Aaron Starmer's Blog, page 6

The Only Ones: Foreign Language Editions

Hey gang! Here's the word on the street—the street being Broadway, where the Random House offices are located. The Only Ones will be coming out in some foreign language editions! Children around the world will soon be able to share in the adventures of Martin (or Maarten, in Brussels), Henry (or Enrique, in Costa Rica), Darla (or Sheila #2, in Australia), and Nigel (or Dragon Warrior with a Tiger, in Japan).

For now, the kind folks at Dogan Egmont in Turkey and at Rai Editora in Brazil have...

A Blog Tour to End All Blog Tours

Borders has fallen. The e-book has placed a pox-filled blanket in the arms of librarians and Chinese printing presses and would-be assassins who like to underline passages and dog-ear their paperbacks. Marketing budgets are dwindling to nothing. Lakes are turning blood red. And authors are left wondering "what in the sam-heck is a wordsmith supposed to do to get the kids to read his tale about misfits building a giant machine in the wake of apocalypse?"

Simple. BLOG TOUR!

To those out of the l...

The Only Ones: Early Reviews, Selections and More

It's less than 50 days until The Only Ones invades your neighborhood bookstore and your online dealers of tall tales. And out there in the world there are faint rumblings that something is afoot. Yes, there are a few interesting developments regarding the book and I shall detail them below:

Kirkus Reviews , the self-proclaimed "world's toughest book critics" put their dukes down and held their hugging arms out. They had some lovely things to say about the book, including, "Both literary and...

On Why Writing for the Kids is so Darn Easy

©Johnny Ryan

I play a weekly game of spoons with Don DeLillo, Marilynne Robinson and the guy who wrote volumes 3, 4 and 9 of Truly Tasteless Jokes (he's told us his name a million times, but we still just call him Skippy, an homage of sorts to the gangly neighbor on Family Ties). They're fierce contests, these games of spoons, draped in cigar smoke and filthy language. A grand time is almost always had.

And almost always, talk turns to wordsmanship and literature or, as Skippy likes to say...

A Time-Traveling Oscar Wilde Tries His Hand at Twitter

Here we are. Here we go. Twitter. Curious, curious indeed. Start with a profile name. My own name should suffice. No need to be facetious. Clean, clear, unencumbered by accoutrements. Oscar. Wilde.

Rats. Taken. Chap looks quite a bit like me as well. No worries. No worries. You are a writer, my friend. Should be able to find a suitable alternative. WildeAtHeart? Too obvious. WildeChild?…come on now Oscar, aim higher. Pithy, to the point. You have got this!

Hmm….

Truth be told, Oscar, you have...

Go Down to the Crossroads

I'm willing to bet that Harold Bloom is wagging his meaty arthritic fist right now, decrying the declining influence of classical educations and the literary canon. Ah, yes, the classical education. Gone are the days when a crested Exeter boy was considered cultured if he knew his Greeks, could recite some Donne, and laughed at the right moments in As You Like It. I'm not going to say times were simpler then but…actually, yes, that's exactly what I'm going to say. Times were simpler then.

Peop...

School Visit: Thank You to the Curious Minds of Manhattan Charter School

My novel DWEEB, silly as it is, touches on some weighty issues regarding education. Specifically, the role of standardized tests in the lives of the squeaky-voiced, acne-plagued future of our fair land. Look at the cover, for crying out loud. It's a scantron sheet! I've never claimed to have any answers, however. Because I'm far from an expert. I only know that the anxiety surrounding tests can affect administrators, teachers and students alike, and undoubtedly shapes the lives of most of...

Best Practices in Internet Marketing

I don't pay a mortgage. I rent. Always have. Some people have told me that renting is unwise financially, but it's worked out well for me. Too many foreclosures out there, too many shrieking morons from HGTV and TLC that I might come afoul of in the real estate game.

The internet, however, is desperate to sell me a mortgage. And some life insurance. And gold. And some other big ticket purchases most people usually discuss with their families and their financial advisors. The internet used to t...

Bit Parts in My Life

Hoboken, the humble and fantastically corrupt city in which I live is trumpeted as the birthplace of Frank Sinatra and baseball. The first birth is indisputable, the second is contentiously debated. There's little doubt that The Cake Boss is filmed here, as evidenced by the hordes of salivating families who stand in line outside of Carlos Bakery for hours on end, just to get their pictures taken with a cannoli. For the most cynical of hipsters, Hoboken represents the type of gentrification

The Only Ones: Teaser Book Trailer

It's 144 days until the release of The Only Ones. For those without an abacus on hand, that places the launch date at September 13, 2011 (aka Peter Cetera's 67th birthday). Movie studios like to whet audiences appetites months in advance of their release date, so I'm thinking I'll do the same thing. At the end of this post you'll find a humble, but hopefully enticing, teaser book trailer for The Only Ones.

Those outside of the book business might not run across book trailers during their...