Good News: Pumpkin Patch advances

My short play, Pumpkin Patch, had its premiere on Saturday night, at the American Globe/Turnip Theatre 15-Minute Play Festival in New York. The show went pretty well. For various reasons, the rehearsal period ended up being compressed, so the actors and director were working hard on Friday night and during the day on Saturday to get ready. I did my best to be helpful.

The good news is that the play won the competition for that evening, so it will move on to the finals this Friday (7pm) and Saturday (5pm). Competitions decided by audience voting are often problematic, but I think these folks do it better than anywhere else I've seen. The voting is done by secret ballot, you rank your top choices (1-4), and you have to see all the show in order to vote (you can't arrive late or leave early). Seven shows (one from each night) move on to the finals, and the producers pick three others to even it out to ten plays for the final weekend.

I've got my fingers crossed that all will go smoothly this weekend (I'll be in Boston, not NYC).

Wish I Was This Clever

Miss Snark pointed out this fun web site. I want to be this clever in my marketing. Something to shoot for, I guess. The timing is impeccable. Definitely check it out.

ticket to ride

Bought my bus tickets the other night to head to New York for the production of my short play, Pumpkin Patch, by the American Globe/Turnip Theatres in the New York 15-Minute Play Festival. My show runs Saturday night, and if it does well, it'll run again the following weekend.

This is a play that's never been staged before, so I'm especially excited (and nervous) to see it up on stage. It's about a conflict between a white gardener and a black neighbor in a community garden, in a neighborhood that's undergoing gentrification. I'm very curious to see how the audience reacts.

Assuming we don't get stuck in traffic, I should be able to see a rehearsal on Friday afternoon. I'm not one for surprises when it comes to my work--I much prefer to see it in rehearsal before watching it in front of a big audience.

Chronology: Handy Tools

I've spent the last three days doing a pass through my new novel, trying to get the chronology worked out. It's a story that covers a lot of ground, time-wise, and since it took me about a year to write the first draft, some of the temporal stuff got out of whack. It turned out to be a bigger (but really fun) puzzle than I'd expected. Things that I thought happened in the spring time, suddenly had to happen in the fall, because a couple weeks passed between this scene, and then two months for that one. I think I've got it all figured out (for now) anyway, which should help my further revisions.

I came across two simple tools that I used a bunch, that aren't so unusual, but are really handy:

the first was a calendar, that would lay out a year at a glance calendar for any year. It sure ended up being helpful for me to know what day of the week it was on January 21, 2002.

the second was a day calculator, that would tell me how many days there were between two given dates, or give me a date x number of days from another (say 912 days from today).


You never know when you might such things. Mostly, I was glad to make progress after a busy week home with the kids for spring break last week.

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.")

In The Dumps: Need a new plan

A friend scored a copy of the Bookscan sales report for my novel, Tornado Siren, last night, which was both helpful (good to be reminded of the reality) and depressing (reality bites). The book got off to a good start when it came out early last year, but since then sales have been slow. I've had a lot of experience marketing plays and play productions, but trying to sell books has been a whole new thing.

I've sold a lot of books just on my own to friends and family, which has been enormously helpuful. But most of those don't show up in Bookscan (which is what editors and agents can look at to see how well my book fared). I'm with a very small publisher, so their marketing and distribution power is tiny, and now that the book has been out for a while, it will be very hard to get additional reviews and press. (We're hitting the hot patch of tornado season, which might help make people interested in Tornado Siren.)

So I felt depressed for a while last night (you know--I suck, no one is ever going to read or buy this book again, I should have been working harder, I waste too much time, what an idiot, I don't know what the hell I'm doing), but I know that I just need to make a plan and get to work.

I'm in the midst of writing a new novel, so time is short. But I think I'm going to shoot for spending 30 minutes every day marketing Tornado Siren, and 30 minutes on screenplay marketing. I'll try this for the next 30 days and see how it's going. (My own little marketing binge.) I haven't spent much time at all on marketing either of these aspects of my work this year, but if I don't do the work, the stuff won't sell (duh).

Odd Audience Reaction at Mike Daisey's Show (at the ART)

This weird thing happened at Mike Daisey's show.

I heard about it from Adam's blog, and now Malachy's has a video of this very weird audience response to Mike Daisey's monologue performance at the ART. A good chunk of the audience leaves, apparently in protest, though it's unclear why. (He uses the "f" word, but to be honest, the content that's on the video seems fairly mild.) On Mike's site, he says they were a Christian group (but I'm not sure how he knows this).

Mr. Daisey handles the whole thing extremely well (the protesters pour water on his desk and script on their way out). I don't know what I would have done. I wondered sometimes during the production of Pieces of Whitey, if we might get angry audience response (it's a comedy about race and well-meaning white people) (but that mostly seemed to happen from the critics) (and they were angry), but nothing every happened.

What's so weird is that this group leaves en masse, but when Mike tries to talk to them about what's happening, they don't answer him. And he's acting calmly and reasonably, really, considering the situation. It seems a strong violation of the unspoken audience/performer contract: he's doing his best to engage and entertain them, and in return expects an honest answer in return. You could say that their leaving is an honest response--they apparently hate it. Pouring out the water on his stuff shows that they really, really hate it. But, especially with the water, they don't take into account that he's a human being (one in a vulnerable position) with feelings. It's not like he was berating the audience or treating them disrespectfully. But they chose to disrupt his performance and the experience of the other members in the audience.

I'm especially disturbed that this happened here in Boston. I've always found audiences here polite, if a little reserved. I just don't get it.