A Launch, a Load of Self-Promotion, and a Hedgehog

Yes, it's been a week and a half, and I completely forgot to update my blog concerning the outcome of my book launch, which is doubly bad because I have this URL listed in the front of the book as my website and I hate the thought of people thinking, "oooh, blog" and then finding it stagnant.  Not that they would, necessarily, be thinking, "oooh, blog" but they might, and I would hate for them to be disappointed.  


In any case, the launch went very well.  There was a steady stream of people, and by the end my face hurt from smiling, so I think that would generally indicate success.  Afterwards I went home to collapse on the couch with Kezia while we consumed pizza and Strongbow and watched An Education (great film by the way, based on a memoir) and had a lovely evening.  Since then I've been wrestling with the beast known as Self-Promotion, which does not come naturally at all.  I've known people who were simply genius at it, but I am not one of them.  In a way, the online promotion part is easier.  Those people don't know you.  And Very Old Friends, who've watched you slave over the novels for years and even perhaps read manuscripts...those aren't bad either.  It's the hometown promotion that's the hardest, I find.  Suddenly you're approaching people who, though they don't really know you, per se, have seen you about town and known of you since you were a midget.  I can assure you, I was thoroughly unimpressive as a midget.  Yes, I had fabulous adventures in my head, but who was to know?  I certainly didn't tell them.  Cancer threw me a little more into the public eye, but who wants to be known for being disease-ridden?  Anyway, approaching people who know you in the aforementioned vague way, and saying, essentially, "Hi, I've written a book.  Please buy it," can feel rather odd.  However, I have been gritting my teeth and getting it done, though generally in a less blunt fashion.  The online promotion has slowly been coming along as well, though it's a lot to learn.  There is, in the end, so much that could be done for promotion, with all the resources available, that I find I have to make myself stop, to set it aside and go back to the writing.  After all, the writing is what really counts.  Without it, there would be nothing to promote, not to mention that without it I would turn into a sodden mass.  We write for the same reason we breathe: because without it we would not survive.  Numbers and sales seem petty things then.


I have acquired a new friend recently.  His name is Ferdinand, or Ferdy for short, and he is an African Pygmy Hedgehog, an anniversary gift from my husband.

Publishing and Other Odds and Ends

Okay...do I remember how to blog?  It really has been a while, but September has been a very busy month.  I know, excuses, excuses.  But in all honesty, since the last time I posted plenty of things have happened: my sister broke her ankle, I went to Portland to visit her, my husband got a new job, and I wriggled my way through the preliminary steps of publishing Ashford, among other things.


Yes, I'm self-publishing.  A controversial move, but much less so than in the past.  At this point it can't do me any harm, and might do me some good.  The manuscript had been edited and re-edited multiple times, by others and myself, and was starting to build a little fan base.  It's time for it to exist in another form, and it's time for me to learn how to market it.


From the back cover:

Seventeen year old Anna is a naive American orphan, delighted to find herself on a tour of Europe in the spring of 1939.  A feeling of camaraderie with all mankind thrills her as she mingles with throngs of foreigners, but her joy is short-lived.  WWII shatters the world.  As fathers and sons, husbands and brothers dive grimly into the trenches, Anna is left stranded in England, disillusioned and afraid.  However, this worldwide catastrophe may be the perfect catalyst to mature Anna into the brave young woman she longs to be.  Even as the world is shadowed with disaster, Anna finds friends in the kindly Bertram family.  In the midst of all that threatens to tear her world apart, will she find a place to truly belong?

My thanks to Megan Andrews for the back cover description.

The golf season is winding down, and I have to say (surprise!) that I'm ready for it to be over.  It's been a good experience over all, but it's not my world.  People look at me when I speak, and it's like they don't understand the language.  In all fairness, I probably look the same when they start talking about golf.  That world and mine are like oil and vinegar (to borrow a phrase from Anthony Trollope).  Not to say that mine is better or theirs worse.  They just don't fit.

111 on 1-11-11

I must have some sort of celebration.  It is the eleventh day of the first month of 2011, and at this moment my blog has been viewed 111 times so far this month.  So thank you, anonymous 111th viewer, for turning a rather dreary day into something more auspicious.


It's cold today, not just ordinary winter cold, but that fierce biting cold that creeps into your bones until you feel like you'll never really be warm again.  That type of cold doesn't seem to care what the thermometer says.  Sometimes I can feel it on a summer day, although it does come more often in the winter.  It's cold the way some people's houses are cold.  It doesn't matter what the thermostat says.  It's simply cold, uninviting.  It doesn't want you there.  It wants to freeze you out.  Of course, this could only be my overactive imagination, but I don't think so.  The only solution is to warm it somehow, like trying to thaw open the car door with a hair dryer.


This afternoon my warming solution is hot cocoa in a tea-cup, one hour of silence, the music of A. R. Rahman, a ballet class, and a quiet evening with my husband.