“Mr. Fishburne,
I was drawn by the title of your book by accident, as a few years ago I heard a songwriters interview ( McMurtry ?) who had written a song in which “going to see the elephants” was code in the 30’s or 40’s for a young farmhand’s trip into town for his 1st sexual experience at a traveling carnival. Evidently this was a sideline of the sideshows. I am certainly glad I was hooked, as I enjoyed the book greatly ! You have a lovely off-hand style and your characters took me back many years to my enjoyment of Richard Braughtigan’s books. Your characters have just the right amount of humanity to make them as unpredictable and zany as the ones who inhabit this planet. Thank you!”–J.P.
JP! thanks for writing. Yes, the song you reference is called “See the Elephant” and is by the very smart songwriter James McMurty. James sings songs that are like lyric short stories. He may be influenced by his literary father, Larry McMurtry, author of Lonesome Dove and many stories, books, and movies.
You can listen to the song here. It’s a beaut.
How many times on my booktour was I asked: where can I buy your book?
Millions and Millions of times.
The quick answer is Amazon and Barnes and Noble but of course there are thousands of independent bookstores too that are perfectly good at selling books.
But Independent bookstores have traditionally been behind the technology curve, which makes today’s news so sweet:
Indiebound’s new iPhone app, allows readers to order books from an independent bookstore. From your phone. Home delivered. It also tells you where the closest independent bookstore is from your current location.
(hat tip Kevin Smokler)
At least once per week you get to work and realize you forgot to wash the shampoo out of your hair.
Is all this Twitter babble a bubble?
Or is it’s success directly tied to the recession?
Would a better name for this time-waster be Fritter?
(don’t bother, I already checked)
But underneath all these updates, tweets, #, @, and ! notations is a bubbling frenzy that has a lot of psychology behind it. Twitter is working because it’s doing something right inside millions and millions of brains who are spreading it. And fast!
Here’s an article in Psychology Today that talks about why Twitter might be so successful (inducing a state of information hypnotisism is one possibility)…
Here’s an illuminating post on Ebooks and what role they may play in the future of publishing.
I haven’t touched a Kindle yet, but if past is prologue, Amazon’s entry into electronic reading will only get better over time as more companies and better technology improves the concept.
Which means that some version of electronic paper is here to stay.
How that works for authors and readers is still very much up in the air. This gent from Oxford University Press doesn’t think that Ebooks can be as revolutionary as promised because they don’t provide publishers with the short-term cash flow necessary to sustain their business…
But in our current state of Creative Destruction, is that enough of an obstacle to keep ebooks from flourishing?
Take a read “Why ebooks must fail…”
