You'll Never Walk Alone

 

When I typed a filename for my draft of this piece on Word, I mishit a key and accidentally typed ‘booklaugh’.  And I’m not making this up!

On Friday (1 August) at 7.15pm, I will be doing an online book launch.  What?  Me?  Yes, really.  I will be promoting (frightening word) Past and Present, a collection of my short stories, some with a historical setting, some contemporary and many of them funny.  (I love writing humour.)  It’s all advertised on Eventbrite and the book itself is on Amazon.  My host for the launch, Allison Symes (whom ACW members will remember), and I have worked on the format of the launch, readings and questions.

Am I apprehensive?  Yes.  Am I nervous?  Definitely… but not so much as I might have been a few months ago. 

For a couple of years, since my novel, Wodka or Tea With Milk was accepted for publication, the business of marketing the books I have written has terrified me.  I can do the writing, and the editing, but not the selling and promoting.  I was a child and a teenager at the time when ‘showing off’ was the worst sin you could do at school, and this still sticks.  I suspect that this is a particularly British thing. 

Breaking the mould of who you are is also difficult, from being Rosemary who buys from shops and eats in cafes around the Essex/Suffolk borders, to Rosemary Johnson, author, who is asking shop/café owners to display her book.  From Rosemary who worships at your church to Rosemary Johnson, author, whose book she would like you to read at Church Book Club.

What has helped me with this online launch – what made it even possible – was the support of Gill James, of Bridge House Publishing (who publishes Past and Present) and Allison.  Their suggestions and guidance have not only steered me on to the right book launch track but given me confidence to do it at all.

And... next week I am meeting Lucy Rycroft for marketing coaching and in September, at the British Christian Writers' conference, I have an appointment with Jason Smith, social media guru.  I've suddenly become aware of having support, a lot of it. 

We Christians are never alone, are we?  Jesus has told us that he will always be with us (‘And behold, I am with you always, to the end of the age’ – Matthew 28:20).  Even at book launches.  

 

Rosemary Johnson writes flash fiction, short stories, novels and book reviews, and lots else besides, including recipes for her local church magazine.  She is the author of Wodka, or Tea with Milk, a novel set during the Solidarity years in Poland in 1980-1, and Past and Present, a collection of her short stories,  was published by Bridge House Publishing, in June.  In real life, she lives with her husband in Essex.