1. Who are you?
A girl with dreams and daring. Like most of us, I think, the dreams come more readily than the daring. I tell people to unplug and explore and then spend too many hours alone and on the computer. I guess that makes me a writer? And a work in progress. Today was a good day. A paper and pen day. I wrote most of these questions and answers in notebooks and on sticky notes. I wrote the email story at the grocery store with a tiny gel pen I keep in my pocket, balancing a little blue notebook on the handle of my cart like I balance a hope that the words I plant will spring up flowers.
(If you liked that glimpse behind the pen, I can show you more…)
2. Have you ever written anything? Had anything published?
A one-act play I wrote won a couple of small contests. Nothing big, and I wouldn’t call it extraordinary. I get paid to write things for family businesses—procedural documents, tiny stories for Facebook, web content. One time somebody asked me if I could write lyrics to advertise his company’s line of metal roofs. Come to think of it, he had just heard me read a radio ad written for (and then written into) Love Like Steel, in the style of Jack Kerouac. That was an interesting day…
I spent 2018 researching and writing my second full-length musical. A producer I know is keeping an eye on it. It’s always a long process, so while I’m waiting for the next stage, I decided to write Love Like Steel.
3. Do you have a marketing plan?
I used to think marketing was icky. Then I read Contagious by Jonah Berger. He writes, “To Dave [Balter], marketing isn’t about trying to convince people to purchase things they don’t want or need. Marketing is about tapping into their genuine enthusiasm for products and services they find useful. Or fun. Or beautiful. Marketing is about spreading the love.”
I started to think marketing could be beautiful.
Then I became best friends with a marketing strategist who’s secretly a poet. We write stories for each other. Sometimes we go to a business school in a tower where they talk about art and Don Quixote and Hemingway and quantum mechanics. I wrote half of Love Like Steel there. Everyone else was writing radio ads.
In a way, Love Like Steel is a test of the word-of-mouth marketing principles espoused in Contagious. It’s not the marketing scheme a traditional book publisher would use. But the experts tell me it should be effective. I think it’s worth a shot.
4. Is it a self-published book?
Yep. But not a low-quality POD from CreateSpace or Lulu. I didn’t think I could convince a traditional publisher to publish a book not intended to be sold anywhere online, so I worked with a short-run printer and paid extra for those touches that make a book look and feel lovely. I wanted Love Like Steel to be something of an heirloom, something people would want to buy as a Mother’s Day gift or give to a newly-married couple. I’d be happy to send you a copy, if you’d like to flip through it.
