Kindle Fire GiveAway!

by Libby Hellmann






Interested in winning a Kindle Fire? If so, come on over here to find out more. The contest is running now.

Thanks.

Scatalogical Talk in a dive bar in Chicago

Arlynn Presser, former romance writer and all-around smart and funny woman, is conducting a year long project. She's decided to meet all her Facebook friends in person, even if it means traveling across the country or to the far corners of the earth. Her plans are to have a drink and videotape their conversation. She's convinced her friends have terrific stories to share.

I think it's a fabulous idea, and I was honored to be Friend #9. (Watch out Elliot Spitzer-- I'm right behind you). The conversation was about writing, but we were in a dive bar in Chicago -- are there any others worth going to?-- and it kinda sorta got off track.


Here it is.
Scroll down a post or two.

Have a great weekend.

Bigness

by Marcus Sakey

As those of you who follow me on Facebook know, I often post questions. Part of the reason is that I find the whole social media thing a little me-me-me oriented, and as a good Midwestern boy, I was raised to find relentlessly talking about myself impolite. But the larger part of the reason is that I'm fascinated by the answers.

Yesterday, my question was this: "What's a book or movie that you've read or watched over and over? Ready, Go."

As of this writing, 49 people have responded. Here are some of the big winners, mentioned multiple times:

• To Kill A Mockingbird (book and film)
• The Star Wars Trilogy (the real one, not the one for the kiddies)
• The Last of the Mohicans (film)
• The Lord of the Rings (films)
• Catcher in the Rye
• North by Northwest
• The Godfather
• The Shawshank Redemption
• Mystic River

This is, at first glance, one weird ass list.

But the more I look at it, the more sense I see. These are all big titles, by which I don’t mean so much that they made a lot of money, though they did, or that they were sweeping in scope, though most of them were.

No, the bigness I mean here is something else. It’s an ineffable sort of bigness. A sense that the story has weight, heft. Something that will endure.

That makes sense, of course, since my question was about books and movies that people have enjoyed multiple times. But as a writer, it’s also an interesting and daunting thing to recognize.

Something made these big. It didn’t just happen. A quality in the idea, or in the telling, or both, took these beyond the norm.

The vast majority of books and movies come out, live their day, and fade into the background. They aren’t lost, but they aren’t likely to get three or four mentions on a list like this. They aren’t likely to haunt the collective imagination of a wide group of people.

If I have a point, I suppose it’s this—I wonder if, as writers, this is a worthwhile test to apply to our own work. It would be a painful one, no question. This is a scary ass hurdle to put before yourself while you’re trying to create something from nothing.

But maybe it’s a good one. Maybe it can help. Maybe, if nothing else, aiming for bigness has value.

Meanwhile, I’d love to see more answers to this question. What book have you read a number of times? What movie can you always watch again?

Ready, go.

Not to talk about marketing, but . . .

by Sean Chercover

Okay, we don't really talk about marketing around here. Just not really our thing, and it's very well-covered by other people like this guy.

But this is really funny (thanks to Guyot for sharing):



Not only is it funny, and perhaps a bit painful, but it also motivated me to search for the author's website. Dennis Cass. Well, his blog. His Blogger blog. He doesn't have a website. Of course.

So he's a smart guy and produced a funny video that will at least attract other writers to his blog, where they will learn about his book. His video probably won't appeal to anyone outside the publishing industry, but a lot of people work in publishing, and they are the kind of people who talk a lot, and spread - for want of a better term - buzz.

I'm think about all this because Trigger City comes out in October and now is the time to start planning the tour and other promotional efforts.

Yes, I have a MySpace. And my first book has its own MySpace. I'm not linking to them here - this is not an attempt to get you to "be my friend." I frankly suspect that MySpace is a waste of time, but I'm there and have many friends. And I'm on facebook. No, I don't want to "forward and see what happens." I know what happens. What happens is, I spam all my "friends" with a picture of a puppy dog and the message "forward and see what happens."

God, is there any more complete waste of time than forwarding pictures of puppy dogs on facebook? Time's running out, folks. You only got another (insert estimate of your remaining days here) days left before you become worm-food. This is your life. And it is not, as they say, a dress rehearsal. Jo-Jo Dancer, your life is calling! Do you really want to spend it FORWARDING PICTURES OF PUPPIES TO YOUR "FRIENDS" ON FACEBOOK!!???

Ahem. Excuse the outburst. But you must know what I mean.

So . . .

. . . anybody care to share? Which marketing efforts (either online or off-) do you swear by? And which do you swear at?

MyFaceSpaceBook

by Marcus Sakey

So I caved. After years of resisting the pressure, I created a Facebook page.

Facebook, like MySpace and texting, is becoming one of those technical divides that marks a change between age groups. For me, it was email--when I was in college, email was just coming into mainstream use, and a remember many a conversation with "old folks" who didn't see the point. "Why not just call? they would ask, reasonably enough. And I'd try to explain as best I could, none of it really coming down to something you could put your finger on, just a statement that it was cool, and useful, and that like it or not, it was the way of the future.

Surprise! I'm one of the old folks now. I'm a little baffled by Facebook. Not how to work it--I'm a pretty technical guy, and have been on computers my whole life, so it's not that I don't understand. I understand. I just don't get it.

Or didn't, at least. After having spent a couple of days playing around, adding friends, installing widgets, and rating movies, it's starting to make a little more sense, at least as a way of keeping in touch with people. I can see how it would be especially useful if, say, your high school gang was going to different colleges. It's an easy, noncommittal way to say hello, to share your pictures, to keep people up on your moods. That part I can see.

Where I'm not sure it's useful is as a marketing tool. Unless I'm missing something--and I may well be, so fill me in--it doesn't seem like it's easy for people I don't know to find me, even if they're searching, unless we have a chain of friendships in common. Plus, once they get there, I'm still a little baffled about what they would do then. Compare their movie taste to mine? I guess that's something, but I'm not sure it's much.

I don't know. Anybody have thoughts on Facebook in general, or on using it as a marketing tool?

And anybody wanna be my friend?