How do you keep somebody in suspense?

I’ll tell you next Tuesday.

Yes, that’s a bit of an old joke, however it can be effective marketing. It can also be a driver for anxiety. I recently entered some art into a contest. The winners of the contest were supposed to be announced last Tuesday.

I waited. I waited. Then I saw the e-mail announcement from that mailing list pop up on my account. With great trepidation I opened the e-mail.

I’m not much of an artist really. I try, but I don’t have any delusions about my talent level. I don’t actually think I’m going to win anything in this contest… intellectually. Emotionally, there’s the teeny spark of hope. Hope can be cruel, so I try to avoid it. Pragmatism. Planning. Realistic options. But I really like this author’s work and it would be so far beyond super cool to be noticed. I’ve shown my contest entry to a few friends and they all seem to think it’s good.

And now you’re waiting for the big reveal… I opened the e-mail and…

Yeah, I felt that way too.

I opened the e-mail and there was a brief statement about how the winners would be announced after an additional week of deliberation. Remember what I said about hope? Yeah, and the anxiety and then the “ARRGH! Another week?!?” because that sliver of hope, like a splinter in my mind will be hanging around until at least Tuesday. I say at least because there’s a deeply cynical part of my mind that has crept out of the dark corner where it lives to say, “Oh, absolutely… THIS Tuesday… for sure…” followed almost immediately by a mangled quote from Wimpy the guy begging for hamburgers in Popeye, “I’ll gladly pay you Tuesday for a hamburger today…”

The really effective part of the marketing / contest strategy is that I’ve been thinking a lot about the series and attempting to remember specific parts. Discussions with other fans have me thinking things like, when he did what again? Some would be fans have written unflattering reviews and taken on points of view that don’t mesh with how I remember things. Turns out that after a decade or so, I’ve forgotten a lot of the details.

I’m going to go back and do a re-read of the entire Dresden files series. I’m actually going to look up where the short stories fit in along the way too. I hope to have this entire re-read finished up before the new book comes out July 14th of this year. It’s a tall order, but I’m up for the challenge.

Once again time to go read A Restoration of Faith, the story that starts the whole thing.

Oh, and the art? I’ll have to tell you on Tuesday.