Scribble, scribble…
When Edward Gibbon presented the 2nd volume of Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire to the Duke of Gloucester (the king’s brother) the legendary, cheerful comment from royalty was, ”Another damn’d...
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Worldwide Launch Invitation
Here’s Penguin’s formal electronic invitation for the April 4th event in Toronto. (is formal electronic an oxymoron?) Note ‘formal’ means the invitation, in any case, not what people are expected to...
View ArticleCountdown
So there is a Publication Date, and publishers talk about a Release Date and an On-Sale Date and a Shipping Date. It gets blurred, and I admit to being amused when people in the business a long time...
View ArticleBacklist promotion
Starting tomorrow, the 19th, Penguin Canada are starting a 3 week ebook promotion on their entire backlist of my work. $6.99 for all titles. I think targeted promotions of this sort are a smart idea....
View Article“How did it go?”
Interviews are endlessly different. I am always asked, by publicists, family, editors, ‘How did it go?’ And I almost always answer, ‘We’ll know when we see it.’ The thing is, an interview is always in...
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“Fifty Shades of Kay”: The Contest
I have no one to blame but myself, and I know it. Some time ago I made a pretty obvious joke among friends and then online about Fifty Shades of Kay. People were amused, I suppose for pretty obvious...
View ArticleWile E. Kayote
I am willing to accept that I am the only one who laughs at the header. (I have made the joke before, I confess.) But the feeling is there. You know those scenes in the Roadrunner cartoons where the...
View ArticleReviews
There is an old line, oft-spoken in the book world, about publicists or publishers pulling a fake quote from a bad review. It doesn’t happen much any more, that I know of, though it is still fairly...
View ArticleMore on Reviews
Well, someone in a comment to the last post on Reviews wondered if the Washington Post would do one and … clearly he has the power. (My people would like to talk to your people!) The Washington Post...
View ArticleRelease Day
I do something today, every release day, call it a tradition. It is so easy to get caught up in the ‘process’ as a book nears publication and then appears. An author lucky enough to be in-demand to...
View ArticleThe day before
Double meaning (what, me, a pun?). The day before today was quite predictably crazy, in an entirely good way, though with that feeling you get after one or two cups of coffee too many. There was a huge...
View ArticleParty Central
I remember, some years ago, being at an utterly mobbed book launch event here in Toronto. It was for a writer friend who published a smallish book every few years. He was an older fellow, a...
View ArticleMorning after the night before
I worry about sounding banal in doing descriptions of events. How interesting is it to rad, ‘It was a really enjoyable night.’? Not very, I suspect. The dynamics of a launch event are, as I’ve said,...
View ArticleAfternoon before…
Quiet Sunday, which I can use, to be honest. I just drafted another small essay on request, likely it’ll go online during the coming week. Was naive enough to be startled by just how ‘powerful’ Ars...
View ArticleProject Bookmark
Today’s post is mostly about Canada, and books, but the concept should appeal to everyone who reads, and there’s a giveaway at the end. I’m the ‘face’ of Project Bookmark for April 9th. Canadians are...
View ArticleThe List
Yes, to champagne. River of Stars debuted in publication week at #1 on the hardcover bestseller lists of both Maclean’s – Canada’s national newsmagazine -and the Canadian Booksellers’ Association. The...
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Photo Op
So, when your editor chooses to add #borntojudge to her tweet saying she’s ready to deal with the photos entered in the ’50 Shades of Kay’ contest, it makes you pay attention. In the end, I said,...
View ArticleHome… and away
It is a challenge to do proper Journal posts on the road, though it is a part of the whole idea of the journal, so I shouldn’t wimp out right? Yesterday was a complex day. On the local level, a...
View ArticleVancouver
Sometimes an evening comes together unexpectedly well. I had no idea what to anticipate from the Vancouver Writer’s Festival event last night at the main library branch. It was a shared reading/Q&A...
View ArticleFog
Tracking the Boston news on a difficult day. Wordsworth wrote ‘The world is too much with us…’ and it has never been more true. We know (or are led to believe we know) so much, so quickly, and we see...
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