I started writing this thing, my first-Monday-of-the-month newsletter is coming to you a week early. As you might guess, I’m excited about something.

As most of my LinkedIn or Twitter connections already know, I had the amazing good fortune to appear on the Book Talk television program on C-SPAN2 on Sunday, February 19. (For overseas subscribers, C-SPAN is a joint project of U.S. cable companies to provide unfiltered televised access to congressional and other governmental proceedings. On weekends, their C-SPAN2 channel is devoted to Book-TV. It is, of course, my favorite channel}.

Over the course of a 24-minute conversation, John McArdle, a Coordinating Producer and Host at C-SPAN, kept me on my toes by asking about a variety of interesting topics. About half-way through the interview, I remember sitting there thinking “This is so great. I wish we could just keep this conversation going for a long time.” The topics that John asked about include:

How I went from researching and writing a book about history to writing Everybody Knows a Salesman Can’t Write a Book (which is also in many ways a book about history)
What happened on July 3, 1940 (which I also described in a previous newsletter)
The research process
Dealing with Imposter syndrome
Re-teaching myself how to read French
Advice for other would be-authors of history
My eye-opening, story-validating discovery of a story about another salesman who became an author
The specific origin of the title of my book
What I’ve learned so far about the publishing process
One question that completely stumped me
The origin of Perfectly Adequate Press - the name of my self-publishing company
What it’s like to market a book
My unexpected encounter with BookTok

Oh, and about BookTok - “a subcommunity on the app TikTok focused on books and literature" … As I mentioned in the interview, a bookstore owner in Pittsburgh, PA recorded a TikTok video after I sent her a copy of my book (in which I wrote about her bookstore). Her filmed reaction to that mention was just priceless. (Note, you do not need a TikTok account to watch this video).

As exciting as it was to spend a couple of ours in the C-SPAN studios just across the street from the U.S. Capital, as humbling as it was to be interviewed about my book, nothing else compared to seeing this picture of our daughter Brittany and nine-month-old grandson Liam watching The Papa Bill Show when it first aired on C-SPAN2.

My daughter Brittany & grandson Liam watching The Papa Bill Show

Thanks for reading (and watching).

My interview on C-SPAN2