Red White & Blind

Tony’s Story

Tony Brasunas grew up on a commune in West Virginia. Before leaving for China, as a teenager at Amherst College, he studied Chinese, music, writing, and Computer Science, and meandered into a thoughtful and lonely social and political conservatism.

Directionless after college, perhaps expecting something more from the planet, Tony applied just after the deadline to Princeton in Asia, and he was swiftly bundled off to Guangzhou, China, to teach English. The ensuing journey broke him open. His body tasted death in hospitals and Tibetan monsoons, his heart opened up and slammed shut and opened again, and some unknown inner sage awoke and suggested he trust his intuition.

Double Happiness: One Man’s Tale of Love, Loss, and Wonder on the Long Roads of China (December 2013, Torchpost) masterfully retells that awakening against a backdrop of a modern, changing China.

Excerpts from the manuscript have appeared in the book China, an anthology of travel writing on China published by Travelers’ Tales Press, and in Travelmag, a British online travel magazine.

Writing ‘Double Happiness’

The second journey Tony undertook was writing it all down, editing it, and transforming the journey that changed his life into a story and a book. His third journey was launching a campaign on Kickstarter to gather the money and energy to publish it. And this is his fourth journey — sharing his story with the world.

In the years since China, Tony has slaked bouts of wanderlust by crisscrossing the Andes of Peru, backpacking through Germany and France during a World Cup, and sneaking illegally into Tibet.

Tony speaks passable Mandarin, Spanish, and English, and perhaps that’s why he was asked one fragrant spring evening in Kunming, China to play guitar on a radio station. The host on Kunming’s STAR 101.8 FM asked him why his songs were about a young woman. “Ta shi shei?” (Who is she?) inquired the host. Tony had met her at a nearby cafe, he replied, and she had become his tutor, his teacher of the Chinese that is spoken aloud, not just written in textbooks. “She’s on the roof right now with a radio,” Tony added with a smile. “She has a basket of strawberries and is hoping to hear me play guitar.”

Two weeks later, Tony was arrested and interrogated in Tibet.

The Timeline

Double Happiness was published internationally in trade paperback on December 12, 2013. Hardcover and e-book versions followed in January 2014. The audiobook, narrated by Brasunas, came out in January 2015.

In May 2014, at the Paris Book Festival, Double Happiness won best in Biography / Autobiography. Press release >

In July 2014, Double Happiness was named ForeWord Travel Book of the Year, Silver Winner. Press release >

In September 2014, the Living Now Book Awards (recognizing “Books For Better Living”) named Double Happiness best inspirational memoir.

The Publisher – Torchpost

All blogs, magazines, newspapers, and social media are welcome to request publicity materials, interviews, or review copies of Double Happiness.

Torchpost 415-647-8587 1612 Bay Street Alameda, CA 94501 info {at} torchpost {dot} com www.torchpost.com/books/Double-Happiness

Download Mini Media Kit

For a “white paper” description of the book, a normal-resolution book cover image, and a normal-resolution author photo, download the miniature media kit [ZIP].

Author Photos

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Today is the day.

Red, White & Blind day.

After years of work, I can now announce with much pride, relief, humility, and excitement that my second book is out.

Today, the paperback. Tomorrow, on 1/11/23, the ebook for kindle will be available.

Launch Event!

To get your hands on the book today, please join me for the launch party. I have received tremendous interest and I sense it will be a literary celebration tonight at the fabulous Aqus Cafe in Petaluma, California. The place has a mild Euro vibe, a slightly subversive mood, and features great food, drink, and atmosphere. It has built a wonderful community of artists, writers, and musicians in Petaluma over the last decade, and I’m honored to launch my book there. Please come if you can! It would mean the world to me to see you there.

You’ll also get your book first, at a discount, and signed by yours truly.

Order the Book!

If you’re not able to get to Petaluma tonight, no worries. I’m sure that’s most of you, and I would LOVE for you to order the book right now from the comfort of your home. Not only will you get to embark sooner on what I hope is your great personal journey towards media consciousness, but it will also boost the book’s numbers in its first week so that more other people will organically discover it via online search and discovery.

Order the book today and have it in your hands in no time!

• Publisher. You can it most quickly and with the fewest middlemen at the marketplace of the publisher, BookBaby.
  www.RedWhiteAndBlind.com/buy >
• Barnes & Noble. If you prefer Barnes & Noble, they should ship it quickly too.
  www.RedWhiteAndBlind.com/bn >
• Amazon. And if you prefer Amazon, they have the book in stock too of course.
  www.RedWhiteAndBlind.com/amazon >

This is just the beginning

I’m excited and hopeful that what I’ve uncovered and spent three years putting into print will be of use to you and to many in your life. I’m humbled knowing how much I was able to write and yet how much more I was unable to cover, consider, or investigate. Finally, I’m thrilled to see where the book takes us in the unfolding conversation about the news media, social media, censorship, disinformation, and our longing to be informed about the world.

Book Release Party!

After three years of research and revisions, my book will be out in just two days — on January 10, 2023!

You can preorder the book now and also read a free excerpt at my new site www.RedWhiteAndBlind.com

Launch Event!

I’m honored to announce that the official launch of Red, White & Blind will be a literary celebration at the fabulous Aqus Cafe in Petaluma, California.

Speaking of RedWhiteAndBlind.com, there is a new page on that site with everything you need to know about the event. It even includes a link to the Facebook event for those of you who enjoy the FB thing.

As for Aqus Cafe, it has built a wonderful community of artists, writers, and musicians in Petaluma over the last decade, and I’m honored to launch my book there. It has a mild Euro vibe, a slightly subversive mood, and features great food, drink, and atmosphere. Please come if you can! It would mean the world to me to see you there.

Red, White & Blind @ Aqus Cafe

BOOK LAUNCH EVENT
Aqus Cafe
189 H Street, Petaluma

Tuesday, January 10, 2023
5:00pm – Dinner with the author 😀
6:00pm – Book launch!

Ok, that’s it for now. If you happen to live in the Bay Area, I would love to see you on January 10.

It’s been a blast appearing on podcasts and independent media shows in the weeks since I finished the manuscript. If you’d like to get a sneak peek into the revelations of Red, White & Blind before it’s published, listen today to one of my podcast appearances listed below.

I would love to hear your thoughts on how I did and your advice on how I could improve. I was nervous on the first podcast, probably too casual on the second, and failed to stand up for myself on the third. But since those first few, I believe I’ve improved at dropping in when touchy topics arise and proclaiming without fear the key points of the book.

As for the book itself, I can’t wait to get it into your hands. The publication date will be announced very soon. Consider these podcasts a teaser of what five years of research into the history of media distortion and propaganda have taught me. Our media system is deceptive, and it’s a huge problem as we live through elections, pandemics, and wars, but we’re also living in a time with a New Enlightenment dawning around us. We can know more of the truth about world events than any humans living before us—if we build the media consciousness to navigate the news and penetrate the censorship plaguing social media.

The diverse range of shows that have hosted me means you probably get to choose an interview hosted by someone with whom you agree (although I always recommend a Balanced Media Diet). I’ve been interviewed by left-leaning hosts (Tarabuster, Dig on America), right-leaning hosts (Deprogram, Grimerica), hosts seeking concealed truths (Unbridled Minds, Forbidden Knowledge News) and hosts just wanting to interview interesting people (Ripple Effect).

I’ve listed each show below with a snippet of its self-description and a brief summary of how I think it went, so you can choose your own adventure. I find each one listed here to be worthwhile, but if you want to listen to just one, I’d recommend Unbridled Minds or The Ripple Effect.

Many thanks for your thoughts, suggestions, and wisdom! Your votes for the book’s subtitle varied even more widely than those for the cover. Looking through the results, and talking to a range of people—including some of the Alpha and Beta Readers who read the full book—the first thing I realized was that I had to keep the subtitle short.

The second thing I realized was that I needed to combine both a tiny summary of the book and a brief focus on the book’s ultimately positive analysis about where our troubled media landscape is headed.

It was a bit like composing a haiku.

I couldn’t include censorship, propaganda, and disinformation in the subtitle. I couldn’t even have two of those buzzwords. I needed to choose one.

This first half of the subtitle came down to a dilemma between censorship and disinformation. Both concepts are central to the book’s premises and receive deep analysis. Your votes helped me to see that one of these words is more compelling to Americans in 2022 than the other. I believe I landed on the one with the widest interest: Disinformation.

I’d be honored to have your help with one more part of this forthcoming book. First, thank you for voting on the cover of the book. It’s now set, and I think it’s a beauty.

Choosing a subtitle might not be as exciting or as sexy as the cover of the book, but these little words that follow the title might be even more important in determining who finds the book

• Search engines index the subtitle.
  
• Humans looking for a book like mine won’t likely search on the words “red,” “white,” or “blind.”
  
• The subtitle should also be a concise but accurate summary of the contents of the book.
  
• Finally, and maybe most important, the subtitle should be an attractive pitch for the book.

Yes, in the words of RUN DMC, choosing a subtitle is tricky.