If you’re reading this, chances are either you, or someone very close to you, had a random piece of furniture dropped off at your house a few days ago. Now, you’re probably asking yourself, “why in the world would anyone do this, and what’s with the book they left with it?” And rest assured, the answer is far more straightforward than you might think. However, in order to get to that, I first need to tell you who I am, and more importantly, why I do what I do.

My name is Auston Anthony Jenkins; life-long resident of the great state of Tennessee and a military veteran for most of my adult life. In the spring of 2022, I was suffering with some very deep-seeded personal issues, and without going into to many details, it got very-very bad, very-very quickly. Luckily though, before things had a chance to go completely off the rails, my wife just so happen to stumble across some old diaries I used to keep and encouraged me to take the hobby up again, hoping it might give me an outlet for all of the bitterness I was carrying around. And, like most other times in life, she was right on the money.

Again, not to bore you with details, but between re-discovering my passion for writing and teaching myself how to build furniture, my life changed forever! And, when my wife eventually asked me to write a story just for her, AnabolicAuthor was born.

So, what does any of that have to do with the random piece of furniture left in your yard and the book I hid somewhere inside of it.

Well, to put it simply, it’s my marketing strategy. Yeah, I told it was more straightforward than you thought.

You see, I am unapologetically Christian. And as you might can guess, being a christian, fantasy author, writing stories focused on traditional moral values, is about as popular as going outside and slamming your fingers in a car door. People might do it every now and again, usually on accident, but for the most part, it’s something everyone tries to avoid like the plague. What’s more, I’m a Christian author who writes stories that are designed to speak to non-Christians. There’s cursing, fighting, bloodshed, abuse. All the things that can be found literally ANYWHERE in the bible, but for whatever reason, you’ll be shunned for if you even mention in grim detail.

So, what the heck am I supposed to do? Traditional publishers won’t touch me because I’m too ‘controversial’, and fellow Christian authors don’t like me because I’m not ‘Christian enough.’

Luckily for me though, there was a third option - Self Publishing.

Now, I won’t lie, I love being a self published author. I get to write about exactly what I want to write about, and tell those stories exactly how I want to tell them. Plus, I’m coming to the end of my military career, and the thought of getting paid to write books all day is starting to sound pretty sweet! However, where most other traditional authors have thousands upon thousands of dollars worth of a marketing budget, I have a used 2016 GMC Sierra and Facebook page most people don’t even know exists. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not mad at it by any means, but I’d also be lying if I said it wasn’t a struggle. So, not exactly sure how I was going to get this little business off the ground, I once again turned to someone a whole lot smarter than me - my wife. And what she said was about as revolutionary as anything I’ve ever heard before.

“Just do whatever’s going to make you happy, Auston. Nobody cares how you market your books, just as long as you enjoy what you’re doing.”

Sounds simple, I know, but I swear, the woman is genius in disguise.

So, long story short, this is how I market myself now. About once a month, sometimes twice if I’m lucky, I go out and drop off a small piece of furniture in front of some random persons house. No rhyme or reason, just “Hey, they look like they could use a new book shelf,” so I go make one up and drop it off for them. Is it weird, yeah… But then again, I’m kind of a weird person. So, who cares? My hope is that maybe you or someone you might know will enjoy my work and want to show your support. Or at the very least, I hope you tell your friends and family about what I’m doing so they can check it out for themselves. All in all, I just want to make my wife proud and hopefully leave something behind for my children one day. I personally feel like writing books is what I’m being called to do, so that’s just what I’m going to keep doing.

If you made it this far, I just want to say thank you for sticking around. I really do hope you find good use for whatever piece of furniture I dropped off at your house. Hopefully you’ll also enjoy the book I left with it; maybe even go to Amazon/Goodreads and show your support with a review. I always need more of those. Also, feel free to have a look around my author website, if you want. We have some pretty comfy hoodies for sale and a whole crap ton of tumblers.

Thanks again, and have a wonderful day.

Your friend,

• Jenkins