Long Overdue Newsletter - September 2025

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It's a strange feeling, feeling like a regular at a book festival.

Three years ago, our Printers Row Lit Fest table looked like this:

Three weeks ago, we barely had enough space:

On Saturday, keeping with tradition, we had our Safe Landing table going strong.

Safe Landing is our bestseller, our "Flagship" book.

On Sunday, Table 2 became the new authors/Chicago authors table.

Because August was such a mad rush, bringing five books across the finish line, the thing I kept thinking about at the festival was how thin that line is between "I'm working on my long overdue book" and “I'm a published author."

Our newest authors -- Liza, Clayton Keith, and Bev -- a month ago, their books were still in production. A week before the festival, our awesome book printer (Diggypod) was printing and shipping their books. Liza and Bev saw their debut books for the very first time on Saturday morning at Lit Fest.

What an awesome feeling to go from an idea, to a first draft, to a finished Google Doc, to a PDF, to a digital proof, to this:

Celebrating with family and friends, and one of the coolest moments for a new author: selling their book to a complete stranger. And signing that new author signature.

Or having my just-turned-four-year-old son helping at the table, but how he didn't totally understand that when someone was buying a copy of "Dad, Our Candy Man," they weren't buying his copy from home. "Hey, put that back!"

He's still gettin' the hang of the family business...

Again, it's a strange feeling, feeling like a regular at a book festival. To wrap up Year 3 and look at our two tables thinking, "You know, it might be time for a tent (or 1/2 a tent) next year..." And for that to not be the wild dreamer in me, but a practical, logical next step. It's a strange feeling being able to step away from the tables and walk the festival because Sophia's got it under control, doing a better job running the iPad and card reader than I do. It's a strange feeling, feeling like my business is growing up. Long Overdue's not a baby any more. It can ride its bike now. It can pick up a gallon of milk at the grocery store.

It's a strange feeling holding up my own books with stories and ideas that go all the way back to 2008. On one end, that's a really long time. Seventeen years. For Long Overdue, as a business, it's been six years.

But it also went by incredibly fast. It feels like just yesterday I was naming the baby.

And so I go back to that thin line between "I'm working on my long overdue book" and "I'm a published author." As a writer, I totally understand how long that "working on it" stage can be. There's always adjustments to make. And I don't know if this is encouraging or discouraging to hear, but even when the book is done and published, I still can look at almost any page of my books and think, "Dangit, I want to change that around a little bit. Cut a word here. What if I added a joke there?"

But I guess what I'm trying to say is don't let the working on it stage last forever. Because those other stages -- holding the book for the first time, sitting at the festival table, signing a book, talking with people, holding your breath as someone quietly reads your back cover deciding whether or not they'll take it for a spin -- those are moments worth experiencing. It's exciting to hear our newly published authors talking about what's next, or the small tweaks they'd like to make to their first book, or their upcoming marketing efforts. Their published author journey is underway.

So, who knows, maybe you’ll make the same leap and your book will be displayed at the Long Overdue tables tent next year!

And then we'll all go celebrate at Jim's bar, First Draft.

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"I heard there are a lot of people walking their dogs at the festival, and yet here I am, three years in, still never been.

What gives? It's a strange feeling, feeling left out."

-Crash, Team Dog

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Best place to keep up with all things Long Overdue is a tie between our monthly newsletter and our Instagram page. If you enjoy this newsletter and know someone who might enjoy it as well, let us know, we'll make sure to add them to our subscriber list. We also got back on Facebook recently, you can follow us here.

And check out the rest of our website - Long Overdue Books. Long Overdue Books is a community for creating books. It's a place for authors (and soon-to-be-authors), readers, editors, artists, and designers to come together and move their stories from ideas to finished books.

Also, if you have any questions, ideas, stories to tell, you can reach Cal the Librarian at - library@longoverduestories.com