The Demonologist is on the Globe and Mail Bestseller List for a second straight week!
It’s at #8 (up from last week) and #4 among hardcovers. It’s also #5 on the Canadian Fiction list, and #1 among Canadian hardcovers.
Cheers! And many thanks.
Twitter Chatting
Let’s talk! But let’s use our phones to do it!
I’m looking forward to answering questions, offering unsolicited advice and sounding off in all directions on Wednesday, March 27, 7:00 to 8:00 PM EST when I’m doing a Twitter chatwith Open Book: Toronto. Please stop by to lurk (is that what we call “reading” now?) to ask a question about The Demonologist or share a (necessarily brief) spooky tale.
Oh, my handle is @andrewpyper.
More Bestseller News
The Demonologist has made all the major bestseller lists in Canada in its first week! Thanks to all the booksellers who have introduced the book to readers, and to those readers who decided to take the plunge.
In addition to being #3 on the Maclean’s Hardcover Fiction List, the book was #9 on the Globe and Mail Fiction List (which includes all formats, including original paperbacks) and #6 on the Canadian Fiction List (all formats, including reprint paperbacks) and #8 on the Toronto Star National Fiction List.
It’s been a great weekend here – we had much-loved friends in from out of town – and while we would have celebrated anyway, there were a few more reasons to do so this time.
The Demonologist – #1 Canadian Bestseller!!
Knocked out by this.
The Demonologist is #3 on the Maclean’s Hardcover Fiction Bestseller List in Canada in its first week out. And it’s #1 among Canadian titles.
Thanks for all the support and all the reading, friends. Wow.
“Bring on the devils!” – The Demonologist in The New York Times
“It’s impossible to ignore the devils and demons who have a tangible presence in this story, but the novel’s deeper pleasure comes from the analysis Ullman applies to these horrors…Bring on the devils.”—The New York Times Book Review
The Demonologist – New York Times Book Review (Marilyn Stasio)
The Demonologist gets a rave in the National Post!
“This book is going to be big, and it’s going to be popular, and it absolutely deserves to be both of these things. You should buy it, and read it, and let it scare you stupid…I’ll say this: I’ve read books dubbed “literary” — full stop — that didn’t contain sentences as well-crafted as the ones in The Demonologist. Pyper can write; he has an ear for dialogue and a beautiful sense of rhythm…Pyper’s take on the horror genre is interesting because it is innovative…I dare you to read it. The Demonologist might just scare the lit out of you.” — Matthew J. Trafford, National Post
A Pub Week Thought
My sixth novel, The Demonologist, was officially published just three days ago. You’d think the experience couldn’t be any more fresh than it is now, and in many ways, it is unquestionably exciting and surprising and new. But in other ways, this first week of publication has been prepared for and anticipated – pre-lived – to the extent that this, its appearance on tables and shelves and screens, is only step #126 on the book’s journey.
Way back in the mists of time there was conceiving the idea, researching it, outlining it. Writing it. Then the editing, the notes, the multiple reads. Followed by the pre-publication discussions about the cover, marketing plans, ad copy, the small ways I might assist in all of the above. And then the publicity: interviews (always that awkward revelation of how odd your recorded voice sounds, how strangely your face is shaped when seen on a TV).
Finally, the book is “published.” But, like a reincarnated soul, it’s a baby that’s been born many times before.
So here’s what’s different this time around: I’ve been around long enough, seen the process enough times, know how difficult that whole thing is, to fully appreciate how amazing it is to have so many people – publishers, journalists, booksellers, fans, coming-to-you-fresh readers – get behind this thing we call a “book.” A collection of people who’ve never really existed doing things that have never really happened. A story.
Maybe I’m getting softer as I tip-toe ever farther into my forties – forget the “maybe,” I am getting softer – but publishing a book is such an against-all-odds proposition that every time it happens, every time it works, I’m amazed and moved and reassured by the fact there’s so many people as defiantly crazy as I am out there.
Book people. You know who you are. And you have my thanks.
Birth Announcement
Born yesterday, March 5, 2013, to a bespectacled novelist, a healthy book, 1 1/2 pounds. The father is proud to name the newborn THE DEMONOLOGIST.
There will be no church christening.
Talking The Demonologist on TV
I was on TV this morning. They put make-up on me and everything. It was exciting and strange and dream-like in its brevity. But I didn’t spill anything, and heard words coming out of my mouth in answer to the questions, so that’s something, right?
The good people at Canada AM provided me with a clip of my bit, and I include the link here for anyone who might be interested. Haven’t watched it myself yet. I’m waiting to fortify myself with a glass of something.
National Post Interview
The first newspaper interview with me about The Demonologist is up now over at the National Post site (out in the physical paper in the Saturday edition), where the excellent Books Editor there, Mark Medley, pitched the questions and wrote the piece.
In it, I talk for the first time about some of the strange and inexplicable and vaguely troubling things that arose in the writing of the novel.