Sometimes I think I’m too jaded. Then I think no, it’s just the lighting.

Sometimes I think I’m too jaded. Then I think no, it’s just the lighting ~

I am pleased to welcome Rachel Thompson as a guest poster today. Rachel is simply HILARIOUS!! Here is my recent review of her book, A Walk in the Snark. (Don’t you love, love, love the title?

Here’s Rachel:

If you’re at all familiar with @RachelintheOC via my Twitter feed, my blog, or my new book A Walk In The Snark, you probably know me as that redheaded Queen of Snark in a sea of blondes (OC does stand for Orange County, CA, home of the Tragic – I mean Magic – Kingdom), after all. Essays like Stupid Pants Syndrome, Men are from Seinfeld, Women are From Friends (Mancode), and I’m Fine. Deconstructed. (Chickspeak) certainly cement that fact.

But how did I get here? For millions of bloggers, those were the key questions I asked myself: how can I take my stories and put them into a book? Should I even bother? Will it translate?

Will anyone buy it?

I could have crawled up into a ball of indecision in my dirty martini (extra olives, of course) right then and there, but I knew a thing or two about social media and marketing (as well as writing, of course), so I pushed forward with my vision for my book. I knew I had written something people could relate to. How?

To keep my sanity as a WAHM (Write At Home Mom), I wrote my first Mancode essay on my RachelintheOC.com blog about one year ago (April, 2010), titled it “Men are from Seinfeld, Women are from Friends,” and the response was overwhelming, immediate. Clearly, it wasn’t just my guy who went to the grocery store flummoxed by my note: BUY BREAD and would return instead with soup made in China I then had to check for lead content. Honestly.

Twenty-ish Mancode posts later, I had hit my brand, my goldmine. How? That essay alone has been mentioned or retweeted hundreds of times—and not just by frustrated women! Dudes with a sense of humor, too. Thrilled and grateful at the response, I knew I was onto something.

I expanded into Chickspeak, rounded it out with parenting, some real-life poignant stories of lost love, and felt I had enough to give readers a glimpse of me. Of course, I wanted to add new material also, so fans of my blog would feel they were paying for more than just a synopsis, so I expanded my focus, adding in new essays that no one had ever seen.

I also added in tweets – that’s something I hadn’t really seen in many blog-to-books. Twitter is a huge part of who I’ve become, my persona, my brand – this whole ‘RachelintheOC’ chick—and she says a lot of funny stuff! I wanted to include some of those lines.

Off it went to a professional editor and graphic artist…and, after many late nights, blood, sweat, and tears…I had my book!

Why do men want to change the world but not the toilet paper?

There are some poignant pieces mixed in where you see that being a redhead in a sea of blondes (I do live in the OC after all) is not all beaches and martinis. But hey, that’s real life, baby.

Clearly, I’m not talking rocket science here. I’m a humorist. My goal is to make you laugh, think, (okay, maybe cry occasionally) and give you a respite from your daily life of having to do laundry or yes, change the toilet paper roll!

I’m hard at work on my next book, The Mancode: A Survivor’s Tale. My husband is a good sport and to be honest, this Mancode stuff has been great shorthand for our going-on-nineteen-years marriage. Read the essay about Refrigeratoritis—you’ll know exactly what I mean.

Please visit my blog today and leave me a comment to receive the coupon code for a free copy of my eBook from Smashwords this one day only. This is a Cage Match tour so I’m up against a boy – George Pappas, aka @GPWriter author of Monogamy Sucks. Whoever receives the most comments wins the day – help me kick some Mancode booty!

Thank you to Andrea and Greatthoughts.com for supporting me and my book A Walk In The Snark, and the Indie Book Collective. Tell your friends, your mom, even your dog! Remember, you don’t need a Kindle to read my (or ANY) eBook. Just a computer or a smartphone.

Please email me if you have any questions or comments at RachelintheOC@gmail.com or come visit my blog anytime RachelintheOC.com or Twitter or Facebook or GoodReads. I’m everywhere (except, ya know, the kitchen). I also teach writers epublishing, social media and other cool stuff over at the Indie Book Collective so find me there as well.

What are you reading and where are you going?