Road to the Shelves: In the Bookstore
January 1, 1970
June 2004 Newsletter from the desk of Karen BrichouxContents:
*News
*Article: “The Road to the Shelves: In the Bookstore”
*What I’m Reading
NEWS (and lots of it):
*CONTEST: As a special “thank you” to my beleaguered but faithful newsletter subscribers, my June contest will be for newsletter subscribers only! But there’s a catch: to enter the drawing, you have to send me an idea for a newsletter topic. (Please! Limit your ideas to writing or the writing life!) So send me your idea (email@karenbrichoux.com), and I will put your name into the hat. If I draw your name, the prize is your choice of a) a signed first-edition copy of SEPARATION ANXIETY; or b) a signed first-edition copy of COFFEE AND KUNG FU; or c) a 10$ Amazon gift certificate. Your choice. The deadline for entries is June 18.
*Appearances: I’ll be talking about SEPARATION ANXIETY and signing copies at the following places this month:
June 9, 7pm CST: Rainy Day Books in Fairway, KS. See http://www.rainydaybooks.com for details.
June 17, 7pm CST: Watermark Books in Wichita, KS.
June 24, 7pm CST: Raven Books in Lawrence, KS.
Also during the week of June 22-28, SEPARATION ANXIETY will be the Book of the Week selection on the http://nalauthors.com/forums/. Registration is free and I’ll be chatting about the book and answering questions via email all week long. Please stop by!
*COFFEE AND KUNG FU recently sold Indonesian translation rights. And SEPARATION ANXIETY was purchased for translation into Russian.
ARTICLE: “The Road to the Shelves: In the Bookstore”
I went to one of my local bookstores yesterday, and there it was. My book. On the “new fiction” table and the shelves. Now the fun part begins. Now the book does what a book is supposed to do: Be read. By someone who doesn’t give a rat’s patootie about how many copies it will sell or how they’re going to summarize the book into a review. Now the book becomes one human reaching out to another human and saying, “Hey, isn’t life just like that?”
And all the promotion and agony and worries the author experiences just seem to melt away in the freedom of knowing that now the book is out on the shelves and there really isn’t a darn thing more to be done. Except hope that the readers connect to the characters and say, “Yeah, life is like that.”
Well, nothing to be done except revise Book #3. Which is what I’m supposed to be doing right now.
But I’ll take a few moments to savor the end of a successful road trip to the shelves.
WHAT I’M READING:
As I said, I’m revising, so pickings are slim.
CALL FOR THE DEAD and A MURDER OF QUALITY by John le Carré.
BEAT TO QUARTERS and A SHIP OF THE LINE by C.S. Forester.
LIKE THE RED PANDA by Andrea Seigel.