Kel Munger of the Reno News and Review has clearly gone the opposite direction of myself, going instead from dispatching to journalism.

Among the very kind things Munger said in the September 2006 review of “Answering 911″,

In clear, compelling prose, Burau runs the gamut from the distressing to the hilarious and also explains what in the world would ever make a person want to do a job that amounts to sitting for hours in an isolated room with a bunch of misanthropes trying to help people through the worst days of their lives. I know how hard it is; I did it for almost nine years before the stress got to me.

How nice!

It didn’t occur to me that someone might ever be assigned the task of reading something I wrote, but now “Answering 911: Life in the Hot Seat” is at least on the recommended “non-fantasy” reading list for boys at the Morton Grove Public Library in Morton Grove, Illinois.

The list itself  was compiled in July 2007 by Virginia Singletary of the Stella Hill Memorial Library, Alto, TX, from contributions by the members of the Fiction_L mailing list.

In the meanwhile, I suppose girls will simply have to make do with some nice pamphlets.

My book “Answering 911: Life in the Hot Seat,” has been featured for sale at the Firefighters Bookstore.

When I started this job, I hardly thought I’d be selling my own book next to manuals for how to do the job.

My most recent book, Answering 911: Life in the Hot Seat was recently selected for the short list of Autobiography, Momoir & Creative Nonfiction as part of the 2007 Minnesota Book Awards.