A New Year, and a new look for one of my favorite novels :)
(Like I can really choose a favorite! Hah.)
The goal: see if a different look can help me position the novel more effectively. So much of Can Job’s plot hangs on what it’s like to work in corporate marketing, and yes, the novel pokes gentle fun at my fictional, fumbling Diptych Corporation. But the book is also a romance, and I don’t feel that the last cover, much as I liked it, conveyed “romcom.”
So here’s to a new experiment….
So I’m giving away five copies of Can Job, print edition, on Goodreads.
And I’ve been monitoring how my giveaway has compared to the others by watching it in the site’s “Most Requested” list.
I check again this morning — and this is what I found. Totally cracked me up :-)
Hiya, neighbors!
UPDATE: contest over but you can purchase a copy of Can Job here.
UPDATE #2: Can Job got a new cover :)
A porcupine ate this sign.
So we indie authors lob tons of marketing advice at each other.
Let me know when someone answers the most important question of all:
Why is it harder to market yourself than somebody else?
Actually, now that I think about it . . . this may be just a variation on that other perplexing paradox: in general, it’s easier to solve other peoples’ problems than your own.
Ever notice that? You can tell when someone else’s relationship is a disaster waiting to happen. You know when somebody else should quit his/her soul-crushing job. It’s easy to tell when someone else’s self-destructive habits are out of control.
Meanwhile, someone dares to offer you some extremely good and timely advice . . .
“Maybe you should dump the jerk” or
“Why don’t you just quit?” or
“Ya know, there are other foods besides Ben & Jerry’s Chunky Monkey”
. . . and you bristle and snarl like a porcupine with PMS.
I can’t!
But how will I pay the bills?
Are you saying . . . I’m FAT?
Why would anyone want to buy my camel?
Anyway. Those of you who noticed that my Can Job book description was pretty fugly: no worries. Because if you’d mentioned it, I wouldn’t have been able to fix it anyway.
But you were right. It was too much information, and not enough tease. I see that now.
So here’s the rev. Let’s see if it helps sells books . . .
They’re launching a product that will save the company.
At the biggest trade show in the universe.
Their careers are at stake.
Heck, the future of the entire CITY is at stake.
Then they discover that the product doesn’t actually exist . . .
Poor Taylor. Her mother got her a PR job at Diptych Corporation, and she’s definitely in over her head . . .
__________________________________
“Taylor.” Basil wet his lips. “We should probably get together right after this. Are you free?”
Taylor nodded.
“Good. Meet me in my office. We have a lot to do. If you need lunch, we’ll order up from the cafeteria. I don’t usually eat lunch.”
She nodded again.
The meeting dragged on.
Taylor’s notepad filled with scribbles. Hire photographer for press kit photos, check with corporate communications on list of press contacts, check with corporate communications on list of analysts, tradeshow back wall/customer quotes? She smiled at everyone and nodded her head until her neck ached. Fake it fake it fake it.
Finally it was over.
Everybody stood up.
“See you in a few minutes,” Basil reminded her as they were leaving.
“Sure thing.”
She turned toward her cubicle.
“Hey, protest girl.” It was Miles. He’d caught up with her and was speaking now just above a whisper, his lips close to her ear. “Blow him off.”
“I can’t blow him off. You heard Darryl.”
“Yeah. Darryl’s an idiot, too. But I’m telling you. Baz is going to dump his entire job onto you. He’s a lazy f**k and he’s spotted a sucker. That would be you.”
“Thanks, you’re a gem yourself. What are you even doing here? I didn’t think anarchists stooped to working for multi-national corporations.”
“This isn’t a job, it’s an infiltration.” He grinned at her. Ouch. He was very cute. His eyes were hazel in the middle and brown around the edges, and his hair curled out at the tops of his ears.
She looked away.
They were at her cubicle. She stepped inside and hesitated. She should be doing something, getting something, but what was there to get? Maybe . . . another pen.
Miles stood at the cubicle entrance, watching, seeing too much.
Taylor rounded her desk and opened the top drawer.
Miles stood aside to let her back out into the aisle. Aisle. Really a passageway, a beige fabric alley formed by the walls of her neighbor’s cubes.
She hesitated again.
“That way,” Miles pointed. “Turn left at the copier.”
“Thanks.”
“Yeah. And don’t say I didn’t warn you.”
She went on to meet her fate . . .
_______________________________________
Want to read more? Click here to buy a copy of Can Job.
So this cracks me up.
One of my characters in Can Job
Mind you, the book is not really political, unless you count poking fun at politicians as “political.” The particular pol that figures in this scene is Bo Valgus, whose biggest mistake was not his position no the issue necessarily but that he wasn’t quick enough to voice support for it during a local radio interview. This being fiction, I also couldn’t miss a chance to take a dig at a certain former state governor :-)
The DJ had asked his opinion about same-sex marriage and he’d answered “I haven’t had a chance to think about it, to tell the truth.” The idiot. Everyone knew that a same sex marriage would have come to the floor if ex-Governor Eminent Flipzer’s ungovernable hetero sex drives hadn’t led him to disgrace and ruin. Well, if not ruin, then a brief time-out to think about what a bad boy he’d been.
Overnight, the legislature had become suddenly paranoid about any issue associated with the letters s-e-x.
And so here they were, to express their chagrin with Bo Valgus.
Anyway, I’m laughing today because only a couple months after self-pubbing the novel, a same-sex marriage bill has now passed in our state.
My book is already dated!
lol
But I really couldn’t be more pleased :-)
As one of my FB friends posted, it’s a great day to be a New York Stater.
