Day: October 6, 2010

Ed Rouse on the Big Valley Farm

Conventional wisdom has it that family farms are vanishing for good, and that would be tragic. I am getting to know Ed Rouse and his family and am filled with admiration and affection for them and their way of life. Family farmers are not in it for the money – they don’t get rich. They love their land, their families, their life with animals. They stand for individualism and the American way of life in its purest and most elemental sense. They are engulfed by a wave of government indifference and bumbling, and societal disconnection from its own food and well-being. I am dedicating the book tour to family farms. I am selling signed photo notecards on Redux whose proceeds will go to helping family farmers.

And I hope to mention their plight around the country, so that people might better understand what is about to be lost. We will miss family farms if they go, and the way of life they represent. If we can bail out banks, we can help family farmers out.

This is Day Two of the Book Tour, and I have nothing scheduled, for perhaps the last day for a month. Going to get my Ipad blog set up working, hang out with Maria, nap, read, take photos, maybe play some chess. Great vibes coming from “Rose In A Storm” so far. Just beginning.

Animals are humbling to me. It might be my fevered imagination, but I always get the sense that the donkeys are laughing at me, that they find me inherently ridiculous. Rose respects me, I suspect, but doesn’t think I’m too bright and knows I am generally incompetent. The donkeys always seem to get a chuckle out of me.  Maybe more carrots.

The “Rolling Rose” book tour is about selling my book, of course, and promoting it. Beyond that, I am continuing my own experimentation and exploration of ways in which writers can use a mix of old and new ideas to get their messages out to the world in challenging times. My publisher and publicists are very supportive of this, something that is new. I’ve been at this for years, and am getting closer. My motivation is this: I want to be a writer and that means changing, period.

I started with my blog, which has evolved beyond my own imagination into a great conversation with my readers about my work and life. I have explored several new technologies –  the Ipad, e-mail, e-books, even my photography –  and recently have focused on Facebook as the most effective and efficient way to supplement my publisher’s promotion and my own. Last night was a very successful first effort. A couple of messages on FB alone – and one mention on a local NPR station –  brough a good crowd to a Barnes & Noble store where we sold out the supply of books. There was no other publicity, really.

On the tour, I want to broaden this experiment. I want to go to bookstores and do traditional reading/signings. I also want to bring other people into the book tour tent, people who don’t usually get to come along. On Wednesday, October 18, I will be at the Woodford County Library in Versailles, Ky. at 2 p.m. (outside of Lexington) to see who shows up there, off the usual book tour track. Libraries are a wonderful way to connect readers and writers, and they are often ignored on book tours.

I put a message up on Facebook last night raising this idea and was immediately rewarded by invitations from D.C. to Australia. I am talking with a reader in Washington who is interested in inviting some of her book-loving friends over to her house to meet me and talk about “Rose.” I told her this isn’t a social call, but a way of my promoting my new novel. It might work out, and there are other possibilities. Books Clubs are a powerful way for writers to advance their work and talk about it.  They are also shunted aside on book tours.

So I’m excited about “Rose In A Storm.” I think it is the right book for now, and I think it is a good and cretive book and is selling well. I’m using all the tools at my disposal – Rose, the camera, the Ipad, the computer, Facebook, bookstores, my truck, my wife, my farm and life. And I enjoy doing it. It is good for me as a writer, and also as a human being. So let’s see what I can come up with on this book tour. Might end up in your living room. And thanks to Susan Corcoran at Random House for getting it and supporting it. And yes, Susan, we will make sure there are plenty of books out there ):  “Rose In A Storm” is onsale everywhere books are sold, online or in stores. You can check out the reviews, and a free chapter on the “Rose” page above. Stay tuned.