When The Book Tour Goes Wrong

To begin with, how could James William Lewis not have gotten a literary agent to take an interest in his novel?

Aren't murder mysteries and thrillers in such demand that good writing is allowed to slide for the sake of a page-turning story? The premise is classic thriller fodder, with a suave Doctor Chuck Rivers tracking down the rogue government employee who has dumped poison into underground water supplies in a midwestern city, causing the demise of some of the doctor's own friends. The ones who don't drink bottled water, apparently, unlike the doc.

Unfortunately, Mr. Lewis had to resort to publishing Poison: The Doctor's Dilemma entirely on his own.

Was it a lack of platform that worked against the new author? Again, how could he miss? He was, and is, the only suspect in the infamous Tylenol Murders, in which seven unsuspecting Chicago-area residents went to their deaths after ingesting arsenic-laden capsules. The killer had tampered with the head-ache medication, putting tainted product back on drugstore shelves where innocent people bought it, and then died without ever knowing what hit them.

The scenario of his novel has a ring of truth to it, although Mr. Lewis would call it pure coincidence. Or perhaps he is only following good advice and writing what he knows.

Like any self-published author, Mr. Lewis has had to set up his own book tour, and without a publicist, he isn't protected from the sort of audience-stacking that went on at The Cambridge Rag, where he appeared to promote his novel. He assumed he'd be talking about his book, plugging away, but it turns out that the host of the program brought in journalists and friends to ask pointed questions about....the Tylenol murders.

Forty-eight minutes of grilling, and all in the name of driving sales.

At the moment, the e-book stands at #37,805 in the Kindle store, respectable figures that came at the price of great discomfort for the author.

You'd have to suspect that Chicago-area prosecutors and the FBI have all bought their copies. The case remains open, and Mr. Lewis had recently donated a sample of his DNA to the Feds. No word yet on what the FBI's newly formed book group thinks of Mr. Lewis's literary chops.