25 years ago I started writing a book, today it’s finally published

Deaf Politician — The Gary Malkowski Story

As I write this, it is the Summer of 2020. The world is in the middle of a horrible pandemic and I’ve lost my “day job.” Though my income is down, my free time is up.

Gotta stay productive, so I dusted off my manuscript titled Deaf Politician — The Gary Malkowski Story. I started writing it 25 years ago, and for the past several weeks I have been reviewing it, rewriting it, editing it, and updating it. And today I’m publishing it. It’s a book, at last. (Available on Amazon as a paperback or an ebook.)

When I began this project of writing Canadian politician Gary Malkowski’s biography, I had a contract with an American book publisher that specialized in creating and selling American Sign Language and the Deaf community materials. I had such high hopes of seeing my first book* in print within a year or two.

After countless hours of research and interviewing Gary and the major people in his political and personal life — including Bob Rae, the former premier of Ontario and now Canadian’s ambassador to the United Nations — and following Gary around on the 1995 “campaign trail,” and numerous rewrites, I delivered a manuscript to the publisher.

Unfortunately, Gary did not get re-elected to the Ontario Provincial Parliament and the publisher decided against publishing and promoting the book, as he thought there wasn’t a big enough market for it.

Bitter but not beaten, I continued to work on “Gary’s story” for the next few years. At one point, I had an academic press considering the work, but their interest waned in a short while. (By the way, I never could get a Canadian publisher interested.) I gave up hope that the story of Gary’s great achievement would make its way into book form — at least with my name on the cover.

Honoring the 30th anniversaries

Now on the 30th anniversary of the ADA (Americans Disabilities Act) being signed into law, as well as the 30th anniversary of Gary’s election to the Ontario Provincial Parliament, there is a book. My book!

Using Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing application, I was able to self-publish and present…