So There's A New Book About The Vikings Coming Out...

I feel a little weird about such shameless self-promotion, but what the hell--I'll do it anyway.

A few months ago, I was approached by a publishing company about writing an epilogue to a previously published book about the Minnesota Vikings. They had noticed my work on this very site and were dumb enough to think they thought that my style of writing might be a good fit. The book was called Tales From The Minnesota Vikings Locker Room, and it was originally published by a different company in 2003. The author was Bill Williamson, an excellent writer who covered the Vikings daily for the Pioneer Press. He had created a fantastic oral history of our beloved Vikings that started from the very beginning of the franchise all the way through the 2002 season. The book is full of great anecdotes and behind-the-scenes stories that Vikings fans of all ages could appreciate.

Long story short, I came into the picture because the original publisher was bought out by another company. The new company, Skyhorse Publishing, wanted to re-publish the series (there were books about nearly every NFL team written in the same manner by a local expert) and update the book to cover the nine seasons since the book was originally published. Unfortunately, Mr. Williamson was unavailable because he's currently busy running the AFC West blog for ESPN.

So Skyhorse asked me to update the book and bring the fans up to speed about what has happened with the franchise since 2002. They said I had about 3,000-4,000 words to work with. It sounds like a lot at first, but trust me, it isn't that much. I could have written twice that much about the Favre season alone. But eventually we ended up with something that Skyhorse and I were both pleased with, and now the book is set to re-publish next month.

I got a handful of advance copies this week and one of them is pictured here. It's still surreal to me that I'm officially a published author (in the loosest sense of the phrase). And it's all because Chris let me join as a main writer for the greatest Vikings fan community on the planet a few years ago. It wouldn't have been possible without our fearless leader letting me vent publicly about my favorite team and the support and traffic you readers bring to our site on a daily basis.

To be clear, this is still Bill Williamson's book by a long shot. It's a little under 200 pages and I just wrote the last 10% or so. Tooting my own horn aside, this book is still an excellent read. You can pre-order the book on Amazon before it ships on September 1. And no, I'm not shilling the book because it'll make me money--I got a one-time payment with no royalties. I'm shilling the book because it's a great book for any Vikings fan to have around.

OK, back to our regularly scheduled programming. FOOTBALL IS BACK TONIGHT!! SKOL!!