Australian Launch

On the eve of my Australian launch, I have to say I’m more excited than I’ve been in half a dozen years at the idea of a new book coming out.  Normally, I’m more likely to feign thrill in answer to the question:  “Aren’t you so excited?”  Sure, I love what I do.  But the reality is, by the time the book actually comes out, you’ve gone through so many ups and downs with it, so many edits and perfection-seeking proofreads (now was it “e.e. cummings” or “E.E. Cummings”? The latter, you might be surprised to know), so many boiled-down-to-a-sound-bite summaries and cover quotes, interviews and appearances that the book’s as much a part of your everyday life as your husband is:  now of course you love him, but do you get excited every time he comes home?  And so.

Time marches forward.  It creeps up on you when you’re not looking, and that six month lead time you had to do all the promotion you’d promised yourself is looking more like three.  You get to it, trying to pretend you’re talking about someone else when you call up and tell radio producers and magazine editors how wonderful you are.  All of that was worth it because this, my friends, is where it gets good: not too long after the store manager unpacks the book (hopefully cover out, rather than spine only), you receive an email from a reader.  It’s written in the kind of personal tone you’d use with your best friend, and packed with significant ways in which your story has touched someone’s life.  Could you just die from bliss?  But it gets better.   You’re rung by a prematurely intimate call from an interviewer who’s packing the same sentiment.  Pretty soon your verbal exploration of life’s tricky topology goes viral.  And despite yourself, you start to feel spectacular…

But let’s rewind for a second.  Before you get to that point, there’s the couple of weeks when you know the book’s boxed up and making its way onto semis, into store-rooms, queuing up for that valuable shelf space—in short, it’s slowly but surely coming, the way the bad guys do in The Lord of the Rings.  Everyone you know starts asking after a party, and signed copies, and how excited you are, and wanting to read out bits so that you turn red in front of everyone.  The nerves grow; the anticipation is its more lighthearted best friend; they go everywhere together.  And now they’re yanking you along.  No more floating about like it’s any other day, imagining you’ve still got six months to take-off. The feeling is akin to the cocktail of thrill and worry a seasoned writer’s socked with before gingerly keying in the first actual words of a new book:  possibility at its brightest, though even then stickied-up with an unattainable yearning for everything to turn out perfectly after all that preparation.  The truth is, there’s no book until you’ve started; there’s no dialogue with your audience until they’ve read you.  You’ve got to be in it to win it.  And after all that, it’s the most divine feeling I know, so let’s see what happens, shall we?  For now, I’ll just try wiping that smile off my face and say this:  I’m honored to become part of a literary tradition as rich, varied, and satisfying as Australia itself.  And if my initial experiences with my fantastic publisher Simon & Schuster Australia, and the welcoming book and media community serve as any indication, I think this is the start of something truly wonderful.  Hello Australia.  G’day mate.