The day before yesterday, I drove over to Presbyterian College and shot some video footage of high school kids going through football drills. Why? Well, I do like watching football practice from a distance of, oh, forty years when I was out there sweating in the sun. I went to a football camp before my senior year back when offensive linemen couldn’t use their hands and defensive linemen could throw forearms.

What I was doing, though, was collecting footage to make a homemade “book trailer” for my novel, Crazy of Natural Causes. Lots of teams were out there. In the novel, the Elmore High Mustangs wear blue and white, so I was looking for teams wearing those colors. They abounded.

I also took some photographs of a school, its small field, a church, and a few other images that conjure up the themes in my novel. Chance Benford is a coach for only the first few chapters, but his links to the game, and his ex-players, linger.

Some authors pay to have professional trailers made for their books. I doubt such an expense would be cost-effective. I’m producing one because, well, it can’t hurt. When one has a book on the market, one tries a lot of projects that can’t hurt.

I’ve posted many a video, mostly of me playing guitar and singing, on YouTube over the years.

While promoting my other novels, The Audacity of Dope and The Intangibles, I spent a fair amount of money — I only have a fair amount — on projects that couldn’t help, either. I still do the research, but my tactics have been trimmed by trial and error.

It’s hard. The media in which I grew up, and in which I worked for most of three decades, is in decline. Just last week, I sent out emails with releases, Q&As, and photos to many outlets. The result was some nice coverage locally, but beyond that, newspapers that, ten years ago, employed separate reviewers charged with books, music, movies, and art are now allotting only one position to all that. They rely on “the wire,” and “the wire” is unlikely to jump behind an author whose novel doesn’t jump into the top 10 of the various bestseller lists instantly.

But … the local paper, The Clinton Chronicle, gave it great coverage. Perhaps, once others hear of its budding success, they’ll come around, and I’ll continue “my elusive dreams and schemes.”

For those of you who nominated Crazy of Natural Causes through the KindleScout selection process, and who, as a result, have received advance downloads, I’d appreciate it if you’d write a short customer review at Amazon when you get through. Uh, Goodreads, too, if you think of it.

 

              Crazy of Natural Causes is already available for advance order and will be available for download on July 21. Why reserve it now? Well, the advance cost is only $3.49. http://www.amazon.com/Crazy-Natural-Causes-Monte-Dutton-ebook/dp/B00YI8SWUU/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1436215069&sr=1-1&keywords=Crazy+of+Natural+Causes

              Most of my books are available here: http://www.amazon.com/Monte-Dutton/e/B005H3B144/ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1?qid=1416767492&sr=8-1