Welcome to Trailer Park Tuesday, a showcase
of new book trailers and, in a few cases, previews of book-related movies. Unless their last name is Grisham or King, authors will probably never see their
trailers on the big screen at the local cineplex. And that's a shame because a
lot of hard work goes into producing these short marriages between book and
video. So, if you like what you see, please spread the word and help these
videos go viral.
Click the YouTube icon to watch a larger version
I might have walked right past Melanie Gideon's debut novel Wife 22 if it weren't for its clever trailer. Nothing against Ms. Gideon and what looks like a good book, but--at least on the surface--Wife 22 is not the kind of story found on the shelves of the literary supermarket where I typically shop. Billed as a novel for fans of Bridget Jones' Diary and I Don't Know How She Does It, Gideon's Wife 22 centers around Alice Buckle--wife, mother of two, drama teacher, Facebook fanatic--who feels cut adrift in her 20-year marriage. On a whim, she signs up for an anonymous marriage survey, is assigned an identity ("Wife 22"), and begins an online correspondence with Researcher 101. As you'll see from the video, their clinical chats soon turn to flirtation and Alice finds herself drifting into dangerous waters. The book trailer has spunk, a sense of humor, and enough of the character's "voice" to tease me into checking out a book I normally might have bypassed. And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what makes a successful book trailer.
Sign me up.
I found this story to be very engaging. It was fairly fast paced and the characters were introduced solidly. This is a very modern novel as social media is the thread that binds it. Melanie Gideon uses Facebook status updates, email communications and Facebook Chat along with traditional first person story telling. Some readers might not care for the back and forth of the story telling as they might find it confusing. I enjoyed it. I felt like I WAS Alice checking her Facebook status and always checking for the next email from Researcher 101. I especially enjoyed the answers to the survey questions. Of course the reader is not privy to the questions but reading the answers gives us enough to figure out the questions. The author DOES supply the questions in an appendix. Unless you flip entirely through a book before starting to read at page one, who would know that? I personally was glad I didn't know because as I mentioned I found it fun to guess the questions as I was reading the answers. I went back and compared my idea of the questions to the actual supplied questions as a little game with myself. So, the book really is interactive.
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The Quivering Pen's motto can be summed up in two words: Book Evangelism. The blog is written and curated by David Abrams, author of the novels Brave Deeds (Grove/ Atlantic, 2017) and Fobbit (Grove/ Atlantic, 2012), from his home office in Butte, Montana. It is fueled by early-morning cups of coffee, the occasional bowl of Cheez-Its, and a lifelong love of good books.
I found this story to be very engaging. It was fairly fast paced and the characters were introduced solidly. This is a very modern novel as social media is the thread that binds it. Melanie Gideon uses Facebook status updates, email communications and Facebook Chat along with traditional first person story telling. Some readers might not care for the back and forth of the story telling as they might find it confusing. I enjoyed it. I felt like I WAS Alice checking her Facebook status and always checking for the next email from Researcher 101. I especially enjoyed the answers to the survey questions. Of course the reader is not privy to the questions but reading the answers gives us enough to figure out the questions. The author DOES supply the questions in an appendix. Unless you flip entirely through a book before starting to read at page one, who would know that? I personally was glad I didn't know because as I mentioned I found it fun to guess the questions as I was reading the answers. I went back and compared my idea of the questions to the actual supplied questions as a little game with myself. So, the book really is interactive.
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