The Good and Bad of Book Promotion

I read an article today in the WSJ by Nell Alk entitled, Author Runs the City (here). I thought for a moment, "What a great idea for research into a novel, getting to run a city for a day." I wondered if the character he was researching was a big city mayor. I was wrong. Actually it was an article about Scott Jurek, author of "Eat & Run: My Unlikely Journey to Ultramarathon Greatness".

When I first started reading Diane Mott Davidson I thought she had a good idea in including her recipes at the end of her mysteries. I still think the recipes are a good idea, I just don't read her books anymore. I got to a point where I didn't find her characters engaging.

I thought a good way to expand on this idea of hers would be to include some of the runs, bike rides, and swims that take place in my novel in the back of my new novel. I decided against it. Don't get me wrong, I think that My Jurek has a great promotional idea for his new book. He's got a famous name, he's got a following, he even gets it in the WSJ. Davidson's idea is a bit more passive. Not much promotion. Fun, but no promotional aspect.

Then I realized that they weren't even useful. I never made one of those recipes. I liked reading about them originally, but that wore off. I even asked my wife, who turned me on to Davidson, if she had even used one of the recipes. She might have admitted to making one. It was all gimmick. That's the way the run, bike and swim routes would have come off. Gimmicky. No thanks. So, when you buy my new novel, you'll not see any mapped out race routes. However, you might see a bookmark for my novel in your race packet for your next race. Not gimmickry, that would be all promotion.

RV Novel

A few years ago I had an idea to write a story about a group of friends who travel around the US competing in triathlons, half marathons and other adventure races. The idea was to have a murder or two to occur on the way and for one of the RV riders to be the killer. As they raced more and more, and traveled on and on, the tension would ramp up both because the racers would get tired, but also because of the natural cabin fever that the RV trip would create.

It always seemed like a good idea, I just never got around to developing it further. One problem was that I remember the times I traveled with my lacrosse team in college. We would usually play lacrosse, sleep, eat, and drink. That's about it. Lots and lots of sleeping. Not much tension in that.

I've decided that if I really want to ramp up the tension and frustration one of the racers needs to bring along his wife, his two year old and his four year old. This would rapidly develop some frustration and aggravation. I have first-hand knowledge of just how much tension and aggravation it creates. This is our third day in the motor-coach and the two children alone have produced so much anxiety I'm about to yank my eyeballs out. The wife's complaints are just icing on the cake.

I think its time to pull that ole idea out of the cupboard and revisit the RV story.

Write Drunk . . .

There is a fun article and even more fun comments regarding the article in Fuel Your Writing by Eric Kuentz entitled What Happens When You Try and Drink Like Hemingway (here). It's short and a worthwhile read and it has inspired me to try the same experiment to see what happens. Basically, the author took a bottle of wine and another aperitif and tried to write for the evening drunk. His results?



One thing I learned, besides being out of practice drinking (no worries, not a habit I’m looking to pick up), alcohol definitely lowered my inhibitions. While this can be a dangerous occurrence at the bar, facing the blank page wasn’t nearly as scary as usual. While the ideas didn’t flow as smoothly as I may have liked, and clearly I lose the ability to punctuate and spell, there was definitely a stream-of-consciousness kind of feeling as I was writing. As things popped into my head, as characters spoke out of the fog of intoxication, it all spewed out onto the page.


Going back and looking what I have written in my intoxicated state, I think this may have been what Hemingway meant by “write drunk; edit sober.” My first draft is fluid and uninhibited. It’s haggard and sloppy, but it’s free. I had no fears and no restraints. Nothing was held back, and I wasn’t able to second-guess myself.

Again, it might be interesting to try. the question is . . . would it be worth the hangover?

Mission Success

If the mission of a first line was to establish a sense of foreboding and intrigue then I'd have to say that Tom Clancy achieved that mission with his first line way back in 1986.


They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia. 

The passage only continue to up the tension as it continues.

They moved swiftly, silently, with purpose, under a crystalline, star-filled night in western Siberia. They were Muslims, though one could scarcely have known it from their speech, which was Russian, though inflected with the singsong Azerbaijani accent that wrongly struck the senior members of the engineering staff as entertaining. The three of them had just completed a complex task in the truck and train yards, the opening of hundreds of loading valves. Ibrahim Tolkaze was their leader, though he was not in front. Rasul was in front, the massive former sergeant in the MVD who had already killed six men this cold night— three with a pistol hidden under his coat and three with his hands alone. No one had heard them. An oil refinery is a noisy place. The bodies were left in shadows, and the three men entered Tolkaze’s car for the next part of their task.

Clancy, Tom - Red Storm Rising

Pretty good stuff if you ask me. I've been looking forward to reading this for some time. Now, after trying a couple of first time novelist's fare (a mixed bag) I would have to say it's nice to come back to some familiar territory.

Next First Line Leaves Me Looking Forward . . .

This next first line leaves me looking forward to my next next first line. It's just not compelling, but as a period novel, I suppose it's apropos.


Stepping into the back alleyway, Lianna took a deep invigorating breath and closed her eyes. How she loved these warm moonlit nights stirred by the cool sea breeze. Even behind the Black Dog Tavern, in this dank corner of the wretched port with its nauseous smells and filthy streets, she couldn't help but feel a sense of serenity.

Bray-Weber, Jennifer - Blood and Treasure

I wish that the author had come up with a less trite name than the Black Dog Tavern. That smacks of caricature.

Depressing First Line

Despite what turned out to be a terrific book, I thought the first line was wanting.


The Raccoon River runs through a 631-acre park in the city of West Des Moines, Iowa. During the Great Flood of 1993, the river flooded the water treatment facility of Des Moines, shutting off the city’s supply of drinking water. This time, it only flooded the south end of the park, in sum, almost 200 acres: a far cry from the damage it had incurred nearly two decades before.

Conner, Aimee -. Scrapbook


It's like sitting down to listen to a symphony orchestra and when they play that first note, one or two folks miss they beat and come in at just the wrong time. Thankfully most musicians are good enough to catch back up. Miss Conner caught up as well (here).

Review for a First Timer

I read a first-time novelists first novel and boy do I feel intimidated and under-prepared for my own writing life. I found Scrapbook (here) through the author at a site for authors called Book Blogs (here). It's a decent site with an overwhelming number of YA authors on it. Scrapbook is definitely not YA.

Couldn't put it down. This is my four word review. What did I like most? Edge of your seat writing, short, pithy, engaging. Both the tight writing and quick chapters made it impossible to stop. It's like a roller coaster ride where the train pulls into the station and instead of getting off you ask the attendant if you can keep going around for the next chapter.

It was reminiscent of Silence of the Lambs. I remember when I first read that book and I was stunned by how gritty and visceral it was, Scrapbook was much the same. Having never read any of Miss Conner's works before I found her writing to have terrific pacing, fun characters, gruesome and real description that came at just the right time, with squeamishness in small doses that wasn't so over the top that I wanted to give up on it. It's well worth the time and money and I'll be recommending it to all of my reading friends.

I look forward to Miss Conner's next works.

Everywhere I Look I See Creative Writing

I ran across this link today (here) which lists the ten most painful insect stings as listed by Robert T. Gonzalez in  iO9. Ho-hum you are thinking, I didn't come to a great blog like Publish or Perish to talk about pabulum like insect stings. Except, what I like about it are the descriptions that the author presents of what the sting feels like. He pokes fun at the way wine tasters write and give some clarifications. My favorite is the description of the Paper Wasp sting.

Animal: Paper wasp
Schmidt Index: 3.0
Description: Caustic and burning. Distinctly bitter aftertaste. Like spilling a beaker of hydrochloric acid on a paper cut.


Very clever. Made me take a second look and I feel confident anyone savvy enough to visit this blog will be have their curiosity piqued enough to click the link. 

A Bananas Foster Astray Sandwich

So, in an effort to promote my work and to hopefully find new reviewers I joined a group called Book Blogs. Today I posted my banner ad for Toe the Line and a short "elevator pitch" in their Promote Your Book forum (here).

I am now sandwiched between two works. One is Banana's Foster by Sandra Murphy. I haven't read anything about the book yet, but the title alone makes me want to know more.

The other book is by someone who seems to be quite prolific (at least on the Book Blogs site) whose name is Carlos King. He listed two of his books beneath mine, Prey and Astray. Those I doubt I will read unless they come with a strong recommendation. Still, fun to try and put some stuff out there and see what sticks.

Catching Fire

I finished the second in Suzanne Collins' series. I liked the first one. I read it in about three days. I liked this one as well. They are lively and quick and fun to read. It was as good as the first. Not the most literary novel, but fun to read and spirited. A good escape for a short time. 

One thing I noticed in this novel that I didn't notice in the first one is that Collins moves things along quite clunkily. Anyone who reads this blog knows that I don't particularly care for her endings, but now I'm finding her zips through time, where she writes a catch all phrase like "Gale and I practiced a lot over the next few months" a tad off putting. I'm the type of Joe who wants to know what that practicing was like. I suspect an editor told Miss Collins that the reader would be bored and she had to get to the games. Not this reader sister!

One last thing about this book. I love my Kindle because I can make notes and marks so easily. I see a fancy, five dollar, vocabulary word, I mark it. I notice a striking analogy, I highlight it. I like going back after the fact and selecting "See My Notes and Marks" and remembering these details after the fact. I clicked that feature for Catching Fire . . . nothing. No notes. No marks. Nuff said.

Fun fun fun! But that's about it.