Here's the pertinent excerpt...
The newest crop of titles, published in the past couple of months or forthcoming shortly, includes works by WGN-AM (720) agri-business oracle Orion Samuelson, Illinois politician Debbie Halvorson, TV newsman Walter Jacobson and radio broadcaster John Records Landecker.
They all postponed or had serious reservations about taking on one of the most daunting and nerve-racking tasks of their careers.
“What do I want in this?” Landecker says he asked himself during the bookmaking process. “Why am I doing this? This is stupid. Who gives a s---?”
Soon enough, however, he overcame the psychological hump that has hampered writers since time immemorial — and can seem especially towering for someone who’s baring it all in print: Will anyone care?
“You get to the point where [you think], ‘I don’t care if anybody does or not,’ ” Landecker says. His memoir, “Records Truly Is My Middle Name,” was written with the help of Landecker’s former producer Rick Kaempfer and is due out in March from the Chicago-headquartered Eckhartz Press (which Kaempfer co-owns). It includes “a fair share of drugs, sex, indiscretions [and] slightly humorous tales,” the author says, as well as more serious topics.
“It gave me a better perspective on — it sort of sounds clichéd — the real importance of events in my past … that at the time seemed so cataclysmic and in retrospect seem like a blip,” Landecker says of the writing process.
I'm tellin' ya' folks, this is a good book, and I'm not just saying that because I'm the co-writer. John has lived a life that is truly worthy of a book.
I'm sort of glad that I haven't. :)
