I am riding the crazy train again.
In just two more days, I have not one but two new stories coming out – “Through the Veil” in the anthology “Myths Untold – Faery” and my story “Repetition” in the spring “MCB Quarterly”. So I am no longer an author – I am now J. Scott Coatsworth, master promoter of the works of the obscure author of the same name.
Promotion is a totally different skill set from writing. As an author, we can hide away in our writer caves and forget to shower, burrowing down the rabbit hole after our characters in a mad rush to get to the end of the story.
As promoters, we write blurbs. And blog posts. And we kiss babies.
As authors, we can be antisocial and smelly and superstitious, rubbing our lucky rabbit’s foot before we sit down to write or refusing to change our underwear until we finish the book, and people just nod and say sagely to one another “He’s a writer.”
As promoters, we are expected to be social and witty and knowledgeable about our own works – which we may have finished writing ages ago and subsequently totally forgotten in the intervening months. We’re supposed to gleam and sparkle at signings (yeah, like I ever get signings). And oh, and we’re supposed to smell nice.
And oh my god, don’t get me started on the dreaded blog tour. I am becoming famous (or rather, infamous) for my blog tours from hell, and this time around is no exception. In fact, it’s a little crazier, because I am branching out – simultaneously setting up tours for two books at once, “Myths Untold – Faery” and June’s “A More Perfect Union” anthology. And I’m setting up not just a regular blog tour, but a review tour too. So I am *this close* to being certifiably insane.
So I take a deep breath and close my eyes, and I tell myself that someday all of this will pass. We’ll sell a bunch of copies (one would hope) of the books and journal, and then I will go back to being J. Scott Coatsworth, obscure author.
I am so looking forward to not having to shower.
So how crazy does promoting your work make you? And what do you do about it?