Why a Book Trailer Now?

When I published my novel in 2001, I actually wrote it in longhand in 52 days while on downtime at my job as a coupon proofreader.
Why 52 days?
My mentor, Harry Whittington, the late great pulp legend believed in writing a chapter a day and I challenged myself to do the same after he gave the thumbs-up to the outline and sample chapter for Marquel shortly before he died.
Fast forward to 2000.
My sister, Ellen Williams, discovered iUniverse.com and in 2001 and we both published novels at the same time. She published "Godopossum: Printed Words" and "Radio Face: A Pre-Grunge Love Story " and I paid her to type up my book "Marquel" for upload to iUniverse.
Yes, I knew how to type, but I had children and she didn't and I was busy selling coupon advertising, the same as I still do today.
My novel launched October 2001 and we all know what happened several weeks prior, September 11, 2001. I will just honestly say, I was glad to have the book in print, but I didn't pursue much other than telling some friends and co-workers. I sincerely felt that the world had bigger issues and I just went back to being a mom and wife, and a coupon sales rep. I felt God wasn't calling me back to writing at that time, but just to get the book in print. The book was for sale as a print-on-demand as it still is today, I just left it on auto pilot.
Fast forward again to 2012.
Our daughters are grown and now living in California. The youngest, Blair, didn't read the novel until this year, the oldest, Marquel, kind of read it a year or two ago, and liked it, but had other things going on in her life.
Blair is our filmmaker; she has had a passion since we bought a video camera at a pawn shop when she was about 6 years. Blair produced a body amateur films before she finished high school. Marquel was a criminology major at USF and didn't become interested in acting until Blair needed her for some of her college student films. Then Marquel found her true calling!
Anyway, Marquel casually shared with her manager, Robert Enriquez, that her mother wrote a novel named 'Marquel' and it would be cool to make it into a movie someday. Well, that snowballed... and Robert wanted to read the book.
Marquel telling Robert about the book was the beginning and then all the creative ideas started flowing.
Our daughters heard me say I'd like to have a book trailer and start marketing my book, yes, START, as I never did. Because my dream is to be a full time writer when I retire from selling advertising.
And they were like, "we can do this."
Blair and her roommate, Amy Green, had already formed a production company, GreenSkin Productions and took to writing a script for the book trailer immediately!
Amy is a super fast writer and I was getting emails in a few days with a first draft.
Blair and Amy then started on a budget and Robert called me and said, "what if we got a named actor to play the doctor, Zach Manning?"
I was like, "REALLY? I'm pretty sure this has never been done."
We all looked online at book trailers and they were mostly nice graphics with some animation or voice over, author introductions and some with acted scenes, but not a trailer with a famous actor. So Robert went to work sending me possibilities of who might be a candidate.
I have to tell you, they emailed me constantly asking me if "this was my vision" of the character or the emotion or whatever, regarding the trailer.
When Eric Roberts accepted the Zach Manning part, we were like in a texting and email frenzy of excitement!! But we didn't want to say anything to others, as we know actors schedules can change and this book trailer likely wasn't on the Eric Roberts preferred list. LOL
So why a Book Trailer Now?
Because I have wonderfully talented daughters and they have wonderfully talented friends who have helped make this happen.
I'll try to share more on the challenges of the book trailer soon.

As a note: I wrote my novel in 1989 about an actress named Marquel and I knew when I was 15 that I wanted to write a novel named Marquel and have a daughter Marquel. The book is not about my daughter, other than they are both actresses. Yes, I'm writing a 2nd novel with Blair's name and its near completion. It's a young adult paranormal.