That’s J.C. Penney’s slogan to get the retail season started — which, if you ask me, sort suuu-hucks. Nothing backfires in the fraught territory of gift-giving like the word Scrooge. This slogan, to me, says This year, be as cheap as you can. The Plano-based company has had some crappy quarters for the last year…

Off Ramp gets a reprieve! For now, at least. After I blogged about getting the notice that Picador, the publisher of the paperback edition of Off Ramp, was no longer going to keep the book in print, they’ve decided to hold off. They didn’t know about Tinsel (different publisher), so they’d like to see if…

Tinsel has made it onto New York magazine’s weekly “Approval Matrix,” in the Nov. 9 issue. If you’ve never seen one of these, well, 1.) where have you been? and 2.) it works like this: Four quadrants on a grid, ranking current popular culture (movies, books, TV, music, people, events) by their brilliance, despicable-ness, and…

No one’s more surprised than I am at the play Tinsel got in Sunday’s Dallas Morning News. Above the fold on page 1A of the print edition, with an article by Jessica Meyers — with a nice picture of Caroll and Marissa on the inside jump page. Jessica and I met for the interview in…

Thanks, everyone, who sent pictures of Tinsel in stores. I got pics from all over, and we have two first-place winners, and second and third place winner. The first-place winners get a signed book and a gift card to the bookstore of their choice. The other two get a book. And there are honorable mentions,…

Before I get all too wrapped up in the release of Tinsel, I got an e-mail recently that brings the real business of books into rather sharp focus. The e-mail is from Picador publishers, which is the paperback imprint for Henry Holt and other publishers that are all part of the same company. They’re the…

Tinsel fans, I have so enjoyed your snapshots of the book in stores across the country. There are winners of the contest and I will announce them later this week! The book is definitely out and there’s lots of fun stuff is coming up in the days and weeks ahead. If anyone’s read it, and…

Today I drove up to the extremely picturesque Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia for a rare opportunity to hang out for an afternoon with my friend, the fantastic photographer KayLynn Deveney. She and her parents came to Philly for a few days from Albuquerque. KayLynn and I went to lunch and she showed me some…

This is from the press kit assembled by the extremely helpful Megan Wilson at Houghton Mifflin Harcourt. I’m keeping it handy here so I can remember what my book’s about. Also I want Oprah or her minions to be able to easily find it in case they’ve foolishly misplaced their copy. A CONVERSATION WITH HANK…