Monday, April 21, 2014

I'm writing a book

It will be entitled Beer Lover's Mid-Atlantic. And it will go part of the way to describe why I've been seemingly more quiet than usual thus far in 2014.

I think I was supposed to have told you about this quite some time ago. Or, maybe not. There was no way I wanted to jinx things by talking about a deal that was not officially done at that point.

While all of the fun legalese was being hammered out, I was putting together the plans for how I would cover all the good stuff happening across the 4-state "mid-Atlantic" region of Delaware, Maryland, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania.

Good stuff meaning beer, of course. And, by beer, it means it will cover not just the breweries and brewpubs making the stuff, but the bars and restaurants that are serving it well, too. Plus, a section for some homebrew shops and recipes from them as well. It'll be close to 400 pages by the time all is said and done.

No small undertaking for sure. Not to mention, on a very short timeline. However, it's a job that must be done. It's been a while since a regional "guide book" has been published to tell of the tasty happenings in the beer world around these parts. Though, don't envy me. How many times have you heard about "all the new places opening nearly every day"? Yup, that'll be me trying to figure out who's in and who's out of the book, amidst the constant change in the landscape. Fortunately, I'll be able to add a small chapter/appendix right before publishing that basically will serve as a simple listing of all close-to-completion or should-be-open establishments by the time the book hits the retail shelves.

So I've been at it for around 8 weeks or so now and have covered off much of Delaware, a good half or so of New Jersey, and pieces of western and northeastern Pennsylvania. Maryland is upcoming up this weekend and then plenty of remaining gaps to be filled in over the next couple of months.

The requisite Facebook and Twitter pages dedicated to the book should be up any day so that I can do a better job of publicizing and whatnots along the way. It's definitely been an exercise in organization as much as anything so far.

That's probably enough to say for now. I figure it's probably a bit of a shock just to see words here that aren't event calendar listing-related.

Here's a link to Amazon if you should care to pre-order. You'll see it's due to publish in January. I'll do what I can - which might mean, not much :( - to see this on bookshelves prior to the holidays, but there's a lot I can't control in the project timeline once the manuscript leaves my hands.

Nonetheless, it'll be a tasty yet crazy ride along the way. Have a place that you think I might not be familiar with that is an absolute, must-do somewhere in the great wide world of PA/NJ/MD/DE? Drop a note to me and let me know.

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