As is so often the case with celebrities, we see them in the brief  moments when they ply their trade, when they strike round balls with wooden sticks, catch pigskins at contorted angles, sing ballads, throw tantrums on reality TV. But, we seldom get a glimpse behind the scenes, in the private hours of tedious desperation when they ready themselves for the spot light, when they summon their inner resolve for that crucial second.

Few outside the Inner Circle (his keepers) know Punxsutawney Phil’s intense regimen.

Nor do they realize how the digital revolution has changed his life forever.

For PP is a voracious reader, a circumstance unwieldy for a rodent who lives in a hole. In years past, the Inner Circle met his demands by positioning paper back books just inside the front of his cavern and shining reflected sunlight on the pages with an ingenious  mirrored device.  One member of the tuxedo clad clan lay on his stomach with one end of a rod in his hand to which was attached to the other end a pair of tweezers.  When PP nodded, the prone person flipped the pages.  And so it progressed for hours at a time.

Among the tomes PP devoured were classics such as The Long Dark Night, The Bright Sunny Day, the lyrics of The Shadow of Your Smile,the famous romance novel, She Left Me When It Was Cloudy, the whimsical All My Exes Live In Miami. Latest reports from the American Meteorological Society discarded outside the mouth of his cave littered the terrain.

Then came the Kindle Paperwhite. Since Amazon’s release of the back lit reader, PP has broken free from his keepers and plunged teeth long into a whole new universe of reading pleasure.  He has discovered classic non-fiction works such as My Life in a Hole by Rush Limbaugh, the poignant biography of Paul Newman, Why Nothing is a Real Cool Hand, the fabricated, racy  account of the NASA moon project, Apollo XXX.

It is rumored that Amazon’s new publishing house, Thomas and Mercer, approached him about the rights for his soon to be released memoir, I, Rodent.

Apparently PP has rebuffed this offer from Amazon, choosing rather to join the ranks of his fellow Indie authors. Today, he tweeted that he has submitted the memoir to the New Kindle Book Review in consideration of the Best Indie Books of 2013 Contest.

He did all this with only two buck teeth and a keyboard. So take courage my fellow Indie authors.

(Stephen Woodfin is an attorney and Indie author who uses his fingers to type.)