Well, I've learned the hard way that reviews by themselves don't sell books, ads by themselves don't sell books and even the two together in one publication at the same time, doesn't always have any immediate effect. When readers take a chance on a book and recommend that book to friends or better yet, give books to their friends for birthdays and holidays that is a good long term strategy. One author I know said that trying to get some attention for a new book these days is like highlighting a snowflake in a blizzard. It is just going to take a lot of time and perseverance and a little luck now and then (like being discovered by Oprah).
You're also an author. Tell us a bit about yourself and how you became an author.
What type of books do you write?
I read all the time as a child and by the time I was in my teens it seemed inevitable that I would write stories. In fact my creative writing teacher in high school suggested that I start a literary magazine so I did and it became a tradition at the school. In my twenties I did send out some stories and even won a first prize for fiction one month from a literary magazine in Austin, Texas. I also corresponded with Anais Nin who was very encouraging. Then I decided I needed to live more and figure out what I wanted to write about. I threw out dozens of stories that suddenly seemed trivial to me. In my early thirties I wrote an experimental novel, Snow (I had just finished reading Ice by Anna Kavan). It was one of those stream of conscious creations that is not exactly poetry and definitely not narrative and later I called the manusript my "salvage yard" because sometimes I really could use something from it to clarify another story or novel.
As soon as I finished Snow I started what would later be my first published novel. I interrupted work on this to get a divorce, return to college and then law school and I finished this 124 page book about twelve years after I started it. The Nun was published by Plain View Press in 1992, three years after I finished it. I also started writing more serious short stories and the first of these was published in The Long Story in 1986. I have since had stories published in The Long Story, Monocacy Valley Review, Zone 3, The Healing Muse and some online publications: Storyglossia # 17, The Dublin Quarterly, and Cantaraville.
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