Behind the Scenes: Kobo's Going Going Gone Contest #1. The E-Mail.

So. How did I, a relatively unknown writer living in rural Canada, end up at the centre of Kobo’s new $5000 Going Going Gone contest?

I will tell you. Cindie Geddes, for one, wants to know. Read on.

June 25^th, 2014

I happened to check my phone while eating steamed asparagus at Alexandria’s fanciest restaurant, the Georgian House.

That was unusual for me. First of all, I’m old school. When I’m at a party, I try to focus on the people I’m partying with. This was the going-away shindig for my own family doctor, the intelligent and kind Dr. Chris Millman.

Secondly, I use my phone in the emergency room, so I have to wash my hands every time I touch it, for fear of eating MRSA. But I ended up networking and entering a few new contacts, so I’d already touched my phone. Why not have a quick boo at my messages?

This time, an e-mail made me hyperventilate.

Hi Melissa:

Hope you’re doing well. I wanted to reach out to see if you might be interested in participating in a short fiction project…

The email went on to describe Kobo’s desire to solicit a writer to create a series of mystery/thriller stories that Kobo readers could read for free to extract clues as part of a contest Kobo would be running that tied in with the release of the movie based on Gillian Flynn’s GONE GIRL.

It was signed by Mark Lefebvre.

Holy macaroni salad.

Mark is the Kobo Director of Author Relations and Self-Publishing.

I’m a huge fan of his. Not only is he this corporate muckety-muck who uses his powers for good instead of greed-mongering, he’s also a writer, an editor (in fact, my editor, since he’d chosen one of my stories for one of his anthologies, Tesseracts 16), and celebrated a recent birthday by running through 10 kilometres of mud.

After I won Kobo’s professional cover contest and did a book launch in March, Mark drove from Toronto to my neck of the woods and back—about a 12 hour round trip, even without the blizzard that complicated matters—to star as Elvis. Long story, but my novel, Terminally Ill, features an Elvis tribute artist/escape artist who gets resuscitated by my main woman, Dr. Hope Sze.

Mark is always rushing off to ten million conferences around the world, not to mention billable hours at Kobo, plus editing and writing on his own time, so we basically never talk. But here he was, delivering an opportunity gift-wrapped on a plate.

My heart thudded.

I left the restaurant table and re-read the message.

There was only one answer, of course. Mark was asking, “Do you want to level up in your writing career while we promote you and pay you?”

I wrote back,

Absolutely yes. Thank you, Mark. I’ll read Gone Girl ASAP.

Melissa

If Mark called you and offered you a big, juicy opportunity, would you take it?
Note: this is my 3 y.o. daughter, not Mark. She is not 6’3″ and a Kobo Director/fairy godfather. Yet.

___

Want to win $5000 and a Kobo Aura H2O, the world’s first waterproof e-reader? Of course you do. So pop over here:http://www.kobo.com/gone