The Best of "I Will Literarily Kill You"
One of my favourite marketing efforts is that I offer readers the opportunity to be killed (or unalived as we have to say on the more squeamish of social networks) in my next book. It’s a scheme called I WILL LITERARILY KILL YOU.
I had to make the “literarily” aspect explicit, because I had this horrible waking dream that there might be a string of random actual deaths of people on the list and a wizened detective (probably played by David Mitchell) would put it all together and see it as the ultimate double-bluff and then I’d be caught and put in the chokey.
I should probably talk to someone about my epic ability to catastrophise.
Anyway, IWLKY been really popular and it has been useful for me, because although I make a living coming up with interesting things, I do suck at naming characters. I mean, I named a dog Brown, after all.* So it’s been a great resource to have a series of names that I can draw on at any point and then know as a bonus that it’s going to be a cool thing for someone to show their friends: “Check it out - this is the page where I get decapitated!”
One of the things I ask on the form is whether anyone has any particular ways that they would/would not like to die, because I’m not interested in upsetting anyone. I love it when people sign up because their answers are often hilarious, honest, weird and make me think that my readers are the greatest people on earth.
I thought I’d share a selection of their answers with you.
If it involved a beaver in some way I would not be sad. Isn’t that a wonderful philosophical statement. Who could be sad if a death involved a beaver in some way? Anyway, if you haven’t already, you can sign up here: www.iwillliterarilykillyou.com and if you’re an indie author who might like to join I Will Literarily Kill You then drop me a message and let’s see if we can collaborate as I’d love to get more potential victims (fictional) on board.
*Semi-interesting footnote. Ben Brown is my cardiologist who I admire deeply because I maintain that he saved my life. I gave him a copy of the book and told him that I’d sort-of named the characters after him and I think he was *officially* weirded out. It was really rather awkward.**
** File this under: “I don’t know why I’m so odd and say these things”, but this was the same cardiologist who was explaining to me in a consultation that one unwanted side effect of a particular heart condition was that it can cause the heart to grow quite significantly.
“It worked out ok for the Grinch,” I replied.
“Ye-… sorry, what do you mean?” he said, as his train of thought smashed through the sidings and destroyed a school.
“The Grinch,” I replied, now uncertain that this was a point that I wanted to be making out loud. “His heart grew three sizes in one day and he had a terrific time. There was a book about it.”
“-” he said.
I gave him a moment to collect himself.
“I’m a consultant cardiologist and I can tell you that if The Grinch’s heart had grown three sizes in one day then he would have died an agonising death.”
“Right,” I said. We moved on. Take note “Dr” Seuss.
