In this competitive publishing environment, you need book promotions that are really HOT. So to hype up Charles Bock's heralded new novel about the underbelly of Las Vegas, "Beautiful Children," his PR team is using fake, barely legal porn! They set up a site with a video (SFW) of a teenage girl auditioning for her first porn shoot—then, just before she gets naked, it redirects to a site for the book! This is truly forward-thinking strategic marketing. Either that, or Charles Bock is just a big perv. [SlinkyFoxVideo.com via AgencySpy]

I am exhausted this morning. I stayed up half the night finishing Beautiful Children, by Charles Bock, because I quite simply couldn't stop reading. 407 pages later, I passed out! A while back, we gently ribbed first-time novelist Bock for boasting about taking ten years to write the book, which is about living, being lost, and runaways in Vegas. Was it civilized, we wondered? In conclusion: Yes! Take as much time with that next novel as you need, man. We'll be waiting.

Charles Bock's latest (and first) novel, Beautiful Children, is about living and being lost in Las Vegas. Called "one of the most-anticipated debut novels in years," it's getting red-carpet treatment at the NYT, including a NYT Magazine profile. The hype for what sounds like an interesting book already has people asking Galleycat who Bock's "damn rabbi" is. We're not sure however, how civilized it is to boast about working so hard on your novel. Even if they are a total bitch to write, everybody wants to think of them as effortless endeavors that spring lightly from your soul. To wit: