posted on Feb, 16 2014 @ 02:31 PM
Last night another nor'easter blizzard hit the coast of New England, and I'm feeling pretty bad about what's becoming of this winter. And sort of
responsible, even though there's no possible way that I could be.
I probably should try and explain, but it's not going to be easy.
In the winter of 2010, I finished a manuscript (a novel that I titled The Nor'Easter Murders) and was sorta shopping it to a pretty big NYC
literary agency that was also looking at a memoir manuscript of mine at that moment. What I mean by saying that I was "sorta shopping" it, is that
while the memoir was officially being reviewed, The Nor'Easter Murders was being read by the agent who was managing the memoir's journey
through process, with an eye on packaging the two of them at some point within the agency's process if he felt that the novel was going to work to
amplify the memoir's chances of getting acquired.
While he was reading the manuscript, NYC got nailed again and again with big snow storms, and the snow removal nightmare made the national news again
and again. This spooked the agent and he walked on the project. Of course, it didn't help that I kinda suggested that the weather was being caused by
the manuscript's drive to be acquired and turned into a book - a marketing campaign, of sorts, since the story is about a Boston winter packed with
one nor'easter storm after another, with each storm featuring the work of a serial killer who's using the city's DPW plows to mangle and dismember
the victim's bodies after he's killed them and laid them out in the streets for the snow to cover. Hence the title, The Nor'Easter
Murders.
Well, cut to this winter, and just after New Years Day, I went ahead and decided to self-publish the book as a Kindle, and play around with some sales
and marketing strategies and tactics that I learned from a book on the subject of how to jazz up Kindle ebook sales on Amazon.com. Methods that work
only on Amazon. As soon as I did, the storms started back up again, only this time, it's gotten out of control. Let's just say that I don't need to
provide links to prove that this winter is being pretty crazy for the entire East Coast, and last night the New England coastline got slammed with the
2nd nor'easter blizzard in 48 hours. I've never seen two nor'easter storms hit in 48 hours.
So, while I'm having some fun with it all on my Facebook page, deep down inside I'm a little messed up over what's going on with the winter storms.
Not that I actually believe that my little book here is making nasty snow and ice storms tear the East Coast to shreds this winter in its effort to
... I don't know what it would be trying to do, perhaps market itself? Still, the fact that this sort of thing happened to NYC in 2010 (to a much
less degree, though) and actually frightened a literary agent into wanting no part of the book in spite of the fact that he really liked the damn
thing, makes me a little uneasy as each week features yet another weather emergency of one form of unprecedented magnitude or another.
This is the forum for crazy people who think they've contacted a space alien...right? Well, I don't know what's going on here, but whatever it is,
it's happening to millions of people, and the timing of it all is kind of unnerving me a little. I just hope it doesn't get worse.