Celebrate Every Triumph … Dance Your Inner Kitten to the Bouncing Broken Lace of Your Soul … Eat Teacakes

I found out this morning that the Smashwords edition of my critically acclaimed new novel The Lives and Loves of Hana Lee has achieved Smashwords Premium status at the first attempt. As this is unequivocally a good thing, I’m having a Smashwords Premium party. Right now. There will be cake.

 

There is cake!

 

When you’re going it alone, every minor triumph must be celebrated. With cake. With ice cream. With whatever. The treat is irrelevant. It is the celebration that counts. (I’m having ice cream.) (And cake.)

 

Look!

 

 

What this means is that the book will now be present and available for purchase in the virtual shop windows of a selection of commercial behemoths.

 

For those of you who are interested, here it is in more detail…

 

 

So that’s that. Progress.

 

Now I must return to the awareness-spreading campaign, which is currently proceeding with the kind of deep-simmering intensity normally reserved for people who stare a lot.

 

Selling yourself is a disconcerting business. That’s what I mean.  

 

Sometimes I’m afraid of being perceived as something I’m not, or at least as something I don’t think I am.

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

It’s like when you go to the supermarket to buy teacakes but then the moment you get within 20 feet of the main entrance, a great waft of freshly toasted teacake aroma hits you full in the face. Like an old friend. But it’s not real. It’s olfactory marketing. Immediately you feel utterly compromised. You walk around the supermarket – the sweet, buttery, toast-crisp crunchy supermarket – and everywhere you look, the baskets and trolleys of raging saps are shiny with teacake-packets. But you can’t possibly buy teacakes now, not now they’ve been foisted upon you in such an insidious way, not now THE MAN is telling you to buy them. ‘I am not a victim of underhanded marketing techniques!’ you begin to shout. ‘I am too savvy for your psychological tricks!’

 

You buy the teacakes.

 

You feel dirty.

 

Or it’s like when you pick up a copy of The Sun on the tube and you wish there was a way to make people know that although you’re reading it, you have not paid for it and you also happen to despise it.

 

That’s how I sometimes feel.

 

I might be selling myself like a discounted bagel, but that doesn’t mean I’m worthless.

 

Read my book. You’ll enjoy it. Write a review.

 

Thanks.