Giving Away 3 Signed Copies of Moving (a life in boxes)

The new paperback version of Moving (a life in boxes) is out, and I'm eager to get it into the hands of readers.  To start, I'm going to do my first Rafflecopter giveaway of three signed copies.  I've never used this application before, so we'll have to see how it goes. In theory, it's supposed to be easy (for both you and me).

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I want to share what a few of my fellow writers and friends have had to say about the book:

What Others are Saying about Moving (a life in boxes)
“When you’re always in motion, where does the heart come to rest? Patrick Gabridge’s latest novel brilliantly illuminates a relationship that’s forever looking over the horizon — and what happens when two people who’ve always grown together may now be growing apart. Insightful, compelling and beautifully detailed, Moving is that rare book whose effect on the reader is exactly described by the title.”     –Mike Cooper, author of Clawback



“In Moving (a life in boxes), Patrick Gabridge has rendered a story brimming with passion, humor, and irony as it rides the inner roller coaster of one unconventional couple’s marriage in modern times. Be prepared to take sides and don’t be surprised if you change your mind.”    –Jessica Maria Tuccelli, author of Glow




“In Moving (a life in boxes), Patrick Gabridge unpacks the fascinating history of a peripatetic marriage, defined by eighteen years of moves, open houses, real estate brochures, and a stash of marked-up cardboard boxes awaiting their next journey — until the couple come to a crossroads. Artfully plotted, emotionally stirring, and often laugh-out-loud funny, Moving bravely explores the mysterious terrain of modern marriage, and offers an intimate look at a family who will take up residence in your heart.”   –Diana Renn, author of Tokyo Heist

“With a playwright’s eye for telling detail and ear for crackling dialogue, Patrick Gabridge’s Moving (A Life in Boxes) vividly captures the complexity of modern marriage. After eighteen years and eighteen moves, Lila and Jed have finally settled down. But what does it mean to stay in one place when your life has been built around moving and change and the next new experience? Is it possible to let go of your dreams without losing who you are? Gabridge creates a lyrical and unexpected love story about a man escaping his present only to be drawn back to the family he adores.”  –Laura Harrington, author of Alice Bliss and winner of Massachusetts Book Award



 

What I'm Reading: The Well of Lost Plots

Jasper Fforde's first book, The Eyre Affair, left me laughing, saying, "Wow, that is a very, very, very clever guy." His main character, Thursday Next, is a literary detective in a British alternate reality in which literature is a critical part of existence. Even if you're not supremely well read (I'm not, but Fforde certainly is, though he doesn't rub your nose in it), it's fun because there's a real detective story at play, led by a fascinating lead character, in convoluted world where people are able to go into books and characters in books are able to come into the real world.

The Eyre Affair was a big hit, rightly so, and Fford went on to write more Thursday Next books, and also a loosely linked spinoff series of Nursery Crime novels (starting with The Big Over Easy) which I liked very much.

Sadly, The Well of Lost Plots, the third in the Thursday Next series, was not nearly as good as the first two. I was awfully close to just giving up on this one. The first 100 pages are mostly exposition (the world is so complicated that it takes a lot to catch the reader up) and clever jokes. But no story. He's a self-aware writer, so at one point, Thursday even comments to one of the other characters, when asked how it's going, that her day has been mostly exposition so far (she's living in a book at this point, in hiding). Fforde is so inventive, but as a reader, I'm don't want an author to give up plot for cleverness.

Luckily for me, I brought the book with me on the bus to New York, determined to see if I could finish it. The second half of the book jumps into high gear, like any good detective story, once people start getting killed (and a mispeling vyrus gets loose, which is very bad news is you're text-based and living in a book).

I suppose it's a relief to know that even my favorite writers mess up sometimes (they are human after all) (I'm struggling with some very similar plot/story issues on my new novel right now). I'll still pick up his other books, very soon. If you haven't read any Fforde yet, The Eyre Affair is definitely the place to start.

P.S. Definitely check out Jasper Fforde's web site. It's a hoot. (And I just saw that he's coming to Brookline in July. I'll have to go to the signing of his newest.)

Tornado Siren Marketing: What I've Done So Far

I'm trying to stick with my plan of 30 minutes a day on marketing my novel, Tornado Siren, and 30 minutes on screen stuff. So far, I've spent more than 30 minutes on the book mostly making a list of exactly what I've done so far, so I can get my head around what's worked and what hasn't. Next I need to make up a list of what I want to try next (and then actually do it).

So, here's what I've done so far:

• Designed and printed post card. Got 5,000 copies. Have about 1,800 left.
• Mailed out post card to a couple hundred people. Gave away lots more.
• Got www.tornado-siren.com web domain registered. Put together a web site for the book.
• Set up an Amazon Day, where I e-mailed all my friends and family and encouraged them to buy on the same day (in the hopes of increasing the Amazon ranking, and thus gaining more notice). It worked pretty well (we got to #484 overall, and in the top 100 for fiction). Not sure how many we sold, but it was close to 100. This was the most successful book selling that I’ve done, and really fun, too, because it reconnected me with a lot of old friends.
• Came up with a list of all bookstores in Oklahoma. Called most of them and then had publisher send them advance copies. Didn’t seem to accomplish much—I don’t know if they’re currently carrying the book.
  
• Worked out a deal with an Omaha bookstore to offer a discount on the book with a ticket stub from a play festival (in which I had a play). The theatre offered a discount to patrons who brought a copy of the book. Sent post cards to the theatre to give out. Didn’t seem to generate many sales.
• Did a signing at a Washington, D.C. theatre festival where I had a play. Learned, the hard way, that having the signing after the show is a bad idea. Intermission would have sold a lot more books. I also tried setting up a cross promotional deal with area bookstores, but they weren’t interested.
• My parents and my in-laws have all sold dozens of books for me to their friends and co-workers. Not unlike as if I was a Girl Scout selling cookies. I have to say, these readers have been some of the most appreciative that I’ve encountered.
• Did another signing at a play reading event. I signed books at intermission and sold half a dozen or so, which felt good.
• Set up my first book store signing, at the MIT Coop bookstore. It was an early signing, 5:30pm, which was problematic, but it was my first, so I got about a dozen people, who bought almost 20 books. This store rarely does events, so they were pleased with the turnout. I’d postered all around campus and sent tons of e-mails. The e-mails helped but the posters did nothing.
• I set up signings at other bookstores: Harvard Coop (good audience, decent sales, great staff), Book Ends in Winchester (local flooding was a problem, but 2 people showed), Salem (driving rain kept away all but 2 people), and two signings at a Barnes & Noble in Worcester (where the books were sold on consignment)—the first one was great, with coverage in the local paper (though the article brought in only 1 person) and my wife’s book club showing up. The second signing brought in only 1 person.
• I tried to get signings at half a dozen other stores in the Boston area, but was turned down.
• Went to a local weather conference, and gave out a few post cards and made a possible contact at a book store, but sold no books. (Started to figure out that weather geeks are more interested in non-fiction around tornadoes than fiction.)
• Got a copy to a meteorologist friend, who is friends with the publications director of the American Meteorological Society (AMS). This landed me a nice blurb in the Bulletin of the AMS. This, in turn, got the book noticed and mentioned by the Weather Guys, who write a blog for USA Today. I wrote to people that I knew had read the book and asked them to write comments to the blog, and got a great response (28 comments). The coverage sold a few books, and word popped up on another blog, but that was about it. (I had fantasies of it catching fire from this coverage.)
• The book got three reviews (Curled Up With a Good Book, Romance Junkies, and Publishers Weekly) thanks to my publisher’s efforts, and I got one from a playwright binge writer (on Ink19, which was my very favorite). All were positive, but all were on-line only, and it’s unclear if they lead to many sales. We still haven’t had an actual print review. (The best print coverage I got was in Worcester.)
• I tried my Boston Globe contacts, but they only write about theatre (and not about playwrights writing books).
• I researched all the big media markets, looking for weather forecasters who were black and/or female, and gave this list to my publisher (my main character is a black, woman meteorologist), who sent out copies. We also sent one to Al Roker. Never heard a peep from this. (I’d hoped at least one might read it and like it.)
• I searched Yahoo for groups interested in romance novels (mine has a romance in it, but isn’t a “romance novel”) and groups interested in tornadoes. I joined a couple, made an initial post or two, but didn’t find a way to make any progress. I still feel like this could pay off, but I must be missing something.
• I gave books away as raffle items, to my daughter’s school, and to the weather conference I attended. This didn’t really seem to lead to anything further.
• I contacted some of the biggest stormchaser web sites, and even got a nice mention on StormTrack.org, which is a biggie. Sold a couple books that way.
• Sent books to a bookstore in Denver, where my old theatre company, Chameleon Stage, was having a signing of some of our collected monologues. (I should follow up with them.)
• Went to NYC for two signings sponsored by my publisher. Unfortunately they were at odd times, on weekdays (one in a restaurant that changed its name that very week, so was tough to find). We had half a dozen authors or more at each event, but the audience was entirely made of spouses and people that I’d e-mailed (and just a handful of them). I don’t know that any books were sold.
• Got my publisher to enter the book in both the Massachusetts and Oklahoma state book awards competitions. (My publisher paid for all the books.) But I didn’t win.
• I set up an interviews with shows on a Worcester Community Access TV channel, but for the first one, the producer never showed up, and the second one got canceled. It started becoming clear that it wasn’t worth the gas, so I let it go.
• I participated in an author’s weekend sponsored by my local library, where I got to do a reading and a signing. My friends and neighbors came out in support, and I sold about half a dozen books. There might be some ongoing contacts that come from this event. (We might start a book show on the Brookline community cable channel. We’ll see.)
• Put in requests with my local libraries to carry the book. (And had family members do the same.) They did buy the book and it’s now often checked out.
• Sent a copy to my screenwriting agent/manager in Hollywood, with the hopes that it might lead to it getting optioned by someone. Nada.

That's mostly it. Mostly I've learned that selling a first novel, by an unknown author is very, very, very, very difficult.

I'm certainly interested in suggestions/ideas (other than, "get it on Oprah.")

What I'm Reading: Mission to America

I came across Mission to America when it was recommended by a friend, after I told him that I was looking for an American Nick Hornby. I've become a big Nick Hornby fan over the past year or so (and adored his recent books on books, The Polysyllabic Spree and Housekeeping vs. the Dirt), but I figure there have to be a few American novelists out there who have the same sort of wit, insight, and ability to get under the skin of interesting characters, while still being funny, and sometimes serious without having to be tragic. At the moment, he's one of a few writers from whom I just want to read everything he's written, because it's just so much fun, and I hope that if I read enough of it, maybe I'll at least subconsciously figure out how he does it.

I liked Mission to America quite a bit. It was the first book of Walter Kirn's that I'd read, though I've had an interest in reading Thumbsucker, and the film made me want to read the book. The premise of Mission to America seemed interesting: that an obscure and isolated sect in Montana, on the verge of dying out due to generations of inbreeding, sends out two missionaries to essentially bring back some women converts that will help flesh out the gene pool.

Along the way, they interact with the corrupting influences of America, and while trying to stay true to their beliefs, get entangled in a world that's more bizarre than the one they left.

The book does a good job of not being heavy-handed in either direction. The simple life in Bluff, Montana, isn't exactly perfect. And the two missionaries do meet some interesting people out in the world who aren't totally crazy (though not many).

For me, the book started out fast, and then got lost a bit in the middle. At the very end, though, I couldn't put it down, and I probably came across as fairly anti-social this Easter weekend at my in-laws, as I read through to the ending.

Kirn's writing can be wonderfully sharp and sometimes I'd reread passages, just to make sure I didn't skim through it (it's a fast read overall). However, I have to confess that I wish that the two missionaries hadn't ended up bogged down in an Aspen-like town in Colorado, amongst freakishly wealthy families and ski bums. It seems like his social satire would have taken a bigger risk, but maybe had more of an impact, if they fell in amongst a slightly more typical set of Americans. The people in his Aspen stand-in don't feel like me and don't live anything close to the way I live. And their problems and their personalities barely interested me. So the satire's reach ends up feeling limited.

Still, Kirn's clearly a talented, experienced writer, and he writes a complicated story and set of interactions. I look forward to reading more of what he's written. However, I'm still looking for the American Nick Hornby. Suggestions?