Sometime during my Sophomore/Junior years in high school I started thinking about becoming a newspaper writer. The big stories in 1970/71 included the killing of four students at Kent State, the Pentagon Papers were published, the voting age was lowered to eighteen, the Supreme Court ordered busing as a means of integrating schools, and the Beatles broke up.
Writers were rock stars back then and their impact on life was incredible to me. I started writing for the Forest View High School Viewer as a Junior and while my first story, long forgotten by me, was credited to someone the editor named as Don Mariol, I knew it was me and it was exciting to see something I had written appear in the paper.
My friend, Jeff Beebe, and I were talking about how much fun it was to write for the paper when I told him that someday I was going to write a book and publish it under the name of Don Mariol. We laughed at the idea of the pseudonym but mostly at the idea of me writing a book.
Well, guess what? Fifty one years later I finally did it.
The Smartest Generation is a story that takes place between 1954 and 1976, from my birth to college graduation, reliving history and how it effected my little corner of the world. It is an ode to us Baby Boomers, the least appreciated generation in history. We've been called lazy, self-centered, bored, and worse. The reality is that we are the most educated, smartest, generation ever and our impact on world change cannot be denied.
Hopefully, it will trigger a memory of two and remind you of how much fun this journey has been. If you weren't around then, I hope that this book will help you better understand why your parents, aunts, and uncles are a little more crazy then you had hoped they would be.
The paperback launched late yesterday on Amazon and the Kindle E-Book launches Thursday. If you aren't familiar with ordering a book on Amazon it is really easy. Just go to www.Amazon.com where you will find multiple links near the top including one that says, books. Click on that link and you can either drill down through non-fiction & memoirs, to new releases, or once you get to the home page just type in The Smartest Generation and it will take you right there.
I hope that you will invest the small amount required to purchase the book, especially if you are a fan of this blog, or if you are a fan of history, funny stories, or nostalgia. There will be some swearing in it so children under thirteen might be sensitive to some of it, be careful. If you do read it, I want to thank you for your good taste, but I would appreciate you going back to Amazon and giving it a review.
Obviously a project like this doesn't get done by itself so there are some people I need to thank. First off I need to give a shout out to all my family and friends for allowing me to share our stories with everyone. And by allowing, I mean I wrote this without asking you if it was alright but by us doing what we did it allowed me a story line that I used. So thank you.
Thank you to all of you that have supported my writing of this blog with either your kind words or your helpful critic, both have been greatly appreciated and have made me a better writer. Also, thank you to those of you that have, on occasion, shared this blog with friends and family on social media. Please continue to do so and especially do so with today's blog, I need all the publicity I can get.
Thank you to my editor, publicist, and most importantly, brother, Joe for his help, direction, and input into the writing and publishing of this book. There is no way it gets done without his help. He is a celebrity publicist for a reason.
Finally, thank you to the person who has stood shoulder to shoulder with me for the past forty-five years, my wife Linda. She must still love me because she was willing to read this book ten times as I was writing it to make sure I had information, spelling, and punctuation correct. Talk about above and beyond and for better or worse. I'm a very lucky guy.
While I sit back and wait for the $11.43 in royalties to come in, I am already working on ideas for my next book. i will of course keep you informed on that as time goes by. Of course I will continue to write this blog, infuriating some, energizing others, and hopefully making everyone think about life differently.
It has been one of the best weeks of my life and I want to thank you for sharing it with me.
Now go out an buy the damn book!