making an async http call on publish

I need to make a call to an external api on page/block publish and wonder if there is any way to make this call asynchronous? as it may take a little while and its a fire and forget type thing.

I understand there is the Event API that if implemented allows async methods, but not sure how that would wire up to the published event, I wonder if anyone could offer an example or pointer.

would it just be registering my custom event handler and raising that event from within the ContentEvents().PublishedContent ?

thanks