Earlier this week, our fearless publisher, Marty Dundics, and I stayed up late into the evening preparing our book files for the printer. Michael and I started writing From the Campaign Trail or Thereabouts back in December 2016. We had been publishing a fair amount of political satire in the wake of the 2016 election. Everyone was traumatized, and humor sites were hungry for content with which they could further insulate their echo chambers. The election had been, to put it mildly, a clusterfuck, and like many Americans, its events, from the asinine to the abhorrent, seemed seared into our memories. At some point in all of this, we had the idea to write a novel incorporating not only the scenarios and themes of our recent short political satire, but also the characters we had developed over our years of writing humor together.
Of course, neither of us had much of a clue how to go about authoring a novel. Like many writers, our computers were filled with megabytes of aborted drafts and half-baked outlines. But together, we figured, we could keep each other honest, and with nothing more than outdated MacBooks and an unearned sense of confidence, we managed to complete a first draft over the following 10 months. At that time, the novel was called, Yes, Sir, in America, a title we soon discovered no one found compelling or amusing. The next year and a half, we would return to our manuscript every month or so to trim, reorganize, clarify, and punch-up. It was during this period, as we attempted and failed to find a mainstream publishing route, that Marty agreed to put out our book under the auspices of Humorist Media.
Every aspect of this process has been a labor of love and a learning experience, and that has yet to cease being the case. Now with the book out the door, we must begin marketing and promotion. Like when we first set out writing the novel, we only have a vague notion of how to do this, and with our book coming out under a small imprint, Humorist Books (and the first of the imprint’s releases at that), there isn’t quite the same guidance and structure we might receive with a big corporate publisher. However, we do have the benefit of Marty Dundics’ unflagging support and friendship. There’s a reason we went this route. Those of generous spirit may call us “niche”; others, “emotionally debilitated.” The hope is that we release our strange, absurd novel into our little corner of the world, and by virtue of its unique qualities, it finds the audience it begs for. If Art Garfunkel reads it, we might just retire.