Make love, not war: part II: The marketing of 101GEP

As I anticipated (I did give him permission) E.J. went ahead and posted the master list of poems for 101 GREAT EROTIC POEMS, and that's fine. I decided (for once) not to run up to the deadline to select the works, and rather spend my time refining and formatting the volume. So far, I have not rethought the cover, but we shall see what tomorrow brings.

I want this thing to be a killer. I think it already speaks well of it that months before its release I have already been approached by bookstores wanting to arrange "tasteful", late-evening readings of it. They're expecting to make money off of it, and I can't blame them. They will, I will, and I'm going to raise the body temperature of English-speaking peoples everywhere by a few degrees Centigrade. It is not a perverse or offensive book, there is little in it more explicit than "The Song of Solomon" which is in the Holy Bible (people who get bent out of shape over suggestive material need to read that long-form erotic dialogue).

Make love, not war? You bet.

The marketing plan for this book will be the most aggressive grass-roots campaign to date for one of my volumes, eclipsing the very successful marketing of THE COMPLEAT PANTHER CYCLES. Readings, media access and severe pimping of individual works and tying it in to the very successful 101 GREAT LOVE POEMS, which it is sibling to.

There's a line, a definition, in my old poem "Bragi, awakening in his tomb" that reads

"love: an addiction and a venom I use and sell"

So let it be with this volume. I am intentionally "putting it all out there" with a small note I keep on my computer saying "No one finishes this book in a single reading" - as I want to be certain, in my heart of hearts, that anything with a body temperature that reads this book will be forced to put it down and seek solace from this lonely, cold sphere in the arms of another.

E.J. has gone so far to suggest the marketing tag-line that I invoked above that reinvokes decade of the 60's:

"Make love, not war"