Tag Archives: novel

What’s It All About?

Posted on by
1

Ally Carter had a post on her blog a couple of days back where she talked about The Crazies. She summed up The Crazies this way:

The Crazies are a hard thing to define, but most of us have had them—the what if this book sucks, what if this book tanks, what if my career is over, what if my career never really starts anxiety that comes with this business.

Having just released my first novel, Stealing The Marbles, I can certainly relate to those feelings. The temptation to know where your book stands, how many have sold, whether it’s flying high or sinking like a stone is a strong one.

I find a lot of this post-release time very frustrating. How do you get interviews? Reviews? Who do you ask to do a guest post on their blog? How do you get the word out to the Independent Bookstores? Where the hell do you find the time to work on your next book?

On the one hand, you’re proud of your book and want to shout its name from the rooftops. On the other, you certainly don’t want to annoy people on Facebook, Twitter, total strangers who have book review blogs, shoppers at the local grocery store, strangers you run into on the street, by keeping up a constant barrage of ‘I wrote a book, please buy it’.

I keep pushing the best I can, not really sure if the push is doing anything, but feeling like I should do something to promote the book. What I find really frustrating is, after figuring out a way to make a contact for a review or an interview or trying to get some information on how to go about doing this or that, I don’t get so much as a ‘fuck you’ in reply. How hard is it to hit reply and type ‘Thanks but no thanks’? You could even set it up as an auto reply if you’re that damn busy or uninterested.

The one thing I haven’t been doing is checking to see how well the book is selling. Not that I’m not interested, mind you. It’s just that I haven’t a clue what any of the numbers you can find out there mean. I heard this morning that Stealing The Marbles is number 15 on Mobipocket’s best seller list. That sounds pretty impressive but what exactly does it mean in terms of sales? I haven’t a clue.

A quick check of Amazon shows the Tree Book version of Stealing The Marbles has a ranking of 180,564 while the Kindle version has a ranking of 78,883. Does anyone reading this have a clue what that means? I sure as hell don’t.

I had a feeling from the start that this whole post-launch time was going to be a time of elation and frustration and my intuition has, thus far, been spot on.

So, I will leave you with this: Hey, I wrote a book, it’s a really good book, please buy it.

EJ in Wonderland

Posted on by
Reply

Here is something you should never do: start reading a book from the library, one which happens to have a hold list a mile long, the day before that book is due. The libraries around here are pretty tolerant; no fines, easy online renewal, but, if a book has holds on it, you had damn well better get it back on time or they get positively cranky.

Alice I Have BeenThe book in question here is Alice I Have Been by Melanie Benjamin.

My friend Cindy had taken this book out unbeknownst to me. I stumbled across it one day while in search of something to read and, as I had heard so much about the book and know Melanie from Backspace, I decided to give it a read. I got about a third into the book when I was told it was due back that very day. With great reluctance, I headed off to the Newberry branch and dropped the book off, immediately putting myself on the hold list.

I finally got it back the other day and have spent the last two reading it cover to cover, despite the fact that I have my own manuscript I’m suppose to be working on along with gearing up for the imminent release of Stealing The Marbles.

I will admit I had a bit of a hard time getting into it at first. Alice I Have Been is not my usual genre of reading material. But I persevered and OH MY am I glad I did.

What a charming, beautifully wrought story about the little girl who inspired Alice In Wonderland and, more importantly, the story of her life afterward. This is a blend of fact and fiction so tightly woven together that I found myself ‘curiouser and curiouser’ as to what was which, or which was what. I found myself laughing with the child Alice and feeling the frustrations of the constraints put upon her by her place in Victorian England. And later, as the adult Alice, I followed the twists and turns of her life with a mixture of mirth, joy and sadness.

This is a compelling read, one you shouldn’t miss. Bravo Melanie Benjamin.