Upcoming WCCO-AM 830 Minneapolis Segment

As mentioned earlier in this space, I'm good at making a lot of noise.

That will be demonstrated with Saturday, as I'll be on WCCO-AM 830, "The Good Neighbor" to anyone in Minnesota, of course. During the 5 PM hour, I'll be on with host Eric Nelson, talking about The Interim, along other subjects.

I very much look forward to re-connecting with Eric, as I have not actually spoken with him since 2004, when he had me on about Gotcha Down, my first novel.

Four years ago, Eric put out an intriguing book, titled Slices of the NFL, where he and his brother went on the road, each weekend, to another local to bring readers the scenes and settings throughout the league.

And before that, Eric was yet another TV sportscaster. But he was a darned good one, over at WCCO-TV, the CBS in Minneapolis.

Hope you can catch it. That's this Saturday, August 4th, just after 5PM. 8-3-0 on your radio dial. Anyone still have dials in 2007?

**One final note: An expression of thanks to the many directors of small libraries stepping up to stock The Interim. With each one I talk to, I am humbled by their appreciation for local writers who want to put out a top-tier product.

Up For Back To School Bucks

Coming up very soon on August 9th, I'll be on WAYY-AM 790 for their Back To School Bucks fund-raiser. Murph and Bruce do a solid job there informing, entertaining and, at times, aggravating some of their targets and I'm honored they asked me to tag along.

Aside from wisecracks and other insights that "you won't get anywhere else", I'm also going to offer up a signed copy of The Interim for the winning bidder.

This is a great cause to help fill the backpacks for kids here in Western Wisconsin before they go back to school. I hope you'll give it a listen and consider offering a bid.

Time is still TBD for Thursday, August 9th for my slot.

Thumbs Up For The Area Libraries

So much of spreading the word about the release of The Interim comes through just getting it in the "hands of the people."

Of course, if I would have said "the hand of the American people", then the chatter would start that I'm following my predecessors into the State Senate or State Assembly.

Not true. Definitely not true!

If you frequent the libraries around Western Wisconsin, you may come into contact with The Interim. Close contact. Many of the library directors are giving the go-ahead to stock my second novel and I do appreciate it.


Here is why: Once a book like mine gets "into the system", then people see it and the word gets around. I've often said that breaking into fiction is about as easy as breaking into Popular Music. About 20-40 "acts" or "authors" are automatically sellers, coast-to-coast. The rest are booked between ska bands and chainsaw jugglers (see right) at empty bars in the middle of the week. At least THIS chainshaw juggler has an audience.

As for me, I'm still "playing The Velvet Tiger on Wednesday nights", which is fine, as I have zero elusions about quitting my real job to sit in a cabin in the deep woods and mountains of Oregon, looking out at the spotted owls and contemplating plot structure and character building. For some reason, that is why I imagine the best-selling novelists do. I love my job but I also love getting people to read my books. Even if they read a library copy, maybe they'll come back in December, shoot me an e-mail and say, "hey, I've got a teenage cousin who I think would really like The Interim."

That happened with Gotcha Down more than you would know.

So, if you're not ready to purchase The Interim here, give it a look at one of your local libraries. And enjoy!

A Sad Way To End The Week

Side Note: Today turned out to be a very bad one for my profession. Four journalists were killed this afternoon in Phoenix, after two helicopters crashed into each other while multiple helicopters followed a police chase. The dead are two pilots and two photographers. Photographers (or 'photogs', as they are usually called) are often the hardest-working but lowest-paid people in the newsroom. There is no glory in their jobs, except for those who take real pride in getting the story on, as these men were doing today.

Industry-wide, hundreds of us in local TV are thinking about these four and expressing our thoughts and prayers for their families. I do hope, in this time of reflection, that all of us remember those same intentions when we deal with the general public which, all too often, comes during a time of tragedy in their lives.

Do The Hustle...For Reviews

I'm good at making noise.

I learned this three years ago during the publicity tour for Gotcha Down. Since I actually work in the media, I understand that radio shows need to fill time, newspaper writers need to fill slot (especially in the summer, when half the staff is on vacation but the same amount of space needs to be filled).

As The Interim embarks on the publicity machine, of the "come look at me! I'm a fantastic story" ilk, now the job shifts from just getting it to the newspapers to getting it to the reviewers.

Ah, the critics.

That's okay. I can handle negative words. I work in a business where a thick skin is required, twice a day. When I hear the phone ringing at 6:31 p.m. or at 10:36 p.m., seconds after I've closed out a newscast, I usually assume it is someone that has an issue, be it with a news story or maybe even some throwaway comment I tossed out there to fill time. I can even handle personal attacks from callers, unaware that I may be the one picking up the phone. "Yup, he already knows because you're talking to him right now." Then the caller will usually back-pedal faster than Rickey Henderson in left field, which brings a high entertainment value in itself.

Whether negative or positive, I just want the words.

Gotcha Down enjoyed praise from Booklist, which is somewhat of a gathering point for new book releases. Off the good review from Booklist (the words, "Earl gets the details right in this engaging story," still ring through my cobweb-laden head). Hundreds of copies sold just because Booklist had some nice words on my first work.

That's the power of book reviews.

It is also why I'm sifting through the various book reviewers. Some love small press (great for me), others just want the latest Grisham/Rowling/Patterson epic, which is fine, too. Finding that ideal review shop is trying, between meeting their various requests for submissions. I understand these people "want things the way they want things".

If my mailbox sprouted 75 books a day, all asking for a review and all convinced they are just one 4-star recommendation from selling 150,000 copies (as I firmly believe with The Interim), I'd be particular as well.

Even reviews that are less than glowing may not help the writer for that work, but they can expose a certain desire to overcome whatever failures were mentioned. Plot. Characters. Realism. Whatever it is. I did not have any below-average reviews for Gotcha Down, but the points that, some said, needed improvement were not taken lightly as I finished up The Interim.

Keep evolving in this world. Keep getting a little better with each book.


I just hope that some reviewers out there are able and willing to notice what I've know for more than a year. The Interim could be my Purple Rain, just without Prince's cool motorcycle or having to be Morris Day's opening act.

The "Fabio" of The Interim

So much thought can go into the 142,671 words inside The Interim. It has two. A writer's words speak well or not so well about them.

But what about the book cover? Go with an extensive design or a famous face. Maybe a face like...this one:


Ah, Fabio. "Hello, 1995 is calling, they want their romance novel cover model back."

Even 11 years removed from his apex in the American Pop Culture Lexicon, we just couldn't afford a photo shoot with Mr. Fabio, so we opted for a different character, hoping to capture his essence, just as he is a rising star himself:



And, no, it's not your friendly author. (Even I have limits of self-promotion).

Meteorologist Ben Hampton is the cover model and his price for modeling was firm but fair. Notice the essence of how he grabs the basketball with authority but also the same softness that a mother holds a newborn with. That's innate skill, untaught. During the 16-hour photo shoot on the day of production, Mr. Hampton was the consummate professional. (Truth: During the three-minute photo shoot, Mr. Hampton was the consummate professional.)

So, if you see Ben around Eau Claire, say 'hello' and tell him that his future just may be in modeling for novels.

Paging Ron Shelton. Wanna Get Back in the Sports Movie Game?

Sometimes you have to just spell it out.

Aim for the top and see if anything comes back.

That's what I'm doing here.

Have you noticed the recent wave of sports-themed movies over the past few years? Many were off true stories (We Are Marshall, Glory Road) and done very well. Sports movies have become mainstream, just not for people like myself, who can rattle off every line from Bull Durham, Tin Cup or White Men Can't Jump.



Oh, wait, what about those three, quite possibly The Holy Trinity of Sports Movies 1987 to 1997? (There are others that could be argued in that realm, such as Blue Chips (1994) or Major League (1989), but I will exclude the lovable Major League because, the entire movie, we knew Cleveland would beat the Yankees. Jerry Maguire (1996) always sticks with me because of the realism of the action, as the NFL gave its blessing, but it was much more along the later lines of For Love of The Game (1999), another movie with top-shelf sports scenes but stuck within a dragging relationship storyline).

Ron Shelton directed those three epics.

What I appreciate is that, in each case, the star isn't always carried off in a glory of victory. Sure, he finds some morsel of satisfaction by the end of the film but it is often seen away from the cheering crowds at a sporting event. I have written both The Interim and Gotcha Down with that angle, where the true solution of a character's conflict is found, say, underneath the bleachers instead of at the 50-yard line or maybe weeks after the last game was played.



Shelton's three sports movies still work, even 10-20 years later. The storylines are simple but the situation is complex. Crash Davis trying to hang on for another 10 days "in The Show" or, in Tin Cup, Roy McAvoy catching fire for the first time in his woeful golf career. The comedy within never washes out the underlying plot or lesson, although I'll admit in White Men Can't Jump, it got so funny, at times, that switching to why Billy was down with Rosie Perez did keep WMCJ from Absolute Movie Immortality.



I'm no Hollywood screenwriter but I hope I always have that passion for churning out realistic sports fiction, based on my years covering it. That's why I appreciate his cinematic contributions. Now come on back, Mr. Shelton, and save the sports movie genre from a sappy ending every time. And if you need a writer to "do the little work", I'm easy to find.

The Mad Dash To Write The Interim

I'll never forget that rainy Saturday in St. Louis.

We were all back visiting my mother. Still just one kid by this point as my wife was just two months pregnant with our second. We were still in Duluth.

I had gone downtown to the Dome The Rams Play In (sorry, this goes back to my sports anchoring days where I refused to say the 'corporate' name of any stadium/dome unless they were giving me a cut of the action) for some convention but, mostly, to look at the fire trucks on display.

As we're taking the light-rail, an entertaining experience if you have a toddler with you, back to her house, I get a phone call.

"Bad news about your station," my wife said. "Something about a merger." A merger in the media business means that people are going to get fired. Especially if those people work at the weaker outlet. Which, as was confirmed four times a year by the good folks at A.C. Nielsen, was where I worked at.

The eleven crazy months then began.

Upon our return to Duluth, I sent out panic e-mails to everyone I knew in journalism. I looked at newspaper jobs, radio jobs and then I came across an interesting piece of information:

A job with the Wisconsin Badger basketball team, as Director of Basketball Operations.

So, of course, I applied to join Bo Ryan's staff in whatever it was a DBO (as they are called in the business) does.

This comes as no surprise to those who have known me for years, but me chasing pipe dreams involving Badger Basketball was nothing new. During my college years at UW, these three men all agreed, in various years, that I was not Big Ten material. Let's see...that's two that coached in the NBA and one that cultivated a Final Four team in 2000 and is seen as the Vince Lombardi of Basketball in Wisconsin.








I thought about this DBO position with the rule I always had when looking for jobs. Fire it off and forget.

Of course, I never got the job but I discovered the kernel of inspiration for The Interim which, looking back, is the better end of the deal, anyway.

Fast forward four months.

I'm flying back from St. Louis, this time solo, after a very successful piece of my book tour for Gotcha Down. I was blessed to have enjoyed a solid book signing at Barnes & Noble, back in Ladue (St. Louis suburb) where many of my old English teachers showed up, a bit amazed that a mediocre 'B' student could actually become a real writer of fake tales. I was on KMOX-AM 1120, the Sports Voice of America, with host Mike Grimm for a generous hour that seemed like it was only seven minutes. I met up with friends I hadn't seen in ten years.

Somewhere in the flight, we hit a minor pocket of turbulence heading into Duluth. And I come up with The Interim. I thought back to that DBO job that I didn't get and thought about the plane I was on, bouncing through the clouds. Flashes of the Oklahoma State crash in 2001 went through my mind. I started to scribble out a plot. In about thirty minutes, I had an idea of what I wanted to start writing.

A little context here: Each and every day I drove into work at that station in Duluth, I didn't know what was going to happen. I might get fired. I might not. Most of 2004 was a bizarre scene. Co-workers openly looking and talking about jobs in other stations and cities. Others playing Internet poker (for real money), on the clock because, well, what are they going to do...get fired? Without question, the loosest newsroom I've ever worked in.

When I would get home, around 11 p.m., each weeknight, still full of the stress of surviving another day but not knowing what the following day would bring, I'd sit down and type. Furiously. 1,500 words one night, 3,500 the next. No TV. No music. Just a dim light and a laptop. I'd hear my son stirring in his room if I pounded the keys too hard.

This went on for months. Through Thanksgiving. Then Christmas. I actually wrote The Interim in "real-time". If you go through the book and see the chapters set in December or January, I wrote them at the time. It even got to the point where, if Wisconsin State was playing on a Wednesday night game, I'd write that night. This may sound like a silly ritual, but it did give me some definition amid what I was going through at work.

By January, we all knew the station was going down. Could be days. Could be weeks. The Interim passed 90,000 words, then 100,000, then 120,000. I was still writing The Interim and I was still employed...I might actually win the race to finish The Interim before I would meet the guillotine.

March 8, 2005.

Everyone in the newsroom terminated.

Except for me and three others.

Yet after that day (known as Black Tuesday for those of us who lived it), even though I survived the cuts, I didn't have the stomach to keep writing. It was as if the heart, the soul of The Interim had been cut out.

Nine days after Black Tuesday, I found out that I just might be able to come "home" to Eau Claire.

I didn't pick up finishing The Interim's final 20-30 pages until early October, 2005. By then, all of the stress of 2004 had faded away. Took a long weekend to finish the first draft of The Interim that October, mostly just recapturing the tone of the previous 300 pages.

Part of writing fiction, at least for me, is that you have to be in the middle of some emotional extreme (anger, anxiety, frustration, family illness, pain, etc.) to produce really telling, memorable, exciting-may-I-read-another-page prose. As stress-packed as those last eleven months were in Duluth, I gotta say, I'm proud to have The Interim as the result.

I hope you get the chance to check it out.

Rockford Shout Out

First, a shout out to the Rockford (IL) Register Star for mentioning the release of The Interim in today's on-line edition.

Rockford and I have always had a funny existence.

When I was in college at Madison, I would zoom through the eastern edge of the Greater Rockford Metro Area, on my way back to Missouri. It can be a mind-numbing drive once you are south of Rockford. The 119 miles from Rockford to Bloomington-Normal test the patience and durability of both man and machine. So Rockford was the "last stop" before the rolling hills and dark roads of I-39 through Northern Illinois. Just bring 40 cents and 15 cents for the tolls.

Ten years ago as I was starting out, I tried like you wouldn't believe to land a job at one of the three TV stations in Rockford. There were no openings for sports or news reporters but my first, legitimate, post-internship offer was from one of the stations in Rockford, to be a news photographer, three months after I graduated from Wisconsin.

Of course, being the financial genius that I was at 22, I turned it down and moved to Topeka...for a quarter less an hour. Since then, I've had friends work in Rockford media and I'm always happy to steer young journalists there because it is a town that can make you grow up in a hurry.

My "nod" to Rockford in The Interim centers on Wilson Harrison, a Machesney Park HS graduate and a talented freshman at my fictional Wisconsin State, along with the main "plot turn", the plane crash, occuring just east of Rockford.

As I've discovered, you write what you know and I do know Rockford...at least downtown, State Street, where the TV stations are located and how much the tollbooths are charging when I'm rolling through.

The Interim Available At Borders in Eau Claire

Just a note that The Interim is now available at Borders in Eau Claire, 4030 Commonwealth. Cover price is $14.95.

The good people at Borders have a long history of backing local authors, which I sincerely appreciate as my '04 tour stop with Gotcha Down, as we lived in Duluth then, was very well-attended and the staff could not have been nicer.

If you need to stop by and pick up that Harry Potter book, also look for The Interim, as well as some of the other Western Wisconsin authors.

Fixing Games...Unthinkable? Hmmm.

It's Friday morning and I'm in traffic, ready to drop off my son at one of his summer programs (this one apparently produces crafts that are made of glue and sparkly things that stick to car seats).

I hear on ESPN Radio that the FBI is investigating Tim Donaghy, an NBA referee who is alleged to have bet on numerous games that he worked. Unthinkable in some circles. How could this happen?

Two days later, the storm and stench hovers over the NBA, even as a flashy quarterback with mediocre stats is facing a PR disaster over dog fighting. A favorite columnist, Bill Simmons of ESPN, even wrote today: "you could hear the cacophony of frustrated screenwriters pounding their desks in disgust. The Tim Donaghy scandal doubled as the easiest movie pitch ever."

Actually, I had that pitch three years ago. Sort of.



Just swap out the NBA for Big Ten football, a referee for a cash-strapped assistant coach and you, essentially, have the same story, my debut novel, Gotcha Down. And if any Hollywood screenwriters or producers stumble upon this website, they are always welcome to inquire about purchasing the rights to turn Gotcha Down into a motion picture. They can change the names, the sports, team colors, the stakes, just as long as Patrick Swayze has a key role somewhere, whether as an acid-tongue laden coach or a rough, yet thoughtful, tavern bouncer in rural Missouri.

The Initial Post

Greetings to all who have found this site.

Yes. Another blog. Just what the world needs.

No. You probably won't find anything terribly controversial here but, if you're checking for that, I appreciate it as well.

Chances are, if you landed here, you came from my website, http://www.chrisearlbooks.com/. The publicity for my second novel, The Interim, is just whipping up as I try to get the proper eyeballs to check out The Interim and see if it will land in the proper hands.

I'm targeting everyday readers, as you may be one, but also libraries, both public and high schools, throughout the Midwest, where my novels are generally set. I heard this plenty in 2004, during the release of my debut novel Gotcha Down, that librarians are looking for fresh fiction that encourages high school students, especially males, to sit down and crack open a book. As one that tries to write in a "PG-13" style, I humbly offer up both Gotcha Down (2004) and The Interim (2007) for those audiences.

So what is this blog for? Promoting my book. There. I said it. This may become nothing more than shameless self-promotion. But, if you're fighting for press in 2007, you've got to use an '07 model vehicle to get there.

As for me, personally, I'm just another dad in Wisconsin, with a minivan and two little kids. I'm fortunate, no, make that blessed to treasure where I work and even the people I work with (very, very rare in the broadcasting business). Does that make my life boring? Maybe it does, to some. But it can make for some thrilling fiction.

It's great to be back in Eau Claire. We've been back for just over two years and I'm always appreciative for how friendly the people here are to us. Thank you.

More later. Much more later.