A press release for Laurie McKinney

A press release for Laurie McKinney. Isn’t PR fun.

Harvard-educated Author’s Unique Approach To Find A Publisher For Novel

Arlington, MA – January 20 2007 – If you’ve written the first of an action adventure series with Harvard-based characters that could turn Harvard Square in Cambridge Massachusetts into a free theme park, how would you attract a publisher? “Simple,” answers Laurence O McKinney (Harvard College ’66, Harvard Business School ’68), “You prove that you have a readership already waiting.” With that he placed a classified ad in Harvard Magazine, the Harvard Alumni Association magazine looking for 100 Harvard reviewers to help polish up his manuscript.

Over 235,000 Harvard alumni received the magazine every month. “What better place than among Harvard alumni to launch a series of smart thrillers centered on Harvard,” he explained. “Besides, among Harvard’s alumni are some of the best editors and literary agents in the world. Harvard is one of the most venerated institutions on the face of the earth,” he continued, “Now Harvard’s finally got its own action adventure hero … Hunter from Harvard.”

“The Circle of Power” is the first in a series of action adventure novels featuring the Hunter Greene, boyish executive editor of Harvard's in-house newspaper. He was minding his business when something blew up a large chunk of Delhi, including a few friends. Petty soon all hell is breaking loose; if Hunter's not saving the day, his pack of fictional friends are. He may have been born a Boston Brahmin, but he usually ends up like Batman in tweeds, the loveable reluctant action hero we know as “Hunter ... from Harvard. The book’s pre-publish market test has its own website: http://www.everythingharvard.com/hunter/

Before the book is over, the US Army, the Indian Government, New Scotland Yard and dozens of major and minor characters take their part in a global thriller spanning two hemispheres that starts, and ends, in Harvard Yard. By then the reader will know how to build an atomic bomb, the basics of Indian classical music, the secrets of the computer in the Harvard science center, and who actually wrote Chevrolet's “heartbeat of America” jingle. Fact and fiction, Harvard and history, drama and romance combine in a moving, mindful, and entertaining style that invites the reader on a journey that only Hunter, from Harvard, could have imagined.”

Laurence O. “Laurie” McKinney’s family has been at Harvard since 1725. A graduate of the College, the Business School, who attended Harvard Divinity School, he is a serial entrepreneur whose challenges included selling “The Harvard Chair” and marketing 20,000 hand blown specimen jars from Harvard’s Agassiz Museum. He is also Section Secretary for the Harvard Business School class of 1969.