Book release for ‘Wishes For Starlight’

One thing I keep forgetting to mention is the work I’ve been doing with another author, Linda J Bettenay. I’ve been helping her bring Secrets Mothers Keep to life while she takes the novel to readers across Western Australia.

When people imagine an author’s life, they usually picture the writing desk, a manuscript, a laptop and perhaps a cup of tea going cold beside both. What they don’t see is the work required after the book is finished. Writing “The End” does not automatically place a novel into anyone’s hands.

That is one of the realities I discuss in Self-Publishing Changed Everything—Except the Hard Part. A writer must also become a promoter, organiser, speaker and salesperson—or find inventive ways to involve other people.

In Linda’s case, my writing cap took a back seat while I put on an actor’s cap.

Bree Hartley, from Roleystone Theatre, and I joined Linda for author talks with an element of live theatre. Rather than asking an audience to sit through a conventional reading, Linda selected parts of Secrets Mothers Keep that could be performed as letters exchanged by two young people separated by the First World War.

That’s me in the hat and uniform, reading from the folder.

Bree and I never see or touch one another during the performance. The separation is important. My letters come from the war front; hers come from Outback Australia. At first, the correspondence carries warmth, optimism and hope. Then time and distance work on the relationship. The words change. The people writing them change too.

Our job is to let the audience hear that transformation without telling them everything.

That matters at an author event. A reading should invite people into a story, not explain so much of it that there is nothing left to discover. Linda’s approach lifts the black text from the paper and gives it breath, timing and emotion. The audience does not simply hear about the characters. For a few minutes, it meets them.

It has been a successful journey. Linda found an engaging way to introduce the novel, while Bree and I used theatre to serve a book. I enjoyed watching each room grow quiet as the letters became more serious.

The experience also gave me a privileged, behind-the-scenes view of publishing and promotion. I saw another part of the puzzle: taking books directly to readers.

Linda’s books and mine are nothing alike. Her way of finding readers is also different from the way I promote the SEETHINGS trilogy. That does not make one method right and the other wrong. Authors can still exchange ideas and learn from the parts of each other’s journeys that overlap.

Every performance taught me something new. I saw how carefully chosen extracts could create curiosity without exhausting it. I learned that an author talk could become more memorable when it offered something beyond an author standing behind a lectern. I also saw how face-to-face events create a connection that promoting novels through online channels cannot entirely reproduce.

Yesterday, that journey reached another milestone when Linda released her second book, Wishes For Starlight, at Araluen Botanical Gardens, just a short distance from Roleystone.

I attended as a guest this time, which meant I could leave the uniform and folder behind and simply enjoy the day.

The location gave the event a satisfying sense of completion. One year earlier, while on a personal adventure at Araluen, I had first come across Linda’s name and her request for an actor. I could not have known where that small discovery would lead. Twelve months later, I was back in those familiar surroundings, watching her launch another book.

The weather was perfect, the gardens looked wonderful, and the atmosphere suited the occasion. A book release is not merely the moment a new title becomes available. It is the visible point at the end of months—or years—of work most readers never see. Editing, printing, organising, travelling, promoting and hoping all gather in one place for a few hours.

What a day. What a release.

I bought a copy.

They served wine.

It would have been rude not to do both.

Congratulations, Linda, on the release of Wishes For Starlight. I’m glad a chance notice at Araluen led me into this part of your publishing journey—and even happier that the path brought us all the way back to where it began.

–Mx