While I was in Thailand I got an email from Scorpio Book Store here in Christchurch to come and pick up one of the books I’d left for them to sell on consignment. They had sold the other copy so I was happy with a 50% hit rate for a book with no publicity and no reviews. You have no idea how difficult it is to promote a book but I shall leave that particular moan for another day. Yesterday I was tying up loose ends. One “end” had been flapping in the wind for a while and that was my desire to attend a NZ Society of Authors lunchtime meeting which has always been on one of my work days. I read the email that gave location and time and suggested it was “tomorrow” ie. yesterday, but what I’d failed to notice was that I was a day late reading the email so that yesterday, reading the word tomorrow meant it was the day before. Got it? Thankfully the meeting was at the Beckenham Library where they have a lovely cafe and lots of free magazines to look through, then with an hour up my sleeve I went into the city. I feel I’m now slowly creeping back to a pre-earthquake knowledge of the much altered inner city and I went directly to Scorpio’s and picked up the book. I do only have a few copies left but I decided that I’d donate this one to a reader and left it on the table at the BNZ Quad with a little note inside saying it was a free book. I figured if Scorpio had had it > 12 months and had been unable to sell it, that an author giving her book away outside their door was unlikely to cause them to recoil in horror. After that (and with a few backward glances to see if anyone picked it up), I went to Tauranga (our main library in Cathedral Square), and pulled the only copy of Joe Donovan out of the book shelf and set it on the shelf with the most exposure. I know they have two copies and the fact that someone was actually reading one of them was thrilling but I want multiple fans please! If you use the library, can you pull it out and put it in someone’s line of sight? Thanks!! My last loose end was finally collecting my certificate for the Brockenhurst Scholarship I got last year. That was the one they wanted to give me at a fancy ceremony where they ordered the savouries, invited the guests and the reporters and forgot to invite me! Since then I’ve asked multiple times if I can just call in somewhere and pick it up as my office wall needs me to know I’m not a total failure, and finally, I got it yesterday. And since we’re talking about ends, I’ve also fixed the holes in the lace shawl I gave Chloe when she was a baby. Her parents said their toes got stuck in the lace!! I’m reconsidering giving it back. If I do, it will come with instructions.”Before you even think about using this beautiful piece of delicate knitting to cover your body, Turn up the air con!” I can hear jaws dropping so let me reassure you. What I’m really going to do, is make them a rug of their own. No lace. When I’ve finished writing my novel.
Robyn Anderson 