If we were having coffee today I’d be telling you about last night’s reading.
Reading?
That’s right, for the first time anywhere I took part in a reading in a local bar. This reading was associated with another author event this weekend, a local author fair at the library.
The bar event was called “Noir at the Bar” and, for the most part, featured readings about crime or mystery. Many pieces were short stories. I cobbled together a few scenes from my first novel The Fever. The timing was short, less than ten minutes, so I was probably a bit pre-occupied with time so I tended to rush a little. Seriously, twelve or fifteen minutes would have made a big difference for me. And the lighting was a bit splotchy, with some kind of revolving color wheel, which probably bothered me more than others. I wouldn’t say it was one of my best speaking engagements but it certainly wasn’t even close to the worse.
It seemed well-received though. I was the only author who presented my work with commentary, others just read. I was given a lot of positive feedback on using that approach, so that was good.
Saturday’s event will be more standardized, a hodgepodge of local writing talent from many facets of the writing community will all be crammed together into a room in the library. There will be readings there too, but mystery writers were asked to shift to the bar event because the main event was basically overbooked.
Getting into the trenches and getting the word out is just another one of many things an author must do. I need to do more of it.
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Thomas Fenske is an author living in NC. His latest novel, LUCKY STRIKE, will be officially published next week (You can pre-buy now). To celebrate that, the Amazon/Kindle edition of his first novel, THE FEVER, is on sale for 99 cents through September 30.
You can find links to all of my books at http://www.thefensk.com/main.html
If we were having coffee today I’d have a couple of things to share.
My new book, Lucky Strike, has always been slated for a publish date of October 1. A local author event late in September has complicated those plans a little. The Kindle edition is still slated for an October 1 release, but my publisher has graciously allowed an early release of the paperback version.
Scratching the Surface 