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| JosephFinder.com Newsletter |
April 12, 2005
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One Week Left....
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Dear Friends,
One week before COMPANY MAN goes on sale - it appears in bookstores on Tuesday, April 19. I've already been doing interviews that will appear in newspapers and on the radio right around pub date, and I'm gearing up to go on the book tour -- something like 15 cities in 19 days! Check out my tour schedule and see if I'm coming to a city near you, and please, if you come to one of my signings, introduce yourself and tell me that you're one of my newsletter subscribers.
Check out Fortune Magazine...some early good news -- the first post-publication review of COMPANY MAN has just come out, in the April 18 issue of Fortune Magazine (the one that has the Fortune 500 on the cover). And it's pretty great. It begins: "At long last someone has done for executives what John Grisham did for lawyers" and goes on to say "the book doesn't slow down for a second." The reviewer, Anne Fisher, also adds that she sees Halle Berry in the role of my character, Audrey Rhimes. (Actually, so do I.) You can read the whole thing here.
And at the end of this newsletter is an excerpt from COMPANY MAN that's being sent only to you, my newsletter subscribers.
Joe (Joe@JosephFinder.com)
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It's Not Too Late to Win the $1200 Steelcase Leap Chair
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Do I still need to remind you about the famous Steelcase Leap Chair contest? It's a huge success -- we've already gotten thousands of entries -- but your odds of winning have to be greater than winning Lotto or something. So make sure you enter.
Do this by April 19. By the way -- don't forget to answer the question! Now, I know it says you can win a chair "just like" the one I sat in while writing COMPANY MAN, but the truth is, it's actually nicer than my own, a higher-end, $1200 model. Unfortunately, I'm disqualified from entering. Rats.
Five (5) runners-up will receive signed copies of COMPANY MAN.
To enter, answer the following question that can be found in the excerpt of COMPANY MAN on JosephFinder.com
At Stratton the company aims to have what kind of an integration between office furniture and technology?
The answer to the question can be found by reading an excerpt of COMPANY MAN here:
Contest Excerpt
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See details on how you can win the Steelcase Leap Chair here, as well as the Official Rules.
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Get a FREE hardcover copy of COMPANY MAN weeks before it hits the stores!
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From now until April 19 -- the on-sale date for COMPANY MAN -- we'll be giving away a hardcover copy of the book every day. Just answer one question, whose answer can be found in the first excerpt from COMPANY MAN, right here.
The question is: What's the scary message that the intruder keeps spray-painting inside Nick Conover's house? E-mail your answer, with mailing (snail-mail) address, to: info@josephfinder.com. Put FREE COPY on the subject line. Every day we'll draw one correct entry and send a copy of COMPANY MAN, fresh from the bindery, right out to you.
Yeah, I want you to buy it in the stores come April 19th, but every day we're picking one random winner (or randomly picking one winner?) of a fresh-from-the-bindery copy of COMPANY MAN. The winners so far:
Bill from Surry, England; Gary from Endicott, NY; Deborah from Ypsilanti, MI; Daryl from Columbia, SC; James from Plain City, OH; Tammy from Alamogordo, NM.
If you want to enter to win a free copy, just e-mail us info@josephfinder.com and be sure to put FREE COPY in the subject line. You have until April 19th.
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Reader Reviews Already Are Out
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For some reason, both Amazon.com and BN.com have begun posting reader reviews of COMPANY MAN. It's early -- they used to only post reviews on pub date. But so far I'm delighted to see that the reviews are almost all really enthusiastic. If any of you obtained advance copies of the book and posted reviews, my thanks to you. You can read them here:
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Want Your Copy Signed?
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I'd like to make this offer to you newsletter subscribers only: if you want your copies of COMPANY MAN signed or signed & personalized, send them to me, no later than May 1, at:
Joseph Finder
P.O. Box 15131
Boston MA 02215
A couple of caveats here. Limit one book per person, only U.S. and Canada. No signatures-only, please; I'll personalize them however you'd like.
I can't promise I'll get them right back to you, since I won't be back in Boston until around May 9th, but I'll sign them as soon as possible and send them back.
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A Note on Blogs
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If you're getting this e-newsletter, you're computer-proficient enough to know that a "blog" is short for "web log," which is sort of an on-line diary. But blogs are becoming a major presence on the Internet. Several blogs have asked me to write about COMPANY MAN and about my own work. You might find them interesting, because I take the opportunity to say things about the writing process, or the backstory behind the book, that I haven't said elsewhere.
One blog is called "Overnight Success," hosted and edited by the mystery reviewer David Montgomery, in which writers talk about how they came to publish their first novel. "Overnight success" is, of course, meant ironically. No such thing in our business. My entry is here.
Another concerns the backstory behind the writing of COMPANY MAN, which I contributed to novelist M. J. Rose's blog. You can read it here. M.J. Rose, by the way, has a really hypnotic, very erotic novel coming out next January called The Delilah Complex, about a secret society of women, a brutal murder and a mystery. The first book is this series is The Halo Effect, which will be in stores in July in mass market.
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| EXCLUSIVE Chapter Excerpt |
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Here is an excerpt from COMPANY MAN that is being sent ONLY to my newsletter subscribers. With this excerpt and the two excerpts already on CompanyManNovel.com, I hope you are ready to start reading more next week!
Excerpt:
Nick poured himself a Scotch on the rocks, sat in the family room and watched TV for a while, but nothing held his interest. He started feeling a mild, pleasant buzz. Around midnight he went up to his room. Both Julia's and Lucas's lights were off. The newly installed alarm touch pad in his bedroom glowed green, announced READY in black letters. Ready for what? he thought. The installer had called him and given him the ten-minute lowdown that afternoon. If a door was open somewhere, it would say something like FAULT-LIVING ROOM DOOR. If someone moved downstairs it would say, FAULT-MOTION SENSOR, FAMILY ROOM or whatever.
He brushed his teeth, stripped down to his shorts, and climbed into the king-size bed. Next to Laura's side of the bed was the same stack of books that had been there since the night of the accident. Marta dusted them off but knew enough not to put them away. The effect was as if she were away on a business trip and might come back in, keys jingling, at any moment. One of the books, Nick always noticed with a pang, was an old course catalog from St. Thomas More College that had a listing for her art history class. She used to look at it sometimes at night, regretful.
The sheets were cool and smooth. He rolled over something lumpy: one of Julia's Beanie Babies. He smiled, tossed it out of the way. Lately she'd taken to leaving a different Beanie Baby in his bed each night, a little game of hers. He guessed it was her way of sleeping with Daddy, by proxy, since she hadn't been allowed to sleep in the parental bed for some time.
He closed his eyes, but his mind raced. The Scotch hadn't helped at all. A jerky, low-quality movie kept playing in his mind: The cop saying Do you have any enemies, Mr. Conover? Julia's hot, wet tears soaking his shirt by the side of the pool.
Fifteen, twenty minutes later he gave up, switched on the bathroom light, and fished out an Ambien from the brown plastic pharmacy bottle. He snapped it in half, dry-swallowed one, and popped the other half back in the bottle.
He turned on the bedside lamp and read for a while. Nick wasn't a reader, never read fiction, only enjoyed biographies but didn't have time to read anything anymore. He hated reading those books on business management that so many of his Leadership Team kept on their shelves.
After a while he began feeling drowsy, finally, and turned off the light.
He had no idea how much later it was when he was awakened by a rapid beeping tone. Eddie's installers had set the system to go off only in his bedroom or his study, and not too loud, when he was in the house.
He sat up, his heart pounding, his head filled with sludge. For a moment he didn't know where he was or what that strange insistent beeping was. When he realized where it was coming from, he leaped out of bed and squinted at the green touch pad's LED.
It was flashing: ALARM***PERIMETER***ALARM.
Keeping his footsteps light, in order not to wake the kids, he went downstairs to investigate.
Nick padded barefoot downstairs, the house dark and silent. He glanced at one of the new touch pads at the foot of the stairs. It too was flashing: ALARM***PERIMETER***
His brain felt viscous and slow. It was an effort to think clearly. Only the rapid beating of his heart, the adrenaline-fueled anxiety, kept him moving forward.
He paused for a moment, considering which way to go.
Then a light came on inside the house, flooding him with panic. He walked quickly toward the light - his study? - until he remembered that the software that ran the cameras had been programmed to detect pixel changes, shifts in light or movement. Not only did the cameras start recording when there was a change in light, but the software was connected to a relay that automatically switched on a couple of inside lights, to scare off potential intruders by making them think someone in the house had been awakened, even if no one was home.
He slowed his pace but kept going, trying to think. The motion-sensor software worked by zones. That meant that whoever or whatever was there was on the side of the lawn nearest his study. Eddie's guy had set up the system so that the alarm company wasn't alerted unless the house itself was broken into, since a large animal moving across the lawn was enough to set off the perimeter alarm. Otherwise there'd be too many false alarms. But if something did cross the lawn, the cameras started and the lights went on.
A deer. Probably that was all it was.
Still, he had to be sure.
He kept going through the family room, down the hall to his study. The lights were on.
He slowed as he entered the study, the sludge in his head starting to clear. No one was here, of course. The only sound was the faint hum from his computer. He looked at the French doors and the darkness beyond. Nothing there; nothing outside. A false alarm.
The room went dark, startling him momentarily, until he remembered that the lights were also programmed to go off after two minutes. He walked through the study, approaching the glass panes of the French doors, staring out.
He could see nothing.
Nothing out there but watery moonlight glinting on the trees and shrubbery.
He glanced back at the illuminated face of his desk clock. Ten minutes after two. The kids were asleep upstairs, Marta presumably back from her night out and asleep in her bedroom in the wing off the kitchen. He glanced back out through the windowpanes, checking again.
After a few seconds he turned to leave the study.
The lawn outside lit up. The floodlights came on, jolting Nick. He spun back around, looked outside, saw a figure approaching from a stand of trees.
He moved closer to the glass, squinted. A man in some kind of trench coat that flapped as he walked. He was crossing the lawn slowly, headed directly toward Nick.
Nick went to the touch-pad and deactivated the alarm system. Then he reached for the French doors' lever handle, thought for a moment, and went to his desk. He took the key from the middle drawer and unlocked the bottom one, slid it open, took out the pistol.
He removed it from its oilcloth.
Blood rushed through his head; he could hear it in his ears.
Despite assuring him he'd never have to use the thing, Eddie had left it loaded. Now Nick gripped the weapon, pulled back the slide to chamber the first round, as Eddie had instructed, let the slide go.
He turned slowly, the weapon at his side, careful to keep his finger away from the trigger. With his left hand he turned the handle and opened the French doors. He stepped outside, the soil of the newly seeded lawn cold against his bare feet.
"Stop right there," he called.
The man kept advancing. Now Nick could make out his heavy black eyeglasses, his ogling eyes, his brush-cut gray hair, his bent figure. The man, his name was Andrew Stadler, walked straight ahead, heedlessly.
Nick raised the gun, barked: "Freeze!"
Under the flapping trench coat, Stadler wore white pants, a white shirt. He was muttering to himself, all the while staring at Nick as he came closer and closer.
He's a fucking nut case, buddy . . .
The guy kept coming, goggling eyes staring as if he didn't even see the gun, or if he did, he didn't give a shit.
Eddie's words. A maniac. The guy's been in and out of the locked ward at County Medical.
"Don't you fucking take another step!" Nick shouted.
Now the man's mutterings were starting to become distinct. The man raised his hand, pointed a finger at Nick, his expression malevolent, enraged. "Never safe," the man croaked. He smiled, his hands fluttering to his sides, to his coat pockets. The smile was like a twitch: it came and disappeared several times in succession, no logic to it.
Stadler was questioned in the possible murder of an entire family that lived across the street.
"One more step, and I shoot!" Nick shouted, raising the weapon with both hands, aiming at the center of the lunatic's body.
"You're never going to be safe," the man in white said, one hand fumbling in his pocket, now rushing toward Nick, toward the open door.
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