Advance copies of THE NECESSARIES

So I just got a box of Advance Reader Copies for my new collection The Necessaries, and I’m noticing how the delirious joy of having a copy of one’s book to hold in one’s hands gets overwhelmed fairly quickly by the need to find review sites, prepare a press kit, stuff and mail envelopes, and find more reviewers to beg and plead with and pester to choose your book to read out of all the other hundreds of thousands of books they could be reading at this very moment. I’m not saying there isn’t still joy. I’m just saying that marketing is a very different energy than writing or publishing, and—like a newborn baby, or teaching a class—it will gladly suck up as much time as you are willing to give it.

That said, I thought that loyal followers of this blog & readers of The Writing Well should get first dibs at ARCS. Want to jump out of plane with a skydiving mom or talk your son down from the roof? Want to rush to Angeline’s rescue with Sal, or rock on the porch with Nell while her husband croaks inside? Want to see what a bachelorette party looks like for Dana and Parker in Bay City, or follow Lulu the Lesbian’s advice? If you just have to know what’s going on with Lucy and her mom, then you want a copy of THE NECESSARIES. Here are two ways to get yours:

There’s a digital copy available at the publisher’s website if you follow this link. The password is in the comments to this message and will get you your own PDF copy for review. This should be viewable by most e-readers or on a computer desktop.

If you’d like a print copy, there are two ways to do that: leave a comment to this message with “pb” or a notation of your choice, and I’ll enter you in the drawing. Or use the Contact page on this website to alert me that you’d prefer a hard copy to review, and I’ll put your name in the hat. I’m raffling off a print ARC at random times until the box is empty, so if you don’t win right away, don’t lose hope!

I welcome an honest review anywhere you want to leave it. If you wish to share the link or text with me, I will happily brag on social media and on this site. There are all sorts of marketing-relevant reasons that reviews are good, but the real reason is simpler: we authors want to write something you’ll enjoy and remember. We want to worm our way into your attention and your life and share something that matters, that you’ll take with you. And if we know that happened, that gives us the courage to sit down with the pen and the blank page and the frowning buzzing computer screen, and see if we can’t come up with something else to connect our worlds.

At the Banned Books reading at the Rock Island Public Library last night, I read Chaucer’s Retraction (in Middle English, of course). I make the same plea, in modern English, dear reader, to you: If there be anything in this little book that pleases you, then praise be to the Creator and Font of all Art. And if there be anything that displeases you, attribute it to the default in my knowledge and my lack of skill, and not to my will, for my will is only to please.

Happy reading, whatever is on your bookshelf. (But I certainly hope THE NECESSARIES will make the list.)