Dateable comes out in 2 weeks!!

with photos of me that I used on my dating profiles

It’s June, which means the robins are eating the serviceberries outside my window. I love the patterns of our yard. They link each year to the ones that came before. The peonies, the grass that needs to be mowed twice a week and then not at all, the clematis climbing the trellis out front. 

I just searched my calendar for Dateable, our book that comes out in two weeks. 

June 2022 Caroline and I were submitting the proposal to publishers. June 2023 we were meeting with our editor frequently about revisions. And now, June 2024, we are fast approaching publication day. 

I’m now marketing a book for the first time. For a season, my job was to write the book. As I’ve discussed before, writing works for me because I am an excellent plodder. I started each day writing, rested after 20 minutes, and repeated three or four times. It worked. 

Now my job is to do what I can to make sure the people who might benefit from reading the book know about it. We have a publicity team, of course, but as has been written about many times, due to industry changes, authors also carry a lot of that responsibility. 

This is daunting. How am I, a very tired mother of two in a small city in Canada, supposed to help all of the disabled and chronically ill people who want to date or are dating know about our book? 

Who actually knows, but this is what I’ve been doing. I’m, again, plodding. I set a timer for 20 minutes and I think about the book and the people who might like it. I contact people who have audiences who might want to know about this book and ask to appear on their podcasts, newsletters, etc. I post on Instagram. I brainstorm essay ideas. 

Plodding is the most my body can do. I am not built for a marketing blitz. Or a big book tour. I am crossing my fingers that slowly and steadily, this book will make its way into the hands of people who are dating with bodies and minds that feel like they don’t fit. I hope people like the version of me who lived in Berkeley in 2015 will find it and realize they aren’t alone, there are options, and they deserve the very best. 

So, if you want to read about disabled dating and sex and marriage and caregiving and money, have I got the book for you. 

Or, if you know someone who wants to feel less alone while looking for a partner, send it to them. 

Also, virtually, join me and Caroline on July 18th as we talk about the book with Women and Children First, the greatest bookstore around. 

Dateable: Swiping Right, Hooking Up, and Settling Down, out July 9, wherever books are sold. 

My poem this month is totally unrelated, but I can’t stop reading it.

ON A PINK MOON

Ada Limon

I take out my anger 
And lay its shadow

On the stone I rolled 
Over what broke me.

I plant three seeds 
As a spell. One

For what will grow 
Like air around us,

One for what will 
Nourish and feed,

One for what will 
Cling and remind me-

We are the weeds.