Very Cool BlogFest from Simon & Schuster

I just thought this was very cool, from Simon & Schuster's YA imprint:

"From March 14 to March 27, 2008, Simon & Schuster is launching our first annual Pulse Blogfest -- a two-week event where more than 120 of our top teen authors and all of their fans will come together to share ideas on one single blog. "

The authors include Judy Blume, Holly Black, Tom Sniegoski, Jeff Marriotte, Cassandra Clare, Nancy Holder and...well, tons of bestselling writers who write in the teen and YA area.

Go here to check it out:

Pulse Blogfest

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The TV Commercial

For the television commercial, I asked those viewers and readers from several online communities (adding up to several thousand viewers) to offer input as to which scene or scenes seemed the best to include in a 30 second televisions spot.

I passed these responses to the creative team that was editing and preparing the commercial.

The commercial will run a lot on the SciFi Channel, and then in select placements on Spike TV, the History Channel, Adult Swim/Cartoon network, AMC and the Hallmark Channel. But most of the slots for the commercial will run on the SciFi Channel beginning August 27th, the week that the paperback officially releases.

Here are two versions of the commercial, the first:

Here's the second commercial:

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2nd Video Is Smashing

We've just launched the second of the teaser video clips, drawn from the full-length book trailer for my novel, The Lady of Serpents.

Right now readers are participating in a "Blog This" contest where they embed the video code on their blogs, and it looks like we'll hit 100 blogs before Saturday. The winners get into a sneak preview screening of the final book trailer.

Be sure to turn the sound up on these videos -- the voice-over actress is Elisabeth Wenzel, and she does a great job of capturing a rather sensual and wicked quality in her vocal performance. These are state-of-the-art for the book trailer industry.

If you can't see the embedded videos below, click here to go watch them.

First, the Plague Maiden from The Lady of Serpents book trailer:

Online Videos by Veoh.com

And now, The Queen of Wolves scene from The Lady of Serpents Book Trailer:

Online Videos by Veoh.com

The upcoming release of the paperback of my novel The Lady of Serpents -- and its follow-up novel, The Queen of Wolves, which comes out a week later -- was cause enough for the creation of a full-length book trailer.

This video has a huge "wow" factor to it, and emphasizes particular characters and ideas from the novel itself.

The book trailer debuts on my website on August 6, 2007, but we're leading with teaser video clips. This particular one -- above -- is of Enora, known in the final book as The Queen of Wolves.

Sheila English and COSProductions.com take all the credit for this amazing piece of work -- a way of visualizing the novel, planting its character and concepts quickly in the viewers mind -- and getting across the novelist's name, book title, and book cover, in a very short period of time.

COSProductions.com use of state-of-the-art CGI special effects, as well as a genuine eye for creating atmosphere and mood are top notch -- and wait until you see the final book trailer with the most amazing scene of all.

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Reaching the Reading Public

I've been hearing about and reading posts about how some newspapers are cutting back on their book review space. M.J. Rose, clearly one of the smartest and most talented novelists and influencers on the internet when it comes to the book business, has some blog entries about this here.

Newspapers as businesses are hitting tough times with the internet as competition. Publishers are advertising less and less in newspapers, as well, so newspapers have less of a stake in their book sections.

Worse than fewer book review pages, there is almost no coverage of novels on TV. On Book-TV and the like, it's mainly historical, political, economic nonfiction -- with a few side trips. Good for the nonfiction writers, not so good for novelists. Oprah has rescued dozens of books -- but one influencer on TV is not enough. Publishers spend most of their ad dollars on their top books for the season, and that's it.

Ultimately, there's no point worrying about it -- the internet has become the primary place where people find out about books, outside of a bookstore. And what works on the internet is one-to-one dialogue, community discussion, and sponsorships of sites to help spread the word about a book or several books. Innovation, invention, creating news by making the book an event into and of itself, etc.

I've done this, and yes, it gets the word out. I created a serial novel in 1999, well before King's The Plant, and got publisher sponsorship money for it, and gave it away free to my own email list -- and was interviewed by dozens of newspapers, and more than 20 magazines -- internationally. It cost me the amount of building my first website, that was it. Changed my career. I then sold hardcover and paperback rights -- separately -- to the book.

All I did was write a segment of a novel each week, and send it out to people who subscribed to my free email newsletter. But the German magazine Stern wanted to know about it, the BBC wanted to know, and Time magazine wanted to know.

More recently, I tried an experiment -- I auctioned off the limited edition hardcover rights to my novel, The Abandoned. The news of this spread -- and it was news.

News for a book comes from looking at the book in an innovative way and saying, "How can I get people to know this book? What is unique about it, its creation, me, its presentation, etc.?"

I hire a great company each year (COSProductions.com) to create book trailers (tm) for my novels. It costs, but it's well worth it in terms of how the message spreads virally on the internet.

We love videos in this environment, particularly brief ones. I've probably seen more movie trailers since being on the internet than I ever have watched in movie theaters (and I skip them on the DVD.) If you can make a hilarious video around your book, do it -- we all love the funny stuff. Cute animals doing funny things also helps. I also see more and more videos promoting books and writers popping up on YouTube every day.

Evoke the spirit of the novel within that video, that podcast, that website.

Everything posted on the internet is a gift to somebody else -- they get to download it, look at it, and if they like it, they'll spread the word. And the word becomes news. And when it becomes news, the most number of people possible will hear about your book. And that's what you want.

Interactivity is the marketing of this new age -- and much of the internet is a big op-ed section, where everybody has a voice (for better or worse.) It is the ultimate agora, forum, gathering place, divided into niche interests and specific groups that form within more general areas.

Commercial ventures like MySpace and YouTube are creating the agora (or is it agori?) of the future -- where people gather, choose their ride, their favorite, their view, add to it, spread it, mention it, or sometimes, shred it.

These groups then reform and find each other in the physical world at various book genre conventions, etc. They are mighty morphin' power groups -- they grow and contract over time, and then grow again as renewed interest in the books and writers returns. New message boards are born, new forums, blogs are born again, and others go away. It is a living entity, this internet, and any who come to it become parts of its organism.

Old methods of marketing and promoting a book are going away, or have less influence. Television -- with its hundreds of niche channels (shopping, jewelry!, history, various music choices, food, home & garden, etc.) -- has begun to resemble the internet. I have no doubt that there will be a blog channel someday where famous bloggers have shows with guest bloggers, and people can go to the blogs during the show and write comments, etc.

The internet is a hive.

So, as writers, we are extremely lucky the internet exists and creates these gathering places and watering holes for niche interests as well as wide interests. The computer is the personal, interactive TV set, adviser, home theater, music player, information gatherer, news tool, fantasyland, friend-maker, matchmaker, and gossip fence. Publishers and novelists and booksellers need to get more involved in the multiple ways a book can be promoted here.

Take eBay. I've auctioned off the rights to a book, character sculptures I've made to a book, and even handwritten manuscripts of early drafts -- and each time, it has promoted the book in question to the point where news gets out without me having to do much at all. eBay is a huge watering hole. YouTube is, but other video sites are growing. Flickr is big for photos. Squidoo.com does a cool thing for writers -- you can post your article or promotion, and Seth Godin's Squidoo will even sell the books (connected to an online bookseller) right off that page.

These are just the best-known places -- there are many. Each niche has its own areas, and most of them have already attracted at least a lurking community that checks out what is going on at any given time.

How many times do you get emails from friends saying, "Did you see this?" because some community is in uproar, or some new innovation has been reported, or a book has become beloved? Scroll down a few days to see my post about what Masha Hamilton has done to promote her book -- or go here, The Camel Bookmobile -- a Camel Book Drive.

And if a book can't be known through the internet, then it may be impossible to advertise it, anyway. Every kind of possible readership is here -- and most of them are reading words on the internet (when not looking at pictures.)

There's my rant of the day.

Doug

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Novel as Dictator

I just got a question from a reader who expressed that it must be a joy to write for a living because I get to do it in my jammies and on my own schedule, and I have no boss, and the usual myths.

First, I have the harshest boss in the world: a novel. And every time one is done, I get a new boss: the next novel. And no two bosses are alike.

It doesn't matter what a publisher or an agent or a reader or a reviewer or I want. The novel wants more and better and stronger and is happy to do me bodily harm in order to get it.

I have readers and reviewers who tell me I should only write one kind of novel. But I don't have a choice in the matter: whatever novel is there wanting to be written is what gets done. The novel is a tyrant and a dictator. I'm just the writer trying to keep up with it. No matter how I feel about a previous novel and what it meant to me, the current novel wants more and better and finer and smarter and a new journey for itself. I can't return to five-books-ago to recapture that past; the current book wants none of it. The current novel wants me to push forward into new territory.

Second, no jammies.

Yes, I'll dress rather slovenly on most hard writing days -- sweatpants, long sleeved t-shirt, maybe unshaven if I've avoided the mirror since rising. It's not a pretty sight, nor does it make me feel particularly delicious in the way I think people fantasize this kind of work outfit would make them feel. I feel better when I put on the same kind of shirt I'd wear to work, throw on a pair of slacks, socks, and even regular work shoes -- no sneakers. If I'm wearing my sneakers while writing, I'm a little depressed and the work isn't going so well.

I can't really see people when I'm buried in a novel. I need to be in that fictive dream, inside the story, like a journalist to some extent. I don't socialize that much as it is, but when I'm deep in a novel, I really become a hermit crab and nobody sees me outside of my aquarium.

Now, having said that, it's also wonderful. There are days when it's like breathing ecstasy (not the drug, but the real thing.) And then, there are days when it's like a rain of stones has found the top of my scalp and just won't stop.

And worse, the novel takes as long as it takes. It requires every resource. The world around me would go unmade if I didn't have a partner who handled everything else.

When I was single, my place looked like a rat's nest: books, papers, old towels, clumps of clothes, half-finished cups of coffee everywhere...right now my desk is covered with books. I have a huge desk, very long and curved.

I just counted thirty books on my desk -- primarily research, but some of them for a quick, relaxing break from writing that keeps me thinking about writing. My CD turntable is packed with the soundtracks and recording that I like to hear when writing a certain book. With the last days of Lady of Serpents, it's packed with Loreena McKennitt -- my favorite of hers right now is the live concert recording, but the newly-enhanced recordings of her early CDs also sound great. I also have the soundtrack to the movie Half Light that I play -- thank you, Craig! (Go rent the DVD of Half Light, a very nicely done, quiet yet disturbing ghost story that erupts into violence. And a great soundtrack.)

Empty bottles of Inko's White Tea and little bottle of Coke (I really like it in bottles but not cans) litter my immediate horizon, as well as aspirin bottles and chewable vitamins that I keep forgetting to take. Four pair of reading glasses -- two that are for computer reading, two that are for books (my eyes adjust differently to books and computer screen.) Random three-by-five cards with jotted ideas that I never look at once I've put them down, but the act of writing it down somehow makes the ideas stick in my memory. Three mugfuls of pens, some a variety of colors for my editing and revision process, ongoing while I write a novel.

I take no pride in this, but I've rarely had a desk that wasn't a disaster area. Yet, it is a chaos that inspires me a bit. Well, not the empty tea and soda bottles, although those little Coke bottles are beautiful in their own ways.

Outside my window, the wind howls, and I can hear waves crashing. I can see a bit of sea, and it's in a frenzy. Very beautiful and hostile, which is perfect for the novel.

That sea is what I feel inside me when I'm writing -- hostile, frenzied, unpredictable and out of the realm of my control. My job is to bring it into focus, to understand it, to foresee its destination. It's demanding work. It drives me insane, sometimes.

And still, I love doing it.

And still, writing a novel steals my sleep and my sense of ease.

Douglas Clegg
DouglasClegg.com

Got a comment? Feel free to ask or submit your note to me at:

AskDouglasClegg.com

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Mexico, Myth, Forest...and Advertising
originally posted: July 26, 2005

I have always been ambivalent about belief, simply because I need a preponderance of evidence in order to believe something.

And yet, I've always had a sense of the 'world beyond this world' and even an intuition that everything we dream of may be possible, simply because once, centuries ago, people dreamed they could fly. And now we can. Just the fact that they didn't have the knowledge and mechanism for flight, or that they couldn't conceptualize a flying machine, doesn't take away from their dreams being possible.

And yet, their dreams were wholly irrational at the same time, weren't they?

I've often fought this sense, even while relishing world mythology, studying the histories of the vanquished and how the invading cultures demonize the gods and culture that is being squashed. The gods are part of the irrational. Belief in the unseen, in the untested wisdom, in the intuition, in the myth -- all irrational.

When I was in fifth grade, my family and I took a long summer trip to Mexico. My parents hired a driver who drove us to the pyramids and to the markets of Oaxaca and to the mines of Taxco -- and all over. This was the first time that I'd ever heard that churches were built atop the ruins of the old religious temples of the previous culture -- quite literally burying the gods of the vanquished.

And of course, this happened in Europe, and elsewhere in the world -- the new god, the new belief, enters the land, owns it, and buried the old gods, destroys their written record, turns them into demons who live underground, and turns their beauty, their virtues, their philosophy into deviltry, unless the old gods resemble the new in any way.

Since I was a boy, this has fascinated me. Frazier's The Golden Bough is a book I've been reading since I was little; and from it I've moved toward popular studies of myths (Campbell, etc.) as well as the more academic studies.

I wrote in the blog entry below about the forest in Brittany (called now, "Paimpont") -- a mythic forest, full of the legends of the old gods and goddesses, tales of Druids and of faerie, of sacred trees and kingdoms beneath lakes. It is from all this, and a sense of wanting to unearth the secret history of the past, that brought me to explore the world of The Vampyricon, and The Priest of Blood.

To me, the vampyre is an archetype of the old gods of lost kingdoms, and so I took Canaanite, Hurrite, Phoenician, Greek, and African myth and brought elements of these and others into a mythology of the forest, of vampyres as the lost priest-kings of an ancient world, and of the "Sacred, Terrible Mother," who haunts many mythologies.

Medusa was one such sacred, terrible mother goddess. In Greek mythology, she was a snake-haired, half lizard creature who had once been beautiful but whose vanity had slighted the goddess. Now, her gaze dooms all who see her, and turns men to stone.

And yet, the story of Medusa did not begin there. She was, originally, a goddess or Queen of Libya, conquered with a new culture and a new religion that debased her to the level of demon. Once, she was the sacred madonna of one culture; then, she become the lilith-hag of the next.

There is some possibility that early vampire legends came from Medusa, and this helped create the origin of my vampyre race in The Priest of Blood, descending from the priests who betrayed their goddess, and stole her immortal blood, her flesh, and soul -- leaving behind a shadow known as a "Dark Madonna," who searches from beyond the Veil to enter the world again to take back all that was stolen from her.

The stories of mythology -- of the ancient religions, of the places where the supernatural meets with the natural, of the magic history of the forest and of buried kingdoms -- all bring me back to the day when I was ten years old and climbed the stairs of the Pyramid of the Sun in Mexico.

I saw scorpions and a nest of snakes far below, and the heat of the sun beating down, seemingly directly above the pyramid. My parents had remained below, and my brothers were many steps above me.

And I felt the power of that myth, that culture -- a power that had been buried, its kingdom buried, when the marauding culture and warriors had arrived. Buried them -- for in those days, other pyramids had only been half-dug out of the centuries of dirt and dust thrown upon these beautiful, magnificent pyramids.

Even then I knew: there is a secret history of the world. We do not know all. The conquerors wrote the history; the vanquished were buried or absorbed. There is so much of the world's past we do not know simply because it has been hidden.

From this sense, I began moving toward writing this epic.

One day, I knew I wanted to write about legend, about myth, and even as a boy, I gave my nod to those forgotten gods and cultures that had suffered beneath the feet of the invaders.

And so, in Brittany, in that forest, and in years of research of hidden myths, sacred rites, lost worlds -- I found the tale that could bring out from inside me what I had been waiting -- and wanting -- to imagine and create since my earliest years.

And it is about magical history, a history of that speaks to the metaphor of the soul rather than the rational mind.

Even earlier in life, I had a remarkable -- to me -- experience, when I was just four years old. I'll write more about that later. But it gave me a sense of awe and wonder and curiosity about the world, and I've never lost it.

This is my preponderance of evidence -- that at certain points in my life, I had this sense, and it was powerful enough to remain with me all these years, and swim up from its dark water to the surface so that I might tackle it as subject matter, as a way of looking at and understanding the world, and as a way of exploring the metaphors of mythology, as a way of entering the forest where you aren't supposed to go.
* * *
Too many blogs I've been reading lately have been about the woes of being a writer, or about waiting to get published.

I refuse to complain these days about any of this, at least publicly. I believe in a "seize the day" attitude at this point.

Sure, we're are up against the current, struggling upward, rowing onward....well, let the metaphors unfurl...but it's too easy to give in to the gravelly moan of that chasm that exists between what we desire, what we think we got, and what we really have.

As a novelist, it's always about "seize the day," whether it is in the writing or the living, and if you have that, not much else really matters much. Yes, I still co-moan with a friend now and then when the business itself gets annoying, but I think this is as important to a collegial friendship as is leering over the bad review of a very successful novel.

But since moving into a very different field with my work -- no, not horror or fantasy or suspense -- but into the field that I've been planting since I was a boy, into which I wandered as I learned how to write a novel over the past 20 novels of mine that have been published, I'm beginning to understand that the only Emperor is the Emperor of Ice Cream.

Every love I had as a child is now a love I have as an adult -- from my love of being lost in the woods when I was five, to doing the same now; to exploring the myth and fairy tale and the folk tale to find the essence of story and spirit and adventure, brought now into fiction that I could not have completed even five years ago; even drawing on my lifelong interest in the supernatural, in murder investigation, and in mythological creatures; my love of 19th century storytellers, as well as the tellers of Beowulf and Gilgamesh and, well, name your storytelling poison; to a sense I had at the age of "barely four" to now -- in my 40s -- of the threshold of a world of the imagination that holds as much power, beauty, darkness, and wonder as the perceived world we see when we open our eyes.

I am so happy now for those trips I took as a boy, whether to those Mexican pyramids or to the Alhambra in Spain or that forest in Brittany or my earliest memories among the lush gardens of Hawaii where I imagined an entire universe from the waters off Oahu and watching the moon late on a Halloween night.

Those events -- and others -- set the course for my travels through fiction, and the stories and novels I've written are primarily a result of what impressed me about those early experiences.

Business itself pales in comparison -- the business of being a writer is in the writing itself.

And in the living.

At my desk, writing, I forget this at times.
* * *
* * *
I've heard the adage from publishers and even some writers that ads don't sell books. Given that many of us only hear about books when we've seen ads for them somewhere (sometimes online, sometimes on TV, sometimes in newspapers and magazines), this so-called "truth" seems a bit false.

Admittedly, it doesn't always make sense to advertise fiction in a general-interest periodical. It is often smarter to find those niche publications that reach the widest group of a highly targeted readership.

So, there are ads for my upcoming novel, aimed at the potential readership of the book.

Since The Priest of Blood is a big romantic epic of medieval dark fantasy, its potential is for at least three segmented markets: fantasy readers who like it when the battles go very dark; horror readers of my past novels who enjoy the supernatural aspects of the vampyres and dark mystery; and romance readers and others who love heroic fiction and paranormal or supernatural or vampire tales that are not about gore.

As a result, various ads -- with different designs and approaches -- will be going in fantasy magazines, horror/suspense magazines, and romance publications.

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Kinetic Marketing
originally posted: May 1, 2005

Expect typos. I am too busy today to edit this. Apologies! Additionally, just my thoughts -- your mileage may vary.

Okay, going back to the potential energy versus kinetic energy, I think there is a system that can be developed for effectively marketing books -- particularly novels -- that has not quite had an organizing principle in the past.

The consumer/reader, with cash in pocket, looking for a book to read is potential energy; as is the book itself, on the shelf.

To turn this into kinetic -- the customer reaching for the book and the proceeding to purchase it -- you have to overcome that threshold of resistance between reader and book.

Bestsellers regularly do this because at some point in the past, it clicked, and eventually a brand name was born.

But most books are not bestsellers, and are not even niche bestsellers.

And the goal, from a marketing standpoint, is to get more people buying, reading, and talking up books.

Kinetic marketing would be:

1. Giving the reader the experience of the book before a single novel is sold. The internet allows this, but I still don't see many publishers putting this front-and-center.

2. Creating an excitement around the book so that the first book buyers -- whether they'd yet finished the novel or not -- wanted to tell others about the book as if it's a must-have.

3. Finding that niche -- that place where it's easiest to turn potential marketing into kinetic marketing. The genres are perfect for this. You find 10,000 fans of a romance novel, and you will soon find 100,000 fans. But you've got to locate and cater to those 10,000 first. And how? Go back to number 1.

Possible solutions -- all of which I'm going to explore for my upcoming hardcover from Berkley/Ace, The Priest of Blood:

1. Extended excerpts with outreach to specific online fan communities. This means more than a chapter. And more than chapter one. The most exciting part of the novel needs to be available for reading. The first 20 pages may not be the hook of the novel.

The best of the novel itself should be accessible immediately to the potential buyer of the book.

2. Incentives to be early "testers" of the novel. Might be discount gift certificates, might be special advance order discounts. Why aren't publishers doing this? Go to B&N, Amazon, Powells, and Booksense and, five months before the novel comes out, give a deeper discount for advance-orders-only. You might sell double or more your usual take, and you've reached the consumers who want the book badly enough to plunk down money early.

3. More ARCs. With novels, the proof is in the pudding. Inundate reviewers and booksellers with the book well ahead of time. I know this is going to drive people nuts, because too many folks are selling ARCs on eBay. And yes, you don't make that money from the ARC. They're meant for review. But I still say it's better to over-seed than under-seed when it comes to setting up a book's success (and the many thousands of ARCs that go out for the "big books" obviously don't damage their markets.)

4. Innovative marketing based on the speed of the internet: what's new on the internet, how can it be applied to book marketing? What new applications of technology can be used to spread word on the book, early, hooking it back into the advance order of the book at online booksellers.

5. Communication with online booksellers that sell this kind of book. My friend Matt Schwartz runs Shocklines.com, a fantastic independent bookseller that's online only. He has sold thousands of copies of my novels from his one store -- about 500 copies or more of a hardcover that came out a few years ago called The Hour Before Dark. How many one-person online bookstores out there routinely sell like that? His goal for The Priest of Blood is 1,000 copies this fall, in hardcover. I think he'll make it. I believe he's already received preorders in the several hundred copies, and it's six months before pub date.

Barnes & Noble already has the preorder page up for the book:
Go look at it right here.

Are publishers and writers and marketers even forging relationships with the online bookworld to really ramp it up a notch?

With the capabilities of BarnesandNoble.com to reach millions of current customers and readers who buy books online -- already -- are publishers and marketing folk really providing the content and the brainstorms to come up with ways to reach those millions?

Or with great bookstores like MysteriousGalaxy.com -- why not come up with something fantastic for their website, and for their thousands of customers?

Online book marketing is under-done, in my opinion. There are audio, video, and PDF possibilities not being explored on a scale that I think would find the "first-audience" for a novel months before pub date, could link right into a preorder page listing six booksellers if necessary, the "first-audience" niche group's orders might completely pay for the advance on some books so that the publisher moves toward the gravy point faster on pub date (as do the booksellers), and the word on the book will spread faster.

* * * *

This is just the tip of the iceberg on early, kinetic marketing so that the novel is not a potential on pub date -- it is kinetic.

One other thing for today (then I'm getting back to working on my current novel):

The next hurdle is to create the marketing of the novel in such a way that the readers want to start the novel and talk about from the day it ships so that word will spread fast from early readers within the first two weeks of the novel's lifespan, which we all know, tends to be a fairly small window.

ADDED NOTE: M.J. Rose also addresses this in her current blog entry - Go here.

ANOTHER NOTE:

Got this great reader comment from Les Brown:
------------------------------------------------
Re: Kinetic Marketing (May 1, 2005)

This is exactly how I started reading your works.

I read an excerpt from Machinery of Night, and then preordered it.

I now own most of your hardbacks, including the special edition Priest of Blood.

I have contacted alot of my associates whom I know will love this book, and told them to buy it. I have also preordered the standard hardback to make into my reading copy.

I now also have an appreciation for Caniglia and am hoping to buy some prints. I wish more authors/publishers provided excerpts. I have done the same thing in a bookstore and not commited to buying a new book because I knew nothing about it.

Thanks for the great work, I am looking forward to the rest of the Vampyricon.

* * * * * *

Thanks, Les, for that great note! Glad you've been reading my fiction and that the extended excerpts and other internet stuff seems to help get readers -- such as yourself -- beyond the point of potential energy into the kinetic energy of being engaged by the fiction.

Best,

Douglas Clegg
DClegg@DouglasClegg.com

www.DouglasClegg.com

www.Vampyricon.com

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From Les Brown:
-------------------------------------------------
Re: Kinetic Marketing (May 1, 2005)

This is exactly how I started reading your works.

I read an excerpt from Machinery of Night, and then preordered it.

I now own most of your hardbacks, including the special edition Priest of Blood.

I have contacted alot of my associates whom I know will love this book, and told them to buy it. I have also preordered the standard hardback to make into my reading copy.

I now also have an appreciation for Caniglia and am hoping to buy some prints. I wish more authors/publishers provided excerpts. I have done the same thing in a bookstore and not commited to buying a new book because I knew nothing about it.

Thanks for the great work, I am looking forward to the rest of the Vampyricon.

Douglas Clegg is the award-winning author of several novels, including The Priest of Blood, Isis, The Lady of Serpents, and The Hour Before Dark.

His current fantasy trilogy, The Vampyricon, has been published by Berkley's Ace imprint.

With M.J. Rose, he co-wrote the ebook on book marketing for authors, called Buzz Your Book.

He is a full-time novelist living at the shore in Connecticut.

To keep up weekly with him, be sure and subscribe to get the free newsletter at www.DouglasClegg.com