Book It, Danno.

Today we celebrate a fellow Dallasite (is that what we are called?) for a truly amazing breakthrough in the literary world. I am talking about Michael Ennis and his new novel The Malice of Fortune a Doubleday release.

Ennis has a book signing and reading this evening at the Barnes and Noble across Northwest Highway from North Park Shopping mall. He has already been featured in the Dallas Morning News and will soon have an interview on All Things Considered on NPR with Lynn Neary. This is huge for the hundreds of North Texas writers who sit behind a typewriter everyday grinding out their due diligence. One of us has made it BIG.

Ennis’ book is a mystery set in 16^th Century Italy with non other than Michelangelo and Machiavelli turning into sleuths to solve the caper. I’ll let you buy the book and figure the rest out. But there is more to Ennis’ story that should captivate us.

I found it interesting as a former self-published author, that Ennis and his agent turned to self publishing to get the big publishing houses interested in his work. He had quite the creative strategy. It seems that Ennis had about 50 hardbound copies printed and sent to booksellers around the U.S. He got responses from over 20 of them, which he used as proof to the New York publishing houses that they were missing the boat in not taking a hard look at The Malice of Fortune. He landed a deal in three days with this effort. Three days! (Notice I used an exclamation point. I never use an exclamation point. Never!!!)

Now this is not to say that every writer reading this blog go out and inundate the booksellers of America with your self-printed, bound masterpieces. But it does show that a bit of ingenuity in marketing is sometimes required these days to awaken the sleeping giants in Manhattan– to get them to open their eyes to new writers with new works, many of which are breathtakingly wonderful, such as Ennis and his Renaissance mystery.

I salute Michael Ennis in his success of breaking into the BIG time.  I salute him on producing what many believe will be a best-seller on all charts. I salute him for the creativity of researching and placing a story in such a rich historical period. I cross my fingers for him that Hollywood will discover his story, too. But what I truly applaud him for, is the sheer tenacity in marketing a great idea.

Hats off to you Mr. Ennis. You inspire all of us who toil with the verb and adverb, the gerund and the pronoun. You have done us well.

Check out my new web site at www.johncrawleybooks.com