March Madness, April Showers

Crying Call has been out for a couple months now, and as the weather begins to warm up, that means we’re heading toward market season. Now begins the difficult time management of working on my next novel (Drawing Dead) while getting out there and marketing my finished works. I’ve already managed to have several good outings.

My best sales day ever happened about a month ago at Blake’s Boozy Book Fest. I have to hand it to Blake’s — their six-hour ticketed event was hands down the most fun and best organized book event I’ve ever been to. I’m not sure when their next book event will be, but I hope I’m invited to that one too. For the record, I sold ten copies of my crossword puzzle book, and sixty total books from the Thomas Vale series.

Meanwhile, Blake’s also has a monthly book club, and they selected Crying Call as their current read. I’ll be going there Wednesday night to meet the club, answer questions, and probably sign some books for them. I’ve never done a solo author signing before, and I’m looking forward to it. Actually, I have two solo signings this month, because I’ll be doing a signing at Calliope Bookshelf in Washington, MI on April 18th. More on that in the next post.

Next Saturday, the 11th, I’ll be at the Washtenaw County Fairgrounds, a little southwest of Ann Arbor, for “Books in the Barn,” which I understand is sort of like a Boozy Book Fair without the open bar.

Probably the coolest thing that happened was when I went back to the Third Coast Book Fest in Grand Haven, MI. Last year was their debut year, and I was there for it — it’s where I made my first ever sales at a public event. Three hundred sixty-four days later, Becka was able to come with me this time. She took the picture below.

It’s a picture of me standing with Debra, the first person who ever bought a book from me at a book event. She came up to the table this year, told me how much she enjoyed Blood Game, and promptly bought Crying Call. Guess I owe it to her to finish Drawing Dead on time, so she can finish the trilogy next year!

I’ve Been Picked by a Book Club!

I kind of vaguely alluded to this in the previous post, and now seems the right time to announce the details….

Crying Call has been chosen as the April book-of-the-month by the Book Club at Blake’s Backyard!

Basically, they’re a gang of fervent readers affiliated with our favorite orchard and cider mill in our area. What a thrill! This is the first, hopefully of many, times one of my books will be read by a book club.

A lot of local folks are currently reading my second novel, or will be soon since they’ve just had their March meeting about the book they read before mine. Then, on April 8th, it’ll be Crying Call’s turn. And the bonus is … since they’re nearby, I’ve been invited to pop in on the second half of their monthly meeting, to meet them, talk to them, and maybe answer some of the questions they have. I’ll probably set up a signing table too, or something like that. I’m not sure about the logistics. I have no idea how it will go, but I’m excited, thrilled, and grateful for the chance to meet a lot of new readers!

If you’re a southeast Michigander or Michigoose and you’d like to join a large, growing, and fun book club … now’s the perfect time. Link below:

Poker Book Club? Hell, Yeah!

Damn, it feels good to be writing again.

The words started flowing again this morning, for a pivotal action scene near the beginning of Drawing Dead. The third book has its opening gambit take place in Antarctica (yes, seriously!), and the action is as hot as the weather is cold. At least it will be if I write it well. Feels good to be crafting stories again.

These last few months I’ve been working so hard at everything BUT writing, trying to market and publicize my book and do all the little things they don’t teach you in English class. It’s a lot of behind-the-scenes scraping and hustling, often with no idea if any of it will even work, and some days it feels like shouting in the wilderness. But today was not one of those days!

I tuned into my favorite poker/pop-culture podcast, “Poker In the Ears,” and heard the official announcement of something co-host Joe Stapleton had already told me by email. “Blood Game” has been chosen for a “poker book club.” Basically, I’ll be invited to record part of one of their shows, probably in April. Fans of the show (and there are MANY) are being encouraged to read the book over the next two months, to come up with questions to be asked of me on that show.

I wonder what their audience will think. Maybe they’ll like my book, and maybe they won’t. Some of both probably. No work of art is for everyone.

These are primarily poker fans, and I think they’ll like the detail I put into strategic decisions. “Blood Game” is also, as far as I’m aware, the only work of popular fiction that talks about hand ranges or the fact that PLO exists. But I took some of that out in places where it was maybe too much, and hurt the pacing. Maybe I’ll put some alternate versions of chapters on my website someday, so the poker aficionados can read more of the stuff they like.

At the risk of stating the obvious, this is beyond cool! And I really appreciate the opportunity to get my voice out to the masses. I think that’s all any upstart writer can hope for. A chance to be heard.

Part of what makes the traditional publishing process so hard is you go into it knowing that most agents aren’t even going to read your sample pages, and editors won’t even talk to you without an agent. Just getting people to give you a chance is a massive hurdle. So many of us just give up. Thanks, Mom and Dad, for the fact I don’t know how.

Maybe someday I’ll be in a position to give fellow writers a boost. For now, it’s my time to appreciate being on the receiving end.

(Check out “Poker In the Ears” wherever you find podcasts. In this post, I refer to a four-minute block early on in Episode 328)