After reading and reviewing Vanessa Farquharson’s Sleeping Naked is Green last week, I realized it’s the latest in a hot memoir trend, which has produced some of my favourite books of the last few years. Basically, the success formula seems to be: set yourself some ridiculous life challenge for a defined period of time, usually one year, get a book deal (preferably in advance, to fund the challenge, though that’s not always the case), and write about it. Presto! Bestseller!!
So, I’ve decided to deviate from the thankless path of writing novels and take this alternate route to the bestseller list. All I need to do is set myself a challenge, make a plan, and start writing witty, self-deprecating reflections on how it goes.
Just one tiny problem: I have no idea what my challenge should be. Any suggestions?
OK, time for something completely silly. My favourite overblown 80s power ballad — the Literal Video version!
Literal video is kind of a YouTube craze, where somebody takes an existing music video and dubs over the voicetrack with lyrics that describe exactly what’s happening in the video. The first time I saw this I laughed so hard tears rolled down my face. It might not strike you that way, but if it does … enjoy.
So, the day finally came — my whirlwind trip to New York to tryout for Jeopardy!
I flew into the big city early Tuesday afternoon, checked into a tiny and spartan room at the Y, and dropped by a few Brooklyn bookstores to drop off copies of my book and schmooze a little, hoping that having a life human face to go along with the book might make them more likely to order it. Then I met my friend Sharon for dinner at an Indian restaurant, we went out to catch the rather forgettable movie The Proposal, and I got safely home at a reasonable hour so I’d be well-rested for the Jeopardy! tryout Wednesday morning at 11:30.
My worst fear, based on a description of the audition process that I read online, was that I wouldn’t do well on the initial 50-question written test, and would be asked to leave without going through the mock Jeopardy! round or interview process. However, that information about the process was out of date, because when I got there, I learned that just by making it to the audition, you are automatically entered into the contestant pool and you get to stay for the whole audition process. Whew!
Yesterday I was wading up to my ankles in the shallow waters of Manuels River (one of the loveliest spots in this lovely province), taking The Incredible Max for a walk while the kids were swimming. Three teenaged boys passed me, jumping from rock to rock on their way upriver. As they passed, one slipped, lost his footing, splashed briefly in the water. Scrambling onto another rock to continue his journey, he called to his companions, “I lost a life!”
I laughed, of course. It seemed like a uniquely twenty-first century irony: kids out enjoying the pure beauty of nature on a gorgeous summer day, but filtering it through the metaphor of pretending to play a video game.
As you can see, the online launch served its purpose thanks to you! By the Rivers of Brooklyn made it not just into the top 50, but into the top ten of Indigo’s bestsellers for June 17, due to all those of you who ordered the book yesterday. I hope you receive your copies promptly.
Books published by smaller regional presses need all the buzz they can get to attract some attention on the national scene, so this has been a huge help and I really appreciate it. I am up there with Dean Koontz, Stephanie Meyer and Dan Brown — perhaps not literary giants, but definitely household names!!
What would be even more amazing is to keep it going for a couple of days (or more), because the longer it’s up there, the more people who haven’t seen the book before will notice it and check it out. So if you didn’t get in on the online launch yesterday but were thinking of ordering the book, do it soon, and you’ll still be helping get the word out about the book.
It’s the official online launch of By the Rivers of Brooklyn. And you get the same thing the people at the live launch got: a little bit of me reading from the book (at the launch, the reading was longer, and the lighting was better!):
Here’s how you can participate in the online party:
1. Post here to say “Hi!” “Congratulations!” “I’m wearing my virtual pink silk party dress and while nibbling on a piece of virtual chocolate cheesecake!” or whatever gets you in the party mood.
2. Go to THIS LINK and order a copy of By the Rivers of Brooklyn. The more orders we get in one day the more buzz it will create around the book on Indigo’s site (at least, that’s the plan).
3. Post here and say, “I ordered a copy of the book today from Indigo!” If you would like to be entered in the prize draw, add: “Please include my name in the prize draw,” and I will.
The official By the Rivers of Brooklyn launch is tonight from 7:00-9:00 at Bianca’s restaurant on Water STreet in St. John’s. If you’re in town, please drop by!
In honour of launch day, a new promo trailer for the book that I put together last night:
A little while ago I posted about my uneasy relationship with the academic world over the pursuit of three university degrees. Oddly, throughout all those years spent in classes and reading (or skimming) textbooks, I have not a moment’s hesitancy in saying that 85% of everything I know, I learned from reading novels.
A well-written, well-researched novel can open doors into a time or a place that you could never visit in real life — and even if you could, you’d never see it through the eyes of someone born and belonging there. Novels open the door to professions and problems that are only words on a page until you enter into the experience of people who live with them every day. I passionately believe stories are important, more important than textbooks which can only give you the skeleton of truth. We need flesh and blood and muscle, which is what stories provide.
Recently I picked up, one after another and with no particular plan in mind, three novels set during the second world war. Now, I know my World War Two — I teach it every year in World History. But each of these novels opened a layer of that incredibly complex six year period in history that I either knew nothing, or very little about. Nora Gallagher’s Changing Light brought me into the world of the physicists who worked on a project at once scientifically exciting and morally troubling — America’s first atomic bomb. Jamie Ford’s Hotel on the Corner of Bitter and Sweet showed me the internment of Japanese immigrants to the U.S. from the perspective of a young Chinese boy whose Japanese friend is taken away from him. And The Guernsey Literary and Potato Peel Pie Society, by Mary Ann Shaffer and Annie Barrows, vividly depicted the struggles and suffering of the inhabitants of the island of Guernsey while German forces occupied the Channel Islands.
So, as I’ve told you, the launch party for By the Rivers of Brooklyn is on Tuesday, June 16 at Bianca’s restaurant here in St. John’s.
If you can’t make it, you’re invited to the online party June 17, right here in front of your computer.
The goal is get as many people as possible to order By the Rivers of Brooklyn from indigo.ca in one day, in hopes of creating a little buzz around the book. All you have to do is order the book anytime on June 17 and, if you like, post here to tell me that you’ve ordered it.
For extra fun, you can post and tell me what virtual snacks you’re bringing to the virtual party, or anything fun like that.
For even more fun (I’m overusing the word “fun” now!), I am offering some incentives for people who tell me they’ve ordered the book on launch day.
In one way, I guess, I should be more casual about this, as it’s not my first book. There’s an element of the experience which is new every time, but I’ll admit that with the books I’ve had published over the last few years with Review and Herald, it’s become a little more routine — I’m always excited to hold a new book, but it doesn’t always seem like such a huge accomplishment anymore.
This one does, though. It’s been a long time coming.
I'm Trudy J. Morgan-Cole. I'm a published writer, but never as published as I'd like to be. I'm married to the one of the funniest men I know, and I'm the hardworking, frustrated, delighted mom of two bright and beautiful kids. I'm an adult-ed teacher who thinks my students are the bravest people on earth. I'm a Newfoundlander first and a Canadian second. I'm a Christian who loves Jesus, but finds some of his followers scary. I'm a Seventh-day Adventist who doubts, questions, and loves my church passionately. I blog about all this stuff, as well as about oooh! shiny things that catch my eye.
Click here to learn more about my latest book, "By the Rivers of Brooklyn," or here to buy the book!
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