Martin Cororan - Author of ‘The Melting Pot’

 …It’s been a good week for shameless touting: The ‘Bookshop Theatre’ at Southwark have been kind enough to take a few copies of The Melting Pot off my hands, and the five copies recently lost in Piccadilly Waterstones’ stock management labyrinth have finally found their way onto the bookshelves (suspiciously changing places with Bernard Cornwell so as to be at eye-level). In addition hits to this blog have increased five-fold in the last three weeks*, I’ve sold another handful via Amazon / work, and to top it all I was acosted by a woman dressed as a panda in Waterloo station this morning.

Other bits and pieces:

…Been trying to fathom the algorhythm behind Amazon’s sale rankings. On Friday I sold two copies and jumped 280,000 places! I think it says more about how few books get sold beyond the charts rather than how metioric a rise I am experiencing.

…had a really interesting conversation with two guys in an independent book shop who gave me all manner of ideas / contacts / avenues of enquiry - all of which I’ll be investigating in the next few days (websites, small publishers etc).

…Just realised that this blog entry bears no resemblance to its title…meant to talk about something else…that’s tangents for you!

* roughly a third of the increase can be attributed to people searching Google for definitions of the word ‘Lugubrious’ (used in an entry a few weeks back).

Earlier this year a good friend of mine contracted a rare condition known as ‘Guilllain-Barre Syndrome’ - a secondary illness that attacks the nervous system. One moment he was recovering from flu and the next he was being rushed to hospital; unable to either walk or breathe.

Just before visiting him in intensive care his wife phoned to say that he had no facial movement and wouldn’t be able to respond to anything I said. Walking down the corridor and waiting to be buzzed through I ask myself how I would react and what I could possibly say.

The sight that awaited me was heart-breaking. He was connected to an intubator and his face was frozen in an awful, sad dispondency - So sad in fact that I decided there and then to smile defiantly and say whatever caustic, bloke-ish comment came into my head first. It arrived. I turned to the nurse at the foot of his bed and uttered:

‘You know, it’s a good job he can’t talk as he normally has a high-pitched squeeky voice, and when he walks he minces on his hips like a transvestite.’

My friend made no response. Inwardly I asked myself ‘Does he appreciate the banter, or is he going out of his mind, or both?’ The result was that I veered into gushing sentimentality before regretting that even more than the sarcasm and veering back. For two hours I ping-ponged between equally bad options before saying goodbye.

In April, when he was at his worst, I was getting the The Melting Pot finalised for publication. It’s tag-line was ‘How do you escape from a vicious circle?’ All I thought about at the time was ‘How could a 29-year old find himself in such a physical state, and how could he come back from it?’ It put my little quest very much into perspective and I decided to dedicate the book to him. It reads ‘Back from the dead,’ which is exactly what he did. Today he is 90% fit and expected to make a full recovery.

Despite being completely paralysed for months, losing over four stone in weight, stopping breathing and having to be resusitated, he recently said to me that "2007 has been a good year. I’ve been blessed in so many ways." That kind of outlook fills me with awe…

…Having said that, he somehow managed to get his wife pregnant so he can’t have been that ill!

This week: Social marketing i.e. frequent trips to the pub - A great opportunity to reach new readers and [INSERT FURTHER FLIMSY ARGUEMENT HERE].

…The biggest of which was my own leaving do. Rather than the traditional card, some colleagues had cribbed a copy of The Melting Pot and signed various pages. While most were complimentary, one particularly callous individual, (ugly, incontinent villain in next book), signed the last page with ‘None of us will now buy this as we know the ending.’ Another wrote ‘Wow, underneath all that sarcasm you’ve actually got some talent!’

At the end of the evening my incredibly inebriated (ex) boss came up to me and started quoting huge swathes of the book in detail. Questioning him as to how he could know any of this without having purchased a copy, he replied that he’d nicked one temporarily. I couldn’t complain however as he’d more than made up for it in beers and mojitos.

On a more active note: - The take-up from reading groups who want to receive a free copy is roughly 1 out of every 7 contacted. From there most have said that (if they like it) they will order between 8 and 12 copies, depending on group size. The main reason for declining (besides non-response) is budgetary constraint i.e. couldn’t afford to buy from an unknown author even if they did like it - which is a shame, but fair enough.

Meanwhile - commuting to London has somewhat curtailed my socializing…

Many years ago I witnessed two Yorkshire men come to blows in a row over whether or not it was possible to over-egg a pudding.

‘Surely a hundred eggs in one pudding is too many eggs?’ one finally contested before being unceremoniously belted in the face by the other.

Recently a literary agent told me that in the last 30 years the number of different books published annually has increased by 40,000…at the risk of re-ignition…too many eggs.

It’s partly down to publishing being a lot easier now, but equally attributable to people just wanting to tell their story. Not to stand in judgment, I’m probably more guilty than anyone. At any one time I’ll have so many tales kicking around my head, I can’t get them down on paper fast enough.

However, it’s a bit like how every waiter in New York is an out of work actor - touting your wears is hard work…

…Which I don’t mind at all. This week brought a few more sales and a number of avenues with reading groups. What I do mind is the glut at ghost-written celebrity novels currently bobbing around on a ocean of mediocrity. There I become unashamedly judgemental. For example - a few weeks back I went to Waterstones and found it packed to bursting point.

‘What’s going on?’ I asked the man nearest to me.

‘Jordan and Peter Andre are doing a book signing,’ he replied.

How I wept…

In 2001 on my first day in a new job I attended an extremely boring, acronym-ridden presentation on a subject called ‘GPRS’. At the end of the ordeal the speaker asked if there were any questions. Being new I put my hand up and said, ‘What does GPRS stand for?’ He didn’t know. Rauccous laughter ensued. My boss turned to me and said, ‘Congratulations - you’ve only been here an hour and you’ve already ruined someone’s life!’

Working for a large company, I spend a large proportion of my day being beaten down by such nonsensical words as ‘mindset’, ‘holistic’, ’smart’, and equally banal phrases such as ’singing from the same hymnsheet’ (I’ve probably just quadrupled my hit-rate with that little bad-boy).

As a direct result of the above / attempt to prevent myself crossing over to the dark-side, I’ve taken to crow-barring more interesting words into meetings - words such as ‘tempestuous’, ‘lubugrious’, ‘multifarious’, ‘voluminous’ and ‘rambunctious’. A little of the blame for this practice must also reside with my father who over-uses the word ‘malopropism’ - (an irony considering that it means to be ill-suited or inappropriate).

The point being - language is awesome (the scientific definition of awesome - not the Bill & Ted one). Daryl Hannah once commented that ‘Gargantuan’ is a great word that she so rarely gets to use in conversation. Likewise, in ‘The Devil in Amber’ Mark Gatiss uses the phrase ‘pendulous tackle’ as least twice! Meanwhile I’ve just heard someone say ‘we need to double-head this’ - A phrase that means ‘Get two people to do it’ (either that or I was being offered a part in a porn film). Why didn’t he just say ‘We need to get two people’?

Where am I going with this? A well-deserved rant…deep breath…

Anyway, back in the mundane - the week in brief - stepped on a chisel, seriously burnt my hand retrieving toast from the grill, flooded the bathroom, fell down some stairs - So it is that my quest to publicise a book has been temporarily replaced with the more pressing hope of making it through to the weekend without further injury.

I’ve had some good contact with a number of reading groups in recent days - both in London, (where I work) and the Midlands, (where I’m from) - Sending out review copies where they were asked for and hoping to report back some successes in the next few weeks.

Let’s ‘touch base’ then…ugh!

…Not just a crap romantic comedy starring John Cussack - Also the main theme of this week’s guerrilla marketing. I found a site called bookcrossing.com where you can register/review a book and then leave it somewhere (anywhere in the world) for other members to find, read, review and then leave somewhere else, (Obviously you tell each other where it is!) The idea being you can track where a book goes and effectively leave its success or otherwise to chance.

This probably isn’t going to hugely boost sales (or possibly not at all), but it does seem like a good way to reach new readers, and it’s free.

As an experiment - I’ve left the first copy on the bookshelf of a local pub:

www.BookCrossing.com/373-5608783