Launching in three... two...
Save the date(s)
Writers can be a shy lot, and if you somehow compelled them to talk about the pleasures of publishing many would no doubt mutter something self-deprecating and quickly change the subject. But no matter how introverted they are, or how blasé they pretend to be, most writers know that being published is a gift and privilege, offering special delights along the way.
I know that some get a particular thrill from signing their contract. For me it’s seeing the cover for the first time (especially when it’s a masterpiece like the one Mike Cruywagen has created for ‘An Act of Murder’), or opening the little padded envelope from my publisher and sliding out the finished book with its beautiful sharp edges and its paperback scent.
(I want to say that it’s also a thrill seeing your book being read by people out in the world, and it can be, but it can also be humbling. Many years ago I was in an airport, surreptitiously watching someone read ‘The De Villiers Code’ which, I was fairly confident, had at least two solid jokes on each page. But this reader didn’t laugh. He didn’t smile. He didn’t twitch an eyelid or flare a nostril. He just read on and on, stoically turning each page as you might if you were working your way through a textbook on Stalin’s Five Year Plans; and eventually he gave a great sigh, closed the book slowly, and carefully placed it face-down on the seat next to him as if he didn’t want to damage it but also couldn’t bear to look at the cover again. Having your book harshly criticized is one thing, but there’s nothing quite like watching yourself being tolerated.)
Among all these pleasures, however, one particular delight is the launch of the book, and not just because it’s the only acceptable place for writers to talk about their work to a captive audience. (Aside: if you ever find yourself trapped by a relentless author telling you about the themes of death, isolation and quantum entanglement in their recent bildungsroman, break their trance by offering to buy them some food or electricity units, or throw a rusk into a nearby hedge and then make a run for it.)
So why is a launch so lovely?
Again, different writers will tell you different things; but what I learned, when I launched my last book into the Covid void, and when Tanya Meeson subsequently magicked into existence her Little Local Launches project to give me and writers like me a chance to share our Covid-obliterated books with actual human beings, was that it is contact with people, face to face, that breathes the final spark of life into a book. It is a moment of closing the circuit that finally lets the electricity flow. And of course it’s just plain lovely to see the faces of some of the people who are going to give your book a home, whether next to their bed or on top of the loo.
All of which is to say: if you are in Cape Town or Stellenbosch I would be delighted and honoured if you would come to one of the two launches of ‘An Act of Murder’, either at the Book Lounge on the evening of 10 April (where I will be in conversation with Jonathan Ancer) or at the Oude Leeskamer in Stellenbosch on the morning of 16 April, where Michiel Heyns will take the wheel. (Johannesburg, I will be coming to you in May but will tell you more when I know details.)
I look forward to meeting you. And if I get carried away and it all goes sideways, you can always throw that rusk.
T
