Book Reviews

As I’m working to promote my book more and more (in affordable ways :)) I thought I would share some of the reviews that have been submitted to the different online booksellers. This has been one of my favorite parts of this journey, I love reading why people like the book, of course I haven’t had any ‘bad’ reviews yet so perhaps this won’t be one of my favorite parts for long. I also like the comments I receive on my blog stories, again, those that don’t like my stories aren’t very vocal so I haven’t had any negative comments. I can only hope it stays that way for the most part!

Amazon Reviews

A must read!
Peggy makes you laugh at her and makes you laugh at yourself. You can read the whole book at once or read a chapter that catches your eye. This book reminds you to not take yourself or life too seriously. A must read for those who love to find funny in whatever they’re doing.

Following Funny
I cried from laughing! I loved “locking your house door with a butter knife” Remembering growing up in rural Minnesota with this book. I think all little towns have
similar funny characters.

Ridiculous fun!! Try not to wet yourself!
Peggy Welter is not afraid to point out the funny! She finds a way to say the things that most of us want to say but are afraid to! If you are in need of a good laugh, pick up this book and laugh your way into a new sunnier disposition!

Laugh out loud funny
Peggy will make you laugh until your side hurts. Many of the short stories brought me back to my childhood and reminded me of my life growing up in a small town. I could often picture the antics described.

Following Funny
We can all relate to a story in this book and this is great reminder that we have to be able to laugh at ourselves to make it through this crazy life! I found myself laughing out
loud and getting crazy looks from those around me. Thanks Peggy for sharing
your stories and your great sense of humor with us!

Laugh so hard you’ll cry
Following Funny’s stories are fantastic! Everyone needs to laugh… more often. You just can’t make up some of the things that you get to read about when you are Following Funny. I love that now I have them in one place to go read when life just gets a little
too stressful or serious. Thank you for sharing how you find humor in life, and
for doing such a great job putting it into words – love it!

Barnes & Noble Reviews

Great light hearted read! We all need to see the humor in everyday life, and Peggy does a great job of sharing her experiences, which we can all relate to at one time or another! Couldn’t put it down until I had read the whole book!

ABSOLUTELY HILARIOUS!!!!!! Everyone needs to laugh and this will make your cheeks hurt, it did mine 🙂

iBook Reviews

Fun to read some of a good friends real life way of looking at things. True stories with a different view!!

Great read about a friends real life if you want a good laugh read this book. Congrats Peggy on the book. Hope it does well.

I’d give it 5 million stars if I could. One of my favorite people wrote a humorous book that I can’t put down. Now, where’s my sleeping pills…..

Hopefully a fun little tidbit for a Saturday night. I don’t think I need to tell you it’s fun for me to read these. If you’ve submitted a review, I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you have read the book and have not reviewed it, please take a few minutes to do so, getting as many reviews as possible certainly can’t hurt.

If you read the book and didn’t like it, feel free not to review it. You’re welcome to email me those comments. 🙂 I’m kidding of course. Had to try to leave you with a smile.

Speedos

There is a time and a place for men’s speedos. The time is during vacations and the place is a beach in the tropics. Now, on your back deck sun tanning could be a possible place for one as well but it needs to be discreet, no need to be roaming around the yard flaunting your banana hammock.

Friday a coworker and I spotted a speedo mowing his lawn. It was crazy, right there staring at us as we drove by. The coworker grabbed his phone and not so discreetly took a picture of him. The man was old, and I mean old. White hair, white beard and sagging skin that has seen so much sun it looked like a piece of worn shoe leather. The speedo was green and tight. Nothing left to the imagination. It was a ridiculous sight really.

The disturbing part of this is he lives across the street from an elementary school. I mean, isn’t that against some law? I hope he’s not doing that while school is in session, although there were kids on the playground the day we spotted him. I could only imagine mothers telling there children to look away as they stared at him. I know some neighbors of his and she said she was thinking about calling the police, I didn’t think that was such a great idea as I’m pretty sure the police wouldn’t do anything about. Can you imagine that 911 call?

Immediately after we spotted him I called a friend of mine and said “um, your boyfriend is out mowing his lawn in a speedo, I think you should tell him to stop doing that, he’s scaring the children on the playground”. She replied with “We broke up last week, are you across from my son’s school? I know exactly who you’re talking about! Is he wearing the powder blue one today?” I said “yes, that’s where I’m at and no, he has a green one on today. ” She started laughing and said, “Oh he must have bought a three pack, I’ve seen him in powder blue and red”. Seems others have noticed him as well.

The Book is Done II

Finally! Exactly four weeks after distribution to the eBook sellers they all have it for sale. It only took one poke and prod to my publisher to make sure it was up on the final straggler.

Here is a list of where you can find it:

Amazon (Kindle)
Barnes & Noble (Nook)
iBookstore
Sony Reader Store
Kobo Books
Copia
eBookPie
eSentral
Scribd

I don’t know a lot about all of these sellers but I do know that you can download a free Kindle app and read books on your phone. You can also download iBook on you iPhone. The great part is you don’t have to own an actual reader to enjoy eBooks, I just discovered that myself. I know, I know, I’m behind the times.

Thank you to all of you who have purchased, will purchase, have shared with friends and who have typed up an actual review of the book.

I currently have no idea how well or not well it’s doing and probably won’t know until early to middle July. I do know that I can finally send out a press release and some other marketing items.

Keeping my fingers crossed for retirement in the Caribbean……actually, I’m keeping my fingers crossed to recoup my publishing costs and some gas money!

The Book is Done

In through the nose, out through the mouth. Deep breath. Throw up or crap pants.

That has been my routine for what seems to be weeks. This writing and publishing a book thing has been interesting to say the least. I would think this is how it is on the first time for everyone or maybe it just is me. If it’s like this every time people would never write a second book. It’s also been a test of patience, which I didn’t have much of to begin with and I’m pretty sure I’ve left it all on the table. It has been a hurry up and wait process to say the least.

For those of you who have been following my stories from the beginning, you will recognize a lot of them. I have tweaked previous stories from my blog, used the most popular stories from my blog as they were and added stories that you will only find in the book. Most of the stories I pulled from the blog are not actually available here anymore. I’ve also started gathering stories for a possible second book…….I’m ahead of myself now, let’s get the first one up and running.

The book is priced reasonably at $3.99 which hopefully won’t be too expensive for people to ‘try it out’. I did set up an email address in case I get a lot of hate mail. I’d hate to field those in the same email account I get correspondence about jobs or from my family and friends. If all goes well maybe I’ll get ‘not hate mail’, you never know.

Out of the 11 eBook sellers, Amazon Kindle will have it for sale the quickest. That means in just a few days Following Funny will be swimming among the thousands of other eBooks out there. I’m a good swimmer but we’ll see how the book does.

For those who follow me and read my ramblings, thank you, thank you and thank you. It’s because of you I decided to stick my neck out there and finally do this. For those of you who are planning on purchasing the book I appreciate it more than you could know. If you do purchase it please put a review in with whichever seller you purchase it from. I’m one of those people who looks at the reviews before buying a book and I know others do as well.

The unfortunate part of all this is I won’t know exactly how well, or not well, it’s doing for probably a month or two due to the way the sellers report sales. Again the patience is being tested and I’m failing miserably. Thus I will continue to repeat my previous process.

In through the nose, out through the mouth. Deep breath. Throw up or crap pants.

The Book

Wow. I’m fairly certain I have never in my life had a month go by so fast. I returned from a quick trip to Reno about a month ago hell-bent on finishing my book within this millennium. Actually, I had a goal of March 31st. I sort of hit my goal. I know that sounds like I’m cheating a bit but I really did sort of hit it.

I was actually done writing it by March 31st. I wish that’s all it took is just the writing of it. Unfortunately I’m not one of those people who have editors, designers and publishers at my beck and call. What I do have, thank goodness, is awesome friends and family. One of the things I decided while I was away for a few days was that I had to stop thinking I could do everything myself and ask for help. I know, I know, elementary, but for those of us who are independent, stubborn and pig-headed this is a huge breakthrough.

I sweet talked my graphic designer into doing a cover and a few graphics for me. I call him ‘my designer’ but he’s really my ‘oh man, Peg needs something in a pinch and probably for free’ guy. I do take him to lunch once in a while though, don’t judge. Today I spent a couple of hours with him to finalize the graphics, we finished, until I got home of course and had one change. He probably wouldn’t know what to do if I didn’t have at least one change. I’m glad I won’t be there in the morning when he opens the email from me.

I recruited my sister and a couple of friends to be my editors. I was initially thinking I could edit the beast by myself but after the second time reading it I was ready to hang it all up because I stopped finding anything I wrote funny and I was making too many changes. I got sick of me awfully fast. These three did an awesome job and gave me great feedback not only on spelling and grammar issues but on the flow of the whole thing.

I’ve now recruited people who will buy the book when it’s finally on the market and do a review for it. I hope I don’t have to reimburse their $3.99 just to get them to say something positive, that would be embarrassing. I’ve also recruited some old friends to help with press releases, emails and some advertising pieces. It sure helps to keep connected with people, you never know when they might come in handy to you or you to them.

It’s 2:00 AM on Tuesday morning, I’m staying with my best friend as she just had neck surgery, I can’t sleep (shocking, I know) and the book is one graphic change away from being ready to be converted into an e-book. That is unless my sister comes back tomorrow with something she finds in the most recent copy I emailed to her. I have a new-found respect for authors, editors, publishers, designers and good friends of mine. I loved every minute of it but holy crap is it a lot of work. I’m nervous, excited and scared to death.

I’m laying it on the line and I’ll see what happens. That makes me throw up a bit, I better try to stop thinking about it.

The Liebster Award – Part 1

http://thethingsiseeuphere.com/ was kind enough to nominate me for The Liebster Award so I will do my best to accept it and pass it on. Thank you kindly!

I’d like to thank my agent, my manager, my parents, God…….oh wait, not that kind of award. Oops, oh well, I now have an acceptance speech for when I do win that award.

There are rules to this award and I will do my best to spread the word. I am supposed to answer 11 questions, nominate 11 bloggers with under 2o0 followers and ask them 11 questions. I will do my best to follow the rules.

Right now I will have to do this in two parts, this first part will be to acknowledge the person who nominated me and answer the questions posed to me, the second part will be to nominate 11 others and ask them 11 questions. With everything on my plate at the moment, part 2 will be on the back burner for a short time.

Here are the questions and my answers:

1. What was the worst thing you ever got into trouble for as a child?

This is really a tough one as it seems like I was always in trouble for something. I’m going to concentrate on the word ‘child’ here so I don’t make a mistake and tell you about any ‘teen’ trouble I got into. I had a bit of a temper as a child. My Mom and Dad installed new countertops in the kitchen, my Mom was super excited and the counters looked great. Not long after (and I mean within the first few days) the counters were installed I got mad at my Mom, for what? I have no idea. I took a serving spoon, you know, one of those old heavy duty ones with a wooden handle that doubled as a weapon. I wielded that spoon like an axe and went to work on the edge of the countertop and chipped the living daylights out of it. Mad was not a word that described what my Mom was. Uff da.

2. If you could marry a cartoon character who would it be?

Yosemite Sam. Why? A gun waving, cowboy hat wearing bad boy…..need I say more?

3. If you were an alcoholic drink, what would you be and why?

A margarita. It looks and tastes sweet but packs a big punch.

4. Do you think blind people actually see things in their dreams?

Yes. They probably see things way more clearly than those of us with sight do.

5. If people point to their wrist to ask for the time, why do people get mad when you point to your crotch indicating you want a hand job?

Oh boy. Well, for one, you have your own hands, when someone points to their wrist it’s obvious they don’t have a watch.

6. Have you ever had an imaginary friend?

As a kid, maybe. As an adult, I have two, Me and Myself.

7. What’s the longest you have ever gone without taking a bath or shower?

I can’t think of a time when I’ve had to go on a trip to the Amazon or a camping trip to the middle of nowhere for a week so I would have to say two, maybe three days.

8. Have you ever farted during sex?

Hasn’t everyone?

9. If you were caught peeing in public what excuse would you use?

“Sorry officer but I HAD TO GO! Holding it can cause a UTI and we wouldn’t want that, now would we?”

10. Would you rather only be hit on by ridiculously unattractive people or only people of the same-sex?

I’m not into the girl thing, not that there’s anything wrong with it, so I’d have to say ridiculously unattractive men, one of them has to have a great personality and treat me like a queen…or maybe have a lot of money….hmmmm.

11. Would you eat chocolate pudding that tasted like shit or shit that tasted like chocolate pudding?

Chocolate pudding that tastes like shit, it’s not much different from tasting like that right now but I’d eat it before a pot pie, that’s for sure.

I will attempt to get part 2 of my mission completed as soon as possible.

Daily Prompt – Sunshine

I decided to do the Daily Prompt from WordPress today. The challenge was to think of a word, do a Google image search on it and then write about the 11th image that came up. Needless to say by the time I finished reading the challenge I had thought of several words and I was biased.

What to do? Well, I enlisted the help of Idaho to give me a word. Knowing full well it could be a disaster, I sent him a text to ask for the first word that came to his mind…..fail, didn’t dare use that one………I asked for a second one, his word was ‘sunshine’. I’m not sure if he’s been drinking at work today because that was a bit of an odd choice but I wasn’t about to ask for a third one so I’m going with sunshine. My photo came from the website http://www.parisdjs.com/index.php/post/Paris-DJs-Soundsystem-Morning-Sunshine and here it is:

It’s funny that sunshine would be the word he picked today I feel as I am the farthest thing from sunshine. I have my moments of niceness but I’m a bit stressed out with coworkers today so the door to my office has been closed. I don’t want my non-sunshiney mood to creep out into the lives of others. I’ve been trying to be conscious of that more and more lately. Just because I’m having a frustrating day doesn’t mean everyone else is. More than once today I pictured me clobbering someone over the head with a frying pan or gouging their eyes out with a spoon. No, I did not act on it, I exercised self-control I think is how they put it.

Just for the fun of it I Googled ‘frustration’ and the 11th image is from http://booksyourkidswilllove.blogspot.com/2011_02_01_archive.html.

Now that’s more like it! That’s about what I looked like for a majority of the morning, or felt like it at least, he’s pretty cute though and I wasn’t cute. Then I took my lunch to write this story and being able to be mouthy and sarcastic by writing has helped my attitude immensely. Now I almost am sunshiney. Look out world, a frustrated, sunshiney girl is on the loose, I can’t wait to see what the day ends up like. I bartend tonight, this ought to be good.

Things That Make Me Smile II

I received this text from a friend after she took her dog for a walk:

“Who shits twice on their walk? Who unties the bag and gets it all over their fingers? Yeah, that’s our dog all right. Next time I won’t tie the bag so tight. Sheesh, lesson learned.”

I received this instant message from a coworker on a Wednesday morning:

“Speaking of drinking. Monday I decided it was a good idea to not eat and save my calories for wine. Turns out that isn’t the best idea I’ve ever had.”

When Idaho arrived I asked him how the flight was. He said “great but I had to go to the bathroom super bad but was scared to ask the two ladies next to me to move during the flight so I held it”. I’m glad he wasn’t scared of me when I met him!!

Idaho and I were in the car with my parents going to dinner on Saturday night and my dad said the following as we were talking about family:

“My grandpa was buried Catholic but because he wasn’t a true Catholic he couldn’t be carried through the cemetery gates so they had to carry him through the ditch.”

It happened again!!! Idaho got sick while he was here. It happens to one of us every time. I sent him on a plane with a bad cough and a terrible head cold. When I talked to him yesterday it now sounds like bronchitis. He’s going to stop coming here pretty soon.

Today I received a voicemail and the following words and phrases were in it and I will let you draw your own conclusions how it went.

Bodybuilder neighbor
Middle of September
Speedo
Smelly overflowing garbage
Empty health food containers

Driving in heavy traffic on the freeway yesterday we were at a dead stop in construction. The third car in front of us didn’t start moving when everyone else did. After a few minutes the truck in front of us tried to go around him on the right when he stopped and got out of the truck. We started getting out because we noticed the driver wasn’t physically moving and his head was over to the side. The truck man pounded on his hood, gave the driver the thumbs up to ask if he was okay. The driver then started moving. Apparently he just needed a little nap during the slowdown!!!

Kris with a K

Thank goodness it’s midnight on a Sunday night and I hope most of my readers are sleeping because my computer just did some sort of kung fu, technical, sci fi, I have a virus crap and published a post that stated “I have”. For those of you who read it, hopefully you made up a good story for what came after those two words, for those of you who didn’t……whew.

Here’s what I was thinking…….

I have now started to tell more and more people about my writing, including getting cards made….you can order 1000 for twelve bucks or something so why not? I hate writing http://www.followingfunny.com on a bar napkin, a piece of scratch paper or the back of a deposit slip. It’s not professional and it’s hard to remember where it came from…..and let’s not even talk about the bad branding.

This means that a fairly close circle of friends now know that I have a hobby. Most are not surprised…..some are completely shocked.

I find it hilarious when some of my friends/acquaintances ask “will you be writing about me?” or “will you be writing about this?” (meaning what’s happening right then) I usually say no but am secretly making notes about the moment, hoping they will fit into a story somewhere. Oddly enough, there’s more that I don’t write about than I actually do write about because I don’t want to be offensive, my family might be reading it or I just cannot put it in words.

Tonight on my way home from a night away I stopped to see a friend who owns a bar. She asked me for some more cards because she had given them all out and one of the guys said, “oh, I saw those yesterday and was wondering what they were all about”. Then he started asking questions, we chatted, I gave him a card and he asked “oh, do I dare read it, have you been writing about me”. I said no, “I don’t mention names and I’m fairly general with a lot of things I write”.

After some conversation I said “oh I have to write about that” and he asked “so you won’t use my real name?” and I said “no”. He looked and me and we started laughing and he said “oh yeah, you’ll use Kris with a K”. Well, that was enough to last the entire night. It was Kris with a K from then on out. I pretended to make mental notes, I actually made notes and act like I would really tell stories about him and the chickens running around in his front yard.

Sometimes you just have to make them sweat……

Friday the 13th

I cannot imagine how many bloggers will write about Friday the 13th and all the glory it brings. I will keep mine short and sweet.

Having a Friday the 13th reminds me of when I bartended regularly years ago. The bar manager and I would play paper rock scissors to see who had to bartend when one of three things happened.

1. The first of the month. Holy welfare checks batman. Welfare checks brought out the drinkers and the gamblers like a swarm of locusts. These are people who drink a 40 ouncer out of a paper bag a majority of the month but on check day they live high on the hog and go to the bars. They don’t necessarily get dressed up, shower or brush their tooth but they head out to the bars to party like it’s 1999.

2. Full moon. I don’t believe in werewolves or vampires but I do believe in the nutjobs that venture out when there’s a full moon. I also believe that a full moon pushes people over the edge who are walking that bat shit crazy line anyway. Add alcohol to this group and you have yourself a party fit for an insane asylum and as a bartender you’re the group therapy leader. No. Thank. You. When I would work on a full moon night I would feel like Dr. Weitzman from the movie The Dream Team, I was afraid that at any moment I could end up unconscious and the patients would run wild.

3. Friday the 13th. You would think there wouldn’t be much difference between a full moon and Friday the 13th but that’s not the case. A full moon brings out the real nutjobs who don’t realize they’re like that, Friday the 13th brings out the wannabe nutjobs. This group of people are exaggerated and obnoxious. This is the most irritating of the three groups because they use this date to act like absolute jackasses.

Be careful out there today and keep in mind the other two times of the month I mentioned.