HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN: First, I cannot get over how fantastic it was to see so many of you on Thursday. Wow wow wow! That was a day to remember! And I hope, I truly hope, that it will encourage first time posters to join with us more often! We absolutely adored seeing you, and learning about you, and it makes reading the blog so different, now, being able for me to imagine all of you out there.
(And your Valentine stories were great! Also, we had some winners throughout this week, too, and I will announce those all on Sunday.)
Also! You know how we love a THEME! And maybe the wonderful (I’m not exaggerating one bit, take a look at her bio) Christine Murphy might have read Carter Wilson’s advice-to-readers blog on Wednesday—although maybe not—and today she has more ideas about being a good citizen of book world. And you can tell just by reading them what a terrific writer she is!
And make sure you look at her bio and info on her debut novel at the end of the page. Amazing!
One Author's Plea to Prospective Book Event Audiences
Book events are strange affairs. Populated with family and friends, strangers off the street with nothing else to do that day, or people who genuinely think warm cheese and Q&As about which pencil an author uses are interesting. As I embark, for the first time, on a series of events where I will be on stage, instead of in the audience, I consider what I would love to have from an audience.
1. Show up.
Our publicist tells us we’re not going on tour because events don’t sell books.
We do not believe them.
We are convinced they’re lying, because the household name we follow on social media just returned from a seven-month world tour (#grateful he posts next to an announcement for the next book he sold) and he sells books.
So we preen and prep before our single event at the bookstore where our friend works, convinced the room will be packed with adoring fans.
We arrive and say hi to our parents and long-suffering spouse (who we forgot to mention in the acknowledgements- amazing, really, that they showed up at all) and ask the helpful clerk behind the desk where the stage is and she points to the empty space between the history shelves, where the teenagers are making out because no one ever looks at the history shelves.
Please. Attend the event. Attend any book event for any author, for any book. We are a weak and neurotic people. We are desperate for attention. Please show up. Buy the book. Speak to our family (easy to spot- they’ll be the only other people there). Lie and tell them you read a review and you are so excited to meet us. Let us feel like the decade we spent on something that earned us, after taxes, enough for three sodas, means something to someone. You can return the book tomorrow.
2. Ask a question
Please ask a question. Any question. Much like a fortune cookie with “in bed” at the end of it, just add “while writing?” to whatever is on your mind and make that your question.
-What did you have for breakfast (while writing)?
-What do you think about modern politics (while writing)? (Maybe not, actually. Never mind. Stay away from politics.)
-Did you really film a video in your bathtub on Instagram (while writing)?
We don’t care. We stare blinking into your generous eyes, shaking like a chihuahua with a bladder infection at the thought of someone other than our mothers showing an interest in our work. It’s pathetic. We know that. You know that. Ask a question anyway.
3. Ask us to sign it.
Please do this. We’ll be so excited.
Daydreaming about signing novels is how pretentious intellectuals daydream about signing autographs. Tell us to write something ridiculous, so we can huff and have a story to tell our friends, a story which, ostensibly, is about the thing you made us write, but in reality is about the burdens of fame. We would love to be able to tell stories about the burdens of fame.
4. Tell us you are looking forward to the next book.
This one is easy to remember. We’ll be talking about our next book, even though we haven’t started writing it yet. We’re terrified. Secretly, we’re hoping that the first book will do so well we’ll never have to write another one.
Knowing that someone other than our agents and our mothers are expecting another book is a different sort of motivation. Oh god, we’ll think as you tell us how excited you are, someone actually cares. And it will remind us, even if we think you’re lying, that we care too.
HANK: Ohh, this is great, absolutely great! And since my new book is a thriller about book events--truly, they are front and center in so many scenes--I have been thinking and thinking about what it's like to be on the author side of the microphone. I’d say 99% of the time, it's brilliant fabulous fantastic. But one of the time... well, there's that. And we'll talk about that later.
But weigh in, Reddies, tell us some things about book events! From the attendee side of the microphone, what do you think? From the author side, what do you think?
CHRISTINE MURPHY has lived, worked, and traveled in more than a hundred countries, including living for eleven months in a tent across the African continent and a year as a resident in a Buddhist nunnery in the Himalayas. A trained Buddhologist, Murphy has a Ph.D. in religious studies. This is her first novel.
At a Ph.D. program in Southern California, Sarah and her best friend, Nathan, spend their time working on their theses, getting high, and keeping track of the poor air quality due to nearby forest fires. No one believes Sarah when she reports a fellow student for raping her at a party—“He’s such a good guy!”—and the Title IX office simply files away the information, just like the police. Nathan is the only person who cares.
When Sarah finds Nathan dead of an overdose from a drug he’s always avoided, she knows something isn’t right. She starts investigating his death as a murder, and as the pieces fall into place, she notices a disturbing pattern in other student deaths on campus.
As a girl, Sarah grew up in the forests of Maine, following her father on hunts, learning how to stalk prey and kill, but only when necessary. Now, she must confront a different type of killing—and decide if it can be justified.
Notes on Surviving the Fire is a story about vengeance, the insidious nature of rape culture, and ultimately, a woman's journey to come back to herself.
