Conquering My Fear of Book Presentations

One of the strangest things about writing a novel is that after spending months and years alone with your thoughts, slaving away on your book, you’re supposed to get up in front of people and talk about your work as if it’s something you do every day. For those of us with little or no public speaking experience, it can be daunting to say the least. Terrifying is probably a more appropriate word.

When the local library invited me to do a signing and presentation after my debut novel released, I thought it would be a piece of cake. After all, I had directed a few community plays. I knew I could stand up and talk to a group of people. Plus, I was the first person in our area to have a book traditionally published. I knew everyone would be interested in hearing about that journey.

I was looking forward to the signing, naively confident for a number of reasons. After all, I knew my novel better than anyone. I had learned a lot about the publishing world. And I knew most of the people who would be attending the event. I thought I’d have the same excited sense of anticipation I always had when looking forward to a celebration or holiday. I thought the time leading up to the event would feel like the days before my wedding reception, when I was looking forward to seeing everyone there, smiling and waiting to congratulate me.

I couldn’t have been more wrong.

The closer it got to the day of the event, the more my stomach churned. I worked on my presentation for a day and half and blew up old family photos from WWII to use as visual aids. I practiced in the kitchen, using the clock on the stove to time myself. Then I made my first lethal mistake. Three days before the event, I asked my husband and twenty-six year old daughter for their opinion on my presentation. What I really wanted was feedback on the content, not a critique of my delivery. My second mistake was not telling them that.

I won’t go into the details here, but by the time they were finished telling me what they thought, I was in tears. I wondered what I’d been thinking, imagining that I could perform like the REAL authors I’d seen on tour. I was certain that I was about to make a fool of myself in front of the half the community. The next two days were sheer torture. I walked around with a boulder in my chest, wishing I’d never written a book in the first place. And to top it all off, I had other appearances already scheduled. There was no way I could cancel them. This was what I'd signed up for and now my worst fears were coming true. I was not going to live up to what was expected of me as a published author.

My husband did his best to make me feel better; reminding me that everyone was excited and proud of me. He said they were coming to the library because I had done something amazing and they loved my novel. He said I could stand up there and pick my nose and they’d still be thrilled to have me sign their books. (after washing my hands, of course) I wasn’t convinced. To say I was a mess would be an understatement. Then, the night before my presentation, I had a dream about a little blonde girl who looked up at me with big-blue eyes and said, “Think about it with your heart, not your head.”

Now I know it might sound silly, but the next morning a strange sense of calm had come over me. I knew the little girl in my dream was talking about my presentation. I was still nervous, but thankfully, I was no longer terrified. I’d been afraid of sounding stupid in front of everyone, of losing my place, of fumbling over words, of not being able to answer questions intelligently. Some people have vast amounts of knowledge when it comes to WWII, while others have preconceived notions. I wanted to sound like I knew what I was talking about. I wanted to sound smart.

But the little girl in my dreams was right. After all, passion lies in the heart, not in the head. If nothing else, I was passionate about my novel! I’d made the decision to write THE PLUM TREE because I’d grown up listening to my family’s stories about surviving WWII. I believed the average German civilian’s story needed to be told. How could I go wrong talking about something that was so important to me? I reminded myself that I’d done over four years of research and would be able to intelligently answer questions about that time period. When I’m passionate about something, the details stay with me. I could trust myself.

Most importantly, I reminded myself people were coming to see me because they were excited about me being a published author, not to judge me on my speaking skills, or how much I knew about WWII. They couldn’t wait to hear about the inspiration behind my novel and my journey toward publication. (okay, my husband was right) 

In the end, my presentation went a thousand times better than I could have hoped. It was pretty emotional to see over a hundred faces smiling back at me, happy to be there to support me and hear what I had to say. It’s true that you can feel the energy of an audience, and that night I felt nothing but acceptance, excitement and pride; all matters of the heart.

The audience laughed when I read a quote I thought was perfect for the occasion: “The human brain starts working the moment you’re born and never stops until you stand up to speak in public.” They grinned from ear to ear when I took pictures of them holding up their books. There were audible ‘ohs and ahhs’ during my stories about my grandparents and mother. A few people told me afterwards that they were nearly in tears. I had feared the Q & A period and it turned out to be my favorite part. Other people said I was a natural at public speaking. Go figure.

But best of all, my mother, my husband and adult children said they got choked up while I was speaking. They said I did a fantastic job and couldn’t believe what they were hearing and seeing. Since that night, I’ve done two more presentations and find myself looking forward to the next. I've made the decision to trust myself, to think to with my heart and not my head. And  so far, it's worked.

If you’re nervous about your first book presentation, here are a few tips that worked for me:

     1) Before you start, take a deep breath, smile and count to three. It gives you a little time to collect yourself.

     2) Trust yourself. You know your book and your publishing journey better than anyone in the world.

     3) Be yourself. If you try to fake it and act like someone you’re not, it will show.

     4) Remember that you are a published author!! Even with all your daily fears, frustrations and doubts, (feelings that no one in the audience knows about, by the way) the fact that you have a book published is pretty amazing and something to be proud of! Most of the audience is already in awe of your accomplishment.

     5) Break the ice. Thank the people who invited you, thank the audience, and say something funny to put them at ease. Beside the quote above (which you’re free to steal) I asked how many were there because they loved books and reading, and how many were there because they were related to me. (thanks to my BP friend, Julie Kibler) People laughed!

     

     6) Occasionally turn the attention on the audience if you can. Take a picture of them holding up your book! It worked great for me and I’m so glad I have those photos. 

     7) Have a bottle of water with you. Not only will it give you a tiny break, but your mouth will get unbelievably dry. When I said I needed a drink and took a sip from the bottle, everyone chuckled. Even this small thing will make you look personable.

    8) If you have visual aids–old photos, costumes, etc.–use them to break up your talk.

9) If you’re doing a reading along with the presentation, make it   short. Mine was seven minutes and I did it between talking about the inspiration behind my novel and how I got published.  

10)    Don’t practice in front of your family! It will turn out badly and you will lose any confidence you had. 

11)   Think about your presentation with your heart, not your head. You’re passionate about your novel, right? Use that!

     

Dancing Naked in the Cemetery: When Fiction is Perceived as Fact

by Brenda Remmes

I have the unique joy of being able to trace my family heritage back to the early 1700s.  The tomb stones of many of those relatives are placed behind an historical country church established in 1759 less than two miles from where I live today.  Consequently, I’m not just talking about tracing on a genealogical site, I’m talking about walking up to their grave and saying out loud… “See here, right here I stand.  The fruit of your loins 200 years down the road, and counting.” 

Fortunately, I have a family that not only remained local, but also believed in education and schooled their children to write extensively.  It’s in my genes.  As icing on the cake, someone had enough insight to save their letters and pack them in a crate for me to open 150 years later.  Those letters have been great fodder for my imagination. 

Imagination is the key word here.  Predominantly, I write fiction, so I juice things up a bit.  I play around with names and take a bit of one person’s history to combine with another.  I create places of intrigue and there’s nothing more fun than ghosts and spirits and sounds in the night.  To put all of that in a grave yard, well, the combination is irresistible.

Herein lies the problem.  The embellishment of these stories by me and others over the years has become viral, and with the onslaught of tweet and twitter and all these nasty little messenger devices, the church sees more action at night than during the day.  The congregation only meets every other week for one hour.  The cemetery is busy from midnight to dawn.  Our surveillance cameras caught a bevy of not-so-tantalizing beauties dancing in the nude last weekend.  It was hard to identify them because they didn’t have any clothes on but their bare breasted frolic would have been more pleasing had more been hidden.  Just my personal opinion, of course.

Do I care?  I didn’t used to.  Get your jollies by tiptoeing around graves under a full moon or pretending that some ghost appears to reclaim his golden arm at the stroke of midnight.  What I care about is that frivolity is turning more often to vandalism and we pick up beer cans, liquor bottles and broken glass on a regular basis.  Our “no trespassing after dark” signs are ignored and the security camera and lights are destroyed.  Recently, church windows were broken.  Last night I ventured out and confronted six more young people at midnight.  Really, midnight is long past my bedtime.  I don’t like doing this, but I’m afraid we’re going to have to start prosecuting for trespassing in order to close the flood gates.  And yes, we already have a gate that stops no one.

I write this because this senseless destruction has made me rethink my own writing.  What have I written that people actually believe is true? I used to think that was the height of a good writer, to be so convincing that your reader confused fiction with reality.   I’m having second thoughts, especially now that tweeting appears to be able to broadcast tidbits of misinformation to thousands within seconds, without anyone having read the book.

I’m open for suggestions.  

How to Staunch Voice Bleeding

by Mindy McGinnis

I've coined a new term that some of my fellow writers have latched onto - voice bleeding. It exists. It's a nasty little burrowing virus that will slide inside your brain and infect the gray matter with the voice of whatever writer you may be reading at the time. The voice bleeding virus thrives on creative minds, reducing us to a toxic replica of whoever we happen to be reading at the moment, especially if they hail from the same genre as our own.

How do you combat this virus? Is it something you will never be free of, like herpes? Is this a long-term infection requiring dose after dose of antibiotics? Should you lie quivering in fear under your blanket whenever a tasty looking bit of fiction tempts you?

Don't worry, my friends. There is an answer.

You CAN read while you're writing. You CAN free yourself from the scourge of voice bleeding. You CAN indulge in some published pages while whaling on the WIP.

It's called non-fiction.

Now don't get me wrong, non-fiction requires voice as well. But the chances of a well-styled narrative NF voice sliding into your YA paranormal are significantly less than if your brain is munching on the latest urban fantasy beach candy.

I hear your cries of pain. But non-fiction!!! It's so.... true. And... boring!!

Not so my friends. Hit up some of these titles if you want to learn more about why we're alive, what happens when you're not, and how to avoid people, places and diseases that might make you that way:

WATER: THE EPIC STRUGGLE FOR WEALTH, POWER & CIVILIZATION by Steven Solomon - So you're aware that we need water, but do you know the ins and outs of the political maneuvering, wars, and untold deaths of millions that is intertwined with the story of water? Prolly not.

STIFF by Mary Roach - You're dead! Great - now what? You'd be surprised how many options you've got. Mary Roach explores the myriad of choices your corpse has. Me? I'm going with composting.

THE DEVIL IN THE WHITE CITY by Erik Larsen - Wanna know more about America's first serial killer, and how he used the World's Fair to his advantage? Sure you do.

THE BEAUTIFUL CIGAR GIRL by Daniel Stashower - Mary Roger's murder in 1841 was the first instance of a media frenzy, and it had the makings of a blockbuster. A renowned cigar-peddling beauty with a checkered past winds up dead... and nobody knows who did it. The murder got under the skin of New Yorkers, including one troubled genius named Edgar Allan Poe, who was inspired to write "The Mystery of Marie Roget."

THE LOST CITY OF Z by David Grann - A mysterious city in the jungle, explorers disappearing into thin air, obsession and madness. You're interested, right?

THE SPECKLED MONSTER by Jennifer Lee Carrell - Read this history of smallpox and the people who willingly infected themselves with it in order to create a vaccine and you'll never be more thankful for the CDC.

And while I'm sharing, there's currently a voice bleeding related post over on my personal blog, along with a giveaway!

______________________________________

Mindy McGinnis is a YA author and librarian. Her debut dystopian, NOT A DROP TO DRINK, will be available from Katherine Tegen / Harper Collins Fall, 2013. She blogs at Writer, Writer Pants on Fire. You can also find her on Twitter and Facebook.

Why Not All Books Should Be Fifty Shades of Grey

image via vectorportal.com

by Priscille Sibley

This morning I heard on the news that the Fifty Shades books are on their way to breaking another record. Frankly, I don’t care which one. People like sex. People like reading about sex. And when everyone is doing or talking about something, people stop being embarrassed about it. I’ve heard people say they are reading the Grey books because they love the characters. To me that sounds a little like how men used to read Playboy for the articles, but to be fair, there are other steamy books and they haven’t caught on the same way this series has, so there is something in the books that has latched onto readers’ imaginations. Again, I won’t hazard to guess what. Wink. 

But that’s not where I was going with this blog post. My book has hardly any sex in it; at least there is nothing graphic or intentionally titillating on the page.  I was reaching out to show an emotional connection between the characters. And my book is not a romance.  When one of my day job coworker’s asked me what my book was about, her primary interest was to find out if my novel was like Fifty Shades. (She’s the wife of a minister.) Ah, no, I said. That’s not my story. Well, she said, there’s nothing wrong with it. It’s part of life after all. Sure, sex is part of life. BDSM? Whatever.

My characters have sex. They just don’t do it on stage. Why don’t they? Should they? I don’t think so, and not because I’m a prude, and not because I’m a mother and don’t want to set a bad example. My characters don’t have sex on stage because my narrator would not choose to share that information. My characters don’t have sex on the page because the she in my story is gravely ill. Her husband is devastated because he is in love with his wife, and he is a private person. He had to be a private person for other reasons. Their situation, a right-to-life, right-to-die trial, is being played out in the front of the media, much to his chagrin. While that may sound like a squirrelly way to avoid writing about THE DEED, I can honestly and unequivocally swear, sharing the details of their lovemaking would not advance my plot or add to their characterization. It would not impart more information about their relationship. I sincerely believe that by the end of the book, the reader will have a sense of who they are and the tenderness and passion they share. It is a love story, but not a sexy story. There is a difference.  And in this one, graphic sex would detract from the emotional arc.

Sometimes less is more.

Not all books should be Fifty Shades even if readers are clamoring for it. What do all people (except maybe nuns, priests and monks) have in common? Sex. Yes, it’s how we are all created, and most adults engage in sex. But graphic sex is not necessary in all books. Let’s face it folks, sex is not the only part of a love story.

In other words, adding graphic sex to my novel would have been gratuitous. Why not put a little gratuitous sex on the page if that’s what readers want? Because that would be another book, a different book. And maybe I’ll write that book someday, but not this time.  

Follow me @PriscilleSibley

www.priscillesibley.com

The Importance of Literacy in My Life, and Yours

by Wiley Cash

I grew up in a middle-class neighborhood called Forest Brook in Gastonia, North Carolina. Forest Brook was everything a kid could want in a neighborhood; it was full of both forests and brooks, and even now when I whisper the name, I feel just as much mystery and excitement as I did when I was ten years old. My younger brother and I spent our childhoods riding our bikes on dirt paths, wading through creeks, climbing up trees, and performing all the dangerous feats boys attempt when they grow up in a neighborhood like ours. Even though we spent a lot of time playing outside, we spent just as much time reading and being read to by our mom.

My parents’ second story bedroom windows looked out over an expanse of field behind our house. Dense woods bordered the field on either side. At that time, if you would’ve walked through the field for about two miles you would’ve eventually found yourself in a nice, upper-class neighborhood with a country club where my brother and I would eventually work as lifeguards. Just past the golf course that ringed the club was a tiny municipal airport with a beacon light that could be seen from my parents’ bedroom windows.

At night, after we’d taken our baths and before we’d said our prayers, my brother and I would sit in our mom’s lap in an old wicker rocking chair while she read to us. This ritual probably started when I was around three years old, and I would guess that I climbed down out of that rocking chair for the last time when I was six – only because I was too big to be rocked without my feet touching the floor, not because I no longer wanted my mom to read to me. After that I’d sit on my parents’ bed and listen while my mom read out loud and rocked my brother, who would climb down from that chair for the final time just a few years after me and join me on the bed, our mom still in the rocker, reading to us.

Those are very comforting memories: the sound of my mother’s voice close to my ear while she rocked me when I was small or drifting across the room to where I sat on the bed once I was older; the smell of Dial soap on my clean skin and the scent of the summer-warmed window panes as they cooled against the night air; the sound of chirping crickets lifting from the field behind our house. I remember these things as if they still take place each night; in my mind, maybe they do. I also have a clear memory of staring out the window and watching the beacon light at the airport as it revolved atop the tower, its beam strafing the field behind our house with a faint glow before disappearing, only to reappear seconds later. The beacon light was hypnotic; it lulled me to sleep more than the crickets or the rocking or the sound of my mom’s voice as it grew quieter and quieter while our eyelids grew heavier.

When I was twenty, my parents left our home in Gastonia and moved to the beach at Oak Island, North Carolina, roughly five hours east of where I’d grown up. A bridge connects Oak Island to the mainland, and from the bridge you can see the Caswell Beach lighthouse at the eastern end of the island. Not long after they’d moved, I was crossing the bridge with my mom at dusk; the lighthouse’s beam was just barely visible against the darkening sky. My mom looked at the lighthouse, and then she turned and looked at me.

“Just think,” she said, “whenever you see the lighthouse, you’ll know you’re almost home.”

I knew what she meant, and I appreciated the sentiment, but I knew that I’d never think of Oak Island as home, regardless of its beauty or the beauty of its landmarks. I still think of home as being farther west in North Carolina, at the edge of a little field in a neighborhood dotted with forests and brooks where a beacon light shines through the bedroom window while my mother reads stories to my brother and me.

Whenever I read, I may not always recall the sound of my mother’s voice or the sensation of being rocked, but I always feel the same safety and comfort I felt as a young boy watching the night creep across the field toward our house while the warm breeze rolled through the window screens. I can’t imagine a life that doesn’t include reading.

Even with that said, it’s amazing how often I take my literacy for granted, especially in my day-to-day life at the grocery store where I read labels on products, at the pharmacy where I read warnings on medicine, and at the doctor’s office where I read pamphlets and information about what may or may not be ailing me. I tend to think of my reading life as something I nurture in private, something I use to escape. But I’d be wrong to think of it this way; reading is something I use to survive, and if you’re reading this now, then you use reading to survive as well.

As an author who’s just published my first novel, I’m aware that reading has given me a job. But as an adult who uses my literacy each and every day, I’m aware that reading has given me the ability to thrive in a very complicated world. A 2003 federal study found that one in seven adults don’t possess the literacy skills to read beyond the level required of a children’s picture book. I can’t fathom the fact that so many people have never had the pleasure of opening a novel and escaping their everyday lives. Even more daunting and sobering is the reality that these people’s everyday lives are complicated by illiteracy; tasks that we take for granted – going to the grocery store, buying a plane ticket, writing a letter of complaint – are endlessly and unnecessarily complicated.

My wife and I spent the past few months searching for a way to give back to a reading community that has allowed my dream of being a published author to come true. The answer became clear one day after I opened UNCA Today, the alumni magazine of the University of North Carolina at Asheville. The magazine had profiled Amanda Edwards, a woman who’d been a good friend of mine while we were students at UNCA. Amanda is the Executive Director of the Literacy Council of Buncombe County in Asheville, North Carolina. I read the profile on Amanda, and then I called her about ways my wife and I could contribute to the amazing work the council is doing in Buncombe County. I began researching literacy programs throughout North and South Carolina, and I was shocked by what I discovered. According to the 2003 study, in North Carolina 14% of adults struggle with basic reading skills; the rate climbs slightly to 15% in South Carolina. On the bright side, I discovered that in many cities it costs as little as $25 to buy the materials that will teach an adult how to read. I can’t imagine a better investment in the future of an individual, a community, or a city. Think about what $50 or $100 could do for men and women in your community; then think about what $1,000 could do. With that in mind, my wife and I have decided that we want to raise thousands of dollars for literacy projects and public libraries throughout North and South Carolina, but we need your help.

Beginning on May 14, my publisher, William Morrow, is sending me on a fifteen-city tour throughout North and South Carolina where I’ll be holding events at some of the finest independent bookstores in the country. At almost all of these events, my wife and I will be donating a portion of the proceeds from book sales to local literacy projects and public libraries, and we’ll be encouraging booksellers and the public to give what they can as well. I’m proud that we’ll be partnering with the Literacy Council of Buncombe County, the group that inspired this idea, and I’m especially proud that we’ll be partnering with the Gaston County Public Library in Gastonia, North Carolina, where I received my first library card on the day I turned six.

I can never repay the gift the reading community has given me – for the memories of those nights in my parents’ bedroom when my mom read to us, for the times in my life that were so hectic or horrible that reading was the only thing I could do to escape – but this is a start.

If you’re interested in stopping by one of our events or learning more about the organizations we’re working with, please check out the tour schedule here. If you can’t come to an event, but you’d like to make a donation, please feel free to contact any of these organizations listed here or the literacy council or public library in your community.

In the meantime, read to your kids, read to other people’s kids, and, if you don’t think you’re too old to enjoy it, have someone read to you. It’s up to them whether or not they want to rock you to sleep while they do it.

Publishing in the Age of Google Alert

            By Nancy Bilyeau

Occasionally when my red “smart” phone trembles in my palm, signaling the arrival of book news--perhaps welcome, perhaps not--I think of A.S. Byatt’s 1992 novella Morpho Eugenia.

            Adapted into a fine film called Angels and Insects that ramped up its more-decadent plotline, Morpho Eugenia is at its core a mid-Victorian love story between an impoverished naturalist named William Adamson and a repressed governess named Matty Compton (wonderfully inhabited by Kristin Scott Thomas). Long before their feelings are made known to each other, when William can do nothing but admire Matty’s vigorous wrists, they hatch a plan to earn much-needed money: write books about insects. William’s is about ant colonies on the grounds of an aristocratic mansion where they are both ensnared; Matty’s is a fairy tale featuring same bugs.

            The two of them get busy researching and writing. And I know what you must be thinking: How could decadent plotlines exist in such a novella?  But this is the sublime A.S. Byatt, and yes, it gets kinky, including a passage about a family card game that spells out a sexual act not legal even now in any of the United States. To my point—William and Matty mail off their respective manuscripts to London. And more than a year later: results. William receives a letter saying, “We are very happy you have chosen our house as publisher and hope we may come to a happy arrangement for what will, I am quite sure, be a most fruitful partnership.” Moreover, Matty tells him she has quietly sold her insect fairy tale book and now has in hand a sizeable bank draft. With that money, they run away from the mansion in the middle of the night, heading straight for the Amazon, determined to study much larger insects for a number of years.

            Since the mid-Victorian age, there’ve been some changes in publishing.

            About six months ago--which would be a year after I’d sold my historical thriller The Crown to Touchstone/Simon&Schuster--someone savvy about these things told me to put a Google alert on my name. This was the best way to keep up with news on the book. I did so, and for several weeks was kept informed about the dessert recipes created and then published by a distant relative in Michigan and the high-school-quarterback achievements of an even more distant cousin. I was intrigued by an alert that led to news of someone with my last name being arrested and charged with robbing a Dollar Store in Kentucky. I pondered under what circumstances this would have seemed a profitable plan.

            My Google moment came when I sat at the bar at our local Thai restaurant, sipping a club soda while waiting for my take-out order. It was Friday night, there wasn’t much food in the house, and I wanted to surprise the kids with Pad Thai and their favorite duck with crispy noodles dish. My phone whirred, and I glanced at my Gmail account: “‘Publishers Weekly’ review of Nancy Bilyeau’s ‘The Crown.’ ”  I clicked on the link, excited. My first review! And then a cold and sour panic took hold in my stomach as I read the sentences once, twice, three times. It wasn’t a good review. There was no Pad Thai for me that night, and not much sleep either.

            Since that autumn evening, I’ve been reviewed in national magazines like O: The Oprah Magazine and Entertainment Weekly, in trades such as Kirkus Reviews and BookList, in daily newspapers and on more than a dozen blogs. The reviews of The Crown have been mostly positive. Oprah said, “The real draw of this suspenseful novel is its juicy blend of lust, murder, conspiracy, and betrayal.” It’s wonderful to read a sentence like that. Yet nothing can quite erase the dismay and disappointment I felt when I read my very first review in a Thai restaurant, with no warning from agent, editor or friend.

            I considered removing the Google alert the next day. But I decided, “No, put on your big girl pants—you have to be able to handle this.” And so when the Google alert trembled the next time, I clicked open my Gmail. I had roughly the same defensive stance as a boxer who’s suffered a powerful right hook, trying to ward off the knockout. This alert wasn’t even about me. That Michigan relative had produced an amazing apple crisp, and I burst out laughing.

            The next time Google came for me it was just after breakfast on Saturday morning—a giveaway of advance copies of The Crown just commenced on goodreads. I had no idea this was planned. But before lunch, I’d fired off emails to friends and relatives. My goal was to hustle 50 requests. It was absolutely thrilling to watch the number of people who requested The Crown soar to just over 1,000 in a week.

            More and more, the Google alerts were for me and not the chef or the football player: book reviews; an announcement that the first two chapters were posted on scribd; a news brief in Time Out New York about my upcoming reading and signing at a Barnes & Noble on the Upper West Side. After my book was published on January 10, the alerts came faster and faster. Yet more reviews—Devourer of Books just named The Crown her pick for the month of January. Yay! A piracy website with a skull & crossbones as its emblem offered my book for free, a novel that took five years to write. Boo!

            Google knows no borders, and now that my novel is on sale in the United Kingdom I get alerts on reviews popping up across the Atlantic. Don’t get me wrong. Coming out with a first book is exciting. But there is much about publishing a book that is baffling too—and at times harrowing. Several times I’ve considered removing the Google alert that sends news updates hurtling into my world. Wouldn’t it be nice to search through the Amazon for unusual insects with William and Matty, oblivious of the latest news in book publishing?

But in the end I always accept that knowledge is power. It was Sir Francis Bacon who said it first, in Religious Meditations Of Heresies in 1597, proving that for me all roads lead back to the 16^th century.

I feel confident that if Sir Francis were here right now, he would tell me there is no going back. Information must flow, and I must be ready for it, and never fail to respond when the news comes, which is more often than not through that sudden whirring jolt in a small red phone.

            www.nancybilyeau.com