Connor Coyne

First news first. And it’s good news! A suspect has been arrested in the Flint Serial Killer case. If you want you can read the news here.

But I’m also writing today with a HUGE announcement about Hungry Rats. Mark your calendars!

Wed. 9/1/2010:
Hungry Rats will be available for order from Lulu.com.

Fri. 9/10/2010:
CHICAGO, IL launch party.
Details TBA.

Fri. 9/17/2010:
FLINT, MI launch party.
328 N. Grand Traverse
810.237.GOOD
12-1 PM — lunchtime book signing
7-9 PM — launch party

Late 10/2010: Hungry Rats will be available for order from Amazon.com and retail booksellers (Barnes and Noble, Borders, independent booksellers, etc.)

A few other dates/events:

10/2010 ongoing: I will be touring the Midwest for readings and book signings.
Late 2010 or Early 2011: I will be hoping to make a quick tour of the Bay area, California.
12/31/2010: All profits I earn from Hungry Rats by this date will be donated to the Food Bank of Eastern Michigan.
Early 2011: I will be making a quick tour of the New York area.

As of today, the pace of things is going to pick up quickly. Remember, I don’t have a conventional marketing apparatus: this is all grassroots and DIY, and I’m counting on you! 5-6 times a week for the next couple months, I will be posting little things you can do to help me bring this book into the world: it might be sharing a link or recommending a bookstore, but it’s all important and I can’t do it without you.

If you are very interested in helping me out and wouldn’t mind receiving a short optional activity in your or Facebook email Inbox each day, please message me or email me at connor [at] connorcoyne [.] com.

I will be posting all of these activities on the Gothic Blog as well as on the Facebook Group Friends of Hungry Rats.

It has been a long road for this novel — 7 years — but the end is in sight! In fact, we can see it from here, and it’s only a few weeks away.

Your friend,

Connor

I am very excited to announce the first installment of one of the most dynamic aspects of this project. Gothic Funk Press has finished producing the first of several promotional videos for this novel. It features text from Hungry Rats, includes a new song by Richard Whaling, stars Emily Perkins-Harbin as Meredith Malady, and was shot by Forge 22 and myself.

This video is to act exactly like a movie preview: by giving viewers a compelling glimpse of the story it encourages them to take a closer look, and hopefully to order the book. The video is an example of “viral marketing.” Viral marketing is a strategy that uses new technology in combination with the oldest form of advertising: word-of-mouth. If enough people are excited about Hungry Rats, and spread the word, the project builds buzz. This can more than compensate for our limited budget, but I can’t do it without your involvement. I repeat: I can’t do it without your involvement!

Please do all or any of the following to help share Hungry Rats far and wide.

1. Watch the video, and give it a five star rating! Leave comments. You can watch the video here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZoEaYl45z7E

2. Use the buttons at the bottom of the YouTube screen to share the video by email, Facebook, Twitter, or other networks.

3. You can also embed the video on your blog or website by posting the “embed” code from the YouTube page.

4. Many people forward emails to friends and family, so share the Hungry Rats videos with these people!

5. Overall, these videos are of central importance to marketing the novel… They are our best chance we have to increase excitement in the novel, and so a few enthusiastic emails and postings can make just as much of a difference as a donation. If you like the video, please consider sharing it with everyone you know, and encourage recipients to pass it down the chain.

Thank you for all of your help!

Connor Coyne

From Hungry Rats:

You went from class to class, and notes about you went behind your back and the teachers pretended not to notice. When teens walk their sneakers squeak and when they squeak they slide and when they slide they turn heads on giraffe-long necks. When teens glare you down it’s so genuine that even the most twisted Machiavellian must come to terms with and do penance to such obstinate sincerity. Nobody loves like an teenager loves, and nothing is as hateful distilled as the hate in teenage eyes. Those eyes drip with angry tears, an angry ichor ink.

You wished to put a Sharpie through such eyes.

In many ways, Hungry Rats might claim to be antecedent to its own genre. The term “teen noir” has popped up in the last few years as primarily exemplified by the film Brick (2005) and the television series Veronica Mars (2004-2006). I drafted Hungry Rats in 2003.

But bragging on this count would be more than a little unfair. Twin Peaks (1990-1991), to name just one influential example, has just as bad a case of teen noir as either of the other works. Shows such as Buffy the Vampire Slayer (1997-2003) and scores of novels (including 25 years of Christopher Pike’s work) also fall into this genre. It turns out that pop culture high schoolers have been brooding in the darkness for as long as there has been high school. The ascendancy of the genre these days has more to do with the thirsts of American audiences than with the predilections of writers and artists.

Given a number of critical and commercial successes, it is clear the the synthesis can work. But why? What is teen noir, really?

Today, the Chicago Tribune published a review of the movie Brick which talks at length about the — partially budget-inspired — decision to film the piece at a high school and the influence of the novels of Dashiell Hammett. ‘High school,’ the article asserts, ‘with its ludicrously high stakes, “has a lot of strange similarities to the conventions of crime fiction. It just lined up in an odd way.”‘

That’s at least a start. Both teen dramas and noir have in common a very stylized, symbolic vocabulary.

Teenagers (at least, fictionalized teenagers) have come into a knowledge of their powers, but not of their own inexperience. As new adults they have the full potential of their whole lives ahead of them, but this leads to an arrogance and the possibility of disaster. It is both why material affluence (which enhances arrogance) and Miltonic downfall (which results from it) are conspicuous features of so many teen dramas.

Noir, by comparison, is entirely interior looking. “There is nothing escapist about the black novel whatever,” wrote Derek Raymond. “The writer cannot even escape himself in it; the black novel is the novel in which escape is shut off.” The horror and violence of the larger world is only effective when it reflects the horror and violence of the human mind.

So do we, as consumers who are, for the most part, not in high school ourselves, look to these symbolic landscapes to find a story pregnant with youthful idealism and opportunity but clouded by misery and turbulence? Is this interest a reflection of our own fear of entropy and instability? Is it, perhaps, even a response to the last decade, with its economic collapse, two wars, terrorist attacks, and cultural inertia?

It is certainly plausible.

At the very least, it is not a coincidence that certain art forms become popular at certain times. Jazz was around for decades before the Great Depression made it popular. The Gothic Novel rose and fell with the French Revolution. Teen noir is nothing new, but it is absolutely something timely.

This timeliness gives me hope for the success of Hungry Rats. Veronica Mars, Twin Peaks, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Brick. Christopher Pike. If you’ve got friends or colleagues who’ve enjoyed these works and their cousins, invite them to take a look at Hungry Rats. They’re all part of the same big family.