Collected Miscellany

When people ask what I’m doing to promote Who Are You People? I tell them, quite honestly, everything I can think of. And I mean it. Authors rarely get any substantial promotional support from publishers, so if a book is going to go anywhere, it will be because the author pushed it there.

So, what does “everything,” in promotional terms, really mean? It means:

1. Sending out complimentary copies and promotional postcards to all the major characters in the book and asking them – nicely, of course — to spread the word.

2. Mailing postcards to friends, family members, old college roommates, former students, other writers, and anyone who’s told you the book sounded interesting, including that guy you once met on a cramped Air Canada flight.

3. Developing a website.

4. Learning how to blog. Blogging. Reading other blogs. Getting lost in the blogosphere and reluctantly admitting to yourself that the whole blogging thing is far cooler than you had originally envisioned.

5. Establishing a My Space account, but only after being reassured that “lots of other older people” have one.

6. Hiring a publicist (One Potata Productions) to conduct a national radio and television campaign, a local media campaign, and a multi-city radio “tour.” (This is after you interview 12 publicists, who quote you prices ranging from $3,000 to $30,000.)

7. Squealing like a 10-year-old when you land your first national media interview… on NPR!

8. Staying up all night before the NPR interview thinking of every possible way you will manage to inadvertently sound like a dork.

9. Staying up the night after the NPR interview celebrating the fact that Lianne Hansen actually liked your book. (You’ll come to refer to this as your Sally Field moment. She likes you… she really, really likes you.)

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When people ask what I’m doing to promote Who Are You People? I tell them, quite honestly, everything I can think of. And I mean it. Authors rarely get any substantial promotional support from publishers, so if a book is going to go anywhere, it will be because the author pushed it there.

So, what does “everything,” in promotional terms, really mean? It means:

1. Sending out complimentary copies and promotional postcards to all the major characters in the book and asking them – nicely, of course — to spread the word.

2. Mailing postcards to friends, family members, old college roommates, former students, other writers, and anyone who’s told you the book sounded interesting, including that guy you once met on a cramped Air Canada flight.

3. Developing a website.

4. Learning how to blog. Blogging. Reading other blogs. Getting lost in the blogosphere and reluctantly admitting to yourself that the whole blogging thing is far cooler than you had originally envisioned.

5. Establishing a My Space account, but only after being reassured that “lots of other older people” have one.

6. Hiring a publicist (One Potata Productions) to conduct a national radio and television campaign, a local media campaign, and a multi-city radio “tour.” (This is after you interview 12 publicists, who quote you prices ranging from $3,000 to $30,000.)

7. Squealing like a 10-year-old when you land your first national media interview… on NPR!

8. Staying up all night before the NPR interview thinking of every possible way you will manage to inadvertently sound like a dork.

9. Staying up the night after the NPR interview celebrating the fact that Lianne Hansen actually liked your book. (You’ll come to refer to this as your Sally Field moment. She likes you… she really, really likes you.)

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Who Are You People? is about ordinary folks in America and the charming oddball things they do in pursuit of happiness.

I studied pigeon racers in the Bronx and learned how to motivate a pigeon, which is too involved to get into here but let’s just say it involves sex.

I went stormchasing in Kansas and learned about Supercell Deprivation Syndrome, a malady that affects storm chasers in the winter months when tornadoes are not present. The condition gets so bad some chasers will watch the water draining down the toilet just to see a cyclone.

I hung out with a group of Grobanites in Texas and learned… what’s that? You don’t know what a Grobanite is? A Grobanite is a die-hard fan of the singer Josh Groban who follows him from concert to concert. Think Deadheads, but more menopausal. I learned that Grobanites are prone Grobanian slips, suffer from Joshmares, become scatterjoshed, and are seized by Joshfright when they finally get a chance to meet their idol. Older fans take Joshtrogen, and younger fans believe he is drop-dead gor-josh.

The Grobanites and stormchasers and pigeon racers and everyone else I wrote about were real in that quirky, honest, human way people have when they are not trying to impress others. Which also meant that they weren’t used to dealing with journalists or reading about themselves in print.

For this reason, I felt a responsibility to let the major characters in the book know ahead of time what I was going to write about them. Not so they could edit it, but so they could be prepared. (Also, I wanted to fact-check myself.) Most people in the book were extremely gracious and thankful that I’d thought to call them.

With one exception.

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While Kevin is enjoying the long Labor Day weekend, I’ve agreed to step in and keep Collected Miscellany humming. So who the heck am I? My name is Shari Caudron and I’m the author of a book called Who Are You People? The book is about my three-year, cross-country journey to understand passionate fanatics such as furries and Star Wars fans and stormchasers and pigeon racers. It’s been on bookstores shelves — pant, pant — less than a month.

Over the next few days, I’ll be giving you a glimpse inside the tilt-o-wheel world of a new book author. I’ll talk about what it’s like writing about real people (as opposed to “fake” people like celebs or politicians); the reality of the author’s role in book promotion (hint: it involves $$$$$$); how freakish friends become when suddenly you have a book on the shelves; and other, well, miscellany, related to writing, publishing and promotion.

But before we get to all that, I wanted to give you a better sense of who I am and why I wrote the book. Here’s an excerpt from the introductory chapter called “Topless in the Woods:”

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One of the perils of reading books for review is that you lose some of the enjoyment by concentrating on what you will say in the review (or making sure you have something to say). While this does affect me on occasion (I more often feel pressure to read every book someone sends me), I generally don’t have this problem. Because I don’t get paid to write reviews I don’t approach fiction any different than if I were just reading for myself. The problem with this strategy – if you can call it that – is that on occasion I read a book, enjoy it, and then have very little intelligent to say about it.

Such is the case with In The Wake by Per Petterson. Looking for slim fiction to take on vacation I grabbed this novel translated from Norwegian and read it siting by the lake watching the kids play. I enjoyed reading it and appreciated the author’s skill, but it didn’t have the emotional impact on me that it seemed to have on other reviewers. Perhaps the idyllic lakeside setting was a bit too comfortable and thus created a barrier between me and the psychological struggles of Petterson’s protagonist.

For whatever reason, I just can’t seem to get my thoughts together on this book. And as time passes I will lose whatever perspective I did have. So once again allow me to cheat and use snippets of other reviews to help communicate the book’s strengths and weaknesses.

First, lets turn to Publishers Weekly for the brief summary:

In his impressive American debut, veteran Norwegian novelist Petterson chronicles Arvid Jansen’s breakdown in the six years since his parents and brother were killed in a ferry accident (modeled after the 1994 sinking of the MS Estonia). Arvid wanders around Oslo and through the Norwegian countryside, sifting through memories of his stern, ultracompetent father and nursing an infatuation with his attractive neighbor, Mrs. Grinde. After Arvid’s architect brother attempts suicide, Arvid tries to reconnect with him and pull them both out of the abyss. Despite the gloomy subject matter, Arvid is a witty, self-deprecating narrator who fought with his family while they were alive and misses them terribly now that they’re gone. This novel won several literary prizes in Europe, where the Estonia disaster is well known. The events may not feel as immediate to American readers, but many will find Arvid’s path of loss and redemption affecting nonetheless.

Maybe it was my disconnection to the Estonia tragedy that undermined the book’s immediacy for me. I did find Arvid to be an entertaining narrator but I am not sure I found his “path of loss and redemption affecting.”

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With the focus on the anniversary of Katrina this week it is the perfect time to note the availability of SIGNS OF LIFE: SURVIVING KATRINA. More information on the work – “an Extraordinary Photographic Collection of Survival: One Sign at a Time” – can be found on the website. Here is a brief description :

Signs of Life is a moving collection of photos of the hand-made signs that appeared in New Orleans and along the Gulf Coast following Hurricane Katrina. Profits from sales of the book will go to two organizations still working in the area: Common Ground Relief and Hands On Network.

Hand-made signs—spray painted on houses, on cars, on refrigerators—were some of the first “signs of life” to appear after the flood waters receded. The signs range from the sacred to the profane, from defiant to defeated, from frightening and encouraging. The signs reveal a powerful story of those who survived the deluge.

Compiled by Eric Harvey Brown and Lori Baker, New York-based photographers and writers who volunteered in the Gulf Coast after the hurricane, Signs of Life shows not only the traces of the violence of the storm, but also that much devastation remains one year later. The pictures in Signs of Life come from more than forty photographers— including local residents, relief volunteers, and those just passing through. The images were found on flickr.com and other photoblogs, and have been donated by the photographers for use in the book.

Sounds like a fascinating book put together by a valuable organization.