This past Monday, I attended my first Wilco concert in Missoula (a town filled with many admittedly-hazy college memories), and I was struck by a couple of things.

1) Jeff Tweedy really is lyrically brilliant. Okay, he's been musically brilliant, as well, having mixed several genres since his Uncle Tupelo days and exploring new directions with each Wilco album. But to me, there's probably no better, more challenging lyricist in popular music today; call Tweedy the Bob Dylan of a new generation. Compositions such as "Via Chicago" (my favorite Wilco tune ever), "Muzzle of Bees," "War on War" and others are haunting with their imagery.

2) The musicians in the current Wilco lineup are fairly brilliant themselves. It's rare to listen to a group that sounds this comfortable, this tight, in a live setting. I was impressed by the multi-instrumental wizardry of Pat Sansone, and the hypnotic presence of guitarist Nels Cline. Indeed, Cline was perhaps the highlight of the show, with his mod boots, high-water slacks, and solos (especially on steel guitar) that were an equal mix of epic and epileptic. Wow.

3) This won't be the last time I go see Wilco.

4) Although I wasn't smart enough to bring my own camera, I did find some nice images and a video of the show from Jennifer on flickr, courtesy of my good friend Franny. Thanks to both of them.

Two of the questions I get asked most often--usually in the same conversation--are along the lines of: 1) How did you get published?; and 2) Where do you come up with your ideas?

The short answers are: 1) I was published after a couple hundred rejections; and 2) Ideas come from everywhere. Which is why I was drawn to this video, wrapping both answers together nicely.

The cover for The Unseen has officially been unveiled, and the book has a page up at Amazon and other fine retailers (interestingly enough, I found it first at Target's online store).

The Unseen should be on shelves by the end of September, making it an ideal read for Halloween. Or Thanksgiving. Or Christmas.

Maybe even President's Day.

A few years ago, I sat down to think about my unique brand--what makes a TL Hines story a TL Hines story--and came up with the term Noir Bizarre™. As I explain elsewhere, I think it's a memorable summation of the kinds of tales I am to write. I promptly registered the "noirbizarre.com" domain name (go ahead; it's safe), and started trademarking the phrase because...well, because you never know what's going to pop up.

A recent google search informed me there's another "Noir Bizarre" out there--an, ahem, "alternative fetish club" (as opposed to, I suppose, a "mainstream fetish club") in Sweden, which opened its doors just a few months ago.

So, I suppose people who might search for "Noir Bizarre," expecting to find stuff about my stories, might stumble across references to latex, riding crops and whipped cream.

Hey, I'm groovy with it; fits the theme.

On the other hand, people in search of latex, riding crops and whipped cream might find their way to my site instead, and the most salacious thing I can offer is an old blog entry about ketchup.

Sorry.

Thanks to Last.fm, I've spent the last few weeks "scrobbling" what I listen to. It's been fun, and rather interesting to look at the play lists of people who share similar music tastes to mine--new artists to be discovered, once I get past the fact that more than a few of my closest matches on the music "taste-o-meter" are 18-year-old girls.

I've already noticed one interesting side effect, though. I'll be the first to admit that I have one of those personalities that has an urge to find the unseen corners of anything, so I've been trawling the recesses of Last.fm, and my own memory banks, trying to come up with obscure bands and songs no one else has ever listened to much.

That means revisiting the music of my youth, and I have to admit I wasn't one of those cool kids who had a bunch of Dead Kennedys, Suicidal Tendencies and Sonic Youth albums tucked away at home. Not even The Ramones or the Clash, for that matter. (Well, I did have a couple of singles, but I wasn't a "fan".)

I did purchase music by the Psychedelic Furs and the B-52s, though. And I was an avid fan of all things Pink Floyd and The Doors, so I wasn't a hopeless case.

Still, I listened to a lot of pop and rock--you know, Journey, Styx, Night Ranger, that kind of thing. And, okay, some hair metal. Cinderella, Motley Crue, Poison...um, let's not that list get any longer.

But even then, a part of me tried to find the music that fell between the cracks, so I found myself listening to a lot of pop music that didn't catch on very much with other people. You see where I'm going. I decided to start searching the annals of Last.fm, seeing if I could be the one and only person who was a listener of some particular artist or song. And my rule was: it had to be an artist or song I really did listen to at some point in my past.

First off, I thought I'd go for some of the semi-obscure names that I was sure would have several listeners, but were still a bit under the radar.

Maybe you recognize the name Walter Egan. If not, if you're of a "certain age," you would certainly recognize his signature tune Magnet & Steel. A total of roughly 3,000 listeners, and 10,000 plays in Last.fm's database. Kind of what I expected, but my ace in the hole was Egan's comparatively little-known song Fool Moon Fire from his album Wild Exhibitions, which I listened to thousands of times on vinyl. I fared much better on this: only 15 scrobbles of Fool Moon Fire in Last.fm's archives. At most, that's 15 other people listening to the song. At least, it's one other person who has scrobbled the song 15 times. Someone out there remembers and loves one of only two songs about werewolves (along with Werewolves of London) to ever hit the Billboard charts. (I was also pleasantly surprised to discover Walter Egan has a free download of this very song on his website, and I've since scrobbled it several times. It's now up to 20 plays on Last.fm.)

Next up, I went for Michael Stanley Band, and their song He Can't Love You Like I Love You, another one played several thousand times during my youth. I was surprised to discover it has 545(!) plays on Last.fm, and I found out a new piece of trivia: this song was actually the 45th video ever played on MTV. I need to find some of those other MSB fans.

Okay, howzabout Donnie Iris? Ah, Leah, which dovetailed with my high school crush on a girl named Leah, was literally worn out from repeated plays. Evidently, a few other people had crushes on girls named Leah, because this song has more than 8,000 scrobbles on Last.fm. Okay, I didn't expect this song to be actually obscure, but it's nice to see Donnie Iris is doing all right. One user, owkenobi, even left a comment on the song: "This is the greatest song ever written. Of all time." I don't know that I could say that, but it's nice to find a fellow traveler; owkenobi's getting an instant friend invite from me.

Martin Briley. Let's go with Martin Briley. His first hit, The Salt in My Tears, brought him some considerable fame, but I was always more partial to the work on his album Dangerous Moments. Ha! My favorite track from the album, Underwater, has never been scrobbled on Last.fm. And it's likely to never be, since I don't think this album was ever released on disc or digitally, and my old vinyl version is long gone.

Time to pull out the most obscure pop band I listened to in my youth: The Innocents. They had only one album and no charted singles; I heard of them while watching TV one day, and discovering them in a documentary about the "making of a band." It's a shame they weren't bigger, because their music was rather more interesting than a lot of other stuff in their day; it was definitely pop, but had a bit of a new wave edge (I saw someone say it was "Devo pop," and I think that's a nice description. More on that in a moment.) To this day, I can still hear the songs on their one and only album (creatively titled The Innocents) floating through my head.

I hit it big time with this. Only one of their songs, Directly from the Heart, has been scrobbled on Last.fm; the entire rest of the album, including my faves Stop Shooting Up Stars and Twisted Kiss.

Curious, though, I decide to do google searches for this band, and these songs in particular. And it seems I wasn't the only child watching that TV on a Saturday afternoon long ago. I discovered blog entries, a MySpace fan page (with 99 friends!), copies of the album for sale, and more.

If the Internet is good for nothing else, it's good for finding that shared sense of community tied to the smallest things. "Hey, here are people who listened to The Innocents. My kinda peeps!"

Of course, now you know my next goal. I must find a band from my childhood that's not mentioned anywhere, by anyone, on the entire Internet.

I spent 17 years in the ad biz, creating marketing for everything from guitar wah-wah pedals to medical textbooks to burritos. And in almost every case, I can tell you the means of measuring marketing effectiveness was exactly the same:

Did it sell? Did it move the needle? Did it make the cash register ring?

From advertising's earliest glory days, that's always been the dynamic: advertising is glorified salesmanship, hoping to convince the reader/listener/viewer to buy something. It's one of the building blocks of capitalistic society, after all.

But I'm wondering, more and more, whether that holds true in today's marketplace.

Let me start by saying yes. There will always be a place for retail-oriented marketing that focuses on price or specials or loss leaders.

But I'm not talking about that kind of promotion-oriented marketing. I'm talking more about marketing designed to raise awareness and create a brand in the marketplace. Now, folks who love branding-speak will say true branding efforts don't focus on sales. To an extent, I suppose. But the hoped-for result of a unique brand is differentiation in the marketplace...resulting in more sales. Much of Nike's work from the late 80s on has been very brand-centric--but they've been able to be brand-centric, because those efforts have sold a ton of swoosh-clad shoes.

So, I think even in today's world, we tie marketing to sales. And I also think that's a mistake, because it makes companies miss out on a ton of sales in the long-run. Well, let me correct that a bit; I don't think it's wrong to tie marketing to sales. That's what it's all about. But I think it's perhaps a bit misguided to look at many marketing efforts today through a traditional marketing lens—it's wrong, I think, to say, "How's this going to help us sell more product?" and use that as a sole benchmark.

Instead, I think it's more important to get people talking about you, or your brand, or your product, than it is to actually sell anything. The sales have to be a natural end result of the process, rather than the primary upfront goal. It might seem I’m splitting hairs, but I think it's an important distinction, because modern efforts can be seen as failures is the product doesn't "sell," when in fact the marketing behind it has done its job.

I'll give you a specific example tied to something near and dear to my heart: books. Consider this article in Wall Street Journalabout a recent novel by Chad Kultgen. The article devotes a fair number of words to talking about the racy viral videos produced for the book, and the success of the videos (the article claims they've been viewed more than a million times, although the YouTube view counts don't indicate that). Then, the article says: Still, the limits of the strategy are clear. Only a fraction of the million views has so far turned into sales, likely because the people watching the videos aren't frequent book buyers. As Mr. Kultgen says, "Now we'll see if the views translate into book sales."

The article takes great pains to explain the success of the effort...then deflates it by saying it really didn't sell that many books. The culprit? We're told it's "because the people watching the videos aren't frequent book buyers." Hmmm, I'm betting many of those "infrequent book buyers" have a few Harry Potter books, or The DaVinci Code, or any of a number of other titles sitting on their shelves. It's not that folks aren't interested in books; it's more, I think, that the book just didn't close the deal. Guys, especially the "under 40" crowd the book aims at, are much more visual than verbal when it comes to, ahem, racy content. That's why they were drawn to the viral videos...but not the book itself. (Women, on the other hand, are more imaginative and verbal, which helps explain the enduring popularity of romance novels.)

My point in all of this is, I think this campaign was viewed as a grand experiment that failed. And yet, I don't think it did fail at all. A million views, in my mind, means folks passed it around and talked about it. The marketing did its job. (And before you click through and watch the viral videos, please be advised they're not, um, family friendly. We're talking about crude humor.)

I'm not necessarily saying I like the campaign (I am, after all, outside the noted demo for it). But I am saying its remarkable among book campaigns because of its viral success. It certainly blows away most other "viral video" campaigns for books of any kind that I know about.

Take, for instance, recent videos created for Douglas Coupland's "The Gum Thief," many of which, I think, are quite interesting. The first in the series has a very respectable 240,000 views so far, but the rest of the videos—almost all of which are better than the one with 240,000 views, I think—only have between 3,000 and 16,000. Not that those figures are anything to scoff at; even after a couple hundred views, I think you're getting some benefit from viral videos. I'm just saying we're a long way from the 1,000,000+ views.

And "The Gum Thief" is probably one of the more successful virals produced for books; look at average numbers, and you'll see far fewer views.

Consider one of the biggest names in fiction: Dean Koontz. He's always doing something interesting, and I personally loved the campaign for his "Odd Thomas" books—I saw the spots on broadcast television (no small buy), and they were also distributed as videos on YouTube. Yet they've only attracted a few thousand views. For his most recent book, "The Good Guy," Koontz did a "Shoot the Good Guy" contest asking people to make their own videos for the book. A neat idea, but the top entry still only generated 20,000 views.

On the flip side of that, we know Koontz sold a bazillion copies of those books, so who's to argue? But it does say something about the odds a viral video faces when an author with a large and fanatical following can only generate a few thousand views on YouTube.

Just thinking out loud.

All are invited to come and hear author TL Hines talk about, and read from, Waking Lazarus on Saturday, January 19th at 11 a.m. at Parmly Billings Library.

The program follows a series of discussions on the book as part of the One Book Billings program, sponsored by Parmly Billings Library. Prior the the program at the library on January 19, six discussions are scheduled throughout the community, during which participants will read and talk about this recent mystery that takes place in Red Lodge.

Evel Knievel loomed large in my early childhood, as I've written about before. Indeed, I paid homage to Evel in my second book, The Dead Whisper On, which is set in Evel's home town of Butte. In the early 70s, you either idolized Muhammad Ali, Fran Tarkenton, or Evel Knievel in my small circle--and Evel was far and away the favorite. Boxing and football, sure they were great. But come on: jumping stuff on a motorcycle? That was crazy cool.

I'm in the process of converting this whole site--blogs included--to a new platform that lets me add some nifty new tricks. Specifically, I'm porting over all my old Movable Type stuff to Drupal, which I've grown to know and love over the past few years.

Will there be glitches? You bet...including, for now, the lack of a solution that lets me easily port over old blog entries. I'll do it when I can, but in the mean time, I've archived all old entries at www.tlhines.com/oldblog.

Admittedly, it ain't the typical path to publication. But my journey, which included more than 150 rejections form literary agents before a publishing contract actually found me (in the form of Dave Long) will, I hope, give other writers out there a bit of hope and inspiration. Even when you do everything you can, it really is a matter of timing in some instances.


Path to Publication - iPod Video Version | QuickTime Version

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