Best publicity stunt of the day: Lemony Snicket and Seth collaborate on new series

Quill & Quire is not in the habit of publishing emails, but this one demands sharing.

This afternoon, Q&Q was blind-copied on a correspondence between Vikki VanSickle, marketing and publicity coordinator at HarperCollins Canada, and the curmudgeonly children’s author Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket. The email revealed the “confidential” news that HarperCollins Canada is publishing a four-book series by Snicket, with illustrations by Canadian artist Seth.

From Lemony Snicket:

From: LemonySnicket
Sent: Wednesday, February 08, 2012 11:43 AM
To: Vansickle, Vikki
Subject: RE: Lemony Snicket Announcement – CONFIDENTIAL

My Dear Ms. VanSickle,

As I have already explained at length to you and others in this publishing conspiracy: no.

Take this press release back, please. I have attached it here. I have sympathy for anyone wanting to promote my work, but none of this information can be released.

In particular, I do not want to see this press release distributed to the list of people I’ve taken care to blind copy above. May they remain forever blind to any information about myself or my work.

These books are questionable and contain questions. I, for one, question why anyone would be interested in reading them.

And have the decency to leave Seth out of it. He has enough trouble as a celebrated artist imprisoned in a basement studio in some wretched university town, not to mention the fact that he’s Canadian.

I would appreciate it if you didn’t contact me again. I’ll be in my office until 4.

With all due respect,

Lemony Snicket

The email was accompanied by a “press release” with a placeholder for a quote from Seth (“if and when he recovers from the trauma of your last encounter”), and a marked-up version of the cover.

The official press release, which arrived 15 minutes later, confirmed that the first book in Snicket’s series, Who Could That Be at This Hour?, will be available in ebook and print formats on Oct. 23.

Bookmarks: sex scandals, meth rings, and Lemony Snicket

Some book-related links:

• The catalogue pages for disgraced U.S. Governor Mark “Appalachia by way of Argentina” Sanford’s (cancelled) book
• Meth ring uses rare comic books to launder drug money (I knew there was something wrong with adults reading comic books…)
• Indian politician’s sympathetic book about Pakistan’s founder gets him booted from party, starts a firestorm
• Lemony Snicket working on new quadrilogy
• Wanna buy a million-dollar wine book?
• Dissertations as haiku

How you know you’re in a recession, Part MMCXIIV

Quillblog is well aware that hard economic times have a disproportionate effect on writers (who aren’t usually in the top earning brackets to begin with) but it’s a sign that things have become untenable when authors are auctioning off characters in their upcoming books. It sounds unbelievable, but that’s exactly what Nathan Tyree is doing. The author of Zombie Lust and the New Flesh and How to Make Love Like a Zombie is offering some lucky bidder the opportunity to appear as “a major character” in an upcoming novel.

This is not the first time an author has auctioned off a character in a novel. Stephen King, Amy Tan, Lemony Snicket, and John Grisham did so for charity back in 2005, as did Margaret Atwood in a 2007 fundraiser (that one went to Rebecca Eckler, who worried that Atwood might turn her “into a crack-whore-murderer”). But, to Quillblog’s knowledge, this is the first time an author has offered a chance to appear as a major character in a novel, complete with physical description and character traits.

According to Tyree’s seller’s description on eBay:

The winner will have to provide me with their name, a photo of themselves, a description of their personality and mannerisms, a bio (background info and such). I will write the novel and guarantee publication within one year of the end of the auction. Then they will also receive a free copy of the book.

No word as to whether the character will be a hero or a villain (or a zombie), or will survive to the end of the book without being viciously decapitated.

As of this morning, the top bid was $40.

Daniel Handler kills the composer for the kids

The mental and spiritual development of the young ’uns seems to be much on the minds of literary types these days.

Daniel Handler, better known as Lemony Snicket (apparently to his lasting chagrin: the author’s new story is titled “Why Does Lemony Snicket Keep Following Me?”), is working on a symphony that will teach children about orchestral instruments. The piece, commissioned by the San Fransisco Symphony, is called “The Composer Is Dead” (a book-and-CD version is due out in March). In an interview published in the Sacramento Bee, Snick… er, Handler explains that he was originally approached by composer Nathaniel Stookey to contribute narration to Peter and the Wolf, but considered that story “boring.”

Handler describes the plot of “The Composer” this way:

The composer is dead and his death is suspicious, and the authorities come in and question all the members of the orchestra so you learn about all the different instruments.

Yup. That sounds riveting.

In other kid-related news, The New York Times Magazine asks whether children reap the same benefits reading off a computer screen as they do reading actual books:

In a hundred ways, we pretend that screen experiences are books — PowerBooks, notebooks, e-books — but even a child knows the difference. Reading books is an operation with paper. Playing games on the Web is something else entirely. I need to admit this to myself, too. I try to believe that reading online is reading-plus, with the text searchable, hyperlinked and accompanied by video, audio, photography and graphics. But maybe it’s just not reading at all. Just as screens aren’t books.

The school of rocklit

It may be true, as Michael Hearst claims, that “all writers want to be rock stars.” But do they truly have rock within them? That’s one question posed by this Carl Wilson feature in the weekend Globe and Mail. The new album by Hearst’s band, One Ring Zero, features lyrics by a variety of fiction writers, including Rick Moody, Paul Auster, Jonathan Lethem, A. M. Homes, Daniel Handler (aka Lemony Snicket), and our own Margaret Atwood. Although accusations of dilettantism can surely run both ways, Wilson’s piece largely avoids the phenomenon of rock stars who want to be writers, thus sparing us the unpleasant task of contemplating novels like Bob Dylan’s Tarantula or Nick Cave’s And the Ass Saw the Angel.

Related links:
Carl Wilson on singing writers in The Globe and Mail