PressPublish Portland is This Weekend!

Photo by Ian Sane

Photo by Ian Sane

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Just a quick reminder that PressPublish Portland is this Saturday, March 28, 2015 at the Embassy Suites in downtown Portland, OR. WordPress has assembled an amazing lineup of speakers, including me! I’ll be doing a presentation called “What Came First, the Book or the Blog?”, where I’ll talk about how blogging helped me get my book, Mommy Man, published and how I used my blog to market the book once it came out, including the story of my infamous Amazon Chart Twerk.

There’s still time to register, and if you use the special Mommy Man discount code SUPERDAD40, you’ll get 40% off.

That means you can attend for just $90 and still get a 1-year subscription to the WordPress Premium Upgrade (a $99 value) for FREE! That’s right, it’s like getting WordPress Premium for -$9.

If you’re even the tiniest bit interested in blogging and you’re anywhere near Portland, you won’t want to miss it!

Announcing… Press Publish!

press-publish-speakersI’m very excited to announce that I’ll be speaking at Press Publish, a conference started by WordPress for people interested in the world of blogging. A whole bunch of amazing bloggers will be appearing… and me, too! See the picture above for headshots of some of the awesome speakers. Don’t they look cool and interesting? I can’t wait to meet them! (I’m the cartoon one.)

The event takes place Saturday, March 28, 2015 in Portland, OR. (They’re doing another one in Phoenix on April 18 with different speakers.) For more details, including ticket info, click here!

Hope to see you there. And if you have any tips on places to go and cupcakes to eat in Portland, let me know!

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Can’t make it to Portland? Well, get an extra helping of me in my book, Mommy Man: How I Went From Mild-Mannered Geek to Gay Superdad. It’s more of a bargain than ever on Amazon. And if you are coming, that’s even more reason to buy one now. I’m totally going to quiz you on it to see if you’ve actually read it. You’ve been warned!

Book Update! And more!

Where Do Gaybies Come From, bookshelf, great books, literatureThere’s some big news concerning my upcoming book, WHERE DO GAYBIES COME FROM (available May 2014 from Taylor Trade Publishing, ahem, plug plug plug). And the news is that it’s no longer called WHERE DO GAYBIES COME FROM.

To be honest, I’ve never loved the word “gayby.” I know what you’re thinking: so why did I name both the blog and then the book WHERE DO GAYBIES COME FROM? Well, it had a clever ring to it. It got people’s attention. It did a reasonable job of explaining what the book was about.

Still, it bugged me, and I finally figured out why. When you come up with a cutesy name for the child of gay parents, it implies that the kid is the one who’s different, that something about having two dads classifies you as some kind of unique species. Worse, it gives my kids’ future bullies ammo to use against them. “Hey, gayby!” “I’m not a gayby!” “Oh yeah? Well your dad said so in his best-selling memoir!”

I understand we’re a non-traditional family, that gay dads are still a relatively small minority, so if there’s some cutesy term that applies to me, I’ll embrace it fully.

But my kids are just kids. I wrote 264 pages (official page count!) explaining how two dudes ended up with two perfectly amazing yet perfectly common human infants, and that’s kind of the point, so why have a title that suggests otherwise?

Also, I know there are plenty of other people who dislike the term “gayby” — because it’s cutesy, because it implies the kids are gay rather than the parents or for the same reason as me. Who needs a title that turns people off?

I briefly flirted with calling the book “Breeders,” even though that term irritates people even more than “gaybies,” but at least it referred to me, not the kids. Then, my editor came up with a much better idea, one that was right under our noses all along.

Announcing my upcoming memoir:

MOMMY MAN: HOW I WENT FROM MILD-MANNERED GEEK TO GAY SUPERDAD

If I have one reservation about this title, it’s that it’s entirely focused on me. Sure, the book is mostly about me, but it’s also also about my amazing partner, Drew, and the two incredible women who helped us become a family. And it’s about the kids, of course, although (spoiler alert!) they make kind of a late appearance.

Just don’t call them “gaybies.”

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A couple of other things to report… I did my first podcast! The delightful Karly and DJ at What’s With the Drama invited me to take part in their show about stay-home dads, and we had a really fun chat.

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I was also invited by the Daily Post at WordPress to take part in a roundtable for parent bloggers. We had a great conversation about privacy, dealing with criticism and our personal blogging tips. Part 1 of 3 is up now!

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Sorry for the repeat image at the top of this post. Until there’s a real cover, this one will have to suffice.