Publication Day Arrives!

Publication day is here! The Cubicle Survival Guide: How to Keep Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth is now available in bookstores everywhere! What a relief. Sort of.

I don’t have children, so this is the closest thing I have to knowing what it feels like to raise something and send it out into the world to fend for itself. It’s nice to know that The Cubicle Survival Guide: How to Keep Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth will never end up in jail; yet, I do worry about it sitting alone, wrapped in plastic on a dusty palette in a dark and anonymous warehouse, like some murder victim on Law & Order.

As I recently discussed with a good friend, promotional opportunities are supposed to help save The Cubicle Survival Guide from such a grisly fate.

“So,” my friend asked, “It’s finally done. How does it feel to have the book coming out?”

“Terrifying,” I said.

“Are you crazy?” he countered, “This is the best part. The work is done.”

“Not really,” I explained. “Now I have to promote the book. Interviews with reporters, columnists, bloggers, and radio stations. That sort of thing.”

“Oh. Are the radio interviews live?”

“Yes.”

“Dude,” he said, taking a gulp of beer, “You’re screwed.”

“I know,” I said. “Thanks for that.”

“No problem.”

Obviously I’m a little worried about interviewing with the media. There is no delete button. No backspace button either. One of my interviews is only three minutes long. Really. But if you don’t think that all hell can come crashing down and fire cascade from the sky in the span of three minutes, then you’ve never broken up with a Bolivian woman on $2 margarita night.

So bring on the crazy questions, the awkward pauses, and the empty chairs around a folding table in drafty bookstores. It’s publication day. It’s time to talk about the smelly cubicle neighbor who clips his nose hairs with the company scissors and the lady in cube 7-B who eats leftover crust from the pizza boxes she retrieves from the kitchen trashcan. Bring on the young man with the Jessica Biel shrine surrounding his monitor and the bitter divorcee with the photo of her ex-husband, riddled with thumbtack holes, hanging beside her calendar.

The Cubicle Survival Guide: Keeping Your Cool in the Least Hospitable Environment on Earth is officially here. It should make you laugh out loud. It should make think, “get out, I work next to the same smelly, crazy dude” and “oh, that’s what I should do about that meddling woman.” It should make you say, “I think I will buy a copy of The Cubicle Survival Guide and take it home tonight. Reading is, after all, much better for me than watching Law & Order.”

Thanks for visiting on this special day. Best, – James F. Thompson