Hey Folks,

Just a quick reminder for all of you in Paris (and those who want an excuse to spend an exorbitant amount of money to fly to Baguette Land for the night) that the next reading is TOMORROW, APRIL 9 AT 7PM at the glorious SHAKESPEARE AND COMPANY, Kilometer Zero, Paris.

It is a major honor to speak at my favorite bookstore in the world ... yet another example of how far you guys have brought Slim and The Beast. I'll be speaking/reading/sipping a glass of wine with Yann Rousselot, a great friend and fellow Inkshares writer. His Dawn of the Algorithm  is a beautiful poetry collection complete with illustrations from around the world, including work from my girlfriend and twin brother.

NB: Speaking of Aaron, he is currently in an international music competition (Toyota is sponsoring it) and has a chance to be flown to New Zealand to spread his musical love. He needs virtual credits (no real money is spent), so if you are a fan of his music,"voting" takes about 15 seconds and could very well change his life. (In case that hyperlink didn't work, here's the original source: http://feelingthestreet.com/profile/aaron-lopez-barrantes)

Dearest Folks,

As of today, I’ve sold 1,108 books. There are 11 first edition copies left. There are just two things I wanted to mention before the second edition is air-dropped into the hands of rabid, screaming fans:

Book reviews on Amazon and Goodreads

I’ll be the first to admit: I’m not good at this. Reviewing books online is not something I’m accustomed to. BUT, for better or for worse, it makes a HUGE difference going forward. And since I created a Goodreads account, I’ve actually found that it’s a pretty awesome website (think of it as a digital library that evolves with you, reminds you of what you like, and provides great recommendations). The truth of the matter is: the more reviews I receive, the more readers I get. It’s that simple. So if you’ve read the book and have a few minutes to jump on Goodreads or swing over to Amazon to tell the world (and me) what you think, it really does make a huge difference (even if you just give me “stars”). Just as every backer counted towards the 232 who originally funded me, every review now counts in getting me to “the next step.” (Note: please be honest if you do review it … hearing actual opinions is the only way for me to improve as a writer).

(Secret double note: my twin brother, Aaron, and I are envisioning an artistic adventure, a twin tour extravaganza—a TWOUR if you will. Combining his blues/folk singer/songwriting skills, vocal harmonies, Slim and The Beast and my harmonicas, we’re hoping to travel around the U.S. and spread the brotherly love. But for this to happen, we need to gain more of a following. So pop on some tunes and write that Goodreads review—it’s a major help for the next step).

Inkshares Credit System

You may have noticed Inkshares’ new “credit system.” At its most basic level, you are being rewarded for funding a “best-seller” (we’ve sold over 1,000 copies, and that’s awesome). This is kind of like a “buy one get one free” system, except better: Inkshares is reinvesting book sales in readers. As far as I know, that’s unprecedented. So jump on your Inkshares account and bask in the glory of believing in humanity. Browse the website to see what tickles your toes ... I suggest you check out Yann Rousselot’s poetry collection, Dawn of the Algorithm, which includes beautiful, unique illustrations from around the world (Aaron was an illustrator, as was my girlfriend). Yann is one of my Parisian writers in arms. We met at a book swap. Call it romantic.

Dear Backers,

One year ago (almost to the day), I began the Inkshares journey. Today, March 6, 2015, I received an email with this:After two trips to the US in a four-week span, a weekend in Spain complete with a Slim and The Beast cake (thanks Adriana!), and plenty of general life things to keep me busy in between, I’m back at home and can settle into the next novel. The book tour was special. I’ll try to put into words what exactly that means.

How Humanity (Not a Book Tour) Changed My Life

Maybe the best way to describe it is “like one of those daydreams”: you’re not fully asleep; you can still hear silverware clinking; you can see what’s around you and you know what it’s supposed to mean, but all you can do is stay asleep and keep dreaming.

 “You know, you’re really lucky to be here,” a lady with a badge told me with an air of incredulity. “This is the American Booksellers Association…the Winter Institute…you should be excited! This is it!”

This was it, indeed. That’s what everyone kept telling me.

One hundred Slim and The Beasts were stacked to my left. Next to me sat a woman who’d written a book about multi-tasking and its dangers. The massive, carpeted room was filled with dozens of tables: those lining the walls for the authors, the center tables for food and drink.

During such fanciful affairs, I’m more used to serving hors d’oeuvres than being referred to as “sir”—I have catered just as long as I’ve written novels, all seven years worth. To calm the nerves, I talked to the bartender for a while about IPA beer (he said its hoppiness—what I call bad-tastiness—is due to mouldy cargo holds in creaky ships). I gave him the Wi-Fi password (apparently he wasn’t allowed to have it) and returned to my “author table” to begin greeting booksellers from across the country.  

This was the seminal moment. I was a published man with a public image. I picked up a pen, ready to sign. It exploded in my hand immediately. And then hundreds of booksellers flooded through the doors, trying to get their hands on the next big thing. Whoever was at the table next to me had a long, slithering line of signature-seekers. T.C. Boyle was out there somewhere. According to the brochure, this certainly felt like “it.”

I never had a line, but many people came up to me and almost invariably asked about the ink stain. “You know you have ink all over your hand.” “What can I say … I’m new at this.” Stripped of prestige, slightly tipsy, I met and spoke to dozens of kind booksellers for the next two hours. I made some great connections there, but these connections were necessarily fleeting: at an event like this, it’s all about eye contact and the handshake. And so this is what I remember most about the ABA Winter Institute—not so much the book signing or mention of potential screenplays, but the kind bus driver with a jolly face who now has a copy of Slim and The Beast; a beautiful dinner with Ingram Distribution representatives, one of whom announced her retirement over tapas and beer; and discussing feminism and race relations with a Floridian bookseller in a bumbling shuttle bus. I woke up at 6am to drive from Asheville, NC down to Chapel Hill, the hometown of Slim and The Beast. I saw the sun rise in the Appalachians. The Winter Institute was indeed a memorable experience.   

Although the ABA event was the “highest profile” of them all, McNally Jackson Books in New York City was equally exciting. I felt at ease reading and discussing the book in front of friends and their acquaintances, and was helped by some fantastic questions from a red-dressed lady in the audience. But what I remember most is the importance of community: I drank wine with family friends from the French village where I was born; with my twin brother and my mom; with my girlfriend from Paris; with my best friends from childhood; with a great friend from Seattle who was at the inception of Slim and The Beast; with virtually all of my college friends … the list goes on and on. The event at Molasses Books in Brooklyn also felt more like an apartment party than a “book event,” which is how it is supposed to be.

I don't feel like the book tour was about me, really. It was about an idea that began three years ago. It was about all of you, the backers, and about a celebration of community.  I am incredibly fortunate to have found Inkshares when I did, and still have trouble believing I am a “published author,” which probably has to do with the distinct feeling that I haven't done anything special. People write and publish books all the time. Hundreds of thousands of writers, many more talented than me, will never see the published page. If I have done anything special, it’s about the way I went about publishing, and therein lies the paradox: the entire point of Inkshares is that it's at least as much about community as it is about me. To that extent, I feel like all of you should be front and center. I can take the role of representative, maybe; but the thought that it was MY party, MY book tour, seems to miss the point entirely. “In an ideal world we’d all be sitting in a circle,” I should’ve said at my events. And maybe that's my hippy free love background talking, but I really do mean it: the notion that I should be elevated because I’m now published is ignorant at best, and flat-out wrong at worst. If I’m here, writing this backer update, it has to do with the backers, not “me.” There’s nothing special about writing a book, but there is in finding the book’s community.  

For too long, in my opinion, writers have been revered for the wrong reasons. When considering the writer as something almost mythical, it seems the harder to interview, the harder to read, the harder to analyze, the larger the myth. In short, the less connected the writer is with her community, the more renowned she becomes. There is a bizarre dance that occurs between writer and reader, in which the writer (and the writer’s ego) seeks to put herself higher than the rest, while the reader (and his desire to create the “writer myth”) pushes the writer away. But great writing isn’t about genius and deference, but patience and humility. More than anything else, it’s about humanity and the book’s community. So if the Inkshares model has proven (and continues to prove) anything, it’s that “having what it takes” isn’t about some misplaced sense of accomplishment or belonging to a “higher plane,” but about having faith in humanity, which in turn had faith in me. Belief in the goodness of people can also become one of its main causes; so if this entire experience has taught me anything, it is a firm belief in daring to dream.

A while ago I wrote a piece, “How Humanity (Not a Literary Agent) Changed My Life.” After reaching the1000 books mark, I can only change the title and reiterate the same feeling. Since I can now speak from “book-tour experience,” I know that the book tour isn’t “it,” at least not in the narrow sense of book sales and fame. I have a foot in the door, which is more than anything I could have imagined, but “it” isn’t about 1000 books or a 2nd print edition; “it” is about talking to my editor about my next novel; eating a breakfast burrito in a roadside diner with my fantastic colleague, Thad Woodman, and my Parisian girlfriend; sitting in a Lower East Side apartment talking about Batman, psychedelics and heart surgery; and drinking with a published, well-reviewed Columbia MFA candidate who struggles to find an audience, just like me. My life has changed for the better, but it has also remained the same: I have a few more Twitter followers, a few more dollars in my bank account, and more than a few beautiful memories that will remain with me; but I still live in my 15m2 apartment, I still do part-time work I’m not necessarily proud of, I’m working on a new, totally different novel, and I still struggle to write every day.

This is “it.” This is how it’s supposed to be. One year later, after crowdfunding, editing, choosing the book cover, learning about marketing, book sales and book tours and editing a 2nd edition, I’m back at square one, and couldn’t be happier. Whatever the future holds, Slim and The Beast has been a success, and that's only because you believed in me.

“Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. But it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”

I’m not a British statesman and this isn’t 1942, but I couldn’t help go for the Churchill reference. Here is a journal entry from one year ago, when I was more or less unemployed (I had no teaching hours that month) and was looking at the prospect of a multi-year process to publish Slim and The Beast:

The present is most assuredly an opportunity and that’s exactly how I view 2014: an opportunity. Even not working for a month — do I view it as financial stress, or creative/existential opportunity? How I spend this month will dictate how I spend this year, I think; because how I spend each day dictates how I spend my life. That takes some time to realize, but I’m getting there and liking it. If you don’t read every day, when do you read? If you don’t write every day, when do you write? Etc. I’m approaching the beginning of the third novel, and I can’t wait. Except that I can wait, and that’s important. I’ll know when it’s time, truly, to begin.

I’m tempted to cite the age-old trope that hard work pays off; that I knew I could do it; that I never had any doubt I would publish a novel; but the truth is everything that has happened this past year is a mixture of luck, hope, and humanism. I’ve always been optimistic about writing to the extent that I know I’ll keep writing, but nothing could have prepared me for all that has happened in 2014. 232 is a number I will remember for the rest of my life. Whatever happens with the novel—whether it disappears in a dusty attic or is a marginal success—what matters is that it’s out there. And yet “it” hasn’t even started yet; this is the end of the beginning. On February 3 the “business” side of things will commence: there will be signings and discussions, interviews and reviews. But all that really matters is interested readers. I don’t expect all of you to love or even like the novel. All in can say is I’m honored it’s on your bookshelf. But if any of you have already gotten through the novel and want to chat about it—what you liked/didn’t like, whatever you’re thinking—please email me at slbfiction@gmail.com . I’d love to continue the conversation.

Maybe the most humbling experience about this whole process is that the book is now out of my hands; that this part of my life, Slim and The Beast, strangely feels in the past even though “it’s” just beginning.

The first draft took three months and was written in the spring of 2012. Three years and countless drafts later, an imperfect but complete work is ready to escape me. The feelings I had, the themes I was pursuing, all of the edits and “you are a failure, what are you doing?”s were necessary for me to better understand myself and this experience (i.e. life). But now I can move on to the next chapter, and that's exciting.

Now for the sentimental part: I want to especially thank a few people for being there for me: my twin brother Aaron and my brothercousin Mark, for being the best brothers I could ever imagine and the deep inspiration for Slim and The Beast all along; my Paris buddies, Yann Rousselot, Alex Miles (now in Chicago), Matthew Mowatt and Ian Jagel (now in Seattle) for inspiring Boys’ Nights and for being there to support me from the beginning; my NC brothers (you all know who you are) for the childhood we shared; the Vermont Boys, who’ve been there since I reached maturity; my girlfriend, Lucile, who has and continues to push me and believe in me; my godfather, Johannes, who has always been a beacon in Paris; and of course my mom and dad, who believed in me from the real beginning, who told me to pursue love and gave me the chance to dream; and of course to all of you, the 232 Stars of The Year. Without you … well who knows? I don’t dabble in counter-factual history.

I am well into the third novel but remain hesitant to share anything substantial. The project is also at the end of the beginning, and I am excited to see where the characters take me. There will be tens of thousands of words to shed, but for now I’m still imagining and creating. I have written about a third of it so far, with dozens of other pages that I need to piece and puzzle together. (By the end of 2015, I hope to have a manuscript ready, but I’m also an optimist, so we’ll see).

Before I finish, I wanted to give you a brief idea of what’s been happening with Slim and The Beast since we last spoke. I’ve sold 788 total books (109 of those post-funding stage). The book tour will be from February 2-17, and I will visit New York City and North Carolina (event locations below). There are already reviews here, under “What the Critics Are Saying.” Perhaps more importantly, there are reader reviews here on Goodreads. If any of you are willing, every review helps. Whether it’s on Goodreads, Amazon, or otherwise, reader reviews are just as important as anything the critics have to say (and Goodreads is actually a pretty fantastic side for readers in my opinion).

Finally, just this week, I saw this photo of Slim and The Beast at my favorite bookstore in the world, Shakespeare & Company in Paris.

There’s no way I can properly thank you for making my dream a reality, but I am hoping to make that poster soon (Mark, we gotta talk) so I can have all of your names on my wall.

If I can give you a hug, that’d be ideal; so check out the events below, and if you can make it to any of them, it’d be an honor to see you there and perhaps even sign your copy.

Welp, that about does it, methinks. The end of the beginning. Next time we chat, I’ll have fantastical tales about book tour experiences. Who knows what the future holds, but the present is an opportunity; and I'm eternally grateful that you all gave it to me.

EVENTS IN THE OVERSIZED APPLE

Molasses Books (Brooklyn—Bushwick), Tuesday, February 3, 8pm: https://www.facebook.com/events/1553263644959876/

McNally Jackson Books (Manhattan), Sunday, February 8, 6pm: https://www.facebook.com/events/762734913774433/

EVENTS DOWN NORTH CACKALACK WAY

The Winter Institute (American Booksellers Association) (Asheville), February 9-11, http://www.bookweb.org/wi2015#

The Regulator Bookshop (Durham), Thursday, February 12, 7pm: https://www.facebook.com/events/896272117073135/

FlyLeaf Books (Chapel Hill), Monday, February 16, 7pm: https://www.facebook.com/events/432413866914000/

Dear Backers, 

Proof is coming. Your copy is on its way. In the next few days, you'll be able to find out who Larry is, and why he eats peanuts, and other secrets from the lives of Sgt. Dykes, Slim and The Beast. I hope one day I'll be able to write a note in each of your copies, personally thanking you for making a dream come true. 

For all of you hashtaggers, tweeters and Instagrammers, the hashtag #slimandthebeast is alive and well. I started it when the campaign first began, so it will be cool to look at the original posts and see where it goes. If you feel inspired to tweet about the book or Instagram with a glass of beer/coffee/whiskey, you'll get 5 points for taking a picture with the book as your coaster, 10 next to a burger, and 15 on a basketball court. My handle on both of those is @slbfiction. Also, if you're an Amazon reviewer or do the same on Good Reads, it'd be much appreciated—every review helps, and apparently it can provide a big boost for debut novels (for Good Reads, you won't be able to review until the official release, I believe). The sky's the limit for where Slim and The Beast can go, but I really do believe any success will be because of the communal effort, since that's where it began with humble beginnings. 

There's a beautiful quote by Georgia O'Keefe: “Whether you succeed or not is irrelevant, there is no such thing. Making your unknown known is the important thing—and keeping the unknown always beyond you.” Whatever happens from this point onwards, only the gods and fairies and elves can know. There will be reviews, critiques, people who love the book, people who hate it, but you helped me to make my unknown known, and you are the reason this book is in print. So finally, as the last update before Slim and The Beast is in your hands, and because part of writing is keeping the unknown "beyond," here is the (tentative) first paragraph of a new "unknown" I'm trying to bring into existence: 

When the sirens began the professor was sitting at the Astoria Café. There were more than a few customers reading the paper nearby. Menus stood at attention in spite of the breeze. There was a saltshaker on linen tablecloth, but no pepper to be seen. A beautiful woman sat behind the professor. She wore a burgundy scarf, thin white gloves, a red dress. With the spoon in her right hand, she brought hot soup to her mouth. Her other hand hovered below the steaming spoon, almost cupping it; the professor couldn’t help but imagine a red splotch expanding upon it. The woman blew intently with red lips—she had burnt her tongue the day before and wanted to be extra sure—and her eyes darted along the tablecloth, now fixed upon the professor. In another world she might have spoken to him, but she’d been hired to keep watch. The air was crisp that day. The rustle of trees. The professor recalled a country home in autumn, when brittle wind cracked through sanguine leaves, carrying the scent of firewood across the landscape.  

Dear Friends, Family, and Flies on the Wall,  

 “Oscar Wilde said: ‘Each man kills the thing he loves.’ And it’s true. The mere possibility of getting what we want fills the soul of the ordinary person with guilt. We look around at all those who have failed to get what they want and feel that we do not deserve to get what we want either. We forget about all the obstacles we overcame, all the suffering we endured, all the things we had to give up in order to get this far. I have known a lot of people who, when their personal calling was within their grasp, went on to commit a series of stupid mistakes and never reached their goal—when it was only a step away. This is the most dangerous of the obstacles because it has a kind of saintly aura about it: renouncing joy and conquest. But if you believe yourself worthy of the thing you fought so hard to get, then you become an instrument of God, you help the Soul of the World, and you understand why you are here.” Paul Coelho 

I certainly struggle with this feeling of guilt and deservedness at times, but one thing I am sure of is that you all deserve to have the book in your hands, and for that I'm deeply thankful. 

All love, 

Samuél