One day I wrote a letter to Ray. I had never penned any fan mail before. A few weeks later, I received a handwritten reply. He told me to keep writing stories, so as not to be dead. That letter now hangs in a frame in my office.

Years later, I am an English professor at a small college in Texas. My license plate reads “FH451.” Every year in Composition I, we read “All Summer in a Day,” and in my creative writing class, we consume even more, devouring “The Lake” and “The Anthem Sprinters” and my personal favorite, “Hopscotch.” It’s like eating the sun in small bites.

Next week my new novel, The Discretionist, hits the shelves, and I owe that in part to Ray. (Two books made me want to be a writer when I was a wee lad: Something Wicked This Way Comes and William Goldman’s Marathon Man.) My publisher is Five Star, the fiction imprint of Cengage Learning. Five Star doesn’t provide much marketing on my behalf because (a) their print runs and budget are comparatively small, and (b) I am not a famous author guaranteed to sell 100K copies for them. So I’m asking for your help.

If you agree to post a review on Amazon, on your personal blog, or wherever, I will happily send you a free advanced reading copy (ARC). International shipping probably costs more than the book itself, so I’m going to limit this to the domestic audience for a hardcopy, but I can send a Kindle version to whomever would be willing to pen a review.

Sorry for the long, self-centered post. Marketing is my least favorite part of writing professionally. I am too introverted outside of the classroom to be an effective salesman. But as the man himself once counseled, I am jumping off the ledge and building my wings on the way down.

Read the book’s blurb on Amazon and contact me at mail@lancehawvermale.com if you’d like a copy of The Discretionist in exchange for an online review.

Thank you, and best to all.

- Lance Hawvermale

quote:

Originally posted by Lance:
My license plate reads “FH451.”

Small world. The Cadillac Ray used to ride around in had a FH451 license plate, as well.

quote:

Originally posted by Doug Spaulding:
Small world. The Cadillac Ray used to ride around in had a FH451 license plate, as well.

I posted a picture of my plate on this site some time back; part of the yearly re-registration fees are given to the state's public library system. All the better, my car is fire-engine red!