Trailer Park Tuesday: The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards by Kristopher Jansma

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.

I was there at the Northern California Independent Booksellers Association meeting when Wendy Pearl, a sales rep for Penguin publishers, held up an advance reading copy of Kristopher Jansma's debut novel The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards and bravely announced to the hundred-plus booksellers in the room that if the book didn't become an Indie Next bestseller, she would "eat this galley."  It's the kind of passion every first-time novelist dreams of getting from those responsible for marketing and publicizing their "book babies."  Fortunately for Pearl, she won't have to break her "strict, no-paper diet" because The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards made the April Indie Next List.  I've had my eye on Jansma's book ever since that NCIBA trade show, having packed a galley in my suitcase even before Pearl's challenge.  (Lack of) time and (too many) circumstances have kept me from reading it yet, but the book trailer for Leopards certainly re-piques my interest.  It's a beautiful video which is at once intimate and globally-expansive.  There's just enough odd detail to intrigue us (why is the narrator's manuscript disintegrating at the bottom of an ice-bound lake?) and plenty of big-name blurbs to convince me that Jansma's novel is worth my time: "Light and airy, The Unchangeable Spots of Leopards is a funhouse of a novel about the outsized ambitions of authors and the sneaky power of storytelling.  Kristopher Jansma's debut is a whimsical round-the-world tour that recalls Calvino, Millhauser and The Confidence Man" (Stewart O'Nan).  I can't wait to eat this book.