All I want for Christmas is some screen presence

Here’s the video trailer for the book. (Don’t you know that the only way to get people to buy a book anymore is to throw together a three-minute movie?)

Houghton Mifflin Harcourt arranged to have this done. Charles Halpin at Bookstream Inc. made it happen and a very nice videographer named Herb, from Silver Spring, came over to my house to set up lights and get me to talk to the camera for two hours. Yes, that’s my home office — behind me is the bulletin board upon which my insanity played out for the last few years. And a cameo appearance by the bowling pin lamp I bought in Austin in the 1990s and the Harvey Girls lampshade I found a few years later while visiting Laura Trujillo in Phoenix, c. 2002.

Big shout-out to Michael Wichita, my long-suffering BF, who shot nearly all of the Frisco footage when I dragged him to Texas for Thanksgiving and Black Friday in 2007.

Let me say right now, I have never been a fan of watching myself on the tube, and that includes the YouTube. (“A-mer-i-cuh,” he tells the camera, like it’s a word no one’s ever heard before, like it needs to be said the way a teenage girl says “duh” to her dad.) But my embarrassment knob is dialed down very low these days, down to the “shameless” indicator, because I have a book to sell. So, roll the tape! And feel free to share it with every last one of your friends on the Internets.

3 Comments

  1. Holly Kincaid on October 20, 2009 at 2:29 pm

    Loved the book (received an ARC) and loved the video. It really does help the reader to get to hear the author speak — thanks for doing it even though you don’t like seeing yourself !

  2. Jeff Trykoski on October 22, 2009 at 11:48 pm

    Nice lamp in the background. 🙂

  3. jody wissing on November 6, 2009 at 9:00 pm

    Me too! Love the lamp, but very much loved the book. Our church is doing a similar message this Christmas and there’s some great stuff in your book! We are very excited and will be at B&N to meet you on the 17th. 🙂

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