Inukshuk

National print campaign targeting feature coverage in all major newspapers and lifestyle, environmental, and literary magazines including the New Yorker, O, The Oprah Magazine, GQ, Vanity Fair, Outside, Orion, Ecotone, Harper's, National Geographic Traveler, Entertainment Weekly, etc. We will also pitch stories to major Canadian media outlets where the story’s setting and the author’s band’s loyal following will resonate. The ongoing investigation into the Franklin voyage, and the author's connections to it through his family history and songwriting, should attract off-the-book-page coverage. National radio campaign targeting major public radio shows and critics, including NPR’s Alan Cheuse, who reviewed the author’s previous book. Blurbs likely from Janet Fitch, Karen Joy Fowler, and Ben Marcus, and possible from Alice Munro, Russell Potter, Chris Adrian and Seth Kantner. Promotion through the author’s web site: www.gregoryspatz.com Cross-promotion through the author’s bands’ web sites: www.thejaybirds.com and www.mightysquirrel.net We will explore offering a free download of The Jaybirds’ “Lancaster Sound,” an instrumental Spatz wrote in the midst of his Franklin research AND / OR the popular public-domain ballad about the Franklin expedition, “Lady Franklin’s Dream” Galley giveaways through Library Thing, Goodreads, and popular literary blogs Promotion through Bellevue Literary Press’s social media networks. We have just begun to make social marketing a priority and after transitioning our Facebook profile to a page, we now anticipate reaching 5,000 fans in 2011. The BLP Twitter following has doubled and grows daily. We also have a regular newsletter. We will use all of these tools to connect with our readers, feature BLP books and events, and conduct contest giveaways. Significant galley printing. Advance reader copies available and distributed at ALA Midwinter. Special mailing to independent booksellers, soliciting quotes for the Indie Next list Reading group guide development and book club outreach through Bookmovement.com and Reading Group Choices Author tour: Fresno, CA; Iowa City, IA; Boston, MA; Portland, OR; Nashville, TN; Seattle, WA; Spokane, WA; and more, including Canadian cities in Alberta and British Columbia TBD as The John Reischman and The Jaybirds tour schedule is confirmed Featured title at Book Expo America Co-op available Molly Mikolowski will handle publicity and consult on marketing plans for this title.

The gripping tale of a young man's obsession with an Arctic explorer's doomed quest to find the Northwest Passage"An elaborate tale of family and the paths people take to understanding." --Seattle Times "[This] mix of well-researched history and contemporary fiction makes for a fine, sad read." --Minneapolis Star Tribune "Hauntingly honest and emotionally resonant." --Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Gregory Spatz's prose is as clean and sparkling as a new fall of snow." --JANET FITCH, author of White Oleander and Paint it Black "At its heart Inukshuk is about family. But Spatz has transfigured this beautifully told, wise story with history and myth, poetry and magic into something rarer, stranger and altogether amazing. A book that points unerringly true north." --KAREN JOY FOWLER, author of The Jane Austen Book Club and Wit's End John Franklin has moved his fifteen-year-old son to the remote northern Canadian town of Houndstitch to make a new life together after his wife, Thomas' mother, left them. Mourning her disappearance, John, a high school English teacher, writes poetry and escapes into an affair, while Thomas withdraws into a fantasy recreation of the infamous Victorian-era arctic expedition led by British explorer Sir John Franklin. With teenage bravado, Thomas gives himself scurvy so that he can sympathize with the characters in the film of his mind--and is almost lost himself. While told over the course of only a few days, this gripping tale slips through time, powerfully evoking a modern family in distress and the legendary "Franklin's Lost Expedition" crew's descent into despair, madness, and cannibalism aboard the HMS Erebus and HMS Terror on the Arctic tundra. Gregory Spatz is the author of the novels Inukshuk, Fiddler's Dream, and No One But Us, and the short fiction collections Wonderful Tricks and Half as Happy. A graduate of the Iowa Writers' Workshop and recipient of a Washington State Book Award, he teaches at Eastern Washington University in Spokane and plays the fiddle and tours with Mighty Squirrel and the internationally acclaimed bluegrass band John Reischman and The Jaybirds.