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Where, When, How Much, What Flavor.
Remote posting from Canyon Ranch, where I'm hanging with my parents and trying to relax. Jet lag is screwing with my sleep though which makes me all obsessive and weird. Uusally when I can't sleep, I start mentally fretting about the days or weeks ahead, what I need to do, and what a big inconvenient life-rockblock it is. And this is at 5 Am, clearly telling me I've crossed over the median of sanity.
What do you do when you can't sleep?
Hey ya'll. I'm leaving for vacation with my parents and to meet with my new publisher in New York. I'm set to return on the 6th.
I may be posting from the road when I get the chance. But most likely, updates will rather sporatic for the next two weeks.
See you soon. And thanks for all your book related well wishes. I really appreciate it.
I guess I should stop being cryptic...
The big news on my book is that a publisher has bought it. Pending a ream of paperwork and a few signatures, my anthology (at the moment titled Generation Text: Writing and reading in the age of Information Overload) will be published by the Counterpoint imprint of Basic Books in 2005. This means I will have sold my first book 3 weeks shy of my 30th birthday.
Damn.
Plenty has happened since the end of the Virtual Book Tour. Talking about it feels like life is returning to normal. To wit...
1) My first literary event at the Canvas Cafe, "Lit at the Canvas" went off like gangbusters. The readers blew up the place and the crowd was packed full of friends, too many to name here. Canvas management seemed happy and the producer Melinda kept things running smoothly. A great beginning to what will hopefully be a very rich series of literature and related madness in the Sunset district.
And thank you all so much for coming. Your support makes it worth it.
Derek, who read a couple of great stories, posted some pictures.
2) After taking in a show at The Marsh theatre space last week, I got lucky and met one of the performers, Jen Leo. Jen has a fantastic travel writing blog called Written Road and is the editor of Sand in My Bra, a hilarious collection of women's travelling tales.
We have some friends in common and have emailed but that was our first time meeting. We ended up having a drink at a nearby bar wiith one of her friends, talking about publishing (the biz) and our respective professional and personal ambitions. We hit it off almost immediately.
Jenn sent me a copy of Sand the next day which I'm going to dive into soon and then see how I can help it along. Jenn's the kind of person whose enthusiam is contagious. I love people like that.
3) Scott and Megan are moving. Which just breaks my heart. I know Seattle is better for them and their future. I only wish them that. I'll just miss them a lot.
More to come...
Mary Roach's Virtual Book Tour has finished. i'd be interested in hearing everyone's feedback if you've got some.
Taking a much needed break from work this weekend, reading, writing, spending time with friends. Be back on Monday.
Hey ya'll,
Today is the last day of the Virtual Book Tour. An excerpt of Stiff makes an appearence in the July issue of Inkblots Magazine, Geoffrey Long's fine publication out of Washington D.C.
And that's a wrap. It's been a helluva ride that succeeded way beyond our expectations. I'll be soliciting reader feedback starting next week.
Thanks for your support.
Today on the VBT, an interview with Ms. Roach at Crabwalk.com, conducted by the master of ceremonies over there, Josh Benton.
Tomorrow, The Final Day. *sniff*
Hey ya'll,
Mary Roach shows up at Kottke.org to guest post today. Last I looked, there's a raging debate going on as to how one would feel giving their body to science.
Tomorrow, the tour crawls into Dallas and stops at Crabwalk.com.
The VBT is in Seattle today with a stop at Erik Benson's All Consuming. Erik interviewed Mary Roach earlier this week.
Tomorrow: Back to New York. Mary will be taking over Kottke.org for the day.
The VBT took the weekend off to give everyone involved some much needed rest.
Today it leaps into Toronto with a stop at James McNally's Consolation Champs.
In other news, the tour was listed at Library & Information Science News, a publication that keeps track of such things.
I've already begun thinking about the next tour, what book to feature, which blogs to include. We're getting to that scary place where people with money might want to be involved. That presents a whole host of difficult questions not the least of which is how uncomfortable I am with the perception that the tour might be for sale to the highest bidder. I've got a lot of thinking to do before we take the next big step here.
The VBT gallops into Oakland today with a stop at Brain Dump. Min Jung was gallant enough to step in for a last minute tour cancellation. She's a buddy and a readerly soul.
A few other nice mentions of the tour this week but I'm too tired to blog them. We'll be back at it on Monday. Have a nice weekend, everyone. And thank you for your support.
Today the VBT scoots down the east coast and pulls up at Heath Row's Media Diet. Mary Roach will be blogging there today about web sites, publications and general media of interest to those fascinated with the deceased.
In linky news, The Virtual Book Tour has been mentioned at Harrumph, Shift.com's weblog, Bookslut and is #28 on Popdex last I looked.
As with anything, the VBT is not without its detractors. Jessa Crispin of Bookslut has a valid point when she indicates that the tour has been a bit slow to get off the ground and the a series of blurbs across a series of blogs does not a revolution make.
I agree. Here's why the tour has been the way it has thus far. First, Mary Roach was out of town our first three days tending to real world tour responsibilities. We're hoping that things pick up now that she's back home. Second, every blogger commits to as much as they can based on their available free time. No one is getting paid here and if a tour site is too busy to do anything other than post an excerpt, then that's what they can do. Finally, we're all beginniners here. This is at best a rough draft of a new, barely-proven project. I'm hoping our mistakes for the first tour will be our improvements for the second.
One more thing...There's a mistaken notion floating around that the VBT is somehow acting as hired guns for Mary and W.W. Norton, her publisher. My guess is that this is an idea borne of lack of clairty on my part and a subsequent misundestanding.
1) The sites of the VBT receive no funds from publishers or me, only copies of the touring book.
2) Every blog is treated as an autonomous unit, with complete editorial control. So if any site on this tour hated Stiff, they had free reign to say so.
3) Touring books are selected by me, based on what I think will be an enjoyable read for the owners of the tour sites, and agreed to by them. I'm certainly not interested in wasting their time with lousy books and my intent behind the tour is to promote quality contemporary literature, the kind not often featured in the weblog community. To me, that contains much more intrinsic and collaberative value than trashing something for its own sake, just to show what an independent thinker I am.
We all love books here, good ones especially. The point of the tour is to bring good books to light. That's all.
Tomorrow, the tour heads into Oakland, for a stop at Brain Dump.
For those new to Where There's Smoke, I have a weekly newsletter called The Smoke Signal I send out that recommends three books worth taking a look at. You can sign up for The Smoke Signal here if you're looking to get more of your read on. Comes out weekly, isn't sold-off to anyone. The gist of it is below.
Political Fictions by Joan Didion (Vintage, $14 in paperback, 338 pp.)
Political writing bores me to tears. Unless it's written by one of about three people I trust on the subject. Joan Didion is one of those people.
Way back in 1988, Didion was commissioned to do a series of long essays on presidential elections by the New York Review of Books. I read a few scattered across the book and was, of course, wowed by her cool, wise and (if it's possible considering the subject) unique perspective. Didion follows candidates on foot, hangs out with airport security guards and gives a kind of New-Journalism-With-Crows-Feet take on the process that most armchair pundits don't do for feat of getitng their hands dirty. She also avoids ideologuing and sticks with the process, one now so foreign to the roots of democracy that calling it that is as converse as calling truth fiction.
Or put simply, a book about politics for smart people not that interested in politics.
Team Rodent: How Disney Devours the World by Carl Hiassen
(Ballantine, $8.95 in paperback, 83pp.)
I found this one at an east bay booksale after remembering my friend Jeremy had recommended it to me many moons ago. It's a book length essay/rant about how Hiaasen, bestselling mystery writer and native Floridian considers Disney the 800 pound mouse leaving its droppings all over the Sunshine State.
It all amounts to little more than a well-researched rant but in the hands of a pro like Hiassen, it's downright hilarious. And not being much of a Disney fan myself, it's a delicious sort of cheapshot
Team Rodent was part of the Library of Contemporary Thought series that Ballantine put together several years ago. It gave well-known writers a chance to explore some issue in a small book/long essay format. I have no idea what happened to it but it's a neat idea.
Pieces of the Frame by John McPhee (Noonday, $9.95 in paperback, 308 pp.)
I thought I was the world's biggest John McPhee fan even though I'd only read one of his books (Levels of the Game about Arthur Ashe's winning the U.S. Open). Then my friend Josh introduced me to Pieces of the Frame, a collection of McPhee pieces that he'd deemed his favorite. He'd read about six McPhee books and walked away with the title.
McPhee was kind of the older brother to the generation of 60's New Journalists (Tom Wolfe, Hunter Thompson, Joan Didion etc.) who were all into reporters being self-consciously a part of their stories. McPhee himself doesn't appear too often in his work with a notable exception in this book "The Search for Marvin Gardens." here, he brilliantly juxtaposes playing Monopoly with friends and a vain search for the real Marvin Gardens. The result is a quietly devastating look at urban decay and the forgotton dreams of Atlantic City.
I wouldn't say John McPhee is for everybody. His prose can be painstaking and he takes his take getting to the point. When you arrive, what glory. If you're into the kind of writer who can take any subject and walk you through it with the precision, skill and wisdom of a sage, he's for you.
Today the tour, in one flying leap, heads back to the east coast and sets down in New York City at the virtual home of Carrie Bickner (recently married and now Carrie Zeldman I believe, in non-professional life), the Rogue Librarian. I met Carrie at SXSWi last year and invited her to sit on a panel I was moderating about books and digital culture. Her wisdom helped light the fuse for the idea.
The love continues. The VBT was mentioned at Anil Dashes Daily Links, The Morning News, Library Stuff, Jish.nu, Kottke.org and many many others. Thank you to everyone who has mentioned us on your blog, who has send emails of encouragment and who has inquired about participating in a future tour. If the last one is you, I encourage you to read our guidelines. It'll be easier for everyone that way.
I hope all this attention means we're onto something. My Spidey sense is tingling. I'm going to be dropping selected notes to publishers and editors I know to seed the clouds, if I have some time today.
Tomorrow: Mary Roach appears! She'll be taking over Heath Row's Media Diet for the day and blogging about dead people.
Today the tour cruises into California for a stop at Booboolina.com. Site owner Kristin Garrity will be providing her thoughts.
In VBT news: The tour was mentioned at Boing Boing! which is like a nod from Oprah in weblogistan. Thanks to tour member Heath Row for the tip-off.
Also, tour info has been amended to include a contact address (duh) and to illuminate a bit the origins of the idea. I was inspired by Ben Brown and Greg Knauss at So New Media, an excellent micropress based in Austin. Greg did this for his first book. I later invited Ben to sit on a panel with me at SXSWi on the interaction of web and book culture. I then borrowed liberally from Ben and Greg's idea and decided to try in a smaller concentrated way and with the New York publishing industry aware of what were were up to and the possibilities it contained.
So, in sum, my VBT was an amplification and a rejiggering of theirs, which would make me kinda like Elvis to Ben and Greg's James Brown.
Tomorrow, the tour pulls into New York City for a stop at Carrie Bickner's Rogue Librarian.com. Oh and if you're curious about Stiff or what you've read about it, why not pick up a copy?
Today's Stop: Mike's impressions of Stiff at Barking Moose.com in Philadelphia.
Tomorrow: The tour heads across the country to Booboolina.com.
In the spirit of the fine work done at So New Media and my interest in the web as a useful tool to connect readers with great books, I present The Virtual Book Tour, where a selected author appears at 10 weblogs over a two week period to raise awareness of their book and promote a quality work of contemporary literature without leaving their living room.
Our first touring author is Mary Roach, author of the new book Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (W.W. Norton, 224 pp.). Mary is a columnist for Reader's Digest and a contributing editor to Discover. Her work has appeared in Salon.com, GQ, Vogue and The New York Times Magazine.
Mary will be appearing at a different weblog each working day this week and next week either in the form of an excerpt from the book, a review by the resident blogger, an interivew or Mary taking over that weblog for a day. You can follow the tour on this map.
I'm really excited about the possibilities of this. I've outlined my goals for the tour on my new professional site and you can follow the tour on this map put together by tour member and mad talent, Erik Benson and here as well.
First up: Mike Cavalho's Barking Moose.com. I know Mike from the last two years at SXSWi and have been looking for a project to include him in.
10 points for anyone who gets the pun in the title of this post...
What a lovely Independence Day. Suzan and I arose early for our annual session of Flag Counting, this time accompanied by our friend Wendy. The rules of Flag Counting are simple...
1. You do not talk about Flag Counting (that was Wendy's)
2. Only American flags, outside, that can unfurl count. That means nothing hung in a window or no flag murals, xeroxes or anything like that.
3. You must, as much as possible, not know where you are going. The whole idea behind Flag Counting is to get all together lost and disoriented while seeing your environs with new eyes and a fresh perspective.
4. The accompanying music must be of the blantantly but superficially American sort. For me, that means Springsteen, Mellencamp, and The Hooters.
Perhaps due to anti-war smolder in the city, flag turnout was quite a bit lower than last year. Mysteriously too, we ended up in my friend Jack's neighborhood without ever trying and dropped by for a chat.
After dropping Wendy off, we beelined to Bill's Place for a classic All-American meal then stopped at Green Apple Books on the way home. Many of Northern California's independent bookstores were celebrating Independence Day by waiving the sales tax on all purchases. Green Apple was even giving away free hot dogs.
I went in looking for one book. And came out with six.
After snagging some garderning supplies for Suzan (I got her a rooftop garden for her birthday), we headed home and killed time before the fireworks. We had plans to meet up with Tantek and Amber but I left his phone number at home. We settled for a drink afterward after meeting at the foot of Buena Vista Park.
Arriving home before midnight, I hustled to the roof of our building to perform a yearly ritual. Since 1994, I have ended the 4th of July with a song by The Hooters called "Washington's Day", about faith, healing and the hope that when the world is a better, truer place, that we will all be there with the one's we love to tell the story of how it happened.
Here's how it goes...
"Did you think I could ever forget?
That night by the Arlington Flame?
In the silence I heard it,
Through streets so deserted,
You whispered and called me by name.
Did you think I could ever forget?
That powerful look in your eye?
Where Lincoln stood strong,
and you held me so long,
There that night on the 4th of July."
That's a little of why this is my favorite holiday.
My friend Billy has written a killer first-hand look at societies relationship with its poor and disadvantaged. Even though I've made it sound a lot more Sociology Thesis than it is, please check it out. It's more than worth your time.
"Acting is all about honesty.
Fake that and you're in!"
--Samuel Goldwyn, seen on the marquee of a Goodyear Tire joint in San Francisco.
Bookmark Now: Writing in Unreaderly Times edited by Kevin Smokler
