CONFESSIONS OF THE HOPE STREET STALKER

Any friendly looking jogger or walker, any motorist stopped at a stop sign, any homeowner gardening too close to the road is fair game. Either sex will do, though I have more fun with women. What I do is begin with an innocent sounding greeting and ask the person whether I might give her or him something. Women will usually ask what it is that I want to give them, and my response is that what I would really want to give them is diamonds and pearls, but I don't have any. "What I do have, however," I say, "is a letter about my books. Please take it home and read it, then rush out to the nearest bookstore." This usually brings about a smile and often banter. The longer we talk, I figure, the more likely the person is to go out and buy one of the five books described in my letter. Often the person will read the opening lines of my letter and say something like, “So you’re a Holocaust survivor,” and I tell them that, yes I am. Then they will often tell me that a parent or grandparent was in the Holocaust or fought in WW II, and we get into a conversation about the war until a car comes up behind them and starts beeping or they hear their telephone ring inside the house or they have to get to work and we part with them promising to read my memoirs. Some people I meet, of course, are not in a good mood. They are late to work or they’ve just cut their finger on a sharp stone or their spouse pouted all through breakfast and then didn’t kiss them goodbye, and I have been called a nuisance or worse and almost had my feet run over. But that’s all part of the game. I do all this along Stamford’s Hope Street, where I live, and its extension, Ponus Ridge in New Canaan. And I do it because, when my first memoir, “Mother and Me: Escape from Warsaw 1939” was published in 2006 to highly complementary reviews (see Amazon) and named “Book of the Year” by “ForeWord Magazine,” and I sat back to collect my royalties, I discovered that my publisher was promoting neither the book nor the award, but expecting me to do it. The book was out there, alright, but nobody knew about it. Some discussion with my fellow authors showed me that most publishers weren’t promoting their books either anymor. What other authors did was to hire publicists. But publicists cost money and, recently retired from a documentary filmmaking career, I did not have money for publicists. So I wrote a letter, addressed, “Dear Friend,” and explaining that in the current book marketing climate an author had to promote his or her own books and then proceeded to describe my memoir. I made copies of that letter and stuck them in my back pocket to hand out to anyone and everyone who made the mistake of allowing me to start a conversation with them. Women in the supermarket checkout line proved particularly vulnerable. I devised sneaky ways of getting into conversations, and it has become a game. But where the game became the most fun, was on my thrice-weekly runs from my Springdale house into New Canaan and back. That was when I could engineer one-to-one conversations that weren’t subject to the impatience of checkout clerks or other customers, and when all manner of interesting developments could take place. One of the most interesting developments took place several years ago at the driveway to the New Canaan Country School. I had discovered that, if I was there at just the right time, I could catch mothers stopping before turning onto Ponus Ridge after dropping their child off for the school day. If I was there at the biggest rush time, it wouldn’t work because I would be stopping traffic, but, as you learn watching predators on any “Nature” television show, if you time it right, you can catch stragglers. This technique worked like a charm for months until, one day, I was greeted at the school’s driveway by a cop brandishing a Taser. Someone, apparently, had reported a prowler. And the report must have been a serious one because, before the detaining officer could finish frisking me, as I leaned against his car in my running shorts and “T” shirt, three other police cars had pulled up. Soon four New Canaan police officers were reading my fliers and asking for extra copies to show to a father-in-law from Poland or a Polish officer on the force. I did promise not to distribute fliers at the school’s driveway anymore, but that’s moot point now since, at eighty-one, I can no longer run as far as the New Canaan Country School. On the other hand, I came away with a label for myself, “The Hope Street Stalker” and a title for this blog. Those of you who are runners know that running can be a thoughtful time. You see things that remind you of other things, and your mind freewheels to interesting places and times. And if, like me, you carry a pocketful of fliers to hand out to anyone you can accost, then you end up in even more interesting places and times. Beyond that, I’ve found that the whole business of promoting your books can be a hoot, and by now I’ve got four more books to promote. If you want to learn the best way to promote your own books, this isn’t the blog for you. But if you’re interested in how one writer goes about advancing his career, the crazy and the poignant things that happen along the way, then follow along, and we’ll have some fun. Regards, Julian Padowicz