Adventures in Marketing: Weeks 227 – 228

My pre-publication promotional blitz for “Goshkin At Large,” consisting of an announcement to 300+ FB “friends” and another hundred or so emails to people I actually know, produced five – Count ‘em, FIVE – checks in Spruce Hill Press’s P.O. Box. One from a fellow ex-Philadelphian, one from my lawyer world, one my comics world, one from an ex-colleague/ still friend of Adele’s (and mine), one from the Vanne Bistro readings crowd.
Presses are now ready to roll (or roulez) their being in Montreal. Now I’m in Berkeley, the editor/formatter in Portland. and the illustrator in Kentucky, yet no sheet of paper was touched, let alone harmed, in reaching this state. (Is that science-fiction, or what?) There were a couple blips. Like the printer couldn’t figure out the book’s title from the cover, or believe the only color we wanted was black; but that’s been straightened out, and it’s due to ship Oct. 8. Counting freebies set aside, about 244 remain, so get your $15 to P.O. B 9492, Berkeley 94709.

In other news…
1.) I have been asked to write about a black, gay, back country, Afro-lachian, Afro-futurist outsider artist, who died of AIDS in 1998. I’m up for it, though I can’t help wondering if Cornell West will think us both being born in 1942 America makes me the guy for the job, identity-politics wise.
2.) Long time readers may recall “Fully Armed.” Suffice it to say, it has not received a great deal of attention lately. But just this week I received an e-mail from a woman who said she had known its subject and wondered if I could put her and him in touch. She went on to say that she had read and enjoyed the book when it came out and wondered if I had written anything else, since she had been unable to find that I had. I wondered how hard she had been looking for the past 40-some years, since, me aside, I knew of three other book-writing Bob Levins whose work she might have turned up. Anyway, I directed her to this very web site, and if its cash register rings, there will be another “Adventure” in the near future.