Vacuuming in the Nude and Other Ways to Get Attention

Now, after spending the last month with the Civil War, I decided I needed a bit of a palate cleanser. Lucky for me, America’s favorite working man, Mike Rowe, was advertising his mother’s latest book up for sale, making this week’s book of the Vacuuming in the Nude and Other Ways to Get Attention by New York Times best-selling author, Peggy Rowe.

Obviously, I knew Mike Rowe had a mother. I had seen some of his posts about stuff she’s said to him. I did not know she had already published two books. Those announcements were probably buried in Facebook’s algorithm. So, I missed her first two books, although I have since ordered them. THIS book was wonderful. It’s not quite an autobiography, it’s more what I would call a slice of life book.

It’s her story of how she came to be a first-time published author in her 80’s. All her life, Peggy wrote. She says repeatedly that writers write. If you are a writer, then that’s what you do. She raised a family of readers, but for her, the joy came in the telling of the story, rather than the reading of the story. So, she wrote, all her life. And she tried, several times, to get published, receiving in return a mountain of rejection letters.

And while telling us this, she’s telling us her story. She’s letting us peek into her world, with her fantastic sense of humor, which was easily inherited by Mike. And while telling her story, she shares some of the stories she’s written over a lifetime. So, stories within stories. And all with this tongue in cheek humor that left me either laughing or crying, depending on what was being told.

So, this is necessarily going to be a short review, because I don’t want to spill the beans about any one story, but here are the key life lessons I took away from this book.

A lot of people say they are writers who are not. Note, Peggy does NOT say this in the book. I’m just thinking about people I know and social media accounts I follow of would-be writers. Being published or not does not make you a writer. As Peggy says over and over again, writers write. You don’t have to be published to be a writer; all you have to do is write. But you do have to find your audience, even if it’s not a paying one.

Ok, there are two stories I want to give a quick synopsis of from the book, both of them from writer’s conventions Peggy attended. One where a presenter says “Sharing your work isn’t important. The important thing in writing is to feel fulfilled.” As Peggy’s husband John would say (and she says this in the book) “Hogwash!” Which is true. If you want to write just to feel fulfilled, that’s called keeping a diary. Not a darn thing wrong with that. Diaries are valuable historically in keeping track of what happened when, not just in your personal life but literally historically. We wouldn’t know half of what we know about the founding of America if it weren’t for the diaries of John Adams and Thomas Jefferson. So, there is historical significance in that.

But generally, if you’re writing, you want an audience. And sometimes that audience is strictly close friends and family. And there is nothing wrong with that.   But if you want a broader appeal, it gets a little harder.

The other story I want to summarize is when an editor from one of the publishing houses explains what happens when you send in your manuscript, without an intro. By intro, they don’t mean a cover letter. They mean have a specific editor you are contacting, and a letter of recommendation from an author represented by the house. Without these things, your manuscript gets, essentially, binned. At the end of the month, the publishing house has a get together where they process all the binned manuscripts with form letters thanking the hopeful authors for their attempt.

Needless to say, this was profoundly discouraging for all the hopeful authors in the room, including Peggy, who was ready to leave. Only to find out that a poem she had submitted for a contest at the convention, had won. Two steps back and one step forward.

And then she shares the poem she wrote. So, the entire book is like this, where she will explain the background behind why she chose a specific story for inclusion in this book. And then she’ll share the story. And after the poem, she heard from a friend about a Horse magazine that was looking for submissions, so she put in a story for that, and that got published. This, incidentally, is not uncommon. There are many authors, well known authors today, who got their start writing for magazines. Michael Malice famously said he started writing for an exotic fish publication. Larry Correia started with articles for a gun magazine.

But if you don’t have the published author connection to introduce you to the publishing house, how do you make the leap from hopeful writer to published author?

Both of those examples, as well as Peggy Rowe, went the self-published route. Because without that intro, you go into the slush pile, and receive an automatic rejection letter. Basically, editors have absolutely no idea what the reading public wants. So, they just keep publishing the same drivel over and over again. Until you find a way to make your voice heard, independent of the publishing houses. For Peggy, her guardian angel was her son, Mike Rowe. Who, on reading her manuscript for About My Mother, determined this should be published, and looked into self-publishing.

And the book immediately sold out, which brought the publishing houses calling. And now we have three books by Peggy Rowe, of which Vacuuming in the Nude is the third installment. And it was so good. Seriously, I laughed, I cried, I paused to think about how publishing has become complacent in their refusal to take a risk with a new author. Which certainly makes the self-publishing route more viable. Because once you prove you have an audience, the publishing houses want their cut.

Ok, that’s a little cynical. Once you get the publishing contract, they truly do have the connections to get your book before an even larger audience. And there IS risk for the publishers to take a leap of faith on a new author. But we are so very lucky that Peggy had Mike, and that Mike loves his mom. Because without him taking her down the self-publishing route, we might not have this wonderful book. Which I cannot recommend enough, for some quick feels, and for some words of wisdom on when to keep trying, how to find your cheer squad, and how to find humor throughout life’s slings and arrows.

This book was originally reviewed on YouTube on September 11, 2022, but is now available on Rumble and PodBean.