oh, the pressure

I’ve got an urge to hide in the back of my closet with a big bar of chocolate. And why, you’re wondering. Or maybe not, but I’ll tell you anyway.

It’s not the deadline for getting the first pass proofs of QoS back to the publisher; it’s not the deadline for finishing Pajama Jones. Or at least, these things produce the normal day to day pressure that I can (usually) cope with.

The source of my wanting to hide in the closet has to do with the fact that Tied to the Tracks is about to come out. This is always the worst time. Waiting for reviews is never fun. And today the publicist emailed me with news about what she was up to (all good stuff, yes) to ask that I keep her in the loop about whatever publicity/marketing stuff I was doing for Tied to the Tracks.

Now, see. Beyond posting here once in a while, I’m not really doing anything to promote Tied to the Tracks because well, I’m busy with the next book. And then today Fuse#8 posts about a small press book that has hit number one on Amazon before it even came out because of the efforts undertaken by its blogging author. Now I feel like a slacker.

And on top of that, over at the Smart Bitches there’s a discussion about ARCs being sold (on ebay and elsewhere), about unscrupulous reviewers making a buck off ARCs, and how authors feel about that. A rather sharp discussion has broken out in the comments. Some readers are disgusted with us authors. Authors have no right to be angry about the ARC issue; we are all whiny babies, some of those commenters tell us, and we should get over ourselves.

A thought comes to me. A crazy but perhaps ingenious idea. A cyber fistfight, a hair-pulling screaming cursing girl rumble between me and an angry Smart Bitch commenter. Now, that’s what I call publicity. It’ll get picked up on the news services, and people will click there way here to watch the bloodshed. What’s this all about? they’ll ask, and somebody will tell them: this new book, see. Tied to the Tracks, it’s called. And there’s something called an arc. I heard a guy say it’s some kinda sequel to that Raiders movie, Harrison Ford’s gonna play the lead. You wanna buy a copy, you’d best get moving, bub. I hear they’re all sold out at Amazon and Barnes and Noble too. Look at the way those two are going at it. I ain’t seen a spectacle like this in years, I tell ya. Years. Must be some book.

Tags: Smart Bitches