Take Me To Post Comment Form I admire writers who create original ideas and find a way to make large amounts of money off of them. That’s what Seth Harwood, a graduate of the Iowa Writer’s Workshop, did with Jack Wakes Up and I’m jealous.

As a young writer without a track record, Harwood became frustrated by the lack of attention he was getting for his novel, Jack Wakes Up. So he did what any marketing-savvy writer would do and developed a new niche, a new product and a new product delivery system that not only earned him big respect points from the formerly disinterested mega publishing companies, but paid his rent for a few extra months to boot.

Harwood recorded Jack Wakes Up on a podcast and posted it on his Website for free download. The podcast was a major hit and the Jack Palms Crime Podcast Series was born.

Damn him for being so creative and persistent.

Today, Harwood has more than 10,000 listeners (which translates to an automatic marketing base) and a paperback novel published by Crown.

I HATE WHEN I DON’T THINK OF INNOVATIVE THINGS LIKE THAT…

In Jack Wakes Up, we are introduced to Jack Palms, a movie star turned drug addict, (sounds like – insert pretty much any celebrity name here -) turned has-been who is living off residual checks from Shake ‘Em Down, his one-and-only movie.

The money is drying up though, and this new clean, uneventful life is starting to become too much for Jack to bear.

So when an old friend comes calling and asks Jack to use his former celebrity and show some out-of-town high rollers around San Francisco club scene, he’s happy to oblige. What Jack doesn’t know, however, is these ‘guests’ are a pack of former KGB agents turned coke dealers out to make a deal with Jack as their tour guide.

Soon people are turning up dead and Jack’s got too many gunmen after him to count. But the thing that scares Jack most is that he’s starting to really enjoy life.

http://www.amazon.com/Jack-Wakes-Up-Seth-Harwood/dp/0307454355/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1247005264&sr=1-1