Asks approximately no one.
When you don’t maintain a blog, much less promote your own website, you can’t expect villagers with torches storming the castle to protest that you have neglected your Internet presence.
But, with the imminent publication of ’Diversionary Fires’, and another novel in the final stages (‘Smoking With Didi’), it’s probably important I at least maintain appearances.
I predicted, when I first obtained this domain, that I would be negligent. I didn’t bank on my absence extending for months, however. I assumed I’d pop in, toss off a few clever observations, vague insults, something politically inflammatory and conclude with self-promotion pimpery, but it didn’t happen.
The excuses are plentiful and all equally paltry, so rather than tick down my old To-Do List as evidence of how distracted I’ve been, I thought I’d walk to the edge of the diving board, tuck under my knees and do a belly flop back into the dark and deep waters of self-promotion and, in doing so, self-exposure.
Re: paragraph #2 above. My novel ‘Diversionary Fires’ will be arriving this Summer from Amazon Select, as both an exclusive download and paperback. It is not the wide platform I had hoped for, but the publication industry has morphed into something difficult to navigate, and even my literary agent Mira has noted with frustration the new parameters and expectations. The “big” publishers continue to swallow one another up; even with distinct imprints within a publishing house, the odds of successfully putting a finished manuscript into a living person’s mitt has decreased. COVID-19 didn’t help. Many editors were furloughed or terminated. Book signings were canceled as the few brick-and-mortar bookstores closed (temporarily or for good). Escapist fantasy books, or self-help books, proliferated as readers sought an escape from quarantine, anxiety and the hubris of our then-President’s regin of terror.
Amazon IS the fallback. The distribution of reading material in this country yields to them, and then to impulse-buying outlets like Costco or Wal-Mart. Stop and study the endcap of the TARGET book section. Between the celebrity confessionals, cookbooks (another category that enjoyed a surge, since everyone was dining at home), bodice-ripper historical romances that constitute a series and the latest 138-chapter mystery from James Patterson (and each chapter is about 2 1/2-pages long), I’m not sure anything of literary aspiration has a place. This isn’t snobbism; it’s fact. I as much as anyone relish a good tell-all, and Ina Garten could open a ‘Barefoot Contessa’ outlet in my home, as every book of hers lines a sagging pantry shelf. Even the most captivating synopsis, glamorous author photo or hyperbolic blurbs will go ignored in the short-attention span world in which we reside. (Rack “jobbers” also populate those endcaps, as they do the front tables in big-box bookstores, so there’s a lot of money involved in ensuring placement and refreshing that inventory.)
I have no objection to my novel keeping company with a head of lettuce, a plunger or baby’s first shoes in a shopping cart, but the competition is fierce to become that product.
So I will be Tweeting. And Facebooking. Offering sample chapters or excerpts. Even doing giveaways on social media. This is the game now. Authors are expected to aggressively generate their own hustle. The more-celebrated ones have staff. I do not, unless three middle-aged cats count. There will be ads on Amazon, on Facebook, in select print publications…but Rodney Ross will be the ringleader. It’s not a role I relish — I’d rather be writing, or addressing that nonstop To-Do List — but you do what you gotta do.