Hello:
As a reminder, you subscribed to this newsletter, Fabulist Rabbit Holes, with an explicit promise that I wouldn’t overburden your mailbox with too many updates, though I did say that there’d be a higher frequency around the imminent release of my book, Novel Advice. Truly, I meant to send an update last week, but like most folks in the U.S. I couldn’t tear myself away from watching the news, and the memes — oh, the glorious memes.
But commerce waits for no one! So once more unto the newslettering!
A Call To Action
If you’re like me, you’ve got an address book spread across multiple different platforms and social networks. So last month, when I read a piece of advice that said “email everybody you’ve ever met and tell them about your book,” I wept. But I dug in and tried to make sense of my unruly contact lists. “Oh, look, the assistant to someone I had a meeting with ten years ago is in here three separate times, and one of my closest friends isn’t.”
After a painstaking process that required more spreadsheets than should be legally allowed, data loss due to format incompatibilities, sync crashes, and a lot of retyping, I finally beat my address book into a shape that vaguely resembles “ordered.” And then I sent about trying to spam as gently as I could. If you got that email and were annoyed, I apologize. And if you didn’t get that email, then let me know, because this address book cleanup with probably go on for the foreseeable future. Here it is — I don’t want you to miss out on anything.
Hello friends, acquaintances, and people who found their way into my Google contacts over the years. I hope that you’re managing to stay safe during these fraught times. Somehow, during everything that was going on in the world in 2020, I managed to write my first book––and it’s coming out next week!
"NOVEL ADVICE: Practical Wisdom for Your Favorite Literary Characters" is a collection of advice columns, with letters written by famous characters from literature, writing into an agony aunt named “Aunt Antigone” for help with their fictional dilemmas. I’ve been told that it’s "a hilarious and thought-provoking look at our favorite protagonists and antagonists, heroes and heroines, lovers and sidekicks seeking life-changing assistance help from an expert with her own dramatic background.” (That's what it says in the press release, anyway.)
I’m writing today to ask for your help in making a successful book launch. If you can, please:
1. BUY THE BOOK! The release date is next Tuesday, November 17th, and it's available now for pre-order at all your favorite bookselling services, such as Amazon and Bookshop.
2. SUBSCRIBE to my new newsletter, "Fabulist Rabbit Holes" to get a free preview of the book. The newsletter will have some other fun stuff related to the book release over the next few weeks, and updates on other projects I’m working on––there’s something very cool coming next year, which I’m not allowed to talk about yet. But it’s gonna be, er, killer.
3. SHARE about the book on all the social platforms of your choice. Review it on Goodreads, Amazon, or elsewhere. Twitter, Instagram, TikTok, Friendster, Google Wave––everywhere is helpful.
Due to the pandemic, there aren't any typical book launch events or signings, but I’ll be making bookplates for anybody who wants a signed copy. Sign up for the newsletter, where I’ll share how to get a signed bookplate shortly.
Or just reply to this email, and let me know how you’ve been during this topsy-turvy year. Many thanks from me, and from Aunt Antigone,
––Jay
Oh, Google Wave. I had such high hopes for you.
A Recurring Question
Speaking of that Goodreads page, the reviews so far are pretty good. I try not to look too much; as the conventional wisdom goes, if you listen to the good reviews, you have to listen to the bad ones too. Need for validation vs. fragility, and everybody loses!
However, I’ve seen a recurring comment that’s worth unpacking for a bit. It’s even highlighted in the one question asked on the Goodreads page.
Good question, Quill, and thanks for providing an answer Alexa K. I don’t think I should submit an answermyself. I’m not quite clear on whether we consider Goodreads a fannish space, and we’ve learned over the years that creators should tread into those spaces with care.
A lot of people make this same misreading. The funny thing is, when first discussing the concept with the publishers, so did I! It just seems easier to grok for some reason that the characters are the ones who would give you advice based on the struggles in their own stories. Perhaps it’s because we’re used to thinking of classic stories in terms of the lessons that we — the readers — have learned from them. It seems to take a bit of an adjustment to let go of that thought.
Not that I let go of it completely — it was the root of the idea that the agony aunt should be a fictional character too, and led me to using Antigone. You could argue that choosing different characters as agony aunts would give you some wildly different results. How would Ishmael give relationship advice? Probably at great length. Would Emma Woodhouse even finish reading a letter before sharing her extremely confident response? I’d imagine Bartleby the Scrivener advice column would be very short and repetitive.
My very smart publishers, who probably figured this out long before I did, came up with a subtle but smart way to address the issue through title design:
I love how the word “for” is in a different font. It subtly catches your eye, to alert you to the fact that there’s something important about it, but also lets the word fade into the background next to the larger fonts of the rest of the subtitle. I never would have thought of doing that, but it’s perfect. Have I mentioned how much I love Patrick Sullivan’s cover design? If bookstores were open, I could only image how eye-catching it would be on the shelf.
Some Links
A great piece about Walter Tevis, author of the novels “The Queen’s Gambit,” “The Hustler,” and “The Man Who Fell To Earth.” Tevis also wrote “The Color of Money.” The movie version is special for me, though I’m told it bears little resemblance to the novel, which is on my ever-expanding list of books to read. I’ll take the glasses of Fast Eddie Felson over the eyes of Doctor T. J. Eckleburg any day.
One of the few things that has been a reliable escape during this year has been the podcast Moby Dick Energy — each episode, host Talia Lavin has on a guest to discuss a chapter or two of Herman Melville’s “queer whaling epic.” It’s smart, funny, insightful, and a welcome respite from reality. I’ve listened to every episode, I’ve bought several pieces of their great merch, and you might even hear my voice giving a terrible line reading in the chapter “Midnight, Forecastle,” where they did a full performance of the scene with submissions from listeners.
For some reason, I’ve found myself watching this clip over and over again. Not sure why.
Next Time, on Fabulist Rabbit Holes…
The book release is almost upon us! But I’ve been getting reports that some people have already begun to receive their pre-orders. If that’s you, let me know!
Thanks,
Jay