Whew! The Kickstarter for my new cemetery memoir, Still Wish You Were Here, ended successfully last Saturday. Sixty backers raised over $2100, which will help pay for the final publication details and promotion once the book is out. I am so grateful to them for their faith in the project and their help to get it done.

If you would like to preorder a copy of Still Wish You Were Here, the campaign will stay live on Kickstarter until the end of August. After that, I’ll close the campaign until the book goes on sale in October.

I learned a lot during my second Kickstarter. Three weeks is the right length of time for me. I was exhausted after that and don’t think I have the stamina to plow through another week while juggling the rest of my complicated life. I wish I’d done more advance work, so I’d had more people following the campaign from the start. I also didn’t do any podcasts or guest posts during the campaign this time. I don’t know if they would have helped, but I wished I’d done more work to arrange them.

Now, however, it’s time to finalize the book. I want to listen through the text one last time. I find it easier to hear typos than see them at this point, since my brain is so familiar with the text. I need to put together the index and add the list of backers to thank.

Loren speaking at the San Francisco Columbarium, October 2024. Photo by Mason Jones.

I’ve already started setting up release events for October. On October 16, I will be part of a live in-person book release event at the historic San Francisco Columbarium. I’ll join cemetery authors Amy Shea (Too Poor to Die: The Hidden Realities of Dying in the Margins) and Beth Winegarner (San Francisco’s Forgotten Cemeteries: A Buried History) for an evening of conversation about the subject we’re passionate about. If you can get to San Francisco, this will be quite a night.