A Room with an Interview

My most exciting news: I was interviewed for the Newcity newspaper. Newcity is Chicago’s only locally owned and operated cultural weekly, and it’s been around for 22 years. The article just went live on the Newcity Lit site. Check it out here!

Some of you may recall I won a literary award for A Greater Monster. Turns out I was a finalist for another one. Isn’t that kind of like winning a bronze medal in the Olympics? You work your ass off, beat like 3025 people, come in third best in the entire world … and no one gives a shit. Eh, bronze? What a shame. Who won gold? But seriously … bronze is still cool. I was one of three finalists in the fantasy category of the 2012 National Indie Excellence Book Awards.

Here are some interesting stats that I read last month in Poets & Writers magazine. Within an article entitled A Day in the Life of a Literary Agency, which was a peek inside the workings of a mid-size literary agency, they revealed that the agency received 100,000 queries per year, which breaks down to slightly more than 200 queries per week for each of their nine agents. And based on the number of writers they pick up in a year, the odds of an author finding representation from them are one in 11,111. By contrast, do you know what the odds are of getting published when you self-publish? One in one.

I’m having another giveaway on Goodreads until August 16. You can enter here. And in case you missed my previous post, I have two videos up from my reading tour in New York City. Part 1 is here and Part 2 is here.

Lastly, as always, I urge you to support your local indie bookstore! If you know anyone who might like A Greater Monster, here’s my updated list of bookstores that currently carry it:

Chicago
After-Words Books
The Book Cellar
Chicago Comics
Quimby’s Bookstore
Sandemeyer’s Books
Unabridged Bookstore
57th Street Books

St. Louis
Dunaway Books
Left Bank Books
Pudd’nhead Books
Star Clipper Comics
Subterranean Books

Texas
Book People (Austin)
Domy Books (Houston)

Glen Arbor, Michigan
The Cottage Bookstore

Portland, OR
Reading Frenzy

Manitou Springs, Colorado
Back to the Books

Toronto
The Beguiling

Bristol UK
Here Gallery

Berlin, Germany
Modern Graphics

Western Australia
Planet Books

You can also ask your favorite bookstore to order it from Last Gasp Distribution.