Red Mosquito

epilogue wrote:

tragabigzanda wrote:That’s awesome. Any good insights to how she got her first publishing deal? Not asking for details, just curious if you’ve had that conversation with her.

It was a lot of factors. She finished her MFA in writing at the New School a few years ago. That put her in excellent networking position, obviously. Then there were two writer's retreats/conferences she attended where she met her agent and one of her editors. Then she finished the book, submitted to the agent, and the agent shopped it. Viking picked it up and here we are.

She's deep into her first draft of the next book now -- it's a ghost story of sorts, apparently. We're actually having drinks with her and her husband on Monday night. It'll be the first time we've hung out since my wife and I both finished the book. Can't wait to chat more specifics with her.

epilogue wrote:I didn't want to lead with this because I thought it would discredit my opinion somehow or make people less interested in checking it out... but Erin is my friend and neighbor. We've lived two doors down from each other for about 10 years. So, I heard about it from her.

I'd read a short she'd published a few years ago but I had no idea what to expect from this book. I was thrilled that it was so good but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't also super jealous and deflated by it, too. It's one thing when a stranger writes something great. It's entirely different when it's a peer and a friend. But this isn't about me and my bullshit. This is about Erin and her fantastic debut novel that I really, truly love and want everyone to read and enjoy!

A sweeping family epic, told over X generations

Mickey wrote:This is not a comment on Joey's friend's book but if there's one phrase in publishing copy that's a big nope for me, it's:

A sweeping family epic, told over X generations

Malloy wrote:in 15 years of posting in this thread, i've never see a poster rep a debut novel (that lacks sweeping marketing efforts) and two other posters immediately read it

Steve Albini wrote:Whenever there's active promotion on the part of somebody else, whenever I see somebody all dolled up for a fancy photograph and someone's handing out flyers or whenever there's active promotion for something like that, as an imposition on my day, I hate all those people and I want them to fail. I have a visceral reaction to advertising and promotion. There's just something about salesmanship that grates on me on a very base level and I react very negatively towards it. I want those people to suffer and I want their enterprises to fail.

tragabigzanda wrote:

dad wrote:i finally read an entire book this year. i picked this up at a local book shop the other day. love the cover.

This collection was my intro to Portis. Highly recommended.

Mickey wrote:Just turned in a dissertation chapter so I'm toying with the idea of diving into Gravity's Rainbow before I start the next one.

dad wrote:

Mickey wrote:Just turned in a dissertation chapter so I'm toying with the idea of diving into Gravity's Rainbow before I start the next one.

did you ever dip your toes in this one?

seems daunting af.

Mickey wrote:

dad wrote:

Mickey wrote:Just turned in a dissertation chapter so I'm toying with the idea of diving into Gravity's Rainbow before I start the next one.

did you ever dip your toes in this one?

seems daunting af.

I read Part I, which is about 170 pages or so. I was loving it--though it's definitely a trip and you have to be willing to give up a certain sense of control or understanding. Much of the book (at least in Part I) bounces between dream sequences that various characters are having and the putative real world of byzantine post-war bureaucracy in which they live, and there are occasional stretches where it's not clear which of those worlds you're in. But it's very funny, filled with penis jokes, and also very smart, and if you can just go with the flow it's not nearly as hard to follow as it is often made out to be.

I was planning to finish the whole thing by the end of January but then my wife and I were told, unexpectedly, that we had less than a five percent chance of ever having a biological child and I thought about killing myself for a few weeks (not too seriously!) and then about a month later my wife got pregnant and between all the prenatal monitoring and finishing my dissertation I never got around to picking it up again.