What a wonderful reception we had everywhere in Bakersfield for our book, COLONEL BAKER’S FIELD. We started with Congressman Kevin McCarthy, since he and Judy provided a comment about the importance of Colonel Baker to Bakersfield. We also met with others who gave us a comment. They are actually featured in the book with a comment, bio and pictures…so thanks to Kevin, Mayor Hall, George Martin, Morgan Clayton, Holly Culhane, Blanca Cavozos, and Ken Carter.

I’ve been part of many wonderful things both in Bakersfield and Morro Bay, but I have to see this was a wow! Launching our book with my good friend and co-author Sandra Mittelsteadt, our new best friend and publisher (Bear State Books) Chris Brewer, and our talented illustrator/graphic artist who just happens to be my daughter…was totally amazing. I just wanted to see our book in the Kern County Library….but it was so much more.

Chris said it is the first book in 40 years about Colonel Baker! Wow! He also said it was the only book out there that corrected some of the inaccuracies that have been told about his great-great grandfather, Colonel Thomas Baker. He also said it was a fun read. So high praise from our publisher.

We had a great receoption in Bakersfield and I want to thank and document it here on my blog even though I did a huge post…Jody hates that!…on Facebook. Let me recount the other people we met with.

We met Roger Perez at the Kern County Museum and yeah!!! our book is in the book store. We loved Roger’s positive attitude about the museum and creating living histoy…and a motorsports room, too!

We met with Christopher Livingston at the Beale and our book will be in the research room and history room and Chris set up a presentation and book signing at the Beale for June 1 at 11am in the Tejon Room.

Morgan Clayton and family was jetting to Hawaii for their annual family trip but he was excited to get our book with 6 hours of reading time ahead of him. He also bought 10 more to send to teachers…

Over and over we heard this book needs to get to our children and in the schools…We sure would love that.

George Martin told us a wonderful story about he would always put his children to bed with a night time story….or go on trips with stories…he would make sure they were true stories sprinkled with fiction so they had to fact check and ask questions…well, he is not only the best promoter we know of Bakersfield but he certainly understands that history is fluid and it all depends on who is telling the story and how they remember the facts. We have provided Chapter notes so you can check us on the facts and the fiction in the book!! We had to interpret some missing pieces!!

Scott Cox…wow…how gracious…yes, I said Scott Cox was gracious and interested and always fun and we had a great interview with him and Jeff Lemucchi on First Look and he asked us back for May 31…

Camille Gavin wrote a more than fair review of the book. We are so pleased she would do the article and provide as much information as she did. Thanks, Camille!

The catalyst for coming to Bakersfield May 1-2 was to talk about our book with Cal State’s 60+ Club…how much fun that was…Chris Brewer already had a program scheduled and he shared it with Sandy, Jody and I. What a gracious, interesting group. We loved presenting to them and they seemed to love us because they bought lots of books we got to autograph.

We needed to set up our bank account to deposit all our sales, but we also wanted to link with Ben Hanson of Wells Fargo because 1860s was the era of the stage coach and Wells Fargo owned the stage coach market with the Cadillac of stage coaches, the Concord. We have two chapters that reference stage coaching and loved meeting with Ben and our new customer service rep at Wells Fargo Heynner Garcia. He got us to the museum on time!! And our bank account opened, too.

And Mike Trihey!! your reporter was more than nice…what a gentleman and he got the story, too! 5,6, and 11 wow!! KGET gave us terrific coverage. Thank you so much.

Bakersfield Rotary was my original club and meets onThursday so Jody and I had lunch with my fellow Rotarians and they even let me pitch the book. Thanks, President Paul. They have a fund raising lunch, May 16, coming up and we donated a book and lunch with the authors for the cause!!

And my good friend, Chamber Exec Cindy Pollard took time to empty her marketing brain of all the places we should be taking our book for sales and promos. We’ll get there Cindy…and thanks for your help. If you want to see the book…the Chamber has a couple copies for preview, but you have to buy them at Russo’s Books or Kern County Museum.

I’ve been gone almost 12 years and who would have thunk-it…the city council meets at 5:15 not 7pm….so I missed a golden opportunity….but guess, what, Mayor Hall invited me back on May 15…so see you again Bakersfield City Council on May 15 at 5:15….or even earlier!!

Thanks, Bakersfield for such a warm reception.