Book Releases in the Time of Covid (and a Few Clues to Reader Love)

I've spent a lot of time lying on the ground these past months, lying where I'm planted.

Maybe it's metaphorical.

Maybe I'm just exhausted like many of us, from the constant upheaval, both political and pandemical.

If that's not a word, it really should be.

I, myself, live here in NY on LI, a hot spot. In fact the hottest of the hotspots, in a way you never wanted to win that title. And I've spent most of it sick with an undiagnosed respiratory thing that seemed sprung from a 24-hour virus the first week in March...

For sure, it's taken a toll on me. I've aged several years in these past few months. I know many of you will nod along.

 As much as we've all suffered, I can't help feel that, much like after 9/11, those of us in NY and NJ have lived through something slightly (or majorly) different than the rest of you. For months, the world here was out of a sci fi movie (and still is), empty and quiet and terrifying, everything shut down but essential workers.

Doctor friends told horror stories. They slept away from their families. Pop up ICU's filled formerly public spaces. Our daily death numbers were in the thousands. Now as the virus spread has finally slowed and states have begun to open back up, I don't take any of it lightly. My kids are still here. My parents are still here! My friends are still here. And I'm finally starting to feel better myself.

And yet, people close to me were not that lucky. People close to me have lost their people. Mothers and fathers, brothers and sisters, husbands and friends. My sons have lost icons, people in their prime who shouldn't have been cut down. And don't get me started on the rest of the news. . . 

As the country opens up, so much of it carelessly, I don't know how many of us here in NY feel capable of weathering another round.

And yet.

In the middle of it, some silver linings. Here in the northeast, spring sprung. The environment has rebounded some. People have taken to the streets in record numbers to decry ongoing police brutality and blatant racism. 

My son in the rainbow mask at a local protest. 

The open water swim season has begun, and I feel well enough to finally swim.

In the middle of all of that, I had not one but two book releases. Maybe I don't have to tell you how hard it is to be a midlist author releasing books into a covid/quarantine abyss.

I write literary young adult (and now middle grade!) fiction. School/library is my most supportive audience (and purchaser). Yet these books came out to a nation of closed libraries and booksellers.

It hasn't been pretty. JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME, a book I worked on for over the course of a decade, came out in early April as EVERYTHING shut down. Few library districts have picked it up. Few non-trade reviewers even covered it. SEVEN CLUES TO HOME came out in the midst of protests and unrest on the day of George Floyd's funeral. Even the best self promoter with the most hardened heart would be hard pressed to shout out their books in the middle of these far greater things that need our attention.

And yet.

And yet.

This is my career. My livelihood.

And barely at that.

Like many of us, I have been struggling to find both balance and salvation. Like many of us, I have been struggling to make sense, struggling to map a future, struggling to do better in a world that often seems to tell me my better will never be enough. When I'm already pretty damned good at telling myself that.

But even in the book biz, there have been silver linings. Our local Barnes and Noble just opened and I decided to stop in, trying to brace myself for the reality that, by now, JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME might already be gone from its shelves. If it ever even found its way there in the first place.

Instead, I found it here:

It took me five books to find one of my titles displayed with the big names like this.

And SEVEN CLUES TO HOME has gotten some incredible reviews including Booklist who called it a "modern-day Bridge to Terebithia" and Kirkus who called it a "heartfelt tour de force."

You can see (and share!) the official trailer for the book here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDtj4EegDZA

If you are a parent, educator or a librarian reading, my co-writer Nora and I have been doing a ton of work to connect young readers not only to the story but to the outside world around them. In an age of physical distancing, we've created a bunch of fun activities, our favorite, a series of book-related mini-scavenger hunts we hope our readers enjoy. 

 I'll share the hunts below. And, remember, the point of these hunts is to have fun! Creativity, fresh air, and flexibility are encouraged, perfection, not so much.

So, for example, if it says to find a dolphin or peacock, they don’t have to be live ones -- though big kudos if they are! Instead, they can be paintings of them, or versions embroidered on a pillow, or even clouds shaped like one!

Hunt #1: A QUICK SLICE 

Find and take a photo of each of the following items (it’s okay to be creative!): 

1. A white envelope with a name on it;
2. A guitar;
3. A pizza parlor;
4. Carved words or numbers in wood;
5. A dolphin
6. A pie (or pi).

Hunt #2: BE THRIFTY 

Find and take a photo of each of the following items (it’s okay to be creative!): 

1. Something bejeweled or bedazzled;
2. A “so tiny dog that looks like a rat;”
3. An old-fashioned toy that winds up, claps, or spins;
4. A hat with a feather;
5. A peacock . . . or peafowl ;)
6. A constellation.

Hunt #3: SOMETHING FISHY

Find and take a photo of each of the following items (it’s okay to be creative!): 

1. A tackle box or fishing rod;
2. Someone telling a short, dumb joke (video);
3. A gazebo;
4. A big juicy worm;
5. A heron or other seabird;
6. A lighthouse.

Hunt #4: CURIOSITY & WONDERS 

Find and take a photo of each of the following items (it’s okay to be creative!): 

1. A painted rock;;
2. A heart-shaped tree;
3. A “whale’s eye” shaped knot in a tree;
4. A bus shelter;
5. Some sort of hole;
6. A rainbow.

Hunt #5: CLUES TO HOME

Find and take a photo of each of the following items 

(it’s okay to be creative!): 

1. A red box or container
2. Heart necklace or other heart-shaped jewelry 
3. M&Ms, Skittles or other candy you could plant as “seeds” 
4. A potted plant - real or artificial
5. A cloud formation that clearly looks like an animal or object
6. A love note, or handwritten note from a friend.

In fact, I'll run my own personal-three book giveaway here. Through the end of August, if your child reads SEVEN CLUES TO HOME and completes all five mini hunts, have them email me a photo of them holding a copy of the book, as well as photos of the objects they found, and I'll enter them to win a package of three signed copies of my books and a skype/zoom or google hangouts conversation with me (if they want it!). They can email me at g.polisner@gmail.com (if you email and don't get a response without 48 hours, it means your email somehow did not get to me!) They can also tag me on instagram @gaepol and share their scavenger hunt photos there with me! Sending love out to the universe and to all of you, Gae

A Little Obsessed with Kerouac . . .

 Me, in front of Gunther's Tap Room in Northport, NY
last summer. Photo credit, Rick Kopstein

In the coming weeks before the release of my fifth novel, JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME, I'm going to share both tidbits about the story and the writing process, and about the eponymous author, Jack Kerouac, himself.

Though some will clearly go into my novel wishing to find more about Kerouac, the title should be a bit of a tip off. It is NOT a book about Kerouac. Rather, like me, my MC is not a huge fan of Kerouac's -- though for very different reasons. . . Though Kerouac, himself, does appear in a pivotal scene in the book.

I want to love Kerouac's books more than I do. I've delved back into some of his works, post-writing mine, for this book release. At the moment, I'm slogging through the middle of Big Sur. His writing is inarguably extraordinary. Still, I fall in the school of being, first, breathtakingly enamored with his talent, then grow slightly lost or bored in his ramblings, and find myself craving a bit more hardcore editing.

Having said that, I am fascinated by his life, and the fact that he lived for a while in Northport, NY, very close to where I live, makes him feel all the more real and relevant to me. And the closer I get to my release date, the more I find myself reading him, and drifting around the internet and beyond to catch glimpses of his life. I will share some of that with you in coming weeks.

Inside Gunther's Tap Room, in front of the eponymous author.
photo credit, Rick Kopstein

No doubt, Kerouac was both a talent and a tortured human being, never clearer than in this Newsday piece from July 2000 that was covering an exhibition/retrospective being held in that town.

From Newsday staff writer Ariella Budick, printed July 13, 2000:

EVEN AMONG Beat aficionados, it is a little-known fact that Jack Kerouac spent six years, on and off, in Northport, Long Island.

Celebrated during his lifetime as "King of the Beats," Kerouac retreated to a shingled Victorian at 34 Gilbert St. in 1958, the year after the publication of "On the Road."

His rapid rise to fame-he was heralded as the gifted spokesman for a disenchanted generation-yielded to an equally precipitous decline that, by the time he moved to Northport, was in full swing. An exhibit at the Northport Historical Society, devoted to Kerouac's sad years in the sleepy village he briefly called home, details the impact the writer made on Northport and the less significant impact Northport seems to have made on him. It is a tightly focused show, designed for two quite specific, and necessarily limited, sets of viewers: Northport history buffs and steadfast Kerouac disciples.

Kerouac moved to Northport with his mother, whom he called Memere, the constant companion of his adult life. Memere, conservative and Catholic, thoroughly despised Kerouac's New York friends, whom she judged a noxious influence. She particularly loathed Allen Ginsberg for his Jewishness and his homosexuality, even threatening at one point to report him to the FBI for engaging in anti- American activities. She also sent angry missives to William S. Burroughs, who remarked, "My God! She really has him sewed up like an incision." Indeed, one of Kerouac's reasons for moving to Northport was to put some distance between himself and his cosmopolitan friends.

"By all accounts, Kerouac spent his Northport years in an alcoholic haze, 

playing pool at neighborhood bars. A series of depressing photos capture him, 

overweight and falling apart, clowning pathetically for the camera."

By all accounts, Kerouac spent his Northport years in an alcoholic haze, playing pool at neighborhood bars. A series of depressing photos capture him, overweight and falling apart, clowning pathetically for the camera. His inspiration was hopelessly stalled: The many books he brought out during these years were all written earlier, when publishers had been unwilling to consider his work.

Even so, Kerouac's presence seems to have made an impact on some young lives. George Wallace, the exhibit's curator, has enshrined testimonials from a small sampling of Northport's (then) youth, attesting to Kerouac's extraordinary influence: "He made me a thinking person," says Carol Watson, who was 15 when she first met the unstable author. Although the exhibition text informs us that Kerouac did not particularly appreciate attentions from fawning young fans, he enthusiastically joined them in juvenile high jinks. One incident, we are told, involved police chasing the aging Beat and a group of young boys out of an abandoned Gold Coast mansion, after which Kerouac fell asleep, drunk, in the woods.

Kerouac became increasingly conservative- even xenophobic-as he grew older and more isolated. He rabidly supported the Vietnam War, and his growing disenchantment with erstwhile Beat friends and their "anti-American views" sometimes sounded like paranoia.

"Somewhere along the line I knew there'd be girls, visions, everything," Kerouac rhapsodized in "On the Road"; "somewhere along the line the pearl would be handed to me." But this sometime son of Northport died in St. Petersburg, Fla., in 1969, of severe hemorrhaging brought on by alcoholism. The critic Seymour Krim did not mince words:

"He died lonely and isolated like a hunched old man at only 47 with a comic strip beer belly, and faded, gross, ex-good looks, full of slack-lipped mutterings about the 'New York Jewish Literary Mafia.'"

The Northport tribute makes him hardly more appealing.

Ariella Budick, STAFF WRITER, July 2000

If you'd like to preorder a copy of JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME, you may do so through links here:  https://read.macmillan.com/lp/jack-kerouac-is-dead-to-me/

More soon!

- gae

Friday Feedback: A New Shiny Cover Reveal

Forgive the late posting. This was not the blog post I originally planned today. I wrote a whole 'nother one, then, as they say in THE PULL OF GRAVITY, the best laid plans got in the way.

Okay, maybe they said that somewhere else first before my debut YA. :)

Anyway, not the post I was planning, but we did the official JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME cover reveal yesterday unexpectedly, so I'm bumping everything to share that here. Now.

Isn't it pretty?!?!

If you want to read the official COVER REVEAL BLOG POST (and why Kelly Hager of KellyVision was the perfect host), you may do so HERE . . . and to read more about the book or preorder (those are good for writers!!!), you may do so here: https://www.amazon.com/Jack-Kerouac-Dead-Me-Novel/dp/125031223X, (although the BEST place to preorder is via your local indie and/or brick and mortar.

Or, heck, preorder through one of my favorite indies -- and endeavors -- THE BRAIN LAIR BOOKSTORE <--- p="" there.="">
Anyway, I'm excited about this book I started nearly a decade ago (!!!) and hope you all love it when it arrives on shelves everywhere in April 2020.

Now, without further ado, FRIDAY FEEDBACK. If you haven't been here before, please take a moment to read THE RULES.

My share is a moment in my continuing WIP ("Work in Progress") which right now appears to be adult literary fiction. It is completely unedited or reread. A true first "Vomit Draft." Last week we met Paul at "Twenty Three Years Later." For the moment, this is the first time we meet June.

Twenty years later.

June

June Sobel sits at the living room window, across from the piano, and stares out at the patchy lawn. She’s not thinking about the small lump her OBGYN found in her breast yesterday morning, or about the biopsy she has to go in for next week. She’s thinking about Gabriel and the time he explained chord progressions to her, a moment that comes back to her lately, again and again.

“Since there are only so many chord progressions to choose from,” he’d told her, “you can’t protect them, or accuse other people of stealing them.” 

He’d been sitting at the piano, then, absentmindedly fiddling with the last two high-pitched keys, to the point where she’d lost her patience, annoyed at the repetition. It was a Saturday morning and she was enjoying her tea, and it infuriated her the way he’d do that, play nothing at all, or worse, something aggravating just to get on her nerves. After all those lessons, he was more than capable of playing something beautiful.

----

See you in the comments!

- gae

New Books Coming, Older Book Updates, and Friday Feedback Summer 2019

Join the Friday Feedback facebook page. . .
or follow me at my YA blog @http://ghpolisner.blogspot.com/ for weekly posts
starting June 21!

It's been a while since I posted here . . . It's been a busy several months including bookwise, with two books in production for early 2020, an upper YA called JACK KEROUAC IS DEAD TO ME which many of you have been hearing about for a while now, and my debut middle grade, SEVEN CLUES TO HOME, co-written with friend and huge talent Nora Raleigh Baskin (I'm so excited!!!!!) but I wanted to share here that, although it will no longer be a part of Teachers Write, I do plan to continue to host FRIDAY FEEDBACK here this summer, as I did before TW even ever started.

What is Friday Feedback? It's a place to get some inspiration, a bit of feedback, and possibly, if I'm in the mood and you're willing, a "superspeed flash edit" that might be illustrative of how some tiny craft tweaks can often make our writing pop and shine even more. Sometimes there are awesome guest author hosts... everyone from Avi (!!!) to Kate Klise have hosted!


If you want to get an idea of how it works, READ THIS POST FROM 2014 then scroll through the comments, because the comments are pretty much where all the action happens. Participation is free, though I do ask that if you are regularly participating, you purchase at least one of my books, and the books of at least a few of my guest authors. 💖

***It will begin on Friday June 21 and run through Friday August 16th if I got my dates right!***

Anyway, I've missed all my regular participants there, and I'm looking forward to seeing them as well as new ones! If you're on facebook, in addition to following the blog you can join the Friday Feedback page HERE.


In other news, I was quite honored to learn recently that THE MEMORY OF THINGS was the

winner of this year's GOLDEN ARCHER AWARD, Wisconsin's Children's Choice Award, Senior Division. While it has also won the Wisconsin State Reading Association Book Award which is awesome, the Golden Archer is even moreso, given that it is chosen by those I wrote it for, young adults -- who weren't even alive at this point when 9/11 happened!

As for IN SIGHT OF STARS, it is the official July selection of the MomAdvice Book Club . . . you do NOT have to be a mom to participate! I think the organizer chose it without reading it first, so I'm nervous and anxious awaiting to hear whether or not she liked it! 😳 I hope to participate in some sort of virtual Q&A in conjunction with that in July.

And, last but not least, if you are reading and are looking for your own summer book club selection, choose any one of my books for your bookclub of five or more, and I will happily skype in for a Q&A so long as we can make the date work! Just email me at g.polisner@gmail.com to make it happen!

That's a good deal, right??

Right. 

So, off you go to make those plans. 😁

In addition to my own artistic endeavors . . . NO, I can't help myself . . .  both my sons have been pursuing their singer/songwriter careers, each as they finish up school (both majoring in music, one double majoring in music/business). You can follow them on Instagram @samuelgraymusic and @holdenmiller and listen to their music here on Soundcloud (Sam) and here on Spotify, or wherever songs are streamed, respectively.

Hey, at least I'm not going on about how talented my dog and our citrus leatherback bearded dragon are!

(The dog is super talented! I swear!)

xox gae