3,2,1, Launch the eBook!!

Hello! Welcome, one and all!

This news may come as a surprise to some of you, and it may not come as a surprise to others of you, depending on whether you stalk my every move online. That is to say...hopefully...Surprise!

I decided to publish an eBook, so I did.

But what topic could the girl who prides herself on writing about anything and everything without form or strategy possibly write a book on?

I congratulate myself on my own genius.

I have been blogging on The Random Writings since 2011. I have amassed close to 800 blog posts on this particular blog. Chances are, unless you are my Mom, my sister Anna, or Angel, you have not read every one of those blog posts since the beginning, and so, you have most likely missed out on some rather good and hilarious writing (honestly, I think 2011 was one of my best years for creative writing, ever).  Not all 800 posts are the best of the best, however, so in this volume, I've collected the most awesome of The Random Writings, polished them up, made them wittier than ever, and formatted them into one nice little file, available for purchase right here!

Even in the unlikely even that you have read every single blog post I've ever published, you may be surprised by some of the contents of this volume, as it contains a few sketches that I never got around to publishing, and some old sketches that have been rewritten so masterfully that they are no longer recognizable. I know this is true because of the scientific proof I got when my Mom responded, after reading the manuscript, that parts of it were completely new to her. When my most ardent fan (the one who sends me demanding emails when I neglect to write on my blog) is surprised by brand new content--you know for a fact that it's new. I think most notable among the new stories is my tale of hair loss--never published on my blog because I can hardly say the words without gritted teeth.

I also removed a lot of the dashes from my original content, because I overuses dashes far too much. It's a weakness, what can I say?

Recommended best uses for Staying on Topic is Hard:

-Read while snuggled up in bed with an electric blanket to guard against the cold.
-Read while you're a passenger on the long car trip to visit your grandparents on Christmas Day.
-Read while riding the subway to the mall to go hang out with your friends.
-Read at 5 p.m. so that you can ignore the fact that dinner needs to be made.
-Download the book, even if you have no intention of reading it, just to make Rachel do a happy dance.
-Read on the airplane en route to moving to China to teach English. That is one LONG flight.
-Read in church. It's okay, everyone will just think you have a Bible downloaded on your device.
-Read to your small children as a bedtime story.
-Save the book to use as research for April Fool's Day, because it's a great resource for prank ideas.
-Give the book to unsuspecting friends so that they can be utterly bewildered by my fast-paced switching between topics.
-After reading the book, leave reviews that lavish wonderful praise on my writing. Use of the phrases "the Mark Twain of the millennial generation" or "The Lemony Snicket of fortunate events" are recommended.

Staying on Topic is Hard is priced at $3.99 on every retailer where it's sold, although, for the next week only, as a "Happy eBook Launch!"/"Merry Christmas to all!" promotion, you can buy it on Smashwords for just $2.00 with this coupon code: HV72M

I know many of you have been faithful readers of my blog for a long time, now, and I appreciate that greatly! If my writing has been a cool part of your life in any way, I'd really appreciate it if you made the splurge to support me by purchasing my book, and I honestly believe it'll be worth every penny.

If, however, you'd love to read the book, but you don't have a couple bucks to spare right now, feel free to email me privately at randomlyrachels (at) gmail.com and I should be able to arrange an opportunity for you to review my book for free!

So, yeah, I'm an author with a brand new book, and this entire post was shameless self-promotion. If I had Jedi powers, I'd use them: This IS the book you're looking for...no, really, it is!