Welcome to the official blog infomercial for my new book, A Few Seconds of Panic: A 5-foot-8, 170-pound, 43-year-old Sportswriter Plays in the NFL. (Note to self: shorter subtitle next time; that takes forever to type.) My plans for this blog aren’t grand. I’ll link to all nice–and even not so nice–reviews, interviews and other media mentions, no matter how insignificant. I’ll deconstruct what people say about the book, because getting reviewed is an experience best shared with others. I’ll update and chronicle my book tour, which begins on Friday. And I’ll even occasionally write something that’s not about my book, the title of which, in case you missed it, is A Few Seconds of Panic.
AFSOP, as the kids are calling it, is about my summer as a placekicker in training camp with the Denver Broncos of the National Football League. You can read more here about how I talked an NFL team into letting me become the first writer since George Plimpton to dress up as a player in training camp. It wasn’t that hard, actually. I believe it was Dave Barry who, when asked–possibly by himself–where reporters get their story ideas, replied, “thin air.” I was sitting at my desk in the Washington bureau of The Wall Street Journal one day in 2005 and thought, why not a modern version of Paper Lion? A year and a half later I was undressing in front of a half dozen 300-pound offensive linemen.
The book was officially published yesterday. I’m grateful for the copious media it has received already, including reviews, articles or mentions in Time, Entertainment Weekly, Washingtonian magazine, New York Times.com, The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, CNBC.com and elsewhere in the mainstream media. My interweb friends at Deadspin, Kissing Suzy Kolber and The Sporting News.com have been extremely kind. You can read almost all of their words by going here and here.
Or you can bypass the critics and the fawners (well, I’m hoping there will be fawners) and just buy the book. Because what’s an informerical without a naked sales pitch?
