Tag: excerpt

Born and Dying: My First Book’s First Year

cvrIt’s not like I had no idea what to expect. As a bookseller I assisted with author events both swanky and huge (Pat Conroy at a Connecticut yacht-club brunch) and tiny and spare (local writers at my used bookstore in Kingston, New York). As a book buyer for the wholesaler Baker & Taylor, I bought everything from small press titles to kids books to some of the largest adult trade lines (all of which have since folded into Random Penguin–yes, I know they prefer the names reversed.) Book promotion is an enormous challenge at every level. Even backed by a corporate publisher’s PR machine, many books struggle to attract interest. Every year, thousands of excellent books are published and ignored. It’s an honor to reach any readers. And if you hear from a few who loved your book and got what you were trying to say–well, let that wash over you, because that connection is everything. You get used to the non-responses from places you’d hoped to appear. You get used to leaving readings with unsold books. To empty seats in the audience. To other books getting more attention and praise. You stay grateful throughout.

So, to celebrate Not On Fire, Only Dying‘s first year, a multimedia look back. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: thank you for hearing me.

Pics or it didn’t happen: proof it wasn’t a strange, beautiful dream with too much public speaking:

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Original music composed by Naomi Hamby for Not On Fire, Only Dying:

“Marko’s Theme” was used for the book trailer. Here it is accompanied by the previously unreleased “Lola’s Theme.”

Speaking of the trailer:

Maybe you’d like another listen to Marko’s mixtape?

Select blog posts written through acceptance, publication, and promotion. Short and honest:

Thank you for hearing me. (12/31/14)
Cats get in the way. (1/23/15)
No big deal, but…MY BOOK HAS A COVER. *swoon* (3/26/15)
Blurbs and Preorders and THANK YOU. (5/4/15)
Presenting my book trailer! And insecurities… (7/3/15)
Brooklyn, beginning. (9/5/15)
Have I mentioned I have a new book out? (9/29/15)
But is it art? On book reviews. (10/18/15)
More than chocolate? (2/4/16)`
What do you want? (5/11/16)

Thank you to everyone who read this book (and to those who have a copy and might yet get around to reading it–no worries. Trust me, I know how that goes. Maybe once in a while something small and unrelated will remind you of Not On Fire, Only Dying.

Happens to me all the time:

More than chocolate?

10 days until Valentine’s Day! What does your lover want even more than chocolate? (Trick question. Your lover wants chocolate AND other stuff.) May I suggest a copy of Not On Fire, Only Dying?
Untitled-4You may have heard about its desperate, marginalized characters and Lola’s [possibly?] missing newborn, but did you know it’s also a love story? It is, truly. It doesn’t shy from ugliness but it believes deeply in hope and redemption and, yes, love.

Not On Fire, Only Dying is available from the publisher, Twisted Road Publications, your fave indie bookstore, or from one of the big guys—Right now it’s discounted at both B&N and Amazon. Thank you for the love you’ve shown me and my book over the months since its release. I already have my gift (but I’ll always accept chocolate).

xo Susan

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Excerpt (from Chap. 5): For the last year Marko has loved Lola from afar, following their one and only time together. Now they’ve just made love a second time.

__________

The night outside is endless black, rising into space. He has stripped off his sweater, at last, and everything else. He is curled around Lola, her bottom resting in the damp curve of his lap. His spine juts like the bony seam of a tortoise shell.

“Is he dead, Lola?” he whispers. He strokes a fingernail along her arm, watches the goose bumps appear and disappear.

She says nothing, but he knows she’s not asleep. Her breathing is light and irregular. For a moment she doesn’t breathe at all.

“Our baby,” he presses.

“We don’t—”

“Fine, Lola. Your baby.”

“Don’t you really want to ask, ‘Is he real?’”

“Is he?”

This takes her a moment. “As real as I am.”

“Is he dead?” Marko repeats.

He would rather be quiet. He wants to be here, with her, for as long as she’ll allow. Let her speak in riddles, or say nothing at all.

But now he’s asked, he must know.

It’s not her fault, so sick and no one watching her. Her sickness metastasized, but no one checked. She kept the extent of it hidden from everyone, even him. It’s not her fault, if one day she got confused. If she forgot the baby was real and fragile. It’s not her fault that being needed panics her.

They will bear the detective’s disgust together. Marko will stand beside Lola and explain that no one helped her, not even him, and she can’t be held responsible. He won’t let her live in a room without visitors. He’ll come as often as they allow and bring everything she likes: her cigarettes, cream for her coffee, the Swedish fish candy she told him she ate as a child. He’ll smuggle in tiny wedges of hash for her to pinch into sandwiches, to take the edge off the fluorescent lights. What else? He would find out what else.

Hold me responsible, he’ll tell the detective. I should have kept myself curled around her like this, always.

Or he’ll help her disappear, if that’s what she wants. There’s a throb of pain, at the thought of losing her again. But he will help her, however much it hurts him.

__________