I enjoy reading his posts at Wetmachine, and I will be checking out excerpts online (links below):

From: John R. Sundman
To: me
Subject: A “Very Special” post-Thanksgiving message from John of Wetmachine

Hey Matthew,

Although I don’t comment much on 40 years, I do read it quasi-regularly. And I have had you on my blogroll for some while. On that basis, I take the liberty of sending you this “very special” message.

If you have any inclination at all to buy any of my books (especially a pre-order of The Pains), or to pimp them on your site, now would be a good time to do it.

I hate doing the hard sell, but the fact is that I’m unemployed and nearly broke, and selling these books is my only source of income. Of course, I could go back to driving a moving van, and will probably do so in January unless the economy is in a total shambles by then. I ran into my old boss, the crazy man called “Trip”, and he said I can drive for him whenever I want. But in these “shopping days” it seems to me that bookpimping might be a better use of my time.

The thing that’s scaring me, frankly, (besides missing the mortgage, and so forth) is that I haven’t yet pre-sold enough copies of The Pains to pay for an initial print run, and if I don’t see a few hundred more copies in the next week or so, I’m going to have to refund the money to everybody who has put in a pre-order.

So, I’m putting on the hard sell, & trust our relationship is strong enough to weather a little targeted spam. Which I will be custom-crafting to hundreds of my friends over this Thanksgiving break — thereby either re-igniting my novelistic career, or pissing off every friend I have, or both.

Perhaps you can pass this info along on my behalf?

Here’s the intro to The Pains, with an illustration I’m sure you’ll love,

http://www.wetmachine.com/item/1389

Here’s how to buy my books online:

http://www.wetmachine.com/shop/wetmachineshop.html

and here’s how by check:

http://www.wetmachine.com/order/orderprint.html

Happy post-Thanksgiving,

jrs