It is official!  The new book is out.  Currently it is available on all e-book distributors.  Just search for Anthony Tresselt and/ or Fall Factor.  I also reduced the e-book price on the first novel as low as possible before I started getting “nastygrams” from Amazon.  The paper version of Free Falling is as low as the publisher will allow.

For those of you with short attention spans, feel free to forego the long wordy post below!  Just get the damn book!

Since the fall of 2013 when the first novel came out, it has been different journey.  Not epic, as is all the rage to label things now, but sublime, introspective, informative.  The publishing industry is changing and changing quickly.  Just 5 years ago, publishing works of fiction the way I do now would not have been possible.

I know, you see, I have been writing my whole life.  Submitting, resubmitting, going through the motions.  Putting in the work, the time.  Admittedly inconsistently, but doing it all for many years to the best of my abilities.  I have a file of rejection letters, much fatter than acceptance letters.  I keep it to remind myself about humility, effort and tenacity.  A lesson from one of my mentors.

Today self publishing thwarts all that.  Anybody willing to spend the money, can publish just about anything.  I don’t mind.  I do not feel shortchanged.  For me the benefits are obvious.  Readers benefit also.  The amount of material published daily grows staggering.  The downside?  A lot of it is shit.

In the simplest terms, the change in publishing is this.  Instead of putting in the work to get something published before readers can get it, I must put in the work after.  If I do not promote my work, no one will.

I have struggled with this.  Self-promotion is in direct opposition with many of my core beliefs, the path I choose to travel though this world.  However, I have come to look at it more as a value proposition.  My books, the stories, they tell, have a value.  They can entertain, introduce, expose or commiserate.

Most importantly they connect.  I feel books, the written word, is the last way we possess as people, as members of various “tribes,” to pass on stories, traditions, beliefs and all the other things that throughout history have been traditionally handed down by word of mouth, action, interaction.

I choose to do this by telling fictional stories.  Others in the field of arboriculture have done it with instruction manuals, guides, photo essays or how to books.  All of Jeff Jepson’s, Gerry Beranek’s, Don Blair’s and other’s  books sit on my shelves.  Most autographed.  All treasured.  I grew up in arboricultural, never wanted to be an arborist, but fell into it through circumstance and then choice.  I am incidentally arborist to the core.  Those books on the self are part of my story, part of my history.  As are the jokes, the antidotes, the personalities, the characters I’ve met, talked with or just heard about.

My story echoes many of yours.  I came to arboriculture because of the of the “tribe.”  I stay for the same reason  I write to pass on what has been given to me through a lifetime of friendships and experience.  I see the world through a lens of my own forging.  This lens of course shaped and molded by others, remains uniquely my own.  We all have a lens.  We all look through ours everyday.  All media, books, video, whatever, offers us all a chance to look through another’s.

I choose the written word.  It is where my skill, experience and talent lie.  Others choose video, some choose speaking.  Many choose nothing at all.

So the ask/ value proposition is this:  Buy the book. Spend less than you would on your Vente White Chocolate Mocha with extra shots at Starbucks.  Share my stories, with me, for a few hours.  Like the books or not, agree or disagree, love or hate, post a review, then pass the story on.

Simple really.  A few small things.  Read.  Think.  Connect.  Build bridges, pass on stories, spend time, all vicariously.  Our “tribe” of arboriculture needs this now more than ever as do our communities and, I believe, our very society.

Thank you all and enjoy,

Tony