Richard McGowan's Blog: Smashed-Rat-On-Press - Posts Tagged "llama"

In the course of a recent conversation, just after the New Year, questions of readership and goals arose. Some people have lofty goals and set themselves great tasks for the upcoming year. I will quit smoking is a common one. (Thankfully, I did that umpteen zillion ages ago so that's been a non-issue for longer than most Goodreads users have been alive.)

So rather than an aggressive sales goal, like ten billion served or something equally ludicrous, I decided to begin with a goal that may seem modest to some folks, but I thought it was perhaps manageable, and certainly realistic: one new reader per year.

The catch is, that I (and SROP by extension) had already exited from the rat-race of self-promotion. Therefore one new reader per year with no stressfully toxic promotional effort or spamming of all channels all the time is actually a non-trivial challenge. It's like young Harcourt sitting heavy hearted on a park bench, hands under his buttocks for warmth, and saying with a sigh: If yon flower petal falls off, it means Melvina loves me... without ever mustering the impatience to just pluck the damn thing.

The only reason I'm reporting this today is that today marks the first glimmer of potential for hope. The Rodent received, for the first time, a knock upon the speak-easy door. An inquiry from a person I do not know and have never corresponded with, who had heard word of mouthe-mail that SROP books are only available under the table, and their transfer to readers must be negotiated with secret hand-shakes in a dark alley.

So, after sending along the book, the entire SROP staff and management paused for a nice cup of Lady Grey Tea to celebrate the momentous occasion.

Today an inquiry. Tomorrow, the world! Mwahahaha!

And now back to our regularly scheduled pot-watching.

Use a welding glass, at least! Please! Save your eyeballs from certain melt-down! Oh, wait... You mean you missed the launch? It was a thousand times brighter than the sun and visible from two thousand miles away. We had five golden pigs, four marching bands, three French roasts, two mating slugs, and a blue ladybug in red wine.

We had live synchronized llama dancing all along Insectivore Boulevard all day long and well into the velvet night. Ladies snickered and gentlemen swooned.

We gave away thousands of hundred dollar bills to anyone who would take a copy of the book off our hands.

You can imagine what might have happened if we had gone all out.