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

Download the first story for free and solve the riddle! http://www.kobo.com/gone

Terminally Ill…with Kobo’s Mark (Leslie) Lefebvre and Scarlett Rugers

Written by melissayuaninnes August 22, 2013 Chris York Christy Evans Hope Sze indie publishing J. Steven York Kobo books Mark Lefebvre Mark Leslie medical mystery Scarlett Rugers Terminally Ill Writing

Hope Sze’s third medical mystery adventure, Terminally Ill, will hit the stands on February first, 2014, with a kicking cover by Scarlett Rugers, commissioned by Kobo:

And a mini picture of the upcoming print book:

As I mentioned in the Kobo interview, I was very excited to win this cover, since the last thing I remembered winning was a very nice set of bath soaps. More details here: http://kobowritinglife.com/2013/08/20/meet-the-winner-of-kobos-win-an-ebook-cover-contest-melissa-yi/

And here’s the blurb:

Magic? Dr. Hope Sze steers clear of magic.

But when “Elvis the Escape King” chains and nails himself inside a coffin and lowers himself into Montreal’s St. Lawrence River, he can’t break free.

So Hope restarts his heart and saves his life. But now Elvis demands to know who sabotaged his stunt.

Hope hung up her amateur detective badge two months ago, in order to tend to cancer patients on palliative care. The only cases she solves right now are case studies on pain and over-stuffed emergency rooms.

Which gets just the tiniest bit boring.

Hope could escape Montreal any day now. She could transfer to Ottawa to join her beloved ex-boyfriend, Ryan. No more unspeakable Montreal drivers and stymied medical care. No more working with the charming yet infuriating Dr. Tucker.

Hope the Escape Artist can afford to act generous. As parting gift to Montreal, city of festivals (and murderers), she could help Elvis out. Just asking a few questions won’t hurt anyone.

Right?

And so Hope plunges into her most unconventional and, possibly, her most terminal adventure yet. Where the magical art of escape and the dastardly art of crime vie for centre stage, and the better man may lose. Forever.

—–

I got to meet Mark Lefebvre, Kobo‘s director of author relations, at the Advanced Master Class in Oregon in July. I hadn’t realized that he was also Mark Leslie, the editor of Tesseracts 16, who’d recently published my short story, “Burning Beauty,” which just meant I liked him even more.

I could fawn all over Mark, who’s one of those guys that you just meet and you’re like, yup, I like you. I could give a shout out to Kobo, with it’s beautiful and simple interface, writer-friendly approach, and Canadian roots, but that sounds totally self-serving now, right? So you can read J. Steven York’s much more informative Kobo post here, and I’ll just show you some pictures of me and Mark L, hanging out on the Oregon Coast.

First, we did the traditional standing side-by-side thing. You can see that a) he is much taller than me, b) Kris Rusch and Dean Wesley Smith own a lot of books, and c) I am fake-smiling.

So then I suggested that we do more crazy pictures. Those are more fun. Mark immediately decided to pick me up, which is great. I love wacky people. Also, you can now see my surf shoes. Unfortunately, Kobo chose to run the picking up picture of me where I seem to have giant hips, but what can you do? (This one is a little better.)

We brought out a chair next. Props are always fun, and we reprised a classic pose. Clearly, he was saying something fascinating, like “Rutabagas, rutabagas.”

Then we realized we had much better props–books! And what if we looked fascinated, reading each other’s books? Fortunately, Chris York happened to have a copy of her latest Christy Fifield book. And who wouldn’t jump on Mark’s books, like Haunted Hamilton?

Which was cool, except I was like, Are we supposed to pretend to read while surreptitiously displaying the covers, or what? (I just think that Sean Young, the photographer, captured a pretty funny expression, so I included it.)