Here we are again! Some of the folks reading Hagridden are being super cool and sending me pics of their copy — on bookshelves, with booze, in the bayou. Basically, places that begin with B. (Not really — I made that up.)
So here are a few more photos of Hagridden that people have been posting to social media (as always, reposted with their permission):
From my wife, Jennifer.
This is the first one of these photos ever. Before the official release day, even! My wife started reading it on the plane to Texas. 🙂
From Sally F.
(Bonus: can you play “spot the chapbook”? Yep — that’s Box Cutters there next to the Gita!)
(Groan all you want — there’s more where that came from.)
The issue itself is a bit of a guppy, all flash fiction and poetry (even a couple of dirty haiku!), but you guys, we have Dutch artist Telmo Pieper on the cover! You might recognize his work from an article in the Guardian a couple of months ago. He’s amazing, and we feel so fortunate to have hooked him!
And the content is, as usual, fantastic, with women growing pasta in their hair and death in the circus and chicken babies and revenge on a barber and even a bit of porn.
So all in all, we think this issue will blow you out of the water!
Back when my chapbook, Box Cutters, came out, I did a thing where I posted photos of people reading the book. It was awesome, because the people who bought and read Box Cutters are awesome.
So are the people who are buying and reading Hagridden, because they’re doing the same thing and I didn’t even ask them to!
So here they are, the first few photos of Hagridden people have been posting to social media (reposted with their permission):
From Jaretta R. in Washington.From Andrea F. in Texas.From Stephanie D. in Oregon.
Have you ordered Hagridden? Take a photo of it and share it with me! And I’m still happy to share photos of Box Cutters, too!
And I couldn’t have asked for a better companion bookend to my opening reading in Boerne: the audience at the University of Arkansas-Fort Smith was as big, as enthusiastic, as full of family and friends but also as full of community members and students, and as eager to buy the novel! It was a perfect finale to the Southern leg of this fall book tour I’m doing for Hagridden!
There were so many highlights of the Arkansas reading, so I can’t just point to one best thing. I have to point to four, in chronological order:
The first best thing was meeting up with my cousins the Bouldens, some of whom I’ve met before but some of whom I met for first time. And they are a hoot! Tom, my fellow scotch aficionado; and Bob, my fellow jazz fan; and Ben, my fellow author (you should seriously get a copy of his Hidden History of Fort Smith, Arkansas) — these guys were all amazing fun to hang out with over delicious Vietnamese food! And their mother, my great-aunt Katy, was an absolute delight, full of the wry zingers and keen observations I so love in her sister, my grandmother!
Tom Boulden, Bob Boulden, me, and Ben Boulden
Then I got to campus and reconnected with my old college friend Lindsy Lawrence, now a 19th-century lit scholar and English professor at the university in Fort Smith. She was part of my literary crowd back in our undergrad days at Schreiner University, working with the newspaper and the literary magazine and a fellow member of the English Honors Society, Sigma Tau Delta. It’s fantastic that she’s found such success at her current university, and by all accounts, she’s doing a killer job there, with both her colleagues and her students, and I loved seeing her in action!
The old lit-nerd crew from back in our Schreiner days! Me, my wife Jennifer, and our pal Lindsy (now Dr. Lawrence!)
She also hooked me up with poet Christian Anton Gerard, who invited me to join his Imaginative Writing class, and wow, was that a treat! The students there were both ambitious and inquisitive, and I was amazed at the variety of interests in their work, from traditional poetry and essays and novels to film, late-night television, even stand-up comedy! We had an invigorating discussion, and Christian gave me some great ideas for new approaches to my own creative writing classes. (Plus, we swapped books! I’m looking forward to reading his collection, Wilmot Here, Collect for Stella.)
And then there was the reading, which was so well attended that people were pulling out extra chairs!
And of course I took a selfie.
And I wasn’t the only one taking selfies! The faculty there had a brilliant idea of giving extra credit to students by requiring them to take a selfie with the author (that’s me!) and post it to Twitter. So keep an eye on the UAFS Read This! Twitter account to see who’s going to get their credit!
But that wasn’t even the best part; the best part was the Q&A, in which the audience asked dozens of insightful, craft-focused questions that really put me through my paces and turned the whole Q&A into a genuine discussion, and I loved that!
Overall, it was a fantastic evening.
But wait! The Southern leg of the book tour is over, but that doesn’t mean we’re finished! There’s still the blog tour, which this week has included write-ups by Al McDermid and J.J. Ulm, and a terrific interview with Lin Rice, in which we talk about the practice and pitfalls of dialect and why the idea of “home” can sometimes be so emotionally risky.
Do you remember [some mutual friend, family member, or really embarrassing story from way back when]?
Oh my god, I missed your laugh!
Would you PLEASE do an audio book?/I have your voice stuck in my head now every time I read this thing.
Number of books I’ve sold, donated, signed, etc, either from my personal stash or via a local bookstore (but not counting online sales or giveaways):
I don’t even really know, but several dozen. (So far!)
Number of people who have sold my books for me, either by calling up friends/dragging friends to readings or by literally accosting folks in bookstores and hawking Hagridden like a medieval town cryer (I’m looking at you, Sean!):
At least half a dozen.
Number of people who have finished the book just in the last week:
At least four that I know of. As far as I know, we’re still friends. 😉
Number of times I got recognized at random, non-reading places and wound up chatting about/signing Hagridden:
No kidding? Three times! =D
What I told a friend I was meeting for lunch when he texted to say he was running late:
“That’s all right. I’m in the cemetery anyway.” (I really was! I like to visit cemeteries — people who read this blog should know that by now.)
I began the Texas leg of my book tour in my hometown of Boerne, where I graduated high school. Tonight, I wrapped up my Texas tour in Kerrville, at my undergrad alma mater, Schreiner University.
It was great to see the old place, which has undergone tremendous growth — new academic buildings, new housing, new community buildings — but still somehow maintains its bones. And the heart of the campus is still the old Weir Building, where I took so many of my literature and writing classes.
In fact, I hadn’t been on campus long before I found my way up to the second floor of Weir, where I dropped in on my professor, Dr. Kathleen Hudson, and got invited to sit in on her mythology course. (They were discussing Demeter and Persephone. We decided that the old woman and her young daughter-in-law in my novel were a good fit for the discussion!) Afterward, I stuck around and chatted with a couple of students about their own writing.
Kerrville, TX
Then it was time for my reading and book discussion as part of Schreiner’s Monday Night Fiction series.
Which means, yes, a selfie. Or, three — it was hard to get everyone into one shot, and I still cropped out some folks! Afterward, I took another with my good friends and great professors, Dr. William Woods and Dr. Kathleen Hudson.
Kerrville, TX
Kerrville, TX
Chatting beforehand with my biology professor, Dr. Diana Comuzzi.Just as the reading began.
I had a grand time, and the discussion afterward was fantastic! Lots of great questions, including several I hadn’t heard before! And booksales afterward, and food, and friendship, and just an amazing time all around.
Thanks so much to Schreiner University for hosting me!
Not much happening on the blog tour until tomorrow, gang, but there are still loads of things happening online regarding #Hagridden.
A couple days ago, I was very happy to discover that Malvern Books in Austin had done a blog post about my reading with Zoë Miller, including photos, both my and Zoë’s videos, and a special shout-out to my new reading-selfie habit. 🙂
Because today was just a signing, rather than a reading, there wasn’t really a crowd to do a selfie with, but I did take a photo wth the event sign:
I also got a selfie with my old college friend, the comedian and scriptwriter Justin Cooper!
The table was a good set-up (thanks, Barnes & Noble!), and I had a blast visiting with people who stopped by the buy the book, including an excited young writer who wanted to know all about my process! (She called herself an “aspiring writer,” and I asked if she’d written anything yet. She said she’d written a few short stories, and I said, “Then you’re not an aspiring writer — you ARE a writer!” She seemed so happy to hear that!)
And there’s the news from the other day that I’ll be appearing at the University of Arkansas — Fort Smith on Thursday, August 28, as the kickoff to their “Read This!” series!
Of course, the blog tour also rolls on, picking up again tomorrow with a fun interview with Nathaniel Tower, and plenty more posts all this coming week.
Oh! And by now, several of you have mentioned that you’re blazing through the novel or might even have already finished it. So when you get a chance, maybe hop over to wherever you read book reviews (Goodreads? Powell’s? Amazon? Barnes & Noble?) and drop a quick review. You can be honest. I’d just love to see some response!
Today, I gave a book talk about Hagridden at my grandparents’ retirement community and read a short story inspired by my ship-captain grandfather (the story, “The Voices Captain Brewster Heard,” will be published by WhiskeyPaper early next month).
And in the meantime, I’m still on a blog tour!
Yesterday, author Gay Degani interviewed me — we focused heavily on the research aspects of Hagridden, which was good timing since that was also the focus of my book talk today.
And yes, there’s still more to come! Expect a handful of posts over the next few days (I’ll post another recap next week), and tomorrow I’ll post photos from today’s book talk in Boerne. And then more blog tour posts at the end of next week, as well as more pix from more readings….
It’s a hell of a ride, gang! Glad you’re all in it with me.
Coming to Arkansas next week, gang! University of Arkansas — Fort Smith, Thursday, August 28, 7-9 pm. In the library (of course!). Hope to see a whole mess of folks there!
As the kick off to our Read This! season, we have writer Sam Snoek-Brown on campus, Thursday, August 28, from 7-9pm at the Boreham Library, in Room 122. He’ll give a reading from his new novel Hagridden, about the Civil War, and then he’ll answer questions and sign books afterwards.
Samuel Snoek-Brown writes and teaches in Portland, Oregon. He also works as production editor for Jersey Devil Press. His work has appeared in Bartleby Snopes, Ampersand Review, Fiction Circus, Eunoia Review, Red Fez, SOL: English Writing in Mexico, and others. He’s the author of the flash fiction chapbook Box Cutters, and of the novel “Hagridden,” for which he received a 2013 Oregon Literary Fellowship.
For more information on “Hargridden,” published August 19, please see hagriddenbook.com.
For upcoming Read This! events please see the Read This! Facebook page or readthisuafs.wordpress.com. Follow us on Twitter at…
Samuel Snoek-Brown 