I’m happy to announce that Half-Assed: A Weight-Loss Memoir is now being distributed in the United Kingdom, Australia, and New Zealand via Palgrave/Macmillan. If you live in any of these countries, you can go to your local bookstore and request that they order a copy for you. If you’re lucky, they might already have one in stock. Karen already wrote in to report a sighting at the Borders in Auckland. It doesn’t matter what store you go to because my distributor accepts orders from big chains and independent retailers. And yes, Britons, please request “Half-Assed” not “Half-Arsed.”

I want to apologize that I did not have this information for you guys sooner. If I’d known the book would be available internationally, I would have told my foreign readers to wait to buy it locally instead of paying to have it shipped overseas. You could have saved money on shipping and I would have saved my hand cramping up filling out bizarre custom forms. I want you to know that I’m genuinely sorry and hopefully the shipping costs were worth the two month head start you got on your neighbors. If it makes you feel any better, after Helen sent me pictures of her reading the book on a beach in Mexico, it occurred to me that my book has now traveled more places than I have. I wish my body could visit the United Kingdom, Australia and New Zealand, but my words will have to suffice for now.

If you’re a techie, you might be happy to know you can also get the e-book edition of Half-Assed, for Kindle: Amazon’s New Wireless Reading Device. I saw one of these on a plane last month and now I wish I owned one just so I could see how my book looks on it.

The entry period for the viral video contest is now over. I will draw a winner as soon as I finish confirming entries. I’ll announce the winner on the blog when I do so. Thank you to every one who participated. As of this moment, my video has 6,566 views!