In stores at last!

What a day.

SOMETHING MISSING hit the bookstores today, the fruition of a lifelong ambition of mine. It’s not often that a person has the opportunity to realize a dream that he or she has had since childhood, so I tried to enjoy the day as much as possible and remember every little moment.

After a morning of hoops and more interviews with the local newspaper for a feature that will be coming out soon, Elysha and I spent the afternoon chatting with friends who had just purchased the book, receiving congratulatory emails and phone calls from people around the country, and visiting bookstores to see the book for ourselves. With limited time and limited locations to visit, as most of the local stores had sold out of the book by the middle of the day (it’s so nice to have lots of friends), we stopped first at a Border’s Express and found SOMETHING MISSING on the shelves alongside my current book club novel and Pulitzer Prize winning book, The Brief and Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao.

I was thrilled to see the book in the store, and in such good company, but my wife, ever the ardent and vocal supporter, was appalled to not find the book on one of the store’s front tables or displays and made a point of telling one of the clerks that it can be found on the front table of all the other Border’s Books. A brief and contentious discussion followed and we left the store with my wife grumbling about the man and his intellectual faculties.

My first chance to see my book in a bookstore and she gets in a fight with an employee. Nice, huh?

One of my friends later reported that the book had in fact been moved to a front table of this particular store after someone had told the shopkeepers that I was a local author, but my wife was quick to point out that the person who moved the book up front was reportedly a woman and therefore not the man of questionable intellect with whom she did battle.

We then drove down the road a bit to the local Barnes and Noble, and there my wife and I were pleased to find my book, unexpectedly positioned on a front table display as well. It was utterly thrilling. We took photos and I basked in the combination of disbelief and joy until my wife started looking for customers and employees who she could tell who I was.

I’m not going into any more bookstores with her ever again.

 

The release party for my book, planned brilliantly by my wife, followed at Elements Bistro in West Hartford. We had about 80 friends and family show up, many with books in hand, ready to be signed. Unfortunately quite a few could not find the book, but most placed orders and will have them soon. My wife’s aunt also reported that her local store in New Jersey had sold out, and her grandmother reported the same from the independent bookseller in Great Barrington, MA, where it had been made a staff pick.  The thought that people are reading my story is just beyond exciting.

The party was great. Last month I had the honor of meeting author Eleanor Lipman, who gave me a quick lesson on how to sign a book, and my mother-in-law researched the best type of pen with which to sign an autograph and presented me with a set of them as a gift at the beginning of the party.  So I was ready to sign my first copy when I arrived. 

The party was loud and lively, and a photographer and reporter were there from the Hartford Courant to continue gathering information and images for the upcoming story. I spent the evening chatting with friends, colleagues, former students, and family. One of Elysha’s good friends had my book framed earlier that day and presented it to me at the start of the party, and my only complaint is that it went by so fast and I signed so many books that I never had a single bite to eat. I ended my evening in a Wendy’s drive-thru, eating a chicken sandwich from my lap as I drove home.

I asked my mother-in-law, who likes to take photos, if she could send me some from the party to post here. She sent me 140 of them.  The lady does like to take pictures!

When I arrived home, I had email waiting for me from friends, family and my editor,  who had found that SOMETHING MISSING was receiving more attention online, including:

SOMETHING MISSING was chosen as an Editor’s Pick by Random House.

The Mystery Guild, on online book club, posted a very favorable review of the book and is featuring it on their homepage.

White Birch Books, an independent bookseller in New Hampshire, had made SOMETHING MISSING a staff pick and wrote very favorably about the book.

Joseph-Beth bookstores in Ohio has made SOMETHING MISSING their Pick of the Month and is featuring the book on their homepage.

And the day ended with me listening to the latest episode of Books on the Nightstand, a podcast about books hosted by Michael Kindness and Ann Kingman, who work for Random House and are absolute book junkies. And to my surprise, their last segment, Two Books We Can’t Wait for You to Read, included a discussion about SOMETHING MISSING.

Many, many thanks to all who continue to send me good news and such heartfelt sentiments about the book.  One reader emailed me about six times yesterday as she made her way through the book, commenting on her excitement at each crucial moment in the story.  To know that someone is enjoying my story as much as she is the best reward for a lot of hard work. 

So it was quite a day. And as I finish this post and look at the clock, I see that I can probably squeeze in a little more work on the current manuscript.

I can’t imagine a better way to end such a wonderful day.

        

One day to go…

SOMETHING MISSING was reviewed by the Free Lance Star in Fredericksburg, VA today, and in very glowing terms. I’m so pleased to find out that so many people have enjoyed the book so far. More than 75% of the readers in Amazon’s Vine program have given the book four or five stars, and Booklist, Kirkus and Publisher’s Weekly all came out with very positive reviews.

This whole process has truly been a dream come true, and we still have 24-hours before SOMETHING MISSING hits the stores.

Actually, my friend, Jeff Martin (ironic, huh?), may have been the first person to purchase a copy of the book in an actual bookstore. He entered a Border’s Books in Albuquerque, New Mexico, this afternoon and saw an employee setting up a display of SOMETHING MISSING for tomorrow. He asked if he could buy the book today, and after some prodding, the employee relented and sold him a copy.

It’s been quite a week. My publicist has been scheduling bookstore signings (I’ll be posting the dates very, very soon), booksellers have been contacting me daily about any number of things, and I have been interviewed by the Hartford Courant for a story that will appear later this week.

How exciting!  And tomorrow should be even better!

SOMETHING MISSING in the Boston Globe!

It’s just two days away from the release of SOMETHING MISSING, and this morning the book received positive mention in Jan Gardner’s Shelf Life column in the Boston Globe. Having grown up in Massachusetts, just thirty minutes from Boston, the Globe was the first paper that I spent any time reading, so to see my book and name in this paper this morning was thrilling beyond imagination.

And in some odd twist of universal irony, SOMETHING MISSING is mentioned immediately after a nonfiction book about the 1609 shipwreck on Bermuda that served as source material and inspiration for Shakespeare’s The Tempest, a play that my students read and performed the year I began writing SOMETHING MISSING. In fact, my wife and I honeymooned in Bermuda (and I spent a good deal of time by the pool, working on the book) and learned quite a bit about the famous wreck on the Bermudian shoals.

Hopefully these are all good signs of things to come!

Guest review of SOMETHING MISSING

A big thank you to Alan Bradley, author of THE SWEETNESS AT THE BOTTOM OF THE PIE, who was kind enough to write a guest review SOMETHING MISSING for Amazon. His book is quite popular right now, filling prominent tables and shelves in many of the independent bookstores that I have been visiting recently, and I couldn’t be more thrilled to have such a well-loved and respected author reviewing my book.

Frankly, I’m honored whenever someone takes the time to read the book, so to then take the time to write a review, and a favorable one at that, is just icing on the cake.

You can find the review on the Amazon page FOR SOMETHING MISSING.

SOMETHING MISSING making a name for itself

I found a few tidbits of good news regarding SOMETHING MISSING as I surfed the web and combed through my email today:

First, SOMETHING MISSING was listed in Goodreads’ July newsletter under their Movers and Shakers heading.  A very positive reader’s review of the book was quoted in the newsletter in addition to a brief synopsis of the book.

If you’d like to become a friend or a fan of my work on Goodreads, you can check out my profile here. 

Next, SOMETHING MISSING was named as a New Atlantic Independent Bookseller’s Association Notable Book for July.  I have enormous respect and great appreciation for independent booksellers, so this is an especially gratifying honor for me.  We’re in the process of arranging visits to a number of independent bookstores in New England this week, and I look forward to spending time in these stores, meeting readers and supporting the work of these wonderful booksellers.  

Lastly, Alan Lui, a member of the Young Reader’s Advisory Group and a reviewer on Watermarkbooks.com, recently reviewed SOMETHING MISSING, my first review (I think) from someone under the age of eighteen.  And his review is absolutely terrific.  Against the advice of other authors, I’ve been foolish enough to read my Amazon reviews, as well as reviews from places like  Readspace.net, and most have been extremely positive.  But being a teacher, it was especially rewarding to hear that a kid enjoyed my work as much as Alan did.

Writer’s Digest article online

A couple weeks ago I posted about Jordan Rosenfeld’s feature on SOMETHING MISSING and me in the July/August issue of Writer’s Digest.  The article has found its way to the Web for anyone interested in reading it. 

Book clubs: A good use of my time? Or just plain fun?

As a first time novelist, the publishing process is new to me, and so I’m not quite sure what typical authors do to promote their books, communicate with readers, and make themselves available to the general public. I have wonderful people at Broadway working with me, but I’m also trying to do my part, using Twitter, Facebook, and this blog to reach out to potential readers.

Recently, a new opportunity for outreach and promotion has arisen: book clubs. In the past month, I’ve received requests to attend the meetings of about half a dozen book clubs, all of which plan on discussing SOMETHING MISSING, and the book isn’t even out yet!

Since the book has already been chosen as a Border’s Book Club pick, my participation in these book clubs seems to make a lot of sense, and to be honest, I love book clubs. I love talking about stories and authors and writing in general. And to think that I will not be required to read some potentially terrible choice from a fellow book club member (usually my wife, who chooses books using a bizarre and indecipherable process of Internet searches and obscure recommendations that seems to inevitably yield a week of painful reading) is just an added bonus.

My question, though, for the authors, publishers, booksellers, and publicists in the world is this: Is this something that authors routinely do, and is it a good use of my time? Sure, these meetings will be fun, but will they generate sales, buzz, and the like? I’m not sure. Would I be better off spending an evening in a library or a bookstore, promoting my book, or could the time spent with these book clubs be worth the effort?

The actual book!

A carton of books arrived at my home today. My book! SOMETHING MISSING. The honest-to-goodness version of the book, the same that will be found in bookstores in two weeks. As required by my contract with Broadway, the publisher sent twenty-four copies of my novel to do with as I please. What that may be is still unknown, since most of my friends have insisted on making the trip to the bookstore and purchasing one for themselves, but to see and touch the book is just remarkable.

Truly a dream come true.

There have been many of these joyous moments in the process of publishing my first book. Signing on with my agent. The phone call with news of the publisher’s first offer. Signing my book contract. The first time I saw the cover art. The arrival of the review copies. My first review. The first check from the publisher, and every one thereafter. And now this… the book!

This day was long in coming but well worth the wait.

And I don’t dare read it. As much faith as I have in the many editors and proofreaders who worked on the book, I fear that a single typo might have slipped through, and if so, I wouldn’t want to ever know about it. I’m a bit of a perfectionist in this way, and right now, staring at that box of books, they look just perfect. I want them to remain that way in my mind forever.

Product placement

In reading some of my Amazon reviews (I know I shouldn’t, but they’re still very good), I noticed that two people commented on the specificity to which I wrote about certain brand names in SOMETHING MISSING, wondering if I received money from the companies mentioned as a form of product placement.

Certainly a fascinating idea, and one that I wouldn’t mind pursuing in the future, but the reason behind my specificity is two-fold:

Martin, the protagonist in SOMETHING MISSING, is more detail-oriented than anyone I know, and though he doesn’t tell the story first-person, I attempted to imbue the omniscient narrator of the story (me, I guess) with his characteristic obsession for detail as a means of enhancing and infusing the story with his character. My friend, Shep, referred to it as Martin-speak, and he heartily approved of the decision. So the use of brand names (Subaru Outback instead of station wagon, for example) was an attempt to do just this.

Also, I like to think that the reference to a Subaru Outback paints a different and far more specific picture in the reader’s mind than the word station wagon. Having grown up in the 1980s in the “way back” of a long, wide, wood-paneled station wagon, the word station wagon paints a very different picture than a station wagon of today.

But the idea of product placement in a novel is an interesting one. Would advertisers be intrigued by this idea at all? Unlike commercials, the references to specific products in a book could not be skipped over, but then again, if taken to the extreme, stories might become a morass of brand names and commercialism.

But it might be something worth exploring. For example, in my current manuscript, my protagonist, Wyatt, will eventually be driving a car. Probably a pick-up truck. If Ford would like to pay me to make that truck an F-150, with at least six specific references to it in the book, why not? As long as it fit the context and original intent of the story, would this be bad?

The businessman in me says no, but the writer and artist in me is beginning to wonder…

Writer’s Digest feature

An article about me and my book, SOMETHING MISSING, appears in the July/August issue of Writer’s Digest. It’s great. A full-page article that includes a photograph of me (27 pounds heavier than I am today) and the cover art of the book, which always seems to excite my agent.

The author, Jordan Rosenfeld, writes about the process by which SOMETHING MISSING originated, the process my which I write in general, and some of my personal history and how it relates to Martin and his story. I’ve had stories written about me in newspapers before, and never has any writer gotten all the facts correct, but Rosenfeld has done it here, and she has done it well. She’s a good writer, and it turns out, a fiction writer as well as a journalist, columnist and editor.

The article also contains a lovely quote from my editor, which I will cherish on those days when the words and the pages come slow and hard.

I have yet to find a link to this story online and fear that the article might only be available in hardcopy form, which will lead me to wonder if I can scan and post it here or if they would violate some copyright law.

I’m checking.

Customer reviews of SOMETHING MISSING

Reviews of SOMETHING MISSING have begun to pop up on Amazon as part of their Vine Program.  Amazon describes this program thusly:   

Amazon Vine™ is a program that enables a select group of Amazon customers to post opinions about new and pre-release items to help their fellow customers make educated purchase decisions. Customers are invited to become Amazon Vine™ Voices based on the trust they have earned in the Amazon community for writing accurate and insightful reviews. Amazon provides Amazon Vine™ members with free copies of products that have been submitted to the program by vendors. Amazon does not influence the opinions of Amazon Vine™ members, nor do we modify or edit their reviews.

The reviews so far have been excellent.  On a five star scale, no one has rated the book with less than three stars, and it currently has an average rating of 4.5 stars. 

Even the most critical of reviews contain a good deal of praise.

I have a friend who has published a few books and he strongly advised me against reading reviews such as these, but I couldn’t resist.  It’s been thrilling to discover what people  think of the book, and a few of the more critical comments are probably true.

In fact, one of the critical remarks has altered my approach to the current manuscript ever so slightly.  I think the reviewer was quite right in his critique of my writing style, and as a result, I saw room for improvement.

So reading these reviews, both positive and critical, has been helpful.       

Besides, I’m known for having an exceptionally thick skin, the result of a lifetime of unwarranted attacks and persecution and a slightly inflated ego.  I can’t imagine that any single review or collection of reviews could dispirit me to any serious degree.

I hope. 

New use for SOMETHING MISSING. I think.

Sometimes I can’t help but wonder what people are thinking. 

Loving librarians

Thanks to my blessed Google alerts, I discovered some librarians chatting favorably about SOMETHING MISSING.  

I can’t express how simultaneously surreal and rewarding it is to find strangers online discussing a story that you made up in your head. 

Another review!

And a great one, too.  This one from the June 1 issue of  Kirkus Reviews, a “respected, authoritative pre-publication review source within the literary and film industries,” according to Wikipedia.

I’m new to the business, so I rely on Wikipedia a lot. 

Matthew Dicks, SOMETHING MISSING

Dicks combines the neurotic atmosphere of a Woody Allen film with the light touch of Lawrence Block’s Bernie Rhodenbarr’s novels (The Burglar Who Thought He Was Bogart, 1995, etc.) in a unique debut.

The fantastically bizarre leading man, obsessive compulsive Martin Railsback, specializes in stealing things that no one notices have gone missing. Early on, Martin’s vengeful, meticulous replacement of his abusive stepfather’s prized baseball card led him to his rule-driven life of crime. “If a missing item will be noticed, don’t acquire it,” is his first imperative, while his second requires a rigid awareness of his victim’s sense of perception: “When items go missing in the house, the suspicion of theft only occurs if the possibility of the thief exists.” Martin supplants his part-time job as a barista by stealing toilet paper, groceries and other necessities by from wealthy suburban “clients,” as well as auctioning off their detritus on eBay. Dicks expertly crafts the setup, showing us Martin’s deep-seated need for stability and routine, then turning his world on its head when the compulsive thief accidentally knocks a client’s toothbrush into the toilet. This necessitates a nerve-racking, breathless mission to replace it- while its owner is home, no less. Turning a philosophical corner, Martin embarks on an altruistic mission, trying to make his clients’ lives a little better without their knowledge and risking his own tenuous subsistence in the bargain.

A very funny adventure about the mechanics of burglary and the fragility of an ordinary life.

Second review!

The second review of SOMETHING MISSING was forwarded to me today, a starred review (the highest praise a book can receive in this publication) in the June 1^st issue of Booklist Magazine. 

Even more positive than the first!

BOOKLIST

Issue: June 1, 2009

Mark Haddon’s The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time (2003) is about a young, autistic amateur sleuth. Monk is a popular television series about a detective with an obsessive-compulsive disorder (OCD). This debut novel introduces us to a character who appears to have elements of autism and OCD, but here’s the twist: he’s a professional criminal. Martin Railsback is a housebreaker with a short list of “clients” from whom he’s been “acquiring” things for years. He makes regular visits to their homes, cataloging their possessions, tracking their purchases, learning their lives. Most of his thefts are small—food from the pantry, toiletries, books of stamps. Only occasionally, and only after a great deal of precise preparation, will he help himself to an object of actual monetary value. And here’s another interesting thing about Martin: when one of his clients gets into a sticky situation, Martin will risk his own safety to help them out of their jam, even if being a hero means he may have to come into actual, physical contact with a client. This is a splendid novel, written with loving attention to character and detail; Martin is so vividly realized that he threatens to step off the page and into the reader’s own living room. A loopier Bernie Rhodenbarr? A less lethal Dexter? Martin falls somewhere in between, but with a little word of mouth and some shrewd promotion, he could be the next big thing.

— David Pitt

First review

My first review came out today in Publisher’s Weekly. Though it contains some criticism which I will attempt to process over the coming days (is the book really rambling and repetitive?), the review is quite positive and very exciting.

Something Missing Matthew Dicks. Broadway, $14 paper (304p) ISBN 978-0-7679-3088-8

An expert thief unexpectedly finds himself aiding his victims in Dicks's charming if rambling debut. During his hours off, barista Martin Railsback burgles the houses of folks he calls his “clients,” taking only what they won't notice is missing: for instance, “three boxes of long grain rice... two rolls of toilet paper (in Martin's estimation, the Gallos had excellent taste in toilet paper), three cups of olive oil” and, on occasion, something really valuable. The system works beautifully until the day Martin drops a client's toothbrush into the toilet and feels compelled to replace it. This act of simple decency sets him on an entirely different course, and pretty soon he's breaking into houses to improve the lives of their occupants. Martin's own life starts looking up, too, with the possibility of romance and a new avocation, but the specter of real peril looms. Dicks struggles with digression and repetition—Martin's obsessive allegiance to the rules of his pastime becomes exasperating—but he's created a winning hero in Martin, a crook with a heart of gold. (July)

Ironically, Nicholson Baker, one of my favorite writers, also has a new book reviewed in this edition. 

Latest adventures with my book club

I’m a member of a book club that I enjoy very much. We are currently reading Death with Interruptions by Jose Saramago. It was chosen by my wife, Elysha, who views her opportunity to choose a book as an intense and weighty process that involves research, analysis, and great deliberation. She scans websites, reviews lists of popular book club novels, solicits recommendations, and gathers all the information possible before selecting a text.

As a result, she now finds herself saddled with a novel that is too depressing for a new mother to read. Her previous choice, a Margaret Atwood novel entitled The Blind Assassin, wasn’t well received either, despite its numerous literary awards.

I think she might be over thinking her choices a bit.

When it’s my turn to choose, I just pick books that interest me or authors who I like. This process seems to work out well. In the past year, my choices have included a book of essays by Nicholson Baker and Cat’s Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut.

When Something Missing hits the stores in July, my book club has agreed to read it as our next book. This means that I can either re-read my book or work from memory. But what I may say when we meet is still a mystery to me.

How am I supposed to comment on a novel that I wrote?

Should I respond to my fellow book club member’s conjecture?

Should I defend myself against their possible criticism?

Should I be offended if someone doesn’t finish the book before we meet?

There’s always someone in our group who has not quite finished the book by the time we meet, and in the case of Death with Interruptions, it may very well be my wife.

In preparation for this possibility, she found this list of discussion points for members who have not yet read the book, which is quite amusing.

USA Today! Today!

An article appeared in USA Today by Carol Memmott on publishing in trade paperback instead of hardcover, and SOMETHING MISSING was featured prominently in the piece.

Very exciting!

My initial instinct was to run out and purchase fifty copies of the paper, but oddly enough, I have experience with this kind of thing and thought better of it. This is actually the second time that I have been featured in USA Today. Back in 1996 I was a USA Today Academic All American, and my name and information about my academic career appeared in the paper. Early on the morning that the article appeared, I immediately ran out and bought twenty copies of the newspaper, which only cost fifty cents back then, from three different convenience stores.

Those twenty copies were placed in a box with other memorabilia and have yet to see the light of day ever since.

There’s just never any reason to have more than one copy of the paper, especially in today’s digital world. So I’ll go out this morning and buy a copy of the paper, but I won’t go batty and purchase twenty or thirty.

One should be plenty. Well, maybe two or three…

Interruption

Conversation between a three-year old and me:

Three-year old:  Hi.  What are you working on?

Me:  An questionnaire for my publisher.

Three-year old:  Why?

Me:  So that my readers can know me better.

Three-year old:  Oh. 

A second later...

Three-year old:  I've been working on the railroad, all the living long day.  I've been working on the railroad, just to pass the time away. 

So much for my questionnaire. 

A reader's guide

Random House has posted a reader’s guide for SOMETHING MISSING on their site, along with a summary of the book and a couple blurbs from other authors.

As the writer of the book, it was interesting to read the questions that were included in the guide. I’ve known the main character, Martin, for a few years now, and in writing the book, my primary goal was to convey the intricacies of this character to my readers. For me, Martin was always as close to being real as a fictional character could possibly be, and in reading some of the questions in the guide, I was pleased to see that some of the ways in which I chose to delineate his character seemed to work.

For example, question #5 reads:

In chapter two, Martin meets Alfredo, the Grants’ parrot. What makes Alfredo the ideal new friend for Martin?

In terms of establishing and maintaining relationships, Martin is as inept as a person can be, and so in thinking about the kinds of friendships and romantic entanglements that he might be able to maintain, the idea of a parrot seemed ideal to me. But in writing about it, I wasn’t sure if the reader would understand how Martin’s friendship with Alfredo might be the most real and meaningful friendship that he could manage. I wondered if the reader might just see Alfredo as an amusing anecdote within the context of the overarching plot. But in reading this question, I was pleased to see that this was not the case, at least for the person responsible for writing these questions.

Several questions struck me similarly.

I was also intrigued by question #14:

What do you predict for Martin’s future with Laura Green?

This question has been asked by many of my friends who have read the book, and most have assumed that I know the answer to this question. Honestly, I do not. If I had continued writing, I suspect that I would have found out, but I liked the ending point of the novel, and so that question will remain a mystery.

I’ve been asked if I might consider writing a sequel to SOMETHING MISSING someday, and while I would not entirely discount the idea, I have too many other ideas competing in my head to consider returning to Martin’s life anytime soon. But if I were to ever do so, I suspect we might find out about Martin’s future with Laura Green, which I am admittedly curious about from time to time.