« 2007-07 | HomePage | 2007-09 »
Saturday, 04 August 2007
À Bon Chat, Bon Rat
I have my first festival circuit booking.
Mr Scratchmann was out schmoozing yesterday at a Cultural Enterprise seminar and met the man who runs the Word Festival Fringe. He talked the talk and the consequences were The Chancery Stone Roadshow has its first gig. I have been sold as "a shocking and controversial blockbuster." All I have to do now is live up to it.
Piece of piss.
We have the marketing campaign already, laid out today at the seaside Burger King (in Aberdeen all our haunts are Burger Kings – it's tragic but cheap.)
First we're going to be banned by the Word Festival proper, then we're going to be available only at the Fringe, then we go to the papers and announce that we have maximum house sell-outs because we're banned by the Festival, which causes more controversy, more demand for seats (which don't exist and can't be had) and then we fly-post the Festival, announcing our 'ban' and then we get more publicity…
And so it goes on. Colonel Tom would be proud of me.
Mr Scratchmann has been making video installations for rock groups which have been very successful. We'll be making one for the gig, so we will have a video wall of me doing my Madonna, whip up a bit of advance excitement.
So any of you who are going to be up in Aberdeen next May for the Word Festival can come and see me in person and ask me all the questions you've always wanted to ask about DANNY but never dared.
Our advertising was used recently for a group's gig here in Aberdeen. It's the Wuthering Heights film and it looks rather cool projected large on a club wall. We never actually went to the gig, in spite of free tickets, (couldn't be arsed), but the video wall was apparently a great success. Here's a link for you to take a look. Video Wall.
Also DANNY has been selected as one of the top ten books in Aberdeen libraries. The top five actually, if you split the list into children's and adults. I come number four, being beaten by Tolkien and Robert Louis Stevenson but I beat John Grisham.
I would love to claim that I worked really hard for this, or even masterminded it myself, but the sad truth is it came completely out of left field. We didn't even know Aberdeen libraries had a copy of DANNY.
I discovered it on Google a few nights ago and stomped off downstairs to the Pixie offices and demanded, "Did you do this?" to a perplexed Mr Scratchmann. When he denied it I eyed him mistrustfully and said "Are you sure? You didn't send out some mailer that you've forgotten about?" (I wasn't thinking too clearly. Quite how a mailer would produce e-mail poll results I don't know).
But, no, he was not the culprit. We don't know, of course, whether this was fifty people who "e-mailed" in for us or one but, hey, there I am on the Top Ten (jostling shoulders yet again with Harry Potter – is this meaningful in some obscure way?)
I'm telling you, when you beat John Grisham in a reader's poll you are a force to be reckoned with. Next year I am going to nobble it and fix the results so I come in first.
Anyway, here's the link, go check us out, all shiny bright, but with a rather strange 'synopsis' that sounds like they pulled it from a wholesaler's catalogue. Aberdeen Library Top Tens.
Last thing, Amazon is selling DANNY at the hugely discounted price of £8.57 right now (nothing to do with me – they just do these things) and nobody has taken advantage of the fact. What is WRONG with you people? I know for a fact that there are two people, at least, with DANNY on their wish lists – I know because they've both showed up on Google over the last month. What the hell are you waiting for? All the cheap second-hand copies have been sold. You ain't gonna get it cheaper. Move your ass!
Right, going to love you and leave you.
Speak to you soon!
You can now read this blog at the following locations:-
To subscribe to this blog on Blogspirit (my base camp) without divulging your email address click on the Newsgator button on the left-hand sidebar or simply post the following text into your RSS browser: http://www.poisonpixie.com/chanceryblogfeed.xml
Not yet read DANNY? You can check it out now at Poison Pixie where you can read a BIG extract for Free! Or grab a copy on Amazon here.
You can also see me in person on my YouTube site (as well as DANNY's various trailers and ads)here or you can see the same material on the Poison Pixie film site where you can also hear our Mr Scratchmann read his delightful comic verse in his podcasts.
Lastly, there is an independent Live Journal DANNY Discussion Board run by fans, C Stone's DANNY where anyone is welcome to go along and chat about the book till their guts bust.
00:45 Posted in Blog , Books , Web | Permalink | Comments (0) | Email this