Adventures in Self Promotion

I wrote this email to the editor of the Ventura County Star:

Hi, Mr. Moore,
I'm an Ojai writer, and have been published a couple of times in the VC Star, first a Christmas essay about Santa needing a federal bailout. A year or so ago in the travel section, writing about a horseback ride into Lesotho. Now I've published a novel, and I am hoping that you'd be interested in either doing a review of the book, or an interview with me. Here's a link to the book: This is my fifth novel.http://www.amazon.com/The-Spy-Who-Loathed-Me/dp/0615767672/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1362628107&sr=8-1&keywords=the+spy+who+loathed+me.
This is my fifth novel. They're all on Amazon. I'm also a television comedy writer, with credits on Murphy Brown and Baby Talk.
I would really appreciate the coverage, and I give good interview!
Telephone, if that's faster: (I put my phone number here. I'm not going to put it in the blog.)
Thanks for your consideration.
Chris Westphal

A couple of days later I got a call from Amy Bentley, a reporter for the Star, asking me if I'd be willing to do a phone interview. Absolutely. So, Amy interviewed me for an hour and a half on Monday, and the story should appear sometime before April 6, ahead of the Ojai Word Fest, in which I'm also participating. More on that below. 

What, you may ask, is the common thread of these two momentous events? It is this: I put myself out there. Now, certainly, I could have sat at home and waited for people to call me and invite me to do readings and be the subject of newspaper interviews. I have tried that strategy in the past. It isn't very effective. In fact, it doesn't work at all. 

My participation in Word Fest worked much the same way. I saw an ad for it in the Ojai Quarterly. I thought, "You know, I could probably do a reading or something for them." I called them a few minutes later, and one thing led to another. Now I'm scheduled to do a reading on April 6, from 2:30 to 3 at the library. I'll lead a humor writing workshop from 1 to 3 on Monday the 8th, also at the library. 

Today, up in the Bay area, I stopped into a bookstore to set up a reading. I've been here a week, and they haven't tracked me down on their own, so I figured I had nothing to lose. And they do seem interested. 

I have a collection of letters to prominent authors that I'll be sending out with the book in the next couple of weeks, asking them to blurb on the book in upcoming editions. It may work. It may not. Like most things, some of it will probably work, some of it won't, and some of it will transmogrify into something else entirely. It's very rewarding when one casts one's line and hooks something, but after a while the anticipation that something may bite is an exhilarating experience in itself. You never know what you might reel in.