Writing a book is a bit like pinning a heartfelt love letter to a paramour on your front door and inviting passersby to read the weird and alarming personal and private stuff that percolates in your head. The lead up to publication day can be anxiety provoking in the extreme. I liken it to living out my recurring dream where I’m about to sit my final maths exam (which I know I will fail) and to make matters worse, I turn up to the exam completely naked.  Then comes publication day: a gut-curdling anxiety mixed with an adrenaline high and rounded off with a huge dose of underwhelm (because, well, not much usually happens on publication day itself). But in those weeks and months that follow, after you’ve given yourself a stern talking to about not being such a massive idiot, the fun begins: book launches and events!

I have launched Alfie Bains up and down the East coast of Australia in a way young Alfie would find most environmentally concerning.  From Tassie to Queensland and far too many fuel-burning stops in between, I was lucky enough to meet fabulous readers and writers and bookshop owners. And it turns out, they seem to love my weird little protagonist (apart from that one guy who wrote a really impressive piece about how bad it was on Goodreads and gave me one star. And frankly, after reading his beautifully crafted five-star essay, I kind of wanted to have a glass of wine with him because he sounds like he has a brain as big as Alfie’s and I love meeting clever people).

I also love speaking at libraries and bookshops and the odd writers’ festival. I don’t mind a good Zoom into a book club and can cope with podcasts and video chats if someone is kind enough to invite me to participate (though I find the recorded nature of those a tiny bit more stressful – what if I say something monumentally stupid or offensive? What if I accidentally swear? I did once ask a podcaster to delete something I said which was probably inoffensive, but in the hours after recording it, made my gut churn with worry).

Then, suddenly, you come to the end of the events and the deadline looms for the next book. Worry ramps up about how you will produce another 90,000 words worth reading (what do I have to say that hasn’t been said? What made me think I could even write a book???). But somehow, you get it done. It’s handed in, the new cover is designed, the publication day is set and the book tour is planned.

So, in advance of that, I thought it might be nice to share some of the photos of the Alfie Bains book tour before I forget how fun it actually was, and before I have to suffer the lows, then the highs of putting out a new book all over again. Thank you to my author friends, librarians, podcasters, and book people who helped me launch Alfie.

Enjoy!

Love, Sarah x