Finding my Hemingway, or I swear I’ve been here before

I published my first ebook last year. SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION: Selfie-Facing — Analog Musings in a Digital World is available for download from Amazon, B&N, iTunes and Smashwords (where it’s on sale during July), or I’ll leave you a series of voicemails, one chapter at a time, for free. I was not sufficiently scarred by the process to dissuade me from now planning Book Number Two. How’s this for an opening sentence: Cover

  • Thank you for downloading my second ebook.

Very Hemingway-esque, n’est ce-pas? Simple, direct, unadorned, sleep-inducing.

The book part is easy — a beginning and an end, with some writerly stuff in the middle. Some clip art for the cover (thank you, Creative Commons licensure!) and really the only place where I’m stuck is the title. I’m considering the following and would love to get your opinion:

  • Premature ArticulationSpeaking Before Thinking: The Donald J. Trump Story
  • A Love for the AgesTaylor Swift and Her Beaus
  • Rumpus RoomThe Kardashian Saga
  • If The Facts Don’t Fit The Theory, Change The FactsEinstein’s Prescient Insights into the Clintons
  • Opie-oid AddictionWhat I Learned While Binge-Watching “The Andy Griffith Show”
  • Kraut ControlLeadership Lessons from Angela Merkel
  • Maple StirrupThe Life of a Canadian Cowboy
  • Right On D-MoneyGov. Paul LePage on Drugs
  • Iceberg Lettuce AloneClimate Change Deniers Find Themselves Adrift
  • I’ll Have a Dark & Stormy — Edward Bulwer-Lytton Bellies Up to the Bar

Actually, now that I reflect on the above I guess this second attempt may present more challenges than first anticipated. If you’ve read Selfie-Facing (see SHAMELESS SELF-PROMOTION above), you may have at least noticed, if not been offended by, the casual and frequent use of profanity in it. However, in my attempts to reach a wider audience (i.e., in the double-digits) with this next screed, I am attempting to dial it back to a PG-13 from the first book’s hard R. In order to make that clear to the masses, let’s instead consider one of the following titles:

  • F-Balm
  • Swear Are You?
  • Live and Let Expletive
  • Curses! Roiled Again
  • Just Between Cuss
  • I Had A Blasphemy Last Night
  • How I Spent My Summer Imprecation
  • Now I’ve Obscene Everything

Hmm… on third thought, any announcement regarding imminent publication may be a tad incautious. As my inspiration Hemingway once said, “You shouldn’t write if you can’t write.” I’m trying to make sense of that, but I swear this is one instance where Ernest may be full of shiitake.

John Branning

About John Branning

Besides what I contribute here, you can also ignore some of my earlier posts by not visiting my website, www.JohnBranning.com, as well as by not purchasing a copy of my books: “Selfie-Facing: Analog Musings in a Digital World,” which made the list of "The Best Self-Published Books of 2016" as seen on the Huffington Post, and my latest, "Keys To The Truculent Me."