Mx3 Guest Post & Giveaway: Doug Magee, Author of Darkness All Around

Earlier today, I reviewed Doug Magee’s Darkness All Around.  Now I’m pleased to welcome Doug for a guest post. The topic is a recently new thing in book promotions: book trailers. 

The actor said I was brave and at first I didn’t understand what he was talking about. I had just handed him an advance copy of my new novel Darkness All Around.  I wanted him to read it  because he was going to play the part of one of the characters in the book trailer I was about to shoot.

This book trailer stuff is a relatively new part of publishing but it seems most books these days have some sort of video presence as well as print promotion. I’m not sure how much they do to interest readers but publishers seem to think a book without a trailer is somehow incomplete.

In my unofficial survey of the genre I’ve found two basic varieties. There is the interview with the author trailer and there is the hodgepodge of quotes and animated still photos variety. So when it came to my current novel I decided to take a different tack. I had worked as a screenwriter for many years and had directed a couple of short films. I decided to tackle something a little more ambitious. My idea was to film an actor partly addressing the camera as a character from the book would, detailing that character’s dilemma.

In the case of Darkness All Around that meant first and foremost I would film the character Sean Collins. Sean is a man who spiraled into alcoholism, left his hometown in Pennsylvania and spent eleven years drunk on the streets of New York. An accident gave him a traumatic brain injury and in the aftermath of his recovery he began to have horrible visions of a murder he committed before he left his hometown. As the book opens he is trying to convince people he committed the murder, even though another man has confessed and is jail.

I found a fine actor named Chris Henry Coffey to play the part of Sean. It was at our first meeting that he called me brave. When I asked him what he meant he said that readers who saw the trailer would have a very specific image of the character unlike someone who hadn’t seen the trailer and could create their own image. I had heard the author Robert Crais say that he hadn’t sold rights to his series because he didn’t want to spoil readers’ images of his hero.

But I didn’t think there would be any problem. We shot the video and Chris did a terrific job portraying Sean’s anguish. The trailer is, I think, unique. But after having seen it over and over again in the editing, I think Chris has become Sean for me. And I’m starting to wonder if it was a good idea to bring the character to life in that way. Was I brave or stupid?  Did I sacrifice something at the heart of the book for the sake of promotion? Maybe you can give the videos a look and let me know. Or maybe you might want to read the book first.

Without further ado…the book trailers for Darkness All Around.  

Thanks to the author, I have a copy of Darkness All Around for giveaway.  To enter, please fill out the form below.  The winner will be contacted via email on Friday, October 28th.  Open to US & Canada only.  Good luck!