Dogs

My Real Dogs

I thought it might be fun to show you our two mutts, Moxie and Munch. They’re sisters, although Munch is way bigger than Moxie. Even though they’re Shih-Tzu dogs, like “Shirley,” one of the puppies in MY BOYFRIENDS’ DOGS, ours are so not fancy. In fact, we wonder if they’re really Shih-Tzus. But who cares, right? They love us almost as much as we love them.

Update on MBFD’s publicity: I just finished speaking and doing school visits in western Ohio, where I was sure to spread the word about My Boyfriends’ Dogs. Later, at Ohio Council of the International Reading Association, held in Youngstown, I met wonderful teachers and librarians, spoke about teaching writing by using picturebooks, and again, teaching writing through “frozen moments,” as in Larger-Than-Life Lara, an earlier Dutton book. And I even showed the trailer for My Boyfriends’ Dogs, which was great fun because many there had never heard of book preview trailers.

Feb. 4 (the release date) is getting closer…. Am I doing enough???

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tl;dr

I’m so new to this blogging stuff that I admit I thought tl;dr was a typo. When I discovered it means “too long; didn’t read” I laughed out loud. (I laugh easily…frequently when by myself.) But this revelation gives me the excuse to post a short blog.

No real news, except two cool things. On Fuse 8 blog (School Library Journal) the blogger who had been shown all the new YA novels coming out soon had a cool thing to say about MY BOYFRIENDS’ DOGS. I’m not sure I’m allowed to quote directly, but he said that if he were pitching any book to a movie producer, this would be the one: Girl walks into a diner with three dogs. She’s in a prom dress, she’s soaking wet, and each dog is from a different boyfriend. “Best description of this one? A Diane Lane movie for YA. Sold!”
I’ll take that.

Second thing: Yesterday, suddenly the viewings of the book trailer jumped by over 100 viewings. I wonder how that happens. Anyone know? I’ll stop now.

In-house Publicity

My Boyfriends' Dogs

I’m trying new things to promote this book, and it seems impossible to predict what will work and what won’t. But here’s the new thing I tried. This book releases Feb. 4, so my target for publicity right now is “in-house,” the sales, marketing, and publicity folks at Penguin. So…I had pink, blue, and yellow T-shirts made with the cover art on the front. I wrapped each shirt in paper that had dogs with party hats on, applied a pink bow, inserted a postcard or note with My Boyfriends’ Dogs logo and the tagline: 3 Guys, 3 Dogs, 3 Love Stories…And 1 Girl. And I sent a package to each of the 9 top marketing and PR people, at least those I knew about. The shirts arrived early this week, and I’ve gotten some fun and delightful emails in return. Plus, Dutton offered to reimburse me! So far, so good. But let me know if you think this is silly. I’ve already confessed that I’m ignorant of PR strategies.

I’d love to run some kind of contest or giveaway for the rest of the shirts when it’s closer to the release date. Any ideas?? Thanks–Dandi