Well. I kind of make stuff up for a living. I’m not actually making a living, actually.

Go on a Beware the Hawk scavenger hunt with me!

This blog is at least 70 percent better when when my readers participate and send me stuff.

So, in that spirit, I’m announcing a contest. Actually, it’s better than a contest. It’s a scavenger hunt to celebrate the release of Beware the Hawk, as a physical book! From tomorrow, March 10,  until the release of Beware the Hawk in physical form, I will be assigning “missions.” And I will be posting (I hope daily) the best submissions.

Here’s how it works: Each day, I will log on and give you a mission. Complete the mission by going on twitter, and tweeting your find with the hashtag #bewarethehawk. Or, if you hate Twitter, post your submission on my Facebook author page for all to see. The best submissions will end up on this blog.

Sometimes I will ask you to take a photo. Sometimes I will ask you to post some information. Sometimes I will ask for a clever bit of writing.

All the missions will be listed on the Scavenger Hunt! page on this blog, so if you’re behind and you need to catch up, you can. Where is this page, you ask? Look at the top of this blog. See the tabs up there? There’s one that says “A.J.,” one that says “Beware the Hawk,” one that says “The Blogroll” and so on? It’s up there.

See?

In some cases these missions will be easier if you live near Boston and New York, because that’s where the book takes place. But if you folks from other areas get creative, I know you’ll be able to participate.

The first person to complete all the missions will win a signed copy of the book and another prize: If the winner has an iPhone, he or she will get a Beware the Hawk skin for his or her phone. (I will post the image when I finish designing it.) If not, I will offer the winner a tee shirt of his or her choice from my store. Including the forbidden Lonely Mountain tee, which you can’t see anymore, although it is there. I’m also planning some more tees, so there will be more of a selection.

The first five people to complete at least nine of the missions will get signed copies of the book.

Anyone who submits is highly likely to have their submissions featured on this blog. Especially if those submissions are clever. Why? Because I love to madprop my homies. That’s why.

Stay tuned folks. The first clue will be posted tomorrow!

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I’m reading at the Watertown Library! (And not silent reading like when I used to do my homework there.)

Ladies and gentlemen, I am pleased to announce that I will be doing my very first reading in just a little less than two weeks at the Watertown Library in Watertown, Connecticut.

This reading, which will take place at 7 p.m. on Wednesday March 28, will be very special because Watertown is kind of my hometown.* Also special? My mother worked for the library when I was growing up. She worked at the Oakville branch of the library and did all the story hours there for years. So I spent most of my time there during grade school and middle school. I shelved books and did my homework and occasionally had to be told off for being too rowdy.

And that may be what happens again, because I’m hoping to draw a big crowd to the Watertown Library’s main branch on the evening of March 28.

Here’s the deal: Watertown Library included e-books in their collection on the first of March. Because my book is an e-book, I’m going to give a talk about my experience publishing an e-book and then do some reading. And then? We party. Responsibly, and in a literary fashion, of course. I have no idea where people go to party on a Wednesday night in Watertown these days. If I’m honest, I didn’t even know where to party in Watertown when I was living there. But no worries, we’ll figure something out.

Warning: Parents of young children, my book has language in it. Not language, but language. Also, it has situations in it, which cannot be bleeped out the way language can. I will do my best to read responsibly, but my book contains adult material and I don’t recommend bringing the kids to hear me read.

Hope to see you all there!

*Actually I’m from Oakville, which is a big neighborhood/”census-designated place” in Watertown, but to people who aren’t from there, it’s basically the same thing as being from Watertown.

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Fabulous book news!

Last week I spoke to my editor at Vagabondage Press and she delivered some fabulous news: Beware the Hawk is coming to print on March 20!

This won’t come as a surprise to the people who follow my Facebook author page; they hear just about all my news just about as soon as it happens, thanks to my raging social media addiction and my possession of a smartphone. (Just another reason to “like” my author page, or stay the hell away from it.)

Beware The Hawk novellaI’m pretty excited. Beware the Hawk was planned as an e-book and an e-book only, so it’s exciting that a print edition is being released. Since it’s a novelette, it will be a pretty slim volume, but it will be fabulous to have it, to be able to do real book signings as well as virtual signings, to carry a bunch of books around in the trunk of my car so that I can peddle them.

Even better, it will be nice to have a copy of my book accessible to the folks who can’t read it on an e-reader, or who prefer not to. There are, actually, quite a few people who have approached me and said some variation of “I’d like to buy your book, but I don’t have an e-reader.” Well folks, save the date. On March 20, physical copies of Beware the Hawk will become available.

Another announcement: I will be doing my first actual event in my hometown, Watertown, Connecticut, at the Watertown Library. The date has changed from my original announcement. I will provide more information soon.

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Almost like being interviewed by the Paris Review.

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I want to share something extraordinary with you. Yes, it’s another interview, and no, I don’t think it’s extraordinary because it’s an interview with me. It’s extraordinary because of the sheer amount of effort the interviewer put into the piece.

This is an interview with writer Robert McGuire. Robert is a CT-based writer and a member of one of my writers’ groups. He is one of the most thoughtful and disciplined writers I have ever met. His blog Working on A Novel, is based on Journal of a Novel, the diary of John Steinbeck kept while he was working on East of Eden. According to Robert, that journal contained Steinbeck’s daily musings about technical problems in his draft, personal family dramas that were affecting his writing and his daily page count.” Robert, who is working on his own epic American novel, does the same on his blog.

His posts are a must-read for people who are writing novels, or who are interested to what the process of a very disciplined and thorough artist looks like.

This interview was no less thorough. It took a week a do over email, and the questions made me rethink my writing process. It is also the closest I may ever come to being the subject of a Paris Review interview. Interestingly enough, Steinbeck was scheduled for a Paris Review interview himself. He was too sick to do the interview, as it came late in his life, so his interview in the Paris Review interview archives is taken, partially, from his letters in Journal of a Novel.

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Imaginary interviews are fun; real interviews are much better.

There is a scene in The Commitments in which the main character is doing an interview with an invisible journalist while he’s in the bathtub.It is one of my favorite scenes in all of cinema because I’ve been doing interviews like these since early childhood.

http://youtu.be/41L0uedGlf8

Mine usually went like this:

“Q: A.J., tell me honestly; were you prepared for this Pulitzer win?”

A: Oh, certainly, I was. I promised my mom I would put Oakville, Conn. on the map, so I had to win the Pulitzer, or at least the Nobel prize.

Q: But Oakville is already on the map. Look, there it is, next to Waterbury.

A: (awkward silence.)”

That question didn’t come up when Brooke of Books Distilled sent me her interview questions last week, but many other questions that I’ve always wanted to answer did come up. I had kind of a blast answering these questions for real. Check it out.

Will it keep me from doing more fake interviews in the bathtub, or while I’m vacuuming, or while I’m weeding the garden or driving to work? Oh, hell no. I still have to win the Pulitzer.

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You can’t read a review of your book when you’re standing in front of a class.

On Mondays, I have kind of a crazy schedule.

I do a lot of work from home during the day, and then I teach a three hour class in the evenings, so I almost forgot to look for  this review of Beware the Hawk from Brooke of Books Distilled.

Truth be told, I didn’t even see the tweet that announced the review until I was standing in front of my class this evening, teaching them how to use Twitter.

I clicked over to the Twitter’s Interactions page to show them the @replies function, and voila! There was this tweet from Brooke:

https://twitter.com/#!/booksdistilled/status/169061232593215488

I saw that tweet and I was so excited,  but I couldn’t express that excitement just then, because I was trying to teach the finer points of hashtags.

It was torture not to click the link and read the review right there, because I’ve been nervously awaiting this review since the beginning of January, when I attended my MFA program’s alumni day .

This was just after my publisher told me that my release date would be Jan. 17, and that I’d better get cracking, and talk to some reviewers. I instantly thought of Brooke,  a grad school classmate, whose site, Books Distilled, has been posting reviews at a terrific pace since last April. At alumni day, I accosted the poor woman at dinner time, as she was headed to the salad bar, and asked if she’d be interested in reviewing Beware the Hawk.

I was a little nervous about asking a classmate to review my book. It’s always hard when you ask someone you know personally to do something like this, but luckily everything worked out. She agreed to review the book, she enjoyed the book and she even did an interview with me last week.

Please head over to Books Distilled and check this out. And then check back on Thursday, when Brooke posts our interview.

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This review is the best kind of peer review.

If the analytics on this blog are correct, no one visits the blogosphere on the weekend, because they’re out in the world, experiencing real life.

That’s as it should be, but I’m posting on a Saturday night anyhow, because I just got a wonderful reader review for Beware the Hawk, and I have to share.

In the interest of full disclosure, the reviewer (one Ms. Tamela Ritter) is a good friend, a former roommate, and the member of the writing group that helped me refine the first draft of Beware the Hawk, way back in 2003 and 2004.

I can hear the critics groaning now:”Why are you even excited about this? Sure she gave you a good review. She gave you feedback on the first draft. She practically helped you write the damn thing, didn’t she? And then she lived with you, so of course she has nothing bad to say about you.”

First of all, let’s address the roommate thing: Do a survey of my past roommates and you’ll find that to live with me is not to love me. I can think of at least three people who heaved sighs of relief once my stuff (and cat) were moved out of their apartments/dorm rooms.

Second of all, I’m excited about this because I have so much respect for Ritter’s own fiction. Her style is effortless, yet epic. There’s this beautiful nostalgic feeling about America – both the land and the people – in her work. The open road, traveling,  and a search for self are huge themes in her work. Her prose is poignant, but accessable. Soon it will be accessible to everyone; her novel, (I believe it’s titled From the Ashes, although that might have changed) will be released  later this year.

That’s why I’m excited that she reviewed Beware the Hawk so favorably; Ritter is one of my favorite authors.

Wikipedia defines Peer Review as “a process of evaluation involving qualified individuals within the relevant field.” Ritter is certainly that.

This is the best kind of peer review.

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Erin of Reinventing Erin interviews me.

Today represents Day Two of my blog-tour sojourn over at Reinventing Erin. Yesterday, I guest posted about the fears I had when the e-book was published, and today Erin’s been kind enough to interview me about my novella Beware the Hawk.

Who is Erin, you ask? Erin is a classmate of mine from the Fairfield University MFA program who is a long-time blogger. She’s a non-fiction writer, but she talked to me even though I was one of the unruly fiction types.

Check out her site. You’ll be happy you did.

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After a brief hiatus, the blog tour for my novella continues.

The Beware the Hawk blog tour continues today over at Reinventing Erin.

It’s been a few weeks since I had a guest post, but now it’s time for Round Two!

The delightful Erin Corriveau invited me return to her Defining Moments series with a guest post. I’ve already guested on this series (I posted about having two names) and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience, so I was pleased when she asked me back. My defining moment this time? The moment my book went up for sale on Amazon last month.

I decided to use the guest post to talk about some of my insecurities, because although the publication experience was amazing and positive, I still found that I was battling my fears on the day my book came out. That’s not what I expected to happen; publishing a book was to me as getting married is to a Disney princess.

You know, I publish a book, live happily ever after, and  nothing bad ever happens to me again. Except that’s a silly expectation.

So head on over to Reinventing Erin today and check it out. Also, tomorrow, she’s posting an interview we did about the book, so come back tomorrow and take a gander at that, too!

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Guest blog on Word for Words, and the winners of the giveaway.

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Alas, Spy Week has come to a close, but what a close! Today I did a guest post on Word for Words, the blog of fellow Fairfield University MFAer Adele Annesi. It touches on the worries I had about my first published book being genre fiction, especially right after my graduation from an MFA program which teaches the art of writing literary fiction.

Head on over and check it out, and then stick around to check out Adele’s blog. Also, take a peek at her short story “Last Kiss Before Customs,” recently published in Midway Journal. Adele writes quiet, poignant fiction, and it’s always satisfying for me to read what she writes.

Now – onto the winners of the giveway. Here’s the deal. I am off two copies of Beware the Hawk to people who told me yesterday about the most ridiculous thing they’ve had to do for work. I did the drawing this afternoon, throwing the names of the four entrants into the only hat I own that resembles a fedora. And here are the winners:Beware the Hawk giveaway winners.

That’s right! Dreampeddler, whose name is Jodie, and who once cleaned hotel rooms for a year and a half at an establishment where the other maids called her Katie (and the management made her clean the bathrooms with only the dirty towels) wins, as does Discourse in C Sharp Minor who spent her first day on the job filming a lecture on “nitrogen-pooping nematodes.” I love how excrement is a part of both the winners’ stories.

Our other two contestants were Cheese-borrowing Erin and Schnauzer-beard blow-drying Elizabeth.

Winners, please shoot me your emails and I will send you your prizes. And if one of you already has a copy and would like to cede your prize and give it to a contestant who doesn’t have the e-book, please let me know.

Thanks for playing!

 

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