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My folks are snowbirds, wintering waaaay down south before making the trip back to the thawing tundra of Canada in the spring. This year’s migration will take a little longer as they are going to be stopping along the way at every bookstore they can find (and that will fit their massive RV rig into the parking lot). They’ve already tried a few with a great deal of success. The approach is low key – my father asks to speak to the manager, begins by referencing the many titles that I’ve edited that are already in the store, shows the manager the ARC (Advance Reading Copy) for A Darkness Forged in Fire and based on the response offers to have Pocket mail an ARC. My mother waits in the truck with the engine running, just in case something goes down and dad has to book (ah, the puns, the puns!)

Thus far, this is win-win-win. My parents are thrilled to help and take immense pride in my accomplishments (my brother’s too, but he can get his own blog, I’m not sharing 🙂 Most individual stores don’t get ARCs so this gives them a little bit of a leg up and a chance to impress customers with their ‘you heard it hear first’ scoop, and whatever helps sell more books is a good thing. It helps the publisher too in creating word of mouth and what’s known as hand-selling. The personal touch is worth its weight in gold. None of this, of course, replaces the cold hard fact that people have to actually like the book, but if they do, there’s going to be a strip of North America running south to north that will know a little more about my first stab at writerdom.

If a tree wears a tiara in the forest, will anyone hear it cry?

I was a Dungeon Master long before I knew there was more than one kind of Dungeon Master. I think I still have some of the books and even the little figures. Here’s a link to the article.

Today was a great day. The sun was shining and you could walk around Manhattan with just a sweater (pants are also recommended). Even sweeter, however, was meeting with the marketing and publicity folks at Pocket for a chat. We covered a lot of ground, everything from online outreach (which, of course, includes blogging – so I guess I’m also outreaching at the moment 🙂 print and online advertising, blurbs, signings, events and more. What’s so cool about this, is that this is a launch of not just my book, but of Pocket into hard cover fantasy. We are very much in this together. It’s fun and more than a little scary, sort of like getting on a rollercoaster and hoping they finished the ride…except you have no idea where that finish is.