Specifically, I'm thinking about my forthcoming book "Secret Tampa Bay: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure," which is tentatively scheduled for release in the early fall of 2020. Five years ago, writing an offbeat travel guide is just about the last thing I would have expected to do, but it seems that digging deep into my surroundings and my own past has inadvertent revealed a path forward.
Without realizing it, I had been lining up the pieces and doing the work long before the shape of it became clear. It happened about a year ago while I was flipping through the pages of "Secret Philadelphia: A Guide to the Weird, Wonderful and Obscure." I had purchased the book for a trip to see my family in suburban Philly, but the short vacation never actually happened. While Jen and I were waiting to board the plane, which had been delayed, we got a call from her mother informing us that her dad had been taken to the hospital. So after a short discussion, we left the airport and went straight to Sarasota. It was unquestionably the right thing to do and I am glad we could be there for her parents, but I was understandably a little crestfallen about having to postpone a trip I had been looking forward to. So I immersed myself in the hidden history and little known locations in and around the place I grew up.
At the same time I was just beginning to notice some things changing in my professional life. For seven years I'd enjoyed a very steady flow of work as both a resume writer for Your Signature Resume and as a contractor with the proposal writing team at Grant Thornton. It could have just been the usual fluctuations that all of us in the "gig economy" become accustomed to over time, but something about it felt different. Rather than wait and find out, I decided to start actively seeking out an additional stream of revenue.
That's when it occurred to me - I could write Secret Tampa Bay, maybe. The website Atlas Obscura had already published many of my submissions and I was already well into writing this blog. So I went online and looked through the catalog of Reedy Press books to see if they already had a volume on Tampa Bay. They did not. Next I made a mock table of contents based on locations and local objects of intrigue that I could write about (only about half of which actually made it into the book). I called to inquire about it and was directed to the owner. I left a message and he promptly called me back and asked if I could share some writing samples. I complied and again he responded swiftly asking for a marketing plan. I constructed one based on the guidelines he had given me, and within just a week or two I was looking at a contract.
Once everything was signed, I redoubled my efforts to seek out and discover all that is peculiar and fascinating in the area. I set for myself a radius of 1 hour from downtown Tampa, which allowed me to cover not only Tampa, St. Pete and Clearwater, but as far north as Weeki Wachee, and as far south as Sarasota. Initially I wondered how I could possibly fill more than 200 pages, but as I near the final, published product, I find that I have almost twice that much material and that the greatest challenge has been not what to include but rather what to exclude. Some of that excess material will no doubt appear here in future blog posts.
I'm excited. I'm exhausted. But mostly I am profoundly grateful; to Reedy Press for providing me with the opportunity; to my wife and family for their support of my project; to all of those who let me in on their local knowledge and secret worlds, and especially to my old friend Steve. Had his passing not shaken me awake and altered my trajectory, nothing over the past few years in my life would have turned out as it has. I wish he could have been the first one to look at my initial draft - a role we always played for one another, the friend able to offer a frank but thoughtful critique. This time it has been not his presence but his absence that helped shape the work. His shadow falls across the book as it does this blog, and on any of the occasions where I've uncovered or stumbled across something that made me drop my jaw in awe, he's with me then. I believe he would be proud of what I've done.
As kids we adopted as our own a line from the film The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension, "No matter where you go, there your are." I have since amended the saying slightly to reflect his current, posthumous role in my ongoing adventures: "No matter where I go, there we are."
And now, reader, you too are there with us. I appreciate that, and I thank you for joining me in all that has passed and in all that is yet to come.
#SecretTampaBay
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