Media Files and Secure Ordering Temporarily Offline…

…as we switch to our new domain. The upgrade will make everything better and faster than the old Freewebs site, but the downside is transferring files and getting all the kinks ironed out will take several weeks.

We will make an announcement on the blog and the newsletter, and launch our new IDLE THREATS podcast, as soon as everything is running smoothly. Please bear with us. In the meantime, you can purchase our books indirectly from Amazon.com.

Loutan Scores a Kirkus

Carl Loutan, author of the upcoming Wasteland, just got a nice review from the folks over at Kirkus. Here’s the closing line —

“Like a … Bruce Springsteen song in a longer … form.”

We”ll take that.

For those of you in the Midwest, Carl will be reading from Memories of Shoes in Chicago on July 6th and in Indianapolis on the 7th. We’d love to see you there.

Local Press

An article about Idle Valley Press was featured in the most recent issue of the Lafayette Journal and Courier. So, besides you, Donna and me, it looks like one other person has seen this site. If you want to read the article, check it out here.

Back from Book Expo America

We’re exhausted! It sounds easier than it is to stand at a booth and shake hands, talk shop, go to parties, hang out with authors and publishers and every single person who ever lived on this planet in the entire history of time. We’re not looking for sympathy — we’re only handing out excuses for why we’ve been so criminally delinquent with this here blog.

But we’re back, baby! Oh yeeaaah!

Twin Release Party Tonight

Anybody in the Lafayette area (or anybody who can get to Lafayette) should feel suitably invited to the reprint release party for ‘Til I Die and Mercy Eyes, Bob Sweeney’s novels which are now officially branded as Idle Valley books.

Interested parties, derelicts, cohorts, satire fans, confused wanderers, and extended Idle Valley Press gang should show up at VON’S BOOK SHOP (315 W. State Street) at 7 p.m.

We’ll see you there!

Lacey Greenwood on TV

San Diego Public Television will be airing a segment on Lacey Greenwood (Affirmations, July 2008) this Thursday at 7 p.m. Tune in.

OD’ing on Multimedia

We’re all about overloading the internet with content. The most recent batch includes:

Donovan Baker reads the first chapters of his first two Sweet Girls novels: Twisting the Truth (here) and Janie’s Huge Mistake (here).

Summer Internship Opportunities

No plans for the beach? Tired of that whole “relaxing” thing? Interested in learning about the publishing industry for free? We have room for interns this summer. Send an email to publicity at idlevalleypress.com if you’re interested.

Greenwood Eruption

Can’t get enough of Lacey Greenwood? Thanks to our friends at YouTube, there’s even more Affirmations multi-media available. Including:

A hilarious trailer for Affirmations, here.

A slightly-less-hilarious but equally baffling video about drug trafficking, here.

As always, visit Lacey’s parody blog of vapid “chick lit” authors, here.

‘Wasteland’ Trailer Goes Live

The ultra-cool Carl Loutan has just unveiled a trailer for his forthcoming novel, Wasteland. It dramatizes the prologue. Check it out here.

About the novel:

Ranger, Nebraska, 1982. Jonah Hopewell, a farmer on the edge of Ranger Township, comes home one afternoon to find his wife of thirty-five years in the arms of another man. Hopewell responds by taking a weekend trip to Omaha and, for the first time since his marriage, indulging in the vices of his past. As he spends a weekend breezing through a cavalcade of faces and a whirlwind of seedy Omaha locations, Hopewell more about himself — and the foundation of his marriage — than he ever thought possible.