Booknews: Oklahoma, Okay!
Edited by Judy Quinn -- 3/27/00
Author William Bernhardt launches HAWK Publishing Group in his home state
In Dark Justice, the series installment just prior to William Bernhardt's current release, Silent Justice (Feb.), fictional Tulsa lawyer/author (and alter ego) Ben Kincaid uncovers environmental misdeeds while on a book tour. In his real-life travels promoting his bestselling Ballantine series, Kincaid's creator discovered another, and very true, crime.
"People would come up to me all the time and talk about books they love that are no longer in print, particularly from my area of Oklahoma and beyond," Bernhardt told PW.
This past fall, lawyer Bernhardt began administering some justice. Spurred on by multiple complaints that Teresa Miller's Oklahoma pioneer history novel, Remnants of Glory (Seaview, 1981), was out of print, Bernhardt launched HAWK Publishing Group from his Tulsa home, with a trade paperback reprint of Remnants as his inaugural title in November.
"Teresa likes to say that HAWK is a metaphor for being steely eyed on the publishing plain," Bernhardt said. "But the name really is an acronym of the members of my family, [son] Harry, [daughter] Alice, William and [wife] Kirsten."
Joining HAWK's initial list was Bernhardt's own backlist title The Code of Buddyhood, a college-days tale first published in 1993 by Ballantine's former literary trade paperback imprint Available Press. Although the book had done relatively well for Ballantine, the house decided to let the book go out of print just as Bernhardt was entering the publishing game.
Buddyhood is just one example of the kind of niche reprint Bernhardt believes HAWK can swoop down and capture. "I understand the economies of scale at the large publishing houses, and how it's not worth it for them to keep certain books in print," Bernhardt noted, "but I can have a profitable book by selling only 5,000 copies."
That profit goal was best realized in HAWK's third book on the inaugural list, John Wooley and Ron Wolfe's Old Fears, a horror classic first published by Franklin Watts in 1982. Web-savvy Bernhardt, who has a personal (www.williambernhardt.com) as well as publishing (www.hawkpub.com) site, bought some advertising for Old Fears on the Web site BookBrowse and was amazed at the enthusiastic response. Wooley also suggested running ads in Fangoria, which turned out to be "liquid gold," according to Bernhardt. "I really thought of Fangoria as a more movie-oriented magazine." Helping HAWK's profile and book sales were joint appearances by Miller and Wooley at Tulsa independent bookstores Novel Idea and Steve's Sundry. The latter's veteran bookseller/owner Steve Stephenson has been a longtime Bernhardt advocate, having given the novice author his first autograph signing with his debut Kincaid novel, Primary Justice, in 1992.
Bernhardt took a little breather from HAWK output to promote his current book, but a new release is due out in May: How to Make It in the Music Business by Jim Halsey, the impresario behind such country music stars as the Oak Ridge Boys and Clint Black who now teaches at Tulsa's Halsey Institute. How to Make It is an original commission, part of Bernhardt's plan to expand beyond reprints in order to make it into review and distribution channels (Bernhardt currently sells HAWK titles direct and has arrangements with wholesalers as well).
This coming fall will bring a major expansion of the HAWK list, with Bernhardt hoping to issue eight new books a year along with interesting reprints. HAWK titles to come include a reprint of Jim Lehrer's Texas memoir A Bus of My Own (first published by Putnam in 1992), hardcover original Masks (a Hollywood-a-clef co-written by The Waltons's creator Earl Hamner Jr.) and reprints of Ellen Emerson White's YA trilogy, the President's Daughter, the last a suggestion from a visitor to HAWK's Web site.
Not that Bernhardt is giving up his "day job" as a Ballantine author (for which he eventually quite his legal practice to write full time). Thanks to the ever-increasing sales for the 11 novels (most are part of the Kincaid series) penned so far for the house, Bernhardt just clinched a major new deal to bring two more Kincaid novels to the fold, following the sequel to Silent Justice planned for spring 2001. In a teasing note to fans in his online newsletter, Bernhardt hinted that the Justice series will end--but it won't mean the demise of Kincaid. "We're simply running out of terms to slap in front of 'Justice,' " he said. "We're thinking how we can reposition the books with new titles with a subhead to let you know it's part of the Ben Kincaid series."
Also an avid crossword-puzzle creator who has even gotten some published in the New York Times, Bernhardt is, surprisingly, not too busy also to head up an as yet unscheduled serial novel project for Ballantine. He has written the first chapter and will write the last in a thriller that will include the participation of Linda Fairstein, Leslie Glass, Gini Hartzmark, John Lescroart, Phillip Margolin, Brad Meltzer, Michael Palmer and Lisa Scottoline. "I thought to call it The Floating Courtroom, in homage to The Floating Admiral, written by Agatha Christie and her Detection Club," Bernhardt told PW, "but in the chapters that so far follow mine, the courtroom seems to have disappeared."
Bernhardt's own courtroom dramas, however, continue to make their mark. Dark Justice, recently released in a January 2000 mass market paperback edition, just won the Oklahoma Book Award, beating out such stellar competitor books as Stewart O'Nan's A Prayer for the Dying (nominees must be set in Oklahoma or be written by authors who have lived there). Bernhardt previously won the award for his 1994 Kincaid novel Perfect Justice.
All this makes for a pleased native son, who will be coming to BEA this year to promote his Ballantine books, and, of course, mention a little birdie named HAWK.
'House' on Fire
How did The House of Gentle Men, a first novel centered around a touch, look and listen, but no-sex-please bordello for women, "serviced" by atoning men, debut at number one on the Los Angeles Times bestseller list on March 12?
Thanks to the special, peculiar pull of author Kathy Hepinstall's prose, apparently up to tackling an initially hard-to-take premise.
In what became the first of many positive reviews, PW this past December called the February Bard release an "odd but appealing first novel¦, a disconcerting yet harmonious mix of realistic characters and place, with a fable-like premise that is initially hard to accept but acquires resonance as the book draws to a redemptive close."
The bookselling trade also embraced the story, which traces the eventual "recovery" of those involved in the rape of a 16-year-old girl by soldiers training in rural Louisiana during WWII. Borders picked the novel for its Original Voices series and Costco buyer Pennie Clark selected it for her Pennie's Pick. Clark's endorsement in this key mass channel greatly increased Bard's planned first printing of the book, allowing it to go out with a first printing of 20,000 copies, impressive for a first novel. With the building reviews and L.A. Times bestseller status, the book--also optioned for film prepublication by The Mambo Kings producer Arne Glimcher--is now going back for a 2,000-copy second printing.
Author Hepinstall is now on a book tour, making a key loop through Southern-based indie bookstores, including Arkansas's That Bookstore in Blytheville (with its New Yorker featured owner/handseller extraordinaire Mary Gay Shipley now on board as an advocate), Mississippi's Lemuria in Jackson and Square Books in Oxford. She's also making stops in Louisiana, where she grew up and where the novel is set, and Texas, where the 35-year-old now resides.
While she hasn't yet visited L.A. bookstores, the natives know her well; they gave her book that bestselling-attention no doubt in part thanks to her past high-profile ad agency copywriting work at local agencies. Advertising trade magazines, which rarely run book reviews, made note of the release of the book and praised Hepinstall's unusual writing talents, such as her pioneering work for Pioneer car stereo systems, in which, as Hepinstall recently told her local paper, the Austin American-Statesman, "little varmints rhapsodize about the quality of stereo sound just before a car runs them over." "If you want something dark and unusual, she can do it," said Avon executive editor Trish Lande Grader. Indeed.
'Signals' Appeal
J l Rothschild's Signals: An Inspiring Story of Life After Life, an unsolicited manuscript turned down by major houses then plucked from the slush pile by publisher Marc Allen, has become the latest out-of-the-gate hit for New World Library.
Rothschild, who after 15 years with full-blown AIDS, is considered one of its longest living survivors, got one of his first major media breaks to tell his story of his psychic awakening--and his belief that he can communicate with Albert, his friend who died of AIDS in 1994--on the Leeza Show on Friday, March 3. In the week that followed, New World sold some 10,000 copies, bringing the total in print for the February 14 release to 50,000 copies.
Rothschild, who is now a full-time AIDS advocate but once ran a celebrity health spa in Los Angeles, has also attracted a stellar collection of blurbs from bestselling New Age authors, including Marianne Williamson, Bernie Seigel, James Van Praagh and Conversations with God author Neale Donald Walsch, who wrote the Signals foreword.
In the last couple months, Rothschild also appeared several times on the radio show hosted by Art Bell, coauthor of the current speculative bestseller The Coming Global Superstorm.
Like Bell, Leeza host Leeza Gibbons also dedicated an extraordinary amount of time to this author, giving Rothschild more than half of her hour-long show.
As New World Library notes in its promotional material, Rothschild's story dovetails nicely with the fascination with psychics and possible life after death sparked by the Oscar-nominated film The Sixth Sense. Like the child in that movie, Rothschild is now intervening in the lives of other people, bringing "messages" from beyond. New World also has the benefit of promoting this book in two major media channels--not only for those with interest in general New Age but also for the gay market. As part of a bookstore tour that included stops in Los Angeles and Seattle, Rothschild will make multiple visits in SanFrancisco, including an appearance at A Different Light Bookstore on March 26.
Back To News
---> |
