A launch, a promise and my tallest tale about Wimbledon

 

Generally, the moment my fingers touch a keyboard, they go off like a nervous thoroughbred on a race course.  Except when it comes to writing book #2, when they go all stiff and shy.  What with the editing stages of The Dress Thief and publicising it ahead of its launch on 29th May, I haven’t got into the zone with book #2, to be called ‘The Milliner’s Secret’.    If I could find a clear corner in my office, I’d sit in it and rock.

It’s a dilemma all published writers face, whether we’re with an established house or doing it independently.  No longer can we fire a book out into the world and say, ‘Fly little fella’ and go back to what we were doing before.  We must fly with it, holding its wing and guiding it through the impenetrable flock of other ‘little fellas’ that have been launched at the same time.

So how to give our published books the best chance, without ending up in a corner because we can’t get on with book 2?  As time is precious, a big, scatter-gun PR campaign is probably not the way, unless we can afford somebody to do it for us.  It’s why I’m narrowing the focus.  Building a bigger social network platform, getting online reviews and guest blogspots.   As far as traditional PR goes, I’m keeping it local.  People living in your own backyard may read your book because you are local, not because they necessarily read books.  It’s a niche opportunity and not one to be missed.

When I say local, however, I actually mean everywhere you’ve ever lived or studied, or rocked the boat.   The other day, I wrote a blog for a newspaper in Wimbledon, SW19 (the tennis Wimbledon) where I lived in my early twenties.  I shoe-horned in my best after dinner fable about the day I was working in a quaint old bakery in Wimbledon Village and a group of unbelievably tall African American men came in asking for doughnuts.   Or should that be donuts?  Anyway, in they came en masse, stooping to get through the doorway and filling the shop with their singlet-ed presence.   I nearly cricked my neck making eye-contact but I knew who they were because I’d watched their cartoon show as a kid.   They were the Harlem Globetrotters, doing what it says on the tin, globe-trotting.  Yes, they were there, it wasn’t me hallucinating after a night on the cider.  If somebody reads that a girl who once lived in their town is launching a novel, and sold jam impregnated baked goods to superstars, they’ll think, ‘Did I know her?’ and you have their attention, if only for a moment.

But while physical media is great,  the big party is online.  The advice I am picking up, over and over, is that online reviews are key.  But you know this, friends.   Family, friends, colleagues present and past, neighbours, neighbours’ friends, even their children and dogs, have to be asked to post reviews.  Ideally favourable ones.   And here I make a confession.  By not being sufficiently clued up on the importance of Amazon reviews (and in the interests of impartiality, those of other online retailers too) I haven’t done my share of reviewing other authors’ work.   Father, forgive me for I have sinned.   Since I will be asking friends to help me, and mutuality is the soul of networking, I hereby promise that if asked, I will order, read and review your book in a timely fashion.  I will give my website a brush-up and dedicate half of the home page to linking to other people’s books. And so now . . . drum roll and with a lump in the throat, here it is, my baby. 

Published in ebook form on May 29th and as a cute, old fashioned paperback on June 5 and available from -

 

http://bit.ly/1jcla3O   The Book Depository

 

http://amzn.to/RqCHzx  Amazon.com

 

http://amzn.to/1s6DKjf  Amazon.co.uk

This book was written in two phases, first when I was a young mum and had to creep to the computer when my little boy was asleep, and latterly re-written in the last two years when I had time to write seamlessly.  It’s been a long time a-coming and I have no shame in saying that I am deeply proud of it.   My editor Kathryn Taussig and agent Laura Longrigg have been wonderful, and the book wouldn’t be here without them but it’s really for my husband Richard, who has the dedication line all to himself and Sam who put up with an author mother.  This is my favourite picture below, taken some 23 years ago when I was away from my desk, in the Lake District. I’m wondering if I can get a story out of it . . . woman in boat with camera launches book.  It could work.