Amazon Publishing and Little a are conducting a Goodreads Giveaway this month for my novel, giving away 100 free Kindle editions of Kings of Broken Things to those who are selected.
For the uninitiated, you have to join Goodreads in order to enter the contest; once you’re a member just click the “Enter Giveaway” button on this page. It’s pretty easy.
I’ve only ever won a book once, but I love Goodreads Giveaways. Free books! Well, possible free books. Anyway, you can’t win if you don’t play.
The print version is still for sale, of course, at the still reasonable $15.14 for such a collector’s item, also over at Amazon. If you’d like to buy the book in person, check out the book page here for a listing of independent bookstores who have Bad Faith in stock. Many of these stores should have signed copies, fyi. (Or, if you’re tight on cash, you can always request that your local library purchase a copy. Or enter my currently open Goodreads Giveaway contest.)
If you can, please rate and review Bad Faith on Amazon and Goodreads. It may not seem like much, but having the book rated on these forums really does help a lot with the algorithm that suggests books to others and how much attention my novel will get next summer when it comes out. I’d really appreciate the help.
Thanks so much to everyone who has bought a copy of the book, either online or in person, and to those who stopped by at an event this summer. It’s been an exciting first month for Bad Faith. Traveling 17 out of 30 days, to 12 different cities, in 10 different states, for 11 lit events and readings. I had so much fun seeing old friends and meeting new ones, all while learning the ropes of what it’s like to be on book tour. Thanks for sharing the experience!
I’d like to post a few updates regarding my chapbook On the River, Down Where They Found Willy Brown (order in print or Kindle) as it has been out in the world for about three months now. The response has been great so far. When we first put in the order to have these printed I was pretty sure that I’d end up with a box of chapbooks in my office closet for the next few decades. But, three months in, I’m ordering a second batch from the printers. Combine that with some healthy action early on with Kindle sales and it shows that there’s some public interest in this story, along with my ability to write it, I hope. I’ve been hard at work on some edits to the novel that On the River is excerpted from and am pretty pleased to have this as another bit of evidence as to why a publisher should get behind this project. All in due time, of course. After more than more than a half-decade working on this book and developing these characters and the narrative voice, it’s nice to think that there’s a little light at the end of the tunnel. Or yet more crushing defeat. We’ll see.
Anyway, on to the new developments:
-First off, thanks to everybody who came out to Indigo Bridge Books in Lincoln last night. Presenting with Julie Iromuanya was a lot of fun, and the section she read from her novel Mr. and Mrs. Doctor was really, really good. This looks like yet another fascinating book among the many written by Nigerians and Nigerian-Americans the last few years.
Something my work shares with Julie’s is a playing around with perspective to show characters who are interested, but ultimately limited, in understanding what life is like for those around them. A couple questions came up in the Q&A session after the reading about this interesting strategy, what I see as exploring the limitations of the form we’re engaged in.
A fun night with a great conversation with Julie, moderator Jeff Moscaritolo, and the audience. Thanks so much to Jeff and Indigo Bridge for setting up the event, and to Julie for attracting an attentive, intelligent crowd.
-Check out this review of On the River by Sam Slaughter posted today on Small Press Book Review: “Tensions That Never Change.” My favorite part:
The distance created by the narrator is the most interesting part of this chapbook. At once, you are both part of the mob and hovering above them, taking it all in, watching the chaos that ensues, cringing at their choices and the injustice that takes place. You know that the narrator is one of the German immigrants—the prose is speckled with Deutsch—but you never know who it is. At best, you can guess that it’s one of Miihlstein’s lackeys, though a lackey with prescience unknown to his comrades. There is little emotional involvement on the part of the narrator. Very much as Lewis Nordan does in Wolfwhistle, Wheeler shows the thoughts of the mob in front of you and lets you decide what to make of it.
Willy Brown is over almost as soon as it starts, and that’s a shame. The prose carries you along until the inevitably sad end. Like with any good work of literature, you are left wanting more.
-Nine days remain on the Goodreads Giveaway for a signed-copy of On the River. It’s free to enter, so long as you have a free Goodreads account. So far, 102 people have said they’d be willing to accept a free copy of my chapbook. I don’t know if that’s a good number or not, but it’s more than three, so I’m happy.
-If you haven’t seen the list of bookstores that are now selling On the River, check it out. Particularly the number of shops where I’m not a local author that are taking a chance by stocking my book. In addition to Solid Jackson, Jackson Street Booksellers, and Prevue Salon here in Omaha, and Indigo Bridge Books in Lincoln, I’ve added Lithic Bookstore in Fruita, Colorado, Left Bank Books in Seattle, Argo Bookshop in Montreal, and Shakespeare & Company in Paris.
-And, finally, a few photos of the chapbook in bookstores and other places. If you happen to have a copy of On the River and feel like snapping a photo of it in your neighborhood, I’d love it if you’d send it to me. It’s kind of corny and self-congratulatory, but whatever. I like them. I’m corny. I like congratulating myself for trivial accomplishments.
Theodore Wheeler 