My New York publisher, Farrar Straus & Giroux, co-sponsors the car.  They will be publishing SATURDAY NIGHT DIRT, SUPER STOCK ROOKIE (coming in 2009), and more in the MOTOR series.  I work with my editor on the actual fiction novels, but also with the marketing department at FSG.  The marketing department is responsible for advertising the MOTOR series and generating book sales.  I help out every way I can, including visiting book stores, libraries, schools, doing interviews on TV, radio and in newspapers.  Advance copies of SND have already gone out to selected magazine and media outlets; with luck there will lots of publicity when SND hits stores in early April 08.

But I just finished something different and fun on the marketing end.   My good friend Marsh (a racing nut and writer for mags like Open Wheel) went through a  20 page list of all the speedways in the U.S. and Canada. There are hundreds!   You can check this out for yourself at www.speedwaysonline.com   The idea was to look at particular speedways located in particular cities, and have my publisher hook up with book stores in those cities.  The book store owners need to know that a good stock car racing novel is coming, and that lots of people in their community would be interested....

I know, I know--this is boring stuff.   But I wanted to  give you a peek behind the scenes of writing about racing.

p.s.  Skyler and I put up some short racing videos on Myspace.  Type in Will Weaver, or Saturday Night Dirt, etc., and you can find them.  Skyler has also been doing some great computer work with ideas for car lettering.