Read and Write with Natasha
This podcast discusses writing life, reviews books, and interviews authors and industry professionals.
Read and Write with Natasha
The No-Show Book Reading That Went Viral
When Karen De Bonis arrived at her library book reading to find zero attendees, she didn't crumble—she took a photo. That single photo of empty chairs would go viral on Twitter, reaching over a million views and revealing something profound about vulnerability in our success-obsessed world.
Behind this viral moment lies a much deeper story. De Bonis spent seven years crafting her memoir "Growth: A Mother, Her Son, and the Brain Tumor They Survived," which chronicles not just her son's medical journey but her own battle with people-pleasing behaviors that delayed crucial medical intervention. As she explains, "It's really not a story about the brain tumor as much as it's a story about my shattered expectations of motherhood."
The conversation explores the fascinating collision between medical gaslighting and people-pleasing tendencies that left her son undiagnosed for three years.
With remarkable candor, De Bonis reveals her publishing journey—from writing in fits and starts over many years to querying 85 agents without success before finding a home with a university press.
Her honest assessment of book marketing realities (that viral million-view post translated to exactly 44 book sales) provides crucial perspective for aspiring authors.
Perhaps most compelling is De Bonis' DIY approach to audiobook creation, complete with a closet recording studio lined with egg crate foam and free Audacity software.
For writers and readers alike, this conversation offers a masterclass in persistence, authenticity, and the courage to share our imperfect experiences.
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People said that they admired my courage. And then people started saying I admire your courage so much I'm going to buy your book. That was wild. So yeah, it was a really extraordinary experience, really extraordinary.
Speaker 2:Hi friends, really extraordinary Hi friends. This is Read and Write with Natasha podcast. My name is Natasha Tynes and I'm an author and a journalist. In this channel I talk about the writing life, review books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Books and interview authors. Hope you enjoy the journey. Hi everyone, and welcome to another episode of Read and Write with Natasha.
Speaker 2:I have with me today Karen De Boni I hope I pronounced it right. She is after retiring from a satisfying career in health promotion. She's currently writing about motherhood, people-pleasing and personal growth, inspired by the experience of raising her son. Her work has appeared in the New York Times, huffington Post and numerous literary journals. So, karen, thank you for joining me today. I'm so happy to have you in the podcast.
Speaker 2:And just a bit of a background for anyone who's listening or watching I found out about Karen's work through a tweet that went viral and it was about her at her book reading and no one showed up. And the tweet got a lot of support from authors and it went viral. And then other authors started talking about book readings and how you know people don't show up to book readings and how much. So I really love that story and I invited Karen to come to the podcast and I'm glad she accepted. So, karen, thank you again. We'll get to the tweet later on, but I want to just ask you about your book, your memoir. It's sort of about challenges and overcoming them.
Speaker 1:So if you can go ahead and tell us about your book, Sure, and I'll just say up front so my name is not hard to pronounce, but people usually interpret it as French, so it sounds like the way you're pronouncing. It is how you would pronounce it if it was a French name. It's actually Italian and in the book I talk about when my husband and I first met and I thought it was French and he said no, it's Italian and it kind of rhymes with honest. So it's de bonis, it kind of rhymes with honest, but it is actually Italian. Yeah, so my book and I have a, I have a copy right here it's growth, a mother, her son and the brain tumor. They survived and it's really so.
Speaker 1:My son was diagnosed with a brain tumor at age 11.
Speaker 1:It's really not a story about the brain tumor as much as it's a story about my shattered expectations of motherhood.
Speaker 1:I was the second oldest daughter of six children and I babysat all the time and my parents were good role models and I really just thought I would be a natural at motherhood.
Speaker 1:And my first son was born healthy but very colicky for six months and just challenged kind of everything I believed about myself as a mother and what I expected of motherhood. And then when he was eight, he started having some odd symptoms and then the story kind of becomes about this collision of medical gaslighting, which is when a doctor is not listening to and dismissive of a patient's concerns and symptoms, and this collision of medical gaslighting and people-pleasing, which is something that I was raised to be and in part because of societal expectations, in part because of who my parents were, what their expectations were, who I am kind of innately. So the collision of medical gaslighting, people pleasing and my son's deterioration, just that kind of, you know, collision of everything that could I shouldn't say everything that could go wrong, but many things that went wrong in motherhood things that went wrong in motherhood and sorry about what you went through and what made you decide to write this down and publish it.
Speaker 2:What was the motive for you?
Speaker 1:It's a great question. I was not a writer, never was. I was not one of those kids who, you know, sat in bed with a little flashlight in my notebook writing poems or little stories. I just, you know, I wrote. I have a master's degree. So I wrote, you know, I could write at a professional level, for not creative writing, but just for what I had to do. But I had no intention of writing it. And then so my son was diagnosed in 1997. It and then so my son was diagnosed in 1997.
Speaker 1:And part of the story is that I wasn't telling other people a lot of what was going on, because one it was considered kind of typical or common you know some of the symptoms for children and because I was full of self-doubt.
Speaker 1:So when I started kind of disclosing to my friends and to some other people all the things that had gone on, the common refrain, which is very cliche, is oh, you should write a book.
Speaker 1:And I was like, oh, not me, you know I'm not a writer.
Speaker 1:And then with time, you know, within a couple of years, I decided I really do need to write the story, and in part because it was kind of this crazy medical mystery with all these twists and turns of diagnoses and just this unbelievable stuff that went on and that's actually the type of story that I like to read, but also because I saw my people pleasing in the role that it played in this whole saga of my son being undiagnosed for three years and therefore experiencing more damage from this benign brain tumor than he should have otherwise.
Speaker 1:You know, I saw my role as a people-pleaser in everything that happened and I know that there are other women especially men too, but especially women who struggle with this, and I knew that they would see themselves in my story and perhaps have their moment of personal growth where they learned how important it is to start using their voice and perhaps not go through or made the mistakes you know that I made. So it was really about kind of holding myself accountable but doing it in service of others that they would, you know, maybe not go through what I went through.
Speaker 2:So thank you for sharing this. And what was your publishing journey? Like yes. And what was your publishing journey like Did you self-publish?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I did get a small press to publish the book. So I started writing around 1999 or so and I took classes and joined some writing groups and I wrote for a while and then I just stopped for a number of reasons and I think I didn't know it at the time, but I think the story wasn't really done yet. You know, my son was in college at that time. He was able to graduate from high school and graduate from college, but was really really struggling and I hadn't really figured out all the lessons of my own journey. So I put the book away for I don't know, eight or nine years or something like that. And I, you know I was really committed to writing it and I had about 300 pages done and I just couldn't. I couldn't, you know, I had to put it away.
Speaker 1:So in 2016, I was back at work. I had actually left work at some point because I was convinced my son would not graduate from high school unless I was really there full time to you know, mentor him and support him. And I was back to work. You know, enjoyed my career in wellness and health promotion and I had some of my own health issues that made it. You know, I made the decision that I could not work anymore and that was really devastating because I loved my career. I was finally, for the first time in my long career, you know, making decent money and that was important to me, in part because I didn't know if my son, matt, really would ever be able to stand on his own two feet. I thought we might need to support him, you know, financially in some big way for the rest of his life. So it was hard to accept that I was not going to have an income for a while, that I was not going to have an income for a while. But the day I left the doctor's office when I realized I couldn't work, I felt this strong message from the universe saying this is the gift of time to write your book. And actually I listened to one of your other podcasts you had a guest on who had gone to prison for releasing a prisoner and I remember her saying she felt that prison was a gift of time to kind of figure herself out and work on herself. I'm glad I didn't have that gift, but you know I was. I just knew in that moment that I was going to finish this book and I thought it would take about six months.
Speaker 1:I was quite naive and it only took, let's see, seven years because really I didn't know what I was doing. I had so much to learn and I just really I became like a sponge. I just you know every online class that I could take I did that because it was hard for me to get out of the house at the time because of my health problems and thank God for the, you know, for the Internet, internet that I could do that and I joined writing groups and I found writing partners and I just you know it took, it took seven years to get to that point and I my my plan was to get an agent and to get, you know, a traditional publisher, hopefully a large publisher, and I had decided that I was going to query 100 agents, because that's often how much it takes. You know, people, kind of unknown writers like myself, especially with memoir which is considered kind of hard to sell, that's frequently what it takes. So I decided I was not going to quit until I queried 100 agents and I got a couple of requests for full, so my full manuscript.
Speaker 1:You know a couple people wanted and that was a good sign, but then I got ghosted and didn't hear anything else. So I just, let's see, it would have been like January 2022. I had gone through 85 agents and I still had some more on my list and I just thought, you know, I think it's time for plan B, which is to go to small presses. So I had a spreadsheet of presses that I had been researching to, you know, figure out what would be a good fit, and I queried about five of them and I ended up getting two offers and one came in sooner than the other. So I checked it out and they seemed like, you know, they were legit. It was a university press, loyola University, maryland, excuse me, and you know I connected with some other writers who had been published with them and were happy with the experience, so I said yes.
Speaker 1:And it was just an incredible moment to know that I was going to be a published author. It was just, you know, something that you know I'd hoped for for so long, but to know that it was going to happen see, I'm getting all emotional now, you can see just was really an incredible moment. And then it took about a little over a year. I probably signed the contract around February of 2022. And then my book came out May of 2023, almost exactly a year ago. In three days, it'll be my book when your Birthday oh, congrats.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so this is the timing. So I'm curious why did you opt for a small press and not self-publish?
Speaker 1:For me it really came down to the validation. I wanted someone or some entity to say to me yes, your book is good enough that we're going to take it on and we're going to make it. You know, a reality when, with self-publishing and I have friends who have self-published, in their wonderful books, well-written, got tons of reviews but for me I just, you know, I wanted that validity and my plan three was going to be self-published, so I wasn't opposed to that. But I'm glad I, you know my plan B worked out Interesting.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's the first time I hear the validation that. You know, all of us want to feel good about our writing and it's good to hear it from someone else. Yeah, that's a good way of framing it. And if you can just tell, you know the viewer or the listener how did it happen and how did? What was the ripple effects of that viral?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah. Well, one of the things I did to market my book and you know, most authors, even those with large presses, are responsible for some of their book marketing and with a small press, frequently it's completely, you know, on the author. So I again just became a sponge and read everything I could and, you know, figured out what I needed to do. So I did a number of book talks at local libraries around where I live and, you know, frequently I had maybe three people that that showed up, or maybe maybe five, and two of them were like my husband, who came with me, and somebody else. Um, but it was important to me. I wanted that kind of hometown connection. This is where I live now in upstate New York. It's my adopted hometown but I've been here for 40 some years. So I really wanted that connection in my own community. So I had set up a book talk in Troy, which is Troy, new York, which is where I'm living at the library. I was not living at the library, but I set up the book talk at the library and you know, I did some marketing and the library did some marketing, but I think in retrospect neither of us did as much as we could have done. I know at the time I had a bunch of other events going on and marketing things, so you know I didn't devote the attention to it that I that I could have.
Speaker 1:So my husband, I call, I call him my, my, what do I call him? My? Um, my, loyal, uh, uh, grunt, you know, my book marketing grunt. He carries the books in and helps me get set up. We were all set up in the room and nobody came and, um, you know, know, we waited, you know 15 minutes or so.
Speaker 1:And I said to my husband, I said you know, I want you to take a picture. And he's like, really Like, what are you going to do with it? You're not going to post this anywhere, are you? And I said, I said you know it happens to everybody. And I just I was kind of like I was sad, but I wasn't. You know, some people in this whole viral tweet thing, some people said, oh, they'd be destroyed and they'd be so upset. And I honestly wasn't, I was disappointed. But you know, I just I just kind of thought, well, this is just just part of it.
Speaker 1:So I sat in a chair and I kind of like rested my hand on the chair, looking kind of bored, and my husband took a picture of all the empty chairs and the next morning I posted it on Twitter and I just, you know, I just said, oh, you know, it's a bummer, every author's got to have a no-show book talk and I'm not on social media all the time throughout the day. I try to, you know, limit it a little bit. And I checked back, maybe at noon, and it had I don't know a few thousand views or likes or something, and I was like, wow, that's, you know, that's amazing. And I went back an hour later and it was twice as much and I started getting this feeling like I think this thing is going viral. And I was thinking viral might mean like I don't know, I don't know, 10,000 views. I mean that seemed viral to me, but it just kept growing and growing and growing and it had over a million views, had over a million views, and I decided, when I realized this was happening, I thought, okay, my job today is to engage with what's going on. So I, at least for the first day and I'm talking like eight hours just sitting at my computer, because I thought people were taking the time to respond and they were saying this is a wild thing. It's not just that people looked at it or liked it. People were saying things like your vulnerability is inspiring. That was one of the biggest comments.
Speaker 1:It took me really several days to kind of process all of this and understand all of it, but I wanted to. You know, I thought if people were taking the time to comment I wanted to reply to them, so I probably replied I don't know a couple thousand people. That day I replied to every single comment that I possibly could and I remember going to bed that night I talked to my sister. My sister lives in Chicago and I was like and she's not on social media at all and I was like you don't believe it? There's this weird thing. I, you know, I had this no show book talk and I posted this tweet and in tons I said it's, it's really going viral. And I said I'm gonna. I told her I said I'm gonna try to push it up to a million views. Like I did set that goal. I think maybe I was at half a million views and I said I'm just going to keep engaging and just see how far I can push this. But then I went to bed and I woke up the next morning and it was at a million Wow, and.
Speaker 1:But I really think that the most for me, the most powerful takeaway from this experience, were the comments that people you know they it was my vulnerability that people were responding to and to me. That also validated the purpose for writing my book. I'm very vulnerable. In my book, one of the comments that I get most is that you know, I'm just, I'm so honest and I just decided, if I was going to write it in my book, I was going to be completely honest. And it doesn't.
Speaker 1:I don't always look good, you know, completely honest, and it doesn't. I don't always look good, you know I I show my flaws as a mother, especially as a wife, as a woman, but I believed that, in kind of laying myself bare, that other people would relate to it and other people would be able to grow. And I feel like the same thing happened in that tweet where I shared this moment and and people you know people said things like um, oh, I'm so glad to see this, because now I know, when I have my no show book talk, which is bound to happen that it'll be okay. You know that I don't have to fall apart. People said that they admired my courage, and then people started saying I admire your courage so much I'm going to buy your book. That was wild. So yeah, just it was a really extraordinary experience, really extraordinary.
Speaker 2:So did you find out? How many books did you sell based on the tweets?
Speaker 1:I did. I don't. My publisher only gives a royalty check and a and a sales statement once a year. I have not received it yet. My book has been almost a year. I have. But I can tell on Amazon I get an idea of the sales and I sold about 44 books and you know I'm I'm honest about that too when I I do some talks about book self-marketing and I that's something that I share and I do that because I think it's important for authors to understand the reality of the impact of social media and marketing and all that type of thing. So over a million views on Twitter translated for me, for a sale of 44 books. So that's reality. So you know you could get a million comments even it doesn't mean you're going to sell a million books but you will sell more books than you would have sold if you didn't say anything.
Speaker 1:So you know I'm a believer in just putting myself out there and feeling like you know people. If they see it, then that's an exposure to what I have to say, and if they see it again and again, that's often when people will act after they've, you know, come across something many times.
Speaker 2:So did you get any other opportunities besides the books, like were you invited to speak and other stuff?
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, Well, I'm here, so here's one. Yeah, I did. I had a couple other podcasts. People reach out to me and you know, invite me on the podcast and yeah, I think that was it. But you know, those were good opportunities.
Speaker 2:How many followers did you have you know before you sent out the tweet?
Speaker 1:Yeah, I had about, I think, 7,000. And around the tweet I got maybe like 1,000 new followers, so it's up to 8,000 or so. So again, that's a reality check. Like I don't, you know, I never did have a huge platform on social media. That's something that agents kind of look for and publishers look for. But I worked hard to get those 7,000. I started at zero, just like everybody else and got one at a time, and so I had that little bump there, which was nice.
Speaker 2:Well, this is fascinating. So what other marketing efforts you're doing to promote, or you've been doing, and what do you think worked the most for you or for your book?
Speaker 1:Yeah, good question. And you know, without the sales report it's hard to say. I know other authors, even with small presses, they'll do an event and then look at the sales, like they'll go on their portal and look at the sales and they'll have a good kind of some data to support what they're doing. So without that I would say, I mean, you know, I am on social media lately it's been Facebook a lot. I'm kind of phasing out Twitter just a little bit.
Speaker 1:You know, interestingly, I think it's the things that I do, like book talks and podcasts and things like that, but then posting them on Facebook, because then people will say to me oh, my goodness, your book must be doing great. You know you're so busy and I don't know that again, it's, it's. It's not like an equal translation. You do X number of podcasts and book talks and you're going to make this number of sales. But I guess I would say the key thing is just to put yourself out there, because what has been substantiated is, like I said before, people won't just see your Facebook notice of a book talk one time and buy your book. That can happen, but it's more like when they see it a bunch of times, and I have had people either at book talks or online say to me I guess especially in book talks I've had people say to me yeah, I saw your book somewhere. You know they don't remember it could have been Facebook.
Speaker 1:It could have been you know, a post up in the community about your book somewhere you know they don't remember. It could have been Facebook. It could have been you know, a post up in the community about a book talk, and then I saw that it was coming to my library so I figured I'd come. So it wasn't that one time exposure, it was the multiple exposures. I think that really makes a difference.
Speaker 2:Yeah, that's a good point. I think I read somewhere that people need like nine exposures before they actually buy. Yes, it's a lot.
Speaker 1:It's a lot, you know, and I can see that in myself. This is funny because you know, on Facebook, like once you watch a video, then of course, those type of videos, like I have this makeup video that keeps showing up for me and I've probably seen it dozens of times and just this morning I thought, you know, I think I might buy that. I saw that in myself. I mean, that's really how it works.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, I mean for me too. Okay, so before I think, while you and me were chatting, before recording, you mentioned that you were recording, audio recording the book yourself. Yes, and if you can tell me a bit about that experience and do you, did you hire another publisher to do that for you, or is that through the same publisher, and how is this working for you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, good question. Well, I was, you know. I was so still inexperienced about publishing when I got my contract. And in the contract, was you know, there were some clauses about the audio book and some other, you know, versions of the book, and at that time I was not an audio book listener. I am a little bit more now, but I never even thought I would do an audio book. That was just so far removed from where I was at that I didn't even consider it. So I so they basically my, my publisher kept the rights. I allowed them to keep the rights to the audio book.
Speaker 1:So then, when it came time to do my audio book, I realized, oh no, I don't have those rights. And I will say that I've been a member of the um, the author's guild, for a few years now and I think it's well worth the membership fee. One of the things that they do is if you get a contract from a publisher, they will do a legal review of it for no cost. It just comes with your membership. So I did get a legal review and it was still. I've never dealt with contracts in my life, so it was still kind of a learning experience, but anyhow. So I let go of the audio rights and I went back to both the Authors Guild and I love to use Twitter for crowdsourcing, you know Authors Guild and I love to use Twitter for crowdsourcing. You know who's dealt with this. What do you? You know, what should I do? And it sounded like it might be difficult to get the rights back and, and you know, I wasn't sure how to deal with that. But in my case, I just I heard from somebody else. With my publisher, I just wrote a letter saying, you know, wrote an email saying, hey, I I'd like to, you know, produce my audio book. Can we have a conversation about how I can get those rights back? And he wrote back the guy in charge of that and said, um, this letter will, uh, as the official way of saying that we're turning all the rights over to you. So, bam, it was so, so, so, so, so cool, okay, okay.
Speaker 1:And so then there was a question about do I record it myself or do I hire a voice artist to to record it? And I have to say, in all my decisions, I really, because I stopped working in 2016,. I haven't had a steady income since then. So all my decisions, you know, a part of them is a financial. You know what's my financial situation. So it would have been, you know, very expensive to hire a voice artist and I did some research and found that often for memoirs, it's recommended that the author read their own book.
Speaker 1:And I listened to, you know, a bunch of samples of audio books and I decided, yes, I'm going to do that. So that was one step. And then the next step was the recording space. You know, where am I going to set up a recording studio and I could, you know, pay to use a recording studio, which, again, you know, several thousand dollars and more to do that, which was really just, you know, not something I had in my budget.
Speaker 1:So I did some research and talked to some people and my husband. We have an old house. My husband's got a little tiny closet and he gave me half of that closet and I bought that foam what do they call it? That foam, egg, the egg crate foam stuff. We just kind of like stuck it all around the room and I bought that foam what do they call it? That foam, egg, the egg crate foam stuff. We just kind of like stuck it all around the room and of course he has clothes hanging in there, which is nice to. It absorbs all the sounds in a good way and it's actually sound wise.
Speaker 1:I checked it out with someone I knew from a podcast who was a radio professional and he said, yeah, the sound was great. So I got that settled and then I'm recording on my laptop. But the software that I'm using is Audacity and it's a free software. Anyone can use it. And then the one thing that I did was I hired a guy on Fiverr which is like how would you describe that, natasha? Because you used A freelancer's marketplace.
Speaker 1:Okay, thank you, yeah, and he was someone that actually worked on my friend's memoir and he did a nice job. So I hired him to do the editing, because the editing is very tedious and also somewhat technical. You know you have to have some technical expertise for that. So that worked out well. I'll tell you, the big mistake that I made is and I so in my book there's there's a bunch of different doctors and I was concerned that you know in the book I can make it clear in in dialogue and in scene, who's speaking. But in the audio book I was concerned that a reader would be confused. If I'm in a conversation with a doctor, you know who's talking, especially if it's a woman doctor. And even though I read, don't try to do anything fancy with your voice for these characters. You can actually add some dialogue tags. So, for example, you can actually add some dialogue tags. So, for example, in a book, in a print book, it's clear who's talking because of the spacing and the indentations and that type of thing. In an audio book, there are a few places where I would add he said, she said, he continued, whatever. So to make it more clear.
Speaker 1:But I started messing around with the voices so like my husband's voice. This is pretty funny. So you know it helps to. For example, if you're a woman recording a man's voice, it's helped. It helps to like lower your voice a little bit so it's kind of more clear that it's a man.
Speaker 1:But when I was recording that didn't sound like enough. So then I was down like this recording and I got to tell you I listened back to it later and it was just ridiculous. So I really messed up a lot of the character voices. I had to go back in and re-record almost every voice that I did and I was up to I have 25 chapters. I was up to like chapter 20 before I realized that I had just really screwed it up. So I made a lot of work for myself and because of all my little edits, audacity started crashing and then I had to get a new laptop.
Speaker 1:So again and I want to be honest because I think it is not easy to record your own audio book on a lot of different levels However it is doable and I got a lot of support on the Audacity forum who helped me figure out what was going on. Lot of support on the Audacity forum who helped me figure out what was going on. So I now see the light at the end of the tunnel and I hope to have it out. So May 2nd, which is a few days from this when we're recording this, is my book anniversary. One year book anniversary. I hope to launch my audio book. Then it's not going to happen, but I see the light at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 2:Oh, wow, best of luck, thank you. Yeah well, thank you for the honesty. I think that's really helpful as well for authors who are either considering recording their own books. So, before we conclude, what tips would you give to authors and aspiring authors, especially when it comes to being honest about the challenges and all of that?
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's a good question. I think one of the main tips would be to get support in whatever way works for you know, that particular writer or author. I did end up going to therapy in the process of writing my book and I've been open about that because I just think it's a really helpful resource, and especially for a memoir. You know, for me it was digging up a lot of old, painful memories, and so I just felt that I needed support with that. I would also say, like I said before, you know, I became a sponge. I mean just there are so many great resources, either free or very affordable, online. Just take advantage of every resource you can and try to find a critique group or writing groups that will give some critiques, because I really feel so.
Speaker 1:In my critique group we started with about six or seven members and then a few people kind of went their different ways and one person came in. We ended up with a core group of four people. One by one, we have all gotten a book deal and we all credit each other with elevating our writing skills to the level that we could get a book deal skills to the level that we could get a book deal. So you know, it's not easy to find a writing group, and especially one that really gels as well as mine did. I was very fortunate, but I do think that that's important and I would advise for memoirists to find that writing, you know, core group who are also memoirists, because in my experience I've been in some other writing groups with fiction writers and I think some fiction writers don't get the vulnerability of sharing this personal story and where to draw some lines and where to be, you know, fully honest. So those are the things that I would look for.
Speaker 2:This is great, thank you. So how? How do people find you or get in touch with you and buy their, your books? Uh, where can they reach you?
Speaker 1:Yeah, Uh well, my, my book I'll. I'll show it again. My book is available um pretty much anywhere. You know Amazon, barnes and Noble bookshoporg. If your local indie bookstore or Barnes and Noble or whatever doesn't have it, they can order it for you. I know it's in some libraries but, again, if your local library doesn't have it and you want to borrow it, you can ask them to add it to their collection. That's like a thing I didn't know that that was a thing before I got involved with this. So, and that's actually great for me because it's another sale if a library buys my book. But also, you know, I really want people to read it, so it's an opportunity for people in that particular community to read it. And I'm at I'm at karendoboniscom is my website. I'm at karendoboniscom is my website and also pretty much on all the social media handles, or all the social media handles that I have are some version of Karen Dobonis, so I'm pretty easy to find.
Speaker 2:Great, this has been really wonderful and inspiring, and thank you again for accepting my invitation to come on the podcast.
Speaker 1:Well, I appreciate that you found me and, as a journalist, you ask great questions.
Speaker 2:Thank you, appreciate it. Thank you and for anyone who's listening or watching, thank you for joining us for another episode of Read and Write with Natasha and, until we meet again, thank you for tuning in to Read and Write with Natasha. I'm your host, natasha Tynes. If today's episode inspired you in any way, please take the time to review the podcast. Remember to subscribe and share this podcast with fellow book lovers. Until next time, happy reading, happy writing.
