Rob Hart's Blog, page 10

Ash McKenna prize pack

My mom is running a Breast Cancer Bowlathon fundraiser at Rab’s Country Lanes on Staten Island.

One of the raffles will be an Ash McKenna prize pack—a custom New Yorked umbrella, a bottle of Jameson, and a signed advance reading copy of City of Rose, which isn’t due out until February.

Maybe some other stuff too!

Tickets are $5 and you don’t need to be present when the raffle is drawn on Oct. 25. To purchase tickets call the bowling alley, or PayPal the money to me at rob.w.hart@gmail.com and I’ll pass it along.

All proceeds will go to the American Cancer Society.

It’s for a good cause! Enter early and often.

OCCUPIED EARTH has landed

Available now: Occupied Earth, a science-fiction anthology edited by Gary Phillips and Richard Brewer. I’m incredibly proud to have a story in this: “How the Game is Played”, which is the first that I’ve tapped into my political background for a story.

The anthology is set 20 years after an alien race has occupied Earth. Humans and Mahk-Ra live alongside each other, but not always comfortably. There’s no question who’s in charge (spoiler alert: it’s not the humans).

There are a lot of killer stories in this collection, and even more exciting: It’s available from my regular publisher, Polis!

Want to learn more about the anthology? Want to find out where to get it? Click here.

CITY OF ROSE lending library

Galleys are in for City of Rose!

If you’re a book reviewer, get in contact with me, or download it  from Edelweiss.

I’ve only got six hard copies. A few are already in the wind. But I’m holding one aside for a lending library.

Here’s how it’s going to work:

Contact me here. First ten people go on a list. I mail the book to the first person. That person reads it and mails it to the second person. Second person mails it to the third person, and so on and so forth, until the end. Last person mails it back to me.

In return, I kindly as that you consider leaving a review on Amazon or Goodreads, but that’s not a requirement.

It’s a fun way for me to cover a little ground with an otherwise limited resource. I very shamelessly stole this idea from Stephen Elliott, who did it for his very excellent book The Adderall Diaries.

So if you’re interested, get cracking. I’m excited for this one to get out in the world.

Signing at the Brooklyn Book Festival

Are you going to the Brooklyn Book Festival this Sunday? Have you not yet acquired a copy of New Yorked? Then stop by the Mystery Writers of America table at 11:15 a.m. I will have books for sale and will also be signing them if you would like.

Where is the MWA table going to be? Good question. I have no idea and I pray that I am able to find it in time. The festival will be full of excitement and surprise.

NEW YORKED now available as an audiobook

Do you prefer having your books read to you?

Then you’re in luck!

New Yorked is now available as an audiobook from Audible.

Cheers to the narrator, 

Staten Island Arts event in the ferry terminal

Staten Island Arts has invited me to read/sign/discuss stuff in their culture lounge, located inside the Staten Island Ferry terminal.

This is very exciting. I am usually super depressed when I am in the ferry terminal because it means I am commuting to or from work and commuting sucks.

So now for once I get to do something very fun in the ferry terminal!

Sept. 10, 7 p.m. (though I’ll be there earlier than that—probably starting around 6:30 p.m. or so). Come on out, or just stop on your way home.

Mark your calendar or RSVP on Facebook here.

A roundup of stuff and things

BookPeople is Austin, TX, is one of my favorite bookstores. In no small part because of their amazing crime and mystery section, MysteryPeople, run by Scott Montgomery. He posed a couple of questions to me for their blog. I was happy to oblige.

If you’re in or around Austin, you must go to this place.

Check that out here.

My short story from Thuglit, “How to Make the Perfect New York Bagel”, made honorable mention in this year’s Best American Mystery Stories edited by James Patterson. Scott Detrow read it for the Word Crimes podcast and did a stellar job.

Thanks for podcastmaster Erik Arneson for the invite.

Give that a listen here.

The Art of Talking About Yourself

Two nice hits today: My first television interview as an author is running on NY1, and my first really long audio interview just dropped on the Booked podcast.

They are both, to varying degrees, mortifying.

I don’t think I performed poorly. But there’s a reason I’m attracted to being a writer. It’s easier to express myself when I can do it by myself. I could never be an actor. Being the center of attention is not something I actively seek out. I get embarrassed playing charades.

And yet, when you’re promoting a book, you’ve got to take every opportunity you can to talk about it. And yourself. And process. All these things you’ve been perfectly happy to not talk about for so long.

Despite my initial terror, and the fact that I will never listen to or watch either of these ever again, I did learn some stuff that’s going to be helpful going forward.

For example, practice, practice, practice. This is a lesson I learned earlier in the process (and I talked about at LitReactor): You need an elevator pitch ready to go. When someone asks you what your book is about you need to be able to explain it quickly and with confidence.

I stumbled a bit on Booked, so before the NY1 interview, which took place two days later, I wrote something out and practiced it until I had it down.

(They ended up not using that for the clip, but hey, at least I was prepared.)

Also, be careful of filler words. Like. Um. Y’know. Well.

Those words you use to fill empty space. Booked is full of them. Again, something I thought about a lot while recording and went into NY1 being thoughtful of. Because holy shit, it can make you sound like a bit of a goof.

They were both very different experiences—for the NY1 interview, we talked for maybe 45 minutes to an hour, and the whole thing is condensed down into one minute and 48 seconds.

With Booked, we talked for nearly two hours—not all of it made it onto the ‘cast (thankfully—there was some fun off-the-record riffing), but the overwhelming majority of it did. I listened to it on the way to work this morning, and it’s weird, listening to yourself, wishing you’d said things differently, or glad you nailed a thought that, until then, had escaped you.

I’m very fortunate to have landed both of these—and it’s given me some stuff to chew on, about how to be more confident as a speaker.

I will say, though, it was a blast. So thanks to Amanda Farinacci from NY1, and Robb Olson and Livius Nedin from Booked. All three of them asked a ton of smart questions, and were such good sounding boards that the whole process was that much easier.

Interview at The Life Sentence

Over at The Life Sentence, me and Angel Colon talk about writing and books and New Yorked and kids and how much of an asshole I’m going to be a year from now.

The Life Sentence is a very groovy new site dedicated to crime and mystery fiction. Add it to your reading queue—they’re putting out some killer content.

Check it out.

Recent items of note; Bookpage, The Lineup, a new review

Two new guest posts just landed. One was really easy to write and one was really hard to write.

First up, the hard one: Over at The Lineup, I wrote about the murder of Imette St. Guillen, which influenced New Yorked.

At Bookpage, I wrote about the art that inspired New Yorked. That was a little easier.

Finally, there’s this review from Elizabeth A. White, which really resonated. This one made me feel really good to read.