The toughest part of being an author is writing the book, right?

That’s what I thought. And I thought wrong.

There’s so much more that goes into a book once it’s written, whether it’s editing and design, sales platforms, or marketing the brand you’ve created.

For me, that marketing and media aspect seemed like an overwhelming task, but luckily, I had some good connections to help with that.

Enter Loretta Tappan and RoLo entertainment. Loretta and her husband Roger have been critical in helping build and maintain my website, prepare flyers for events, a media kit, and shooting video at events.

Plus, Loretta loves dogs, so it seemed like an interview was a no brainer.

There’s other stuff that also made the timing of this feel right.

May is the anniversary month for the launch of my website, lucy-books.com. The dots further connected as I thought of my next event, Mama’s Spring Market on Main Street in Gas City this Saturday from 10 a.m.-3 p.m. where I’ll be signing and selling copies of Lucy’s Way. The event is hosted by Mama Pearson’s Soaporium, and owners Pat and Amie Pearson weren’t yet married when I knew them way back in the early 2000’s, the same time I originally met Roger in a very cool and creative spot in downtown Marion called Beatniks Café that I reference in Lucy’s Way.

So we decided it was high time for a doggie meet and greet between Chip and Loretta’s dog Chewie. We got together on Wende’s big brown couch, a place where many spiritual journeys have been spawned, where people have laughed and cried and grown in recovery, and where a dog named Lucy often napped.

We laughed. We talked. We let the dogs do their thing.

Below is an excerpt from that afternoon. I highly suggest listening to the interview in its entirety. The 20 minutes of laughter and joy and fun is available here:

Loretta, what’s happening…Chip, don’t jump off the couch, what are you doing?

Loving meeting Chip. Yeah, Mark. It’s about time, right. Mark needed another dog.

It was a long time coming, wasn’t it? Chip is the new Husky/Heeler in my life, he just turned six in March, and he’s already doing his paw thing now because he wants undivided attention. Let’s talk a little bit about the other pooch we have here in the room. Who do we have here?

Chewie. She is a Chiweenie, a Chihuahua, dachshund mix and also very demanding and particular about how we spend our time.

She’s beautiful. I love that. Chewie weighs in at what, four and a half pounds, something in that area?

Twelve.

And Chip is 80 right now, so it’s a big difference. And their initial meeting, Chewie was a little bit shy, but Chip was kind of shy too. It looked like he was the big wolf dog that turned his head the other way. Like, “oh, I don’t know about this.” And now he’s looking at me right now, like, “you weren’t supposed to say those things out loud.”

Loretta, why are dogs awesome?

I’m not quoting you, but I will go back to your book and something that you said about just how they help you appreciate life, right? Like the Simplicity of life, like they get us back to that, they help center us. This dog has just kept me grounded for sure, helped me stay grounded.

What did you like about Lucy’s Way?

How you brought three things together, three very important things together. That wasn’t a direct quote about dogs and simplicity but it was a concept or something that you said in the book about how these animals do ground us and bring us back to that focus on being mindful. And then the Tao and being a drunk. Bringing all of that together in such a beautiful, intimate way, you did it so well.

It’s hard to be that personal and also informational. You did a lot in a very concise book.

What I really love about when I talk to people about the book, and they’re, like, well, how’d you get the idea? When did you start writing? It was, like, oh, I lived it for many years, and I didn’t even understand it until it was almost a hindsight thing, you know.

For people that can have an animal right now and realize as it’s happening, I mean, I knew things were wonderful with Lucy while I was early in sobriety, and she was changing me, but It wasn’t until I read that book The Tao of Pooh that it just hit me in a whole new way like wow, this is all connected. This dog is actually like a Zen master. If I just would have paid attention sooner, I could have saved myself a lot of pain probably.

The other person in the room, Wende, I read The Tao of Pooh, it was her copy and she let me read it. So when you referenced that, I thought of Wende.

We stumbled across that pretty much together and we were like, wow, this is a freaking life changer. It’s by Benjamin Hoff, and I’ve got a link on my website.

So you’re quite a creative yourself. Let’s talk about RoLo. What is it? What do you do? When did you found it? All the things, Loretta.

RoLo is Roger and Loretta. Roger is my husband.

And I actually knew Roger before I knew you. Roger worked at a place called Beatniks. It was a really awesome collective of creatives, way back in the early 2000s. That’s where I originally met Roger back in 2002 or 2003.

The original Beatniks, right?

Yes. So that’s why I digressed. So you and Roger run RoLo?

Yes, technically RoLo really in the beginning, before RoLo it was RDT Sound, and that’s pre Loretta, and it was just Roger’s Karaoke, DJ business. And then when I came into the mix and we were the bar karaoke people, that was our thing, we were Tappan That Sound because we used the last name. He was like, isn’t it kind of dirty and I was like, it’s a bar! It’s fun! It’s okay! These are our people! And then, Loretta got sober and didn’t want to cater to the bar audience as much anymore and the need to rebrand came about. And that’s something I do for other people, so I thought  I can do it for us.

So we became RoLo entertainment at that point, and we started looking at entertainment as more than just providing sound for people. And we’re still working on this because we’ve not been great at focusing on ourselves, right? Like, Roger is so creative. He does graphic design and photography and video. And he’s a lot faster. I have to really work to get to the end result. I don’t always know where I’m going. I play with something and eventually it happens. Roger can go in and look at the room and already know what the end is.

What are some things you’ve done recently? Because you’ve been pretty busy.

We do a lot of community events these days. I like working with our local non profits. Sometimes, they just need sound, sometimes they need the full thing. Yesterday is a perfect example. The Senior Expo needed a system to broadcast Bingo, and they needed a system in the other room for the announcer and music. Then we went from there to [Cancer Services] Walk of Hope, and they needed a full system with a playlist and needed me to MC and talk to people throughout the event and make announcements.

You mentioned the concept of community. Me and Wende have been watching, well, Wende turned me onto watching a couple of episodes of Rainn Wilson’s Soul Boom and one of them is just talking about how community has disappeared. Why is community important, and to continue to cultivate into, especially when you’re dealing with non-profits.

He focused on church community, right? I remember when Rainn was talking, my first thought was the AA community, and I feel like we have that, 100 percent. We look out for each other. We check in on each other. And it’s not that I’m asked to, maybe we are kind of asked to in Step 12, but I feel like we just kind of do that, you know? But then there’s other areas, like Cancer Services for example, where they definitely also have that.

(At this point Chip is over standing in front of Loretta, looking intently at her, hanging on every word.)

A lot of non profits exist for a very specific cause, and they are not always warm and fuzzy things. They are tragedy-based and there is a need or a hunger there.

You do a lot of stuff for the Lucy’s Way media presence, and I don’t want to leave Wende unnoticed on this because she does so much of the events and doing things, but you put the things together. Wende takes pictures, she’ll be there for me. She’s my emotional support animal. She helps set things up, you know, and she pulls people in.

 [Wende’s] also like an interior decorator, I noticed. Your booth was beautiful.

Yes, she does. She thinks of these things ahead of time.

You’ve got a Wende, I’ve got a Roger.

Exactly. You’ve done a lot for the Lucy’s Way media presence. I mean so much, I forget some of the things you do. So, what all do you do, Loretta? What are the pieces that have gone into building Lucy’s Way, the marketing and media presence and promotion? You’ve got the website, you’ve got the flyers, all the stuff. The banner I have at my events. I know we brainstorm this stuff. Like, hey, this would be cool. That would be cool. But you really took my vision and made it happen.

The very, very first thing we did, was Roger and I said, you guys should come over. And you and Wende came over, and we just talked. And that’s really important. I feel like you, if somebody is going to do marketing, communications, website, it’s all connected. And the very beginning, the first thing you do, is you get to know what you’re building the site or the flyer for. So, the very first step was getting you in, having a template of starter questions to get the conversation rolling, and then we just talked.

And then we figured it out. And like a lot of your stuff, like the branding for example, the color scheme, the font, all that was already done because you had to go through all that process with [cover designer] Danielle [Manry] with the book. We just pulled from what you and Danielle created and brought that into the rest of the work and then your vision which you gave us in that initial sit down at our house, and then from there we have just been building off of that. So, it’s like everything’s a building block to the next thing, and we’re just getting to go a little bit further with it each time. Which is so beautiful because, that’s the part where I’m not really a brain behind it. I always see myself as more of a tool in your toolkit. Like I get to be a resource. Not a tool in a bad way. This is like a good tool. That can be a weird thing to say. There are good tools.

I get the question all the time, are you gonna write another book? I would love to, but I thought writing the book was the hardest part of this process. It was probably the easiest one, because then you get an editor, you fire that editor, without telling them once you get your draft back and say, well, no, I’m not doing these changes. Then, you realize the editor was right, and you do all those changes. And then you have to actually figure out how to publish this book, you know, and then it doesn’t sell itself.

So there’s so much that goes into that process after you write the book. So, yeah, I want to write a second book, but I also need to continue this right now. I know we also planned for other books when we plan the whole website around that.

I was going to say that. The very name of the site also kind of gives you that. It’s like a hint, you know, like, you watch a TV series in the last episode, you’re like, oh, there’s gonna be another one, right? Yes, because it’s Lucydashbooks.com. There’s gonna be another one. On your timeline.