Honestly, this post began as an exploration into book trailers. With Graffiti Creek due out August 8th, I have been pining for the ability to create a badass book trailer. Sadly, I don't believe I have the bandwidth to pull it off in a way I would be proud to share. However, on May 17th, my publisher, Pandamoon, opened itself for submissions using #PitDark as a kick-off. The juxtaposition of my research into trailers (research is a word used loosely here to mean lying in bed watching movie trailers) with this Twitter pitch event, got me wondering what we can learn from the best movie trailers about pitching our novels.

I think the best pitches have a focus, meaning the writer knows the draw of the book. And as a disclaimer, I will add that I am no expert. Pitching is incredibly difficult for me. I think I'm pretty bad at it. BUT DON'T STOP READING. My hope is that we can learn together.

With Graffiti Creek, I can now look back on it and see my focus should be on characterization. It was, at its core, an exercise in empathy, and those deep character dives should be my pitch. Whereas with my first book, Juggling Kittens, hindsight and reviews tell me the sense of place and time really sold the book. When we look at the best trailers, we can see the laser focus on the element of strength in the work.

Stories draw us in with magic. The best trailers capture the magic of a story with a moment, a line, an image, a song ... something. But whatever it is, it gives you chills. Those chills trigger something in our mind which makes us feel the magic of the moment. This is all difficult with a book. But I propose the following theory: our magic is in our theme. Even in the most genre-driven book, some central theme drives every character, every choice, every sentence in some way.  As evidence, I present three trailers. What I would draw your attention to is how each captures thematic elements and a sense of magic. And, important to note, they all three play on things already familiar to us. These are universal themes of human existence. Without that important connection, nothing in our brain would send those electric charges  down our spine. In the first two, notice the choice of song, the feeling of the pace, the choice of font. Everything drives us to a familiar place where we feel the wonderment of childhood or the overbearing need to feel noticed. Forget the last minute and a half of each. We get chills at the first glimpse of the monster silhouette or the slight embarrassment of the beautiful sound of children singing Radiohead layered over the familiar clicks of modern day friendship. And the third I included because I want to draw attention to the use of stock footage. There is almost zero footage from the movie itself. The monologue sets the theme against images we can all connect with.

This falls into the category of "much easier said than done ... key to everything." So, yeah, if I could master it or tell anyone how to master it, this blog post would probably cost you money. But I can point to it when it is mastered. The key to a pitch is to give away enough to tease without opening what J.J. Abrams talks about as the "mystery box." In most genres, we all need to be working to create a mystery box. And with our pitches, we need to be working to crack open the mystery box just enough to hear a sound or catch a glimpse of something which makes a reader want to rip into it. So one example is quite obviously from Abrams himself. But the other three are every bit as good. And these are arguably four different genres. Granted, two are monster movies, sort of. But one is a disaster movie and the other a horror movie. With each, there is just enough information presented to make the viewer want to find out more.

All in all, I really just like watching movie trailers and wanted an excuse to watch a lot of them. But, in writing this, I did learn a few things about my own efforts to pitch my novels. And pitching goes on even after you have a publisher. I am constantly trying to find the best way to pitch to potential readers. And attention spans are shrinking all the time. We have to work at being quicker to the punch. Hopefully, this helped a little.

Most people who have read my debut novel, Juggling Kittens, will mention one character straightaway. The Drew. Without fail, he has been the favorite character of anyone who has talked to me about the book. And that's cool. You know ... Ellis ... the protagonist ... he's, um ... he's cool too, though, right? I mean, he is a little bit based on me, kinda, but, you know what? Never mind. Not what we're here to talk about. It's cool. The Drew. Everybody loves The Drew. I get it. Well, here's your chance. Ever read those Choose Your Own Adventure books when you were a kid? Good. Buckle up, bitches, because ....

You've shown quite a bit of promise as a seventh grade Arkansas history teacher. Internally, you know this means you haven't accomplished much beyond displaying an ability to read faster than thirteen-year-olds. But you have enjoyed making connections with the kids, and, setting aside humility for a moment, your project on Indian ancestry was pretty badass. Either way, the district's central office has taken notice. They have invited you to join an Aspiring Administrators cohort of teacher leaders who show a propensity to become future campus principals. As sort of an initiation to the cohort, you've been invited to shadow the administrator on your campus.

Andrew Andrews.

You walk into Principal Andrews' office and take in your surroundings. The room looks and smells like an Old Spice commercial. On one end of his desk are a disheveled pile of papers, which apparently have something to do with fantasy baseball. At the other end of the desk sits a fake (you hope) grenade with a tag hanging off displaying the numeral one. Below it, a tiny plaque reads, "Take a Number." You scan the walls to find one of those singing big mouthed bass, a poster of a mountain climber with a quote from Bo Jackson on it, a framed diploma from a college of which you have never heard, and another framed document. Stepping closer, you discover your principal is also a licensed private investigator.

Principal Andrews walks in as you are examining the private investigator license. He claps loudly and you jump. "Never met a real Private Eye, have you, rookie?" He jerks a thumb at himself and uses the coach's whistle hanging around his neck to blow out a little wolf whistle.

"Principal Andrews," you begin.

He frowns and blows the whistle shrilly. "Ahhh. Foul on the play, Rook." Dropping the whistle, and pointing at his face with both index fingers he drawls out, "The Drew." He pats a plush leather chair in front of his desk. "Now, have a seat. Let's talk shop."

Turning away from the sight of The Drew walking around his desk in his too short coaching shorts, you twist into a chair and smile. "The district office said I should shadow you today."

The Drew pushes his tongue into the side of his mouth, nodding and grinning mischievously. "Oh, I know. The only question is, what do you want to shadow?" He points to his diploma, "The man." He nods toward the private investigator's license, "Or the legend."

We fade in on a riding lawn mower slowly working its way across a field. Silhouetted against the blood orange of the setting sun is its driver. He’s wearing a straw cowboy hat and cutoff blue jean shorts with Timberland boots. His plaid shirt lies open, ruffling in the wind. Suddenly he stops. In the distance, smoke drifts up over the trees. He leaps off the mower, one side of his shirt flapping open. The dwindling rays of the sun reflect off his sweat-glistened abs. He glowers in the direction of the smoke, pale blue eyes baring down on the horizon. He’s worried, and it’s genuine. This is his town. Someone in his town is in trouble.

He begins rifling through his pockets, looking for his phone. But almost immediately a pickup truck bounds around a dirt road and skids to a stop in front of him. A young man his age pops up out of the driver side window. He’s shirtless and wearing a George Strait baseball cap. His shoulders and biceps are muscular and tan. He slaps the top of the pickup and shouts, “Teigen! We got one! Git in!”

Teigen runs for the truck, but the driver is sliding down and pulling off before he even reaches it. Teigen laughs, “Dammit, Skylar.” He leaps for the bed of the truck, climbing in and working his way around to slide into the passenger side window as they speed through fields and backroads.

They finally come to a stop at a trailer home in a blaze. Skylar and Teigen leap out of the truck and run up to the front of the house. An older man is doubled over, wheezing and coughing. He’s a large man, with a few too many pounds in the middle, but he has the same shoulders and arms as Skylar. Has a grizzled, country strong look about him. Another man, the same age but more cagey looking, is tending to him. Skylar puts a hand on the larger man’s shoulder, “What do we got, Cletus?”

Cletus coughs and can’t answer. Teigen steps forward and talks to the cagey fellow, “Yancy? Is he okay?”

Yancy waves him off, “He’ll be fine. We can handle it.”

Before anyone can act, a woman runs up, screaming, “Please! You have to help! My baby is in there!”

The men all turn and look at her, and then stare at the blazing house in shock.

Another woman runs up, “My daughter is in there, too! She took her baby in there! To show her a box of golden retriever puppies!”

Skylar wheels around and turns his hat backwards.

Teigen cocks his head, “Skylar. Skylar, wait.”

Yancy grabs Skylar’s arm, “Cletus tried, boy! We can’t! We just can’t!”

Skylar stares them both down, “Well, the way I see it, cain’t is just ain’t with a c in the front. And if you two ain’t, then I’ll do it my damn self.”

He bursts through them and runs for the house. With one swift move, he kicks open the door. Flames lick out around him and retreat back inside. In the light of the fire, we can see the tattoo on Skylar’s lower back. It’s the Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue emblem, with the words “A Country Boy Can Survive” written above it. Skylar leaps into the burning house.

Teigen shakes his head, “Skylar, you hot headed son of a …” But as he talks, he pulls off his shirt and runs after him.

Yancy yells, “It’s suicide!”

Teigen stops cold and looks back over his shoulder. With his shirt off, we can see it. He has the matching tattoo. “No,” he says back to Yancy. “It’s my best friend.”

After some building of doubt, Teigen and Yancy manage to make a way out for Skylar. Everyone watches for a long moment before, out of the smoke, Skylar appears. In one hand, he is carrying a toddler, who is carrying a baby. In the other hand, he has a box full of golden retriever puppies. He turns to Teigan, “‘bout time you boys got off your asses and fetched me outta there.”

They all laugh. Cut to title screen.

During the rest of the pilot, we discover someone has been setting fires around Genoa. And it’s up to Genoa Volunteer Fire and Rescue to find out who it is. We experience some of the generational drama between Cletus/Yancy and Skylar/Teigan, but we mainly roll through a moment with each character off duty.

We see Teigan share a tender moment with Axl. 

We also meet Saffron and see her back and forth with Skylar about letting her tag along. 

Through Cletus and Yancy, we meet Imagene, Dixie May, and Lavonte. They are all back at home when Cletus comes in still hacking. Yancy helps him in, and Lavonte immediately runs to tend to him. Imagene gives them all a cussing for taking too many chances. But Dixie May strolls in, fresh from a party. She informs Imagene and the rest that they don’t have a choice. “Someone in this town is set on burning it all down. And the way I hear it, they aim on starting with the Clip and Snip tomorrow night.”

The team sets up a stake out at the Clip and Snip. Here we get more generational clash. But before anything can happen at the Clip and Snip, Imagene calls with an urgent message. There is a fire. It's at Axl's trailer. 

Saffron shoots up from the back of Skylar’s truck. “It’s a misdirection. They wanted us here so we’d miss the real fire!”

They rush to the trailer. Skylar has to hold Teigan back as he sobs in his arms. Yancy rushes in. He comes out with a body. It’s Axl.

Saffron rushes to his side. She does all she can. But it’s too late. Axl is dead.

Teigan starts to go to him, but he can’t. He asks through tears, “Was it painless? Please tell me it was painless. Was it smoke inhalation?”
​
Saffron looks up, with terror in her eyes. “No,” she almost whispers it. She flips open Axl’s shirt to reveal the same tattoos and polished abs from before. But now, there are multiple stab wounds in his torso. Saffron looks up at the group. “It was knife inhalation.”

End Credits

​September 11th, 2001, was eventful for both me and one Ruddy Creek seventh grader, but not for any of the reasons you’d expect.

Rachael Marcel’s beagle died on September 10th.

The attacks started on that Tuesday around 8:00 a.m. our time. Ms. Peterman, the math teacher, and I were standing in the hallway talking about her spider bite when Coach Tipton swift-walked down the hallway, elbowing preteens out of his way to brief us on the first plane.

We reacted with a resounding, “Weird,” and filed into class behind our students as the second bell rang.

Coach Tipton wasn’t a coach. He used to be a coach. Somewhere along the way he realized driving a bus before and after school paid almost as much as coaching and required about an eighth of the time. Couldn’t lose the moniker though. He looked the part too much: shaved head, beefy neck, scowl. He was everybody’s favorite guy. Coaches loved him because he was one of their own. Teachers loved him because they viewed him as a coach who would rather teach. Girls loved him because he was 225 pounds of muscle. Boys loved him because he was 225 pounds of muscle.

Other than The Drew, Tipton was the closest to a friend that I made among the teachers at Dan Blocker Junior High. We ate lunch and watched Unsolved Mysteries together once or twice a week. Great guy. Knew how to play the game. Never took work home. Didn’t polish anything he could buff with a sleeve. September 11th, even when it looked like a freak accident to everyone but him, made for some easy-going TV time in the social studies classroom.
​
But it wasn’t half an hour before he came running back down the hallway, tapping on the glass rectangles in our doorways. It was surreal to see a mist coating those muscular eyes (yes, even his eyes were, in fact, muscular).

“I think you better turn on your TV,” Tipton squinted and nodded at me. I’m not sure if it took more convincing for others, but for me that one statement made me feel like a little kid being told about a death in the family. I fumbled at the remote and turned a little red at the fact that the TV would still be tuned to Lifetime from the Unsolved Mysteries reruns. But no one noticed. Lifetime was doing news coverage of the attacks. I’d never seen anything but sappy movies and crappy reruns on Lifetime. To this day, that’s still one of the most shocking things about the whole ordeal: they even covered it on Lifetime.

The kids were pretty clueless as to how to react. When the first tower collapsed, one kid said “cool”. Cool. They were watching TV—not real life. These events had no real bearing on their video-game reality. Not until years later, when they would sit around sharing “where were you” stories, all far too similar and pedantic, would they even start to understand the gravity of what they had witnessed. And that one kid would remember saying “cool” and would remember how Coach Tipton had jumped his ass and would get twice as embarrassed as he had on September 11th, 2001. But he’d leave that part out of his story—leave it for others to tell so they could divert at least a little attention away from what they sat and watched on a television screen all day long.

Like me, no one would ever forget that kid’s clumsiness, his head-ducked shame, our relief we hadn’t been the one to say anything inappropriate. We would eventually forget the numbers of dead, the order of crashes, the names, the details. We would remember ourselves: I was home sick, I was watching The Today Show, I was talking to Ms. Peterman about her spider bite, I was in a class with this kid who called it “cool”. The important stuff. No one remembers events. They only remember their perspective of events.

By lunch, half the kids in school had been checked out, either in an effort to hide from the moment or out of some fear that Ruddy Creek, Arkansas, would be targeted right after New York and D.C. My fourth period had four people in it. Tipton brought his class of seven down, and we all sat in silent wonder, listening to an anchorman tell us how our lives had changed that day.
​
Rachael Marcel’s life had already changed plenty the night before. Her sniffles stumbled into sobs, and eventually she dashed to the bathroom. She was in Tipton’s class, but we both taught her. We did “paper, rock, scissors” to see who would catch her on her way back to make sure everything was okay.

​I stood outside my door and tried to poke at a scuff on the floor until it went away. The glow of televisions flickered out of the little windows turning the yellowing linoleum varying shades of green and blue. It felt like a hospital in winter. I would have shanked a kid for a cigarette right about then. Finally, Rachael unfolded herself from the bathroom. She was all red-headed lankiness. She would probably be pretty someday, but it could still go either way. At twelve, she was pure giraffe with freckles and an affinity for Pygmalion tales about girls like her who became knockouts and drove all the rebels to put on borrowed ties and take them to prom.

She caught sight of me and started jabbing at her eyes. I studied the last little trail of scuff mark until she got close enough.

“You all right?” I didn’t look at her, but I could tell she was nodding, and the tears were coming back in force.

I winced at her silence, willing myself to find a way to say something—anything. “Is it—is it all this on the news?”

I was still a little scared to look up at her, so I wasn’t sure if she nodded or shook or cried. She squeaked out a mumble, “Lucy.”

I gave her a look. “Lucy? Is that like, an aunt or something?”

She held her fists together under her nose and shook her head. “Dog.”

I nodded. “Your dog?”

She nodded.

We stared for a moment at a banner across the hallway which counted down the days until school was out.

“Was your dog—Lucy—was she in—New York?”

She gave me a puzzled look that melted into some form of tearful laughter. And I shared it with her, if for no other reason than because I found it hard to feel awkward when laughing about the same thing. After we both took time to appreciate the chance to laugh about something again, she wiped her nose with a sleeve and sniffed. “Lucy died last night. She was twelve. I’ve had her my whole life.” The last sentence had a well-rehearsed rhythm to it, but it still made her cry all over again.

I reached out then, felt my hand freeze in that horrible no-man’s-land, and then patted her on the shoulder as if she were a touch-lamp. She leaned into it hungrily as I swallowed at the beginnings of five different things I should have said. I groped at words until a lump formed in my throat and my eyes glazed with inexplicable tears.

I left my hand on her shoulder as I spoke, “When I was in the eleventh grade I had a psychology teacher who I really liked. One day we were talking about—I don’t remember what—and she stopped at my desk to ask me if I ever had pets growing up. I told her no, and she said, ‘Hmm, yeah that explains a lot.’ I never could get her to tell me what that meant other than to say it had to do with death and loss. I think I understand her now.”

We both looked at each other and cried for a minute. Then I thought about Tipton and nutted up so we could go back in the room. Later in the year, I brought her pictures of my beagles, which made her cry all over again. But she still thanked me. And in a Christmas card she gave me, she thanked me for the talk I gave her. Although I can’t imagine what good it could have done.
​
September 12th was a Wednesday. On Wednesdays in Ruddy Creek, this old lady named Sharon would roll around an old projector cart with a “soup of the week.” She dished it up out of a dingy-looking plastic bucket, and it tasted like God himself had cum in your mouth. I don’t even like soup. But this was some sort of other-worldly concoction of goodness. And in flavors that didn’t even make sense: Meatloaf with Peas, Turkey and Dressing, Cauliflower and Broccoli with Ranch Dip. How do you make that into a soup? Whatever she made, every Wednesday, no matter who you were, you showed up in the lounge and shelled out three dollars a bowl.

That day, Sharon sported a shirt with an eagle on the front and had a red, white, and blue bow in her hair which looked like she had swiped it off a four-year-old. She made a soup called The American Dream. It tasted like spicy barbecue ribs and cold beer, somehow. I bought two bowls.

The lounge was packed. It’s the worst place in any school, the teachers’ lounge. I’m a big teacher advocate and teacher apologist and all that, but Jesus—if a person’s only experience with teachers was sitting in the lounge for an hour or two and listening to them talk, said person would think teachers are the most bitter, judgmental, hateful, spiteful bag of dicks in the world. The eighth-grade history teacher named Mr. Smith (I don’t know his first name; I don’t think he had one. He was boring as hell. I once heard him sing along to “Margaritaville” and he replaced the damns with darns.) had brought cornbread from home and was warming it up in the nasty-ass microwave. I didn’t hear the first part of the conversation, but I saw him shake his head while he spat, “I think we should put all the towel heads in a camp of some sort until this blows over.”

The man wouldn’t use the word damn, but he would throw out towel head in casual conversation.

A math teacher threw a finger in the air. “Thank you! Did it with the Japanese. They got over it.”

Mr. Smith nodded at that. “I hate to admit it, but I’ve been looking at little Enrique Diaz in the hallway all day. And you know…” He shook his head.

Tipton had a mouthful of soup, but he frowned at me and said, “He’s Mexican.”

Mr. Smith furrowed his brow at him. “Are you sure?”

Tipton laughed. “The kids call him Beaner.”

Mr. Smith shrugged. “I thought they called him that because he’s lazy.”
​
Most everyone laughed. I closed my eyes and tried to pretend I didn’t understand why anyone would hate us while I enjoyed my second bowl of The American Dream.

This winter I will hold a book with my name on the cover. After twenty-two years of dreaming, at least fourteen years of toiling at it, a couple of failed manuscripts, more than three bad relationships with literary agents, and well over a quarter of a million written (like, final draft written) words, I will be a published novelist. In the book, I write a little about the changing of dreams—about the evolution of the fantasy of a future baseball player or ballerina into the reality of an accountant or a computer programmer. The process of going from a spiral notebook scribbler to an ISBN owner has not been dissimilar.

I can remember the fluctuating dreams of being an aspiring writer in my teens and early twenties. It was like the fluidity of a middle school persona, shifting with each new author I idolized. And my level of understanding of the publishing industry was so blissfully low. I was like that person you know who whistles a lot. If you ever ask yourself, how nice must it be to walk around like such a stupid asshole with so little to stress you out that you can whistle a jaunty little tune … Well, I can definitively tell you, now that I know much more about the publishing industry, that, yes it is nice. Very nice. The crazy thing is, though, that no matter how far behind the curtain any of us go, most of us still hold tight to that analogy of the big name publisher to the major leagues. We all want the big contract. But, in my experience, it’s not baseball. It’s more like picking a school for your kid. There is no perfect school for everyone. There is only the right fit for each individual student. Not every child fits in a private school or a public school or a charter school. And not every book fits in a big house or an indie or a university. At some point in my process of seeking a home for my most recent manuscript, I came to the decision that an independent publisher was the right fit for me. I was so sure that I (very early on) abandoned any and all search for an agent, essentially killing any chance of landing the big publishing contract. I ended up partnering with Pandamoon Publishing, out of Austin, TX. And this week, I felt completely validated in the choice I made.

Pandamoon is a little different as publishers go. They strive to be different. From our first conversation, the owner described to me her philosophy on book marketing—being willing to try different approaches so that she can place books into promotional windows that are not oversaturated with titles. Although I understood it and appreciated it at the time, it didn’t sink in until I was face to face with an example. During a recent meeting with one of the marketing directors at Pandamoon, he excitedly shared with us an opportunity to partner with a charity organization. To be honest, I almost zoned out during the first part of his pitch. It wasn’t a charity that connects with me personally—not that I don’t care, but there are those of us in the world with only enough empathy to invest in a limited number of sad-song-two-minute commercials. At a certain point, though, he explained how this was an opportunity to distribute our books to people in a very unique need of books to read. Not only would it make us all feel good about lending our talents in a selfless, helpful fashion (even the blackened-souled, dead-eyed writers among us … me, that’s probably only me), but it would also increase our readership, possibly leading to some word-of-mouth marketing. It was a risk, make no mistake. We were talking about giving away a potentially vast number of digital copies of our books. But risk … risk is, I realized in that moment, one thing that makes me love my publisher.

There was a basketball game I remember watching a few years back. I believe it was the Knicks and Bobcats, and I believe this is a J.R. Smith story (but that may be me wanting every basketball story to be a J.R. Smith story). Regardless, whoever the player was—we’re going to say it was J.R. Smith—had played a terrible game. He made the first three that he took, I believe, but then he missed nine or ten in a row. Missed ugly. He was benched for long stretches. He looked frustrated at multiple points. Terrible game. As the game wound down to its final seconds, the Bobcats managed to tip in a miss that put them up by one point. The Knicks called timeout and loaded the court with shooters. If I remember correctly, there was less than a second on the clock—only enough time to catch, turn, and jack it. Despite his struggles, there was no question that J.R. Smith was one of the five best shooters on the Knicks. Hell, it was the Knicks. Spike Lee might have been one of the five best shooters on that bench. It was a given that he would be out there. When the whistle blew, J.R. Smith curled off a screen and found space in the corner. Having no other options, whoever was in-bounding the ball (he was probably foreign, over-drafted, and is now selling cars … sorry, no more Knicks jokes) passed it to J.R. He caught it, turned, and jacked it. No hesitation. Not a thought in his crazy-ass head that didn’t involve that ball finding net. He had missed ten shots in a row, at least one was an air ball. But the key here is that J.R. Smith had become so accustomed to taking risks on the basketball court that he had no fear of doing so when it counted. Of course, he made the shot. The Knicks won by two. J.R. did some crazy dance or sat down in the first row and ordered a beer or something. Then they traded him. Because … Knicks. This is the story that came to mind this week though. I want my publisher to be J.R. Smith. I want to see that crazy-ass fire in the eye that says, I’ll take the shot … I’ll take every damn shot … and I’ll make it.

Starting today, I'll be doing interviews with writers on Tuesdays via Twitter. I ask 5 questions, they give 5 answers, and we keep it all under 1400 characters. We kick off with David Joy, author of the upcoming Where All Light Tends to Go. Joy lives in North Carolina and was a finalist for the Reed Environmental Writing Award and the Ragan Old North State Award for Creative Nonfiction before turning his talents onto novels and landing a deal with Putnam for Where All Light Tends to Go (2015) and Waiting on the End of the World (2016).

The book is Where All Light Tends to Go. It is currently available for pre-order on multiple sites. Be nice, buy it twice. David Joy is the writer, and he couldn't possibly be a better guy. You can follow him @DavidJoy_Author, and you should.


         
"Shaving is for swimmers."
                                 --David Joy