Borders of Lancaster, PA Crash and Burn...

This past Saturday I had a signing at the local Lancaster, PA Borders Bookstore. This was an event I had been trying to arrange for over two years. Unfortunately, it will probably be my last.

First, a preamble to this blog posting: this essay is not intended to be a slam against the entire Borders Bookstore chain. I have signed at many Borders Bookstores, and have been a Borders customer for many years. Borders maintains the finest big-box bookstores I have ever shopped at, and as a writer (and reader) I support ANY bookstore. Some of the Borders stores I have signed at are staffed by the best people a writer can ever hope to have in their corner. A few that stand out in mind, the York's Bookstore in York, PA, the Borders Express in Camp Hill, PA (managed by the wonderful Jim Munchel and his equally wonderful staff who not only promote the signings they host in their store, they continue to promote and hand-sell the books), as well as various stores in San Diego and Orange County California I have signed at. All staffed and managed by first class people.

I really wanted this signing in Lancaster, PA to go well. I was excited.

I was so disappointed.

As I mentioned, I'd tried to get a signing at this particular Borders for over two years. Every time I called the store and talked to the manager to arrange a signing, I was always told to call the Regional Office which, I was advised, handles bookstore appearances. The Lancaster, PA regional office is in Maryland. Following the suggested protocol resulted in unreturned phone calls and messages. So when Borders direct competitor Barnes and Noble, which is located just up Route 30, proved to be more author friendly, I turned my promotional efforts toward them.

(As an aside, I've never had the other Borders stores I sign at give me that kind of run-around, but then those exceptional stores are staffed by employees who not only love books, they sell and promote them and, in doing so, make their corporate masters and myself money).

I figured if the local Borders wasn't interested in having me, they don't need me. Besides, they seemed more interested in hosting signings by little old Amish ladies who wrote and self-published books on making quilts, or retired Sunday School teachers who self-published short memoirs on their lives in Amish Country; those guys (and little old ladies) never had a problem booking a signing. Me? With my mass market paperback record? Forget it.

I thought I was proven wrong when -- finally -- the Lancaster Borders contacted Brian to arrange a signing with us.

The first sign of trouble, for me, came weeks before the signing. I emailed the bookstore manager who arranged the event with Brian to thank her for setting it up, and asked if they'd be carrying my small press titles. She asked me to send titles and ISBN numbers, so I did. There was also some confusion on my part over what time the signing started. When I first booked it, I had it down for 2-4, but the local paper reported a few weeks before that we'd be appearing from 1-3 (and they spelled my name wrong, too, but then that's to be expected; newspaper journalists always get your name wrong). Due to this slight confusion, I asked the manager to confirm the start time. I left voice mails. I left email messages. The manager never returned them.

As a result, I got there late. And the first thing I saw upon walking in was a very pissed off looking Brian Keene, seated at an itty-bitty table, with an itty-bitty stack of our books. The newspaper blurb from two weeks back reported a third writer, Jacquelyn Sylvan, would be signing books too, but she wasn't there. I didn't see her until thirty minutes later when I took a break from signing books and happened to casually glance to my left. They'd stuck Jacquelyn on the other side of the entrance, completely on the opposite end of Brian and I, and I never saw her due to the large display cases between us.

They had my small press backlist, one copy of each title. And there were five or six copies of each mass market title. I saw no big advertisements for the signing at the store (I'm later told there were posters, but I didn't see any), nobody announced the signing over the store intercom at periodic intervals, which is standard for big box author signings. The worst, however, was that the manager who arranged the signing not only wasn't present, but never arranged with the other store employees to be our so-called chaperones (there's always a store representative that not only greets the arriving author, but checks in periodically to make sure the signing is going well and brings neat things to the table like snacks and drinks from the coffee bar). So not only did we have to get our own drinks, we had to arrange our own tables, and when the books started selling, we had to send our legions of fans to the dump stacks to bring us more.

Jacquelyn quickly sold out of the six copies of her first novel, Surviving Serendipity and left, but first she popped by our table and we chatted briefly. Nice lady. Wish they'd had us grouped together so we could have chatted about the industry, because that's always a fun thing to do at these events.

The day wasn't a total wash, though. I got to meet some great new fans including Matt, Mike, Shelly and her friend (never got your name), John, Gorebeast, and Susan (the snake lady), as well as the Reel Splatter guys (always a pleasure to see Mike Lombardo and crew). My proofreader (and Brian's) Bob Strauss and his wife took us out to dinner later that afternoon, and we had a wonderful time (and hello to Bonnie, who I met for the first time, and Jean, who I usually see on the Strauss' yearly visit to Lancaster, PA). In fact, that dinner more than made up for a less-than-stellar signing.

Oh well, at least we have the Barnes and Noble up the street!

JFG

PS - Brian's musings on this event can be read here.

Reminder, and new books!

Before we start off, I want to remind Mid-Atlantic residents of the following appearance:

June 28, 2008 (Saturday)
2:00 - 4:00 pm
Signing - with Brian Keene
Borders Books and Music
940 Plaza Blvd
Lancaster, PA 17601
(717) 293-8022‎
(888) 812-6908‎

Unfortunately, I will not have copies of Hero or trade paperback copies of Clickers and Clickers II. But don't let that get you all weepy and depressed! Read on!

Hero (which I co-wrote with Wrath James White) is shipping from Bloodletting Press and Horror Mall now! If you're able to receive yours prior to the signing, I will be glad to sign it for you. And for those of you in other parts of the country (or the world), you should be receiving your copies over the course of the next week.

Some of you have asked about a lettered edition. There's going to be one, but I don't know what it's going to look like. But if past Bloodletting Press lettered editions are any indications, Hero will probably receive the same lavish treatment. And no, I don't know how much a lettered edition will cost. My advice is to save a portion of that economic stimulus check so you can get one when its announced.

Speaking of economic stimulus checks...the Delirium trade paperback editions of Clickers and Clickers II ships in mid-July. Some of you already own the Hard Shell Word Factory trade paperback of Clickers; that edition will be going out of print over the course of this summer. The Delirium edition will be the definitive edition, and will contain my preferred text. If you're one of those collector types that needs every edition of every book, and you never picked up a copy of the HS edition, better get one now before its gone forever. And for those of you who never got the first book, or simply want a copy that contains not only corrected text, but my preferred text, please pick up the Delirium edition.

You can get both Clickers books through Horror-mall or through the publisher. You might even be able to get it through your neighborhood chain bookstore (you should be able to order it through them, at the very least).

There's more news to report, but I don't want to tip my hat too soon due to waiting for contracts to go through, but if all goes well expect some new short story appearances and maybe the announcement of a novella or two and/or a new novel or two (or three, or four).

I bring you back to your regularly scheduled programming.

Thanks for your continued support!

JFG

On Hero

Hero, the new collaborative short novel I wrote with Wrath James White, may seem like a fitting pairing to many of you.

And in many ways, you are right.

We're both known for what has come to be called 'extreme horror', a label that still confuses me for various reasons when it comes to my own work because I'm all over the place with my fiction.

I suppose it was fitting that we'd eventually collaborate on something, given that fans of my novels Survivor and Fetish are also fans of Wrath's Succulent Prey and his collaboration with Ed Lee, The Teratologist. For those of you who know me for my supernatural horror, the collaboration may seem like a surprise.

Hero does contain its visceral moments. I won't offer spoilers here, but fans of my extreme stuff, as well as Wrath's fans, will be pleased that we did not turn away when it came to addressing the gruesome elements of the story. As always, we went full throttle on the blood and mayhem when the story called for it.

But for the most part, Hero is a more introspective, philosophical piece of work that treads the boundaries of psychological suspense, thriller, and extreme horror. It raises issues about race relations in the U.S., as well as other sociological issues such as immigration, elder abuse, and self perception.

Here's the back cover copy:

""Adelle Smith has lived her entire life for the betterment of mankind. A Civil Rights Activist in the Sixties and Seventies, she has spent most of her adult life attending marches, giving speeches, and lending a hand to anyone in need.

But on the very evening she is to be acknowledged with a Lifetime Achievement Award for her humanitarian efforts, a stroke leaves her partially paralyzed and unable to speak. Now Adelle's in the care of a ruthless hospice nurse, who sees not a hero before her, but the cause of her many hardships growing up as a child of interracial parents, someone who decides to give Adelle her very own brand of "Physical Therapy" consisting of pain and suffering, mental cruelty and torture.

And now, after a lifetime of helping others, Adelle needs help, quickly, before another round of brutal treatment snuffs out her life."

Yep, sounds like something Wrath and I would tackle together, doesn't it?

How we got from point A to point B, though, is equally interesting. I've known and admired Wrath and his work for seven years, and over the course of several days a few years back, we were corresponding via email when the topic of collaborating came up.

Of course, I was up to it. How could I pass it up?

Wrath mentioned he wanted to try something along the theme of elder abuse and by strange coincidence, I had a brief synopsis in my common-place book of story ideas that dealt with that very issue.

That idea was never used, though. Instead, a month or two later, Wrath came up with the basic seed of the plot -- Adelle Smith, well-known and well-respected civil rights activist, has a stroke and suffers unimaginable horrors at the hands of a psychotic nurse.

I liked it, but there had to be more to it. And the more Wrath and I hashed out the plot together, the more I realized our nurse was torturing Adelle for deep-seated personal reasons of her own. In fact, I told Wrath in the midst of a story brainstorming session, why not make her bi-racial? A product of a Black father and a White mother who never was able to identify with her Black side.

That cinched it. Everything started to fall into place.

It was fairly easy for me to draw on this, being the product of a first generation Mexican-American father (whose family immigrated to this country when Pancho Villa attacked Ciudad Juarez in the Mexican Revolution ) and a WASP mother who can trace her family history back to 1690's England. I've known plenty of people in my life with similar backgrounds -- White/Mexican, White/Asian, White/Black, and every combination conceivable. Most of these folks were fine with their racial identify. Others, however, weren't.

For example, I once knew a kid in my old neighborhood with a Spanish/Mexican last name, who was clearly of Hispanic descent, and he hated Mexicans, Blacks, and Asians. He also more than once voiced the desire to join the KKK. I am not making this up. I once knew a woman of White/Black heritage who was prejudiced against Black people, and once knew a guy with similar racial background who hated White people. For whatever reason, these people had deep-seated issues with a portion of their racial heritage. Why? I had no idea, but it was a theme I felt worth exploring in Hero. Wrath felt the same way, therefore, our nurse now had a good motive for unleashing her cruelty toward a woman she saw as the source of her problems.

The general theme of racism persists throughout Hero. How could it not? I know of Wrath's issue with racism, and I have experienced it in my life, and sometimes continue to experience it. I have been denied jobs based on my very Hispanic name. I have been pulled over by the police in Los Angeles for driving while Latino (I've also been pulled over for Driving With Long Hair and for Driving With Black People -- this happens when you live in Los Angeles). I was once singled out with one other guy -- a Black guy dressed in military fatigues, obviously on leave -- at an airport for a drug sting. Most of the discrimmination, however, is very subtle.

I've also experienced racism for being White. In my high school there used to be these Black on White riots where every sixth months or so, Black gang members like the Crips and the Bloods would get the notion to randomly attack and beat up any White kid they'd see. The first time I experienced this, a Crip gang member told me in class he was going to kick my ass. "But I'm Mexican!" was my defense. "You look White to me," was his response. I got out of that predicament, and survived similar episodes of what I later came to call "beat up White boy day" because I was friends with members of both gangs in high school. Sometimes it pays to have connections.

I can go on with other examples, but I won't. Hopefully, you get the message.

It is from our combined experience that helped Wrath and I shape these characters into the people you will come to meet in Hero.

Racial identity is a personal thing. Some embrace it, other spend their lives running away from it, while a tiny minority hate that very part of themselves that makes them unique.

It took years for me to embrace my own racial identity. Growing up, I never consciously thought about it. There are so many mixed-race people in Los Angeles, so it was never a big issue with me. It wasn't until I was well into my adult years, and living in predominately White suburban Orange County when I experienced the difference. While I was never treated any differently by my family, I recall being treated very differently by other people -- classmates, teachers, and later, employers and select other people. Because I was raised in Los Angeles, where my mother and her family lived, I grew up assimilating in a pretty working/middle-class culture that was also a very mixed-race environment. All of my friends were like me, either mixed-race, or Black or Japanese. The exception was my friend Donald, who is White and who I'm still friends with (for awhile, Donald and I hung out with a group of kids that I think were rejected from every racial clique that existed; there were Mexicans, Japanese, and Black kids in our crew). My dad's family were pretty much centered in Texas, El Paso, to be exact. I only saw them on the bi-yearly trips we took there, and it was the only time Spanish was widely spoken in my presence. As a result, my Spanish is very horrible, and mainly consists of what I call 'Spanglish", which I picked up in Junior High School from some Latino gang members I knew.

Some readers may take offense at the issues raised in Hero. I hope they don't, but I realize there may be a tiny minority that probably will. I won't apologize for it, either. The views expressed by the characters in Hero are just as relevant now as they were forty or fifty years ago. Things have improved greatly since Martin Luther King led his famous march on the mall of the White House, but we still have a long way to go as a society to overcome many of the racial barriers that still face us today.

Many readers may also notice the style we used in the book, in which the pronoun White or Black is capitalized. This is intentional because of the reasons described in the paragraph above.

While I never consciously strive to write "message" books, once I do start a novel, the message eventually emerges, even with an all-out monster-gore-fest like Clickers. With Hero, though, it was pretty clear that the message was as equally as important as the story, which was a first for me. I usually come up with a rough idea for a plot, some characters, throw things together, stir them around, and let it simmer like gumbo and wait for a theme, or a message, to emerge. Not so this time. The message was pretty clear very early on with Hero. And its a message that I think all readers, regardless of their racial heritage, can learn and benefit from.

On top of that, Hero is a suspenseful, page-turning read. Publisher Larry Roberts likened it to a cross between Ketchum's The Girl Next Door and King's Misery. That's a great comparison.

So if you haven't purchased a copy, do so now. There's only four hundred of them, and the book ships this week. You can get one here.

Come on. Make Wrath and I happy. You'll love this one.

JFG

Reboot defined

Many of you wondered what the last blog entry was about, and why I deleted all the contents. Some of you were wondering what kind of change I was hinting at. Here it is in a nutshell.

I was getting tired of the blog, was tired of the previous entries, and I felt a change was in order. I also want to explore the possibility of collecting some of the better, and more memorable blog postings, in a collection of essays that will also include some old non-fiction pieces that have never appeared in book form, primarily some of the choice selections from my old "Diary of a Madman" column from the late Afraid magazine. I can't really sell a publisher on the idea of a book like that if a goodly portion of the material is available, on this blog, for free. Hence the removal of the old postings.

That's the primary change you'll see. Other changes may be more subtle. Frequent postings, for one thing, which I do plan (and hope) to do. More frequent updates on signings and upcoming publications. In the past I've been rather lazy about that, and for that I apologize.

With that in mind, here's some news: my short story "Pulling Strings" appears in Darker Discoveries, a promotional chapbook published by Dark Discoveries magazine. There were only 75 copies of this beautiful little booklet published as part of a subscription drive freebie for the magazine.

Clickers (with Mark Williams) and Clickers II (with Brian Keene) will be published this July in trade paperback from Delirium Books. For those of you who have copies of the Hard Shell trade paperback, the Delirium edition will contain the definitive text. That means all the annoying typesetting errors that marred the HS edition are gone, plus slight revisions for the Delirium edition were undertaken. Nothing major, just a light polish to fix a sentence here and there. The Delirium edition will be the definitive edition, so if you haven't picked up a copy, please reserve one.

Likewise, Hero, my new short novel written with Wrath James White, will be available in a few weeks. You guys know you want one.

Speaking of Wrath, congratulate him on selling the mass market paperback rights of Succulent Prey to Leisure Books.

And while you're at it, pop over and give a shout out to Kelli Dunlap for selling her first novel to Bloodletting Press.

****

Public appearances:

June 28, 2008 (Saturday)
2:00 - 4:00 pm
Signing - with Brian Keene
Borders Books and Music
940 Plaza Blvd
Lancaster, PA 17601
(717) 293-8022‎
(888) 812-6908‎

***

That's it for now.

JFG