Long Overdue Newsletter - March 2025
- Chris OBrien
- Mar 31
- 5 min read
Road to a 16 Seed: Win or Lose... a Tooth
Keeping with our March tradition, here's a new chapter from my book-in-progress called "Road to a 16 Seed."
The premise: You know that moment when you're looking at the March Madness bracket and there's a 16-seed that you've never heard of? This book follows the fictional Midwest Conference, eight schools who compete to be that 16 seed you've never heard of.
This chapter: BCU (Borderline Canada University) hires their hockey coach as interim basketball coach. He brings his hard-hitting style to the hardwood, and the town rallies around the physical style and increase in wins. And losses -- lost teeth, that is.
Thoughts from March Madness
Another March tradition: I spend way too much time watching college basketball.
But I'm gonna try and put those hours to good use and tie some observations back to writing. Let's see how this goes.
First thing, I saw this quote from Purdue Head Coach Matt Painter. He was comparing the hyper-critical, anonymous "fans" on Twitter vs. real fans.
"See, a fanbase isn’t the people that tweet," Painter said. "A fan base is the people; when you’re bleeding, they support you. Everyone has a bad percentage of their fan base now because of Twitter. And then we think, ‘That’s their fan base.’ It’s not our fan base. It’s not their real fan base, either. So I think that’s an important piece. But it’s hard for young people (players) to hear all that and then go out and collectively play. (Players think): ‘Hey man, we’re playing for you guys, but you dog us when we lose."
For first-time authors, the goal of selling a bunch books and becoming a bestseller, nothing wrong with those dreams. But once a book is put in the wild, now it's open to anyone on Amazon or Goodreads or hey, maybe even Twitter, to write a review. The irony is one of the "good" signs that your book has stretched beyond friends and family as the audience is receiving that first 1-star review. Or negative Tweet. And those hurt.
But I think one of the primary goals of that first book shouldn’t be copies sold, it should be connecting and finding your first 10, 50, or 100 true fans. Whatever the number is. Finding the people who are excited to read your work, to cheer on your writing efforts, and if you do write a clunker of a chapter (or a whole book), they're not dogging on ya. They're not the ones giving it two thumbs down with a meanspirited comment. These are the fans you want by your side for every new chapter ahead.
Transfer Portal
The talk of college sports right now, and not in a very positive light, is something called the "transfer portal." In short, it's never been easier and more popular for players to change colleges. Some kids are changing schools every single year. The main driver: college athletes can get paid now, so it's like one big free agency period.
And who can blame these kids? There's some crazy dollar amounts thrown around. Why wouldn't you test the market?
Take a look at this graphic below. These are the 16 teams who made Round 3 of this year’s tournament. Just a few years ago, it was normal to build your team in-house. Develop talent. Maybe you have one player transfer in. But now, look at that, only Purdue could boast an all "internal hire" starting five.
Makes me sad. Part of the fun of college basketball was growing up with a team and seeing how a group improved and blossomed together from their freshmen seasons to senior year. Now you're lucky to have one of those players stay for four years.
What's the writing takeaway/analogy here?
Whether it's building a college basketball team or writing a book, I'm still a believer in that "dance with the date that brought you here" philosophy. What I mean is authors can change editors and proofreaders for every book if they want to. Same thing with illustrators. Cover designers. You're not stuck with anyone.
But continuity is a powerful thing. Especially with your Feedback Circle of readers and your editor(s). When someone learns your style and is familiar with your voice, that can really make a difference in the revision/rewrite process. Same holds true with artists. I think it creates better work and it’s more fun. My favorite part about this newsletter over the last six years is working with the same artist for that opening cartoon (same artist from my book Here or There, too). That's over 60 cartoons now (wow!) And keeping with the theme of this newsletter, she went to Purdue.
Alright. Those are all my March Madness-y thoughts. Time for baseball season.
Oh! And congratulations to our Long Overdue Author and Florida Gators alum + super fan, Adam Hersh, on his Gators making the Final Four. To celebrate, I'm gonna knock $4 off of his book Before You Sign: A Pocket Guide to Contract Law for the rest of the tournament.
Big Months Ahead
We have some very exciting announcements coming up regarding new book releases. So please stay tuned for those April and May newsletter.
And an important reminder, if you have the goal of publishing a book this year, and definitely if you're targetting a September or October release, then April, May, and June are super important. Our general timeline is to focus on reviewing and editing manuscripts from January to June, go into production July and August, and then September, with Printers Row Lit Fest, that kicks off “bookseller mode” where we're focused on promoting our new releases and existing titles for the rest of the year.
If you're working on a book right now, let us hear about it. Email - library@longoverduestories.com
Still some tickets available to the Black & Caspian Supper Club on April 8th, sponsored by the Lakeview East Chamber of Commerce. We'll have cookbooks available for sale and a chance to meet the author, Chef Ahmet Ergun, at the event.
"Gators? Tigers? Cougars? Blue Devils? These teams are in desperate need of a more dog-centric mascot."
-Crash, Team Dog
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Also, if you have any questions, ideas, stories to tell, you can reach Cal the Librarian at - library@longoverduestories.com
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