So The World Is Gonna Be FLEX-y For A Bit….
“So, uh,” Angry Robot’s PR department said to me. “What sort of push are you willing to give this book?”
“The full Kameron Hurley,” said I. “I’ll go all-out. Throw it all at me, I’ll do it. I’m ready, coach, put me in.”
Silence.
“You do realize,” they said, “That Kameron wrote over forty blog posts to support her book. Did like seven podcasts. By the time she was done, she could literally put together a book of her essays touting The Mirror Empire.”
“…have you seen my blog?”
“Point. Okay, fine. You get the Full Hurley.”
And immediately after hanging up on that phone call, I thought: Am I in over my head?
And then I thought: That’s Future-Ferrett’s problem.
But as my paper-baby impends, I’m finding that indeed, this promotion stuff is a lot of work. Just this weekend, I wrote five essays for other sites on various aspects of Flex, and I had to write the new book I’m first-drafting now, and change my website around to reflect the book tour, and by the time I sat down on Sunday night to write my usual Monday-morning-perk-me-up, I was out of juice.
So I apologize, dear readers: y’all knew this blog would become a first-novel repository at some point, just as I went bee-crazy at one point and straight-razor-shaving-crazy and webcomic-crazy. I’ve always been a man who blogs about his passions. (Don’t ask about the bees. I’ll tell you if they survive this bitter winter, alas.)
But what I did not anticipate is that doing all this work for other sites would leave me dry on the main blog, thus robbing you of non-book-related entries and making this even more of a promo shill than I intended it to be. And I’m not quite apologetic, because hey, my first book is coming out and y’all knew that was The Dream, but I do feel bad because were things not so flummoxy I’d probably be poking affectionate fun at Jupiter Rising or raving about The Flash or how Better Call Saul is awesome fan-service, but…
Instead, I’m just gonna refresh my GoodReads rating numbly and say that I won’t go totally dim, but it’ll be less than I’d like. Which is a mild sadness for me; I enjoy the blog, I enjoy the feedback, and it’s sad when I don’t have time to nourish this lovely connection that you and I share.
So I’ll be a little marketroidy for a while. I promise that when I visit Seattle and Portland and (hopefully!) San Francisco and LA on my book tour, I will talk about my impressions of those cities.
In the meantime, here! If you feel like going over to FetLife, I’m discussing how a Men’s Rights Advocate is harming male culture, but that’s not an essay I feel I could port over here without significant rewriting to give it out-of-Fet context.
Please don’t feel obligated to blog your impressions of L.A… or at least clearly label the post on Twitter so I can avoid it. I’ve lived here 15 years and love the place like I love my husband, and visitors invariably hate it, because L.A. is not a visitor’s city. It’s just painful to read, every time. Besides, so many people – many of them famously eloquent – have hated on L.A. before you, the post couldn’t help but be cliche… you don’t want that, do you? I implore you, as a friend, not to jump on that particular bandwagon. <3
Find Steve Martin's piece on the New Yorker visiting Los Angeles – to me that is the quintessential, be-all, end-all, last word on my city.
With that out of the way, FLEX to your heart's content. You've earned it.
Wait, would it be possible for us to have links to the essays about Flex you’ve written for other venues?
(I, huh, like to spoil plots to myself. Yeah, it’s weird).
I’ll be providing them on Twitter, probably, and may do a round-up. It feels like work. But I’ll definitely be pointing you at all of them on Twitter, some of them here.
You’re sending your baby out into the world! Of course you’re going to be moved to blog about how that process goes, and the receptions to it. There’s nothing wrong with that, and I trust you to have some interesting insights from the process.
Though I agree with Cahoon: I’d appreciate a post aggregating links to where you’re blogging about Flex. I’d also be happy to host a blog post on your tour, if you’re still looking for additional spots.
The Full Kameron Hurley, baby.