While unemployed in Michigan, film critic Mike White built a book tour and a book trailer to support the new book, Impossibly Funky: A Cashiers du Cinemart Collection.
The book collects 15 years worth of criticism from a collective of film writers, subjects ranging from crime fiction adaptations to Quentin Tarantino to Star Wars. We caught up with White to find out how he turned his unemployed days into productive literary time.
He explained: ” Ah, the wonders of being laid off. With Detroit’s economy in the toilet, I got the summer off from my day job and spent my first free week working on a book trailer … I don’t know why I needed to create a book trailer. I suppose since the material of the book lent itself to movies so well. Plus, I figured it’d help explain the gist of the book a little more for the conceptually-impaired. Thus the on-screen title of ‘It’s a book.'”
He continued: “As far as DIY advice, just do what you can. Some folks would say that I had it easy since my book is about movies (mostly) so I tell the trailer’s story via movies. But, I bet that a narrative fiction writer might have had a bit easier of a go if they could capture the book in a sample scene.”
White explained how he built the book tour: “I really lucked out with having a lot of friends who hooked me up with recommendations of cool places that would fit my style. I had already made plans to attend Noircon in Philadelphia the first weekend of November and Baltimore for a MicroCineFest reunion the third weekend of November and just branched off from there. Baltimore’s always been incredibly supportive of me so I knew I wanted to do a reading at Atomic Books. I’d been selling my zine there from almost the first issue and they’ve been great about carrying me and working with me ever since.”