I sent out copies of my novel to Brad Pitt, Nicolas Cage and Harry Connick, Jr. They all have ties to New Orleans: Harry is a hometown boy who made it big; Cage had a house there for a while and loves to come into town to party (I've seen him at a local pub and also the Ritz, partying hard); and Brad bought a house on the French Quarter and does some volunteer work in the rebuilding effort. I threw in Tom Hanks and comedy agent Bob Gersh (manages John Goodman) for good measure.
Who knows? Maybe one of them will actually get the book and take an interest in it.
One of the background characters in the novel is based on Cage, and in a movie version, he or Hanks could play the protagonist Hank Clayborn perfectly (washed up high-tech exec comes to NOLA to drink and be an artist). Pitt or Cage or Hanks could play the wild man Lotto from the book, and of course, John Goodman would be great as the Ignatius Reilly-like Cletus Landry, the key fortuneteller on Jackson Square who plays a big role in the story. I'm sort of glad someone talked me out of killing him off at the end of the book.
I also sent off books to the Times-Picayune mysteries book reviewer, and Chris Rose, the affable local columnist, as well as the book review guy at Gambit Weekly. Then I sent a copy to an an arts editor at the Biloxi Sun-Herald and book reviewer at the Mobile Press-Register, and tried to make contact with people at the Jackson and Memphis newspapers.
It's a pain in the ass, and you never seem to be done, but you gotta do it. At least, someone's gotta do it, and when you're a one-man show, you do everything from cooking to washing dishes.
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