Publicity

It has been a good month.  People have just been unendingly wonderful.  I am delighted.  Nell is delighted.  Now Nell is out there, I have a confession.  The putting forward aspect does not come naturally.  Publicity is just not my strong suit.  I wrote and erased and wrote and erased the Facebook post announcing my New York reading at least seventeen times.  And then, after erasing for the seventeenth time, I went and had hot chocolate instead and did not post it at all as the reading started twenty minutes later.

Publicity does not come easily to me but I know it is essential.  It is the difference between Nell getting lost standing up in the "P" section (which is always on the bottom shelf--I checked) at Barnes and Noble or being on the lovely, spacious, visible front table where she can sparkle and flirt and then lie flat, stretch out  and have a snooze.

I have known since I signed my publishing contract that the publicity part would be tough.  I could not see how to do it?  And then, wonderful friends stepped in to help!  They make it easier, happier, better, simpler, shinier, smoother, and much funner.  I love the word 'funner'.  Nell has a wonderful huge extended family now and she is thrilled!  How did everyone help?

Sharon Kay Penman has been unimaginably kind and put up a wonderful interview with Nell and me.  One of my best friends from high school gave me Sharon's The Sunne in Splendour on a Wednesday afternoon and I fell in love with historical fiction.  Splat, right there in the tenth grade.

And Lisa at Bibliophiliac posted a wonderful review and also invited Nell and me for an interview!  Her questions were insightful and rich and it was such fun!

Look what Stella did at her marvellous website Ex Libris!  Not only did Stella write a gorgeous post about Nell and the plum bean, but she also went and researched Java Kai (my favorite coffee shop in Hawaii) and included the Java Kai logo in her post.  I was so touched.  And homesick!  Stella is reading the book now and planning an interview for later in the month.  She is such an incisive, avid reader and beautiful writer and I am delighted!

Rick at Goodreads has started an Exit the Actress thread in his amazing, enormous, wonderful book group.  He has become a Nell champion and it makes me so happy.  And, he and nineteen other generous, gracious people went on Goodreads and Amazon and wrote fantastic reviews!  The reviews help so much and I read each one out loud to my poor parents.

June, from Writing is a Blessing came to the reading and asked terrific questions!  Friends are helping everywhere.  It is like a fantastic team effort.  My closest friend from high school, a wonderful writer, (who is the one who gave me The Sunne in Splendour) knew I was terrified in my reading and sat right in my eye line and peppered me with wonderful, perfect questions at my reading; taking away all my knee knocking nerves.

Friends have popped by the Exit the Actress page on Facebook and left lovely notes...  My family tell  everyone they meet about Nell.  Noah cheers her on and has given her to his friends.  My friend Jack ordered one for him and one for his mom.  It has been a good month.

This Week

I have been writing plum beans in my head all week.  It has been a marvellous, magical, swirled with honey week.  I did my first reading in Washington DC.  My parents were there.  My sister's best friend since they were two was there.  My sister's best friend since they were two's mom was there.  The preschool teacher who taught them when they were two was there.  My favorite history teacher from high school was there.  And people I did not know were there!

I was nervous.  My knees knocked.  My heart bumped.  The room tilted and off we went.  People asked wonderful questions.  Smart, thoughtful, insightful questions.  My mother cried and tried to pretend it was hay fever in February.  My brother and sister's preschool teacher took photos.  There were posters!  In the window; in the store!  We got to keep two of them and Barnes and Noble asked me to sign the rest for them.  "Really?"  I asked.  I have to stop doing that.

That is the reflection of my mom taking the photo...

Noah was first in line!

And then it was off to New York.  We walked in the door of Borders at 57th and Park and saw:

Right inside the door!

And my knees knocked and my heart bumped and the room tilted and off we went.  The two lovely men who organized the event came and found me and showed me how the microphone worked and were so utterly lovely.   They had read it, as had the store manager and they all said wonderful things.  I was so touched that in a building full of books they had read mine.

And people came.  Lots of people.  Old friends, blog friends, new friends, writer friends, sixth grade friends, friends of friends, Vday friends, and people I had never met before.  My brother and his fiancee sat in the second row and my mom and my sister sat in the first.  I took my glasses off so everyone was fuzzy.  I read and everyone asked questions and it was fun.  I had expected terror and got fun instead.  How wonderful.

Signing books!

And then, one of my favorite authors, Sharon Kay Penman, put up the kind, generous, thoughtful interview she did with me... more about that tomorrow...

TODAY!

Dear Nell,

You're off to great places.

Today is your day,

Your mountain is waiting,

So get on you're way!

Love,

Dr. Seuss

Today!  Today!  Today!  

Exit the Actress is in bookstores TODAY!

Blog Friends

I really didn't see it coming.  I had no idea when I started down the plum bean path I would find marvellous, sweet, splendid, fun, ingenious and wondrously supportive blog friends.  No body told me.  You know the friends; the witty, brilliant, honest, incisive, funny friends?  The ones who show up, encourage, root, support, communicate, chat, read, write and inspire?  You know who you are and you are wonderful.  Look at what sweet Kate at Kate's Library just did...

And look at what lovely, lovely Whitney from the marvellous She is too Fond of Books did...  

The Audio Book...

The audio book!  I love the art deco feel of the lettering.  Such a great Nell.  Such a great nose.  She is far more imperious and regal and statuesque than the Nell I wrote but she is fabulous just the same.  And this is the cassette version.  Did not know they still made cassette versions...

Eight more days...

A Website!

It is up!  Priyaparmar.com.  Thank yous.  Huge thank yous are in order.  Thank you to Matt and Joseph and Naomi and Noah.  For the design and construction and video and photos and images and buttons that change color and the greens and the reds and the pinks and the greys and the enormous love, care, patience and work.  Thank you.  

My Name

It is not a terribly uncommon name.  That was a double negative, awful.  It is not even an impossible name to pronounce.  And another double negative.  I apologize--they seem to be getting away from me.  It is not even easy to find me on Facebook.  Through some mystical mechanism, it is nearly impossible to find me on Facebook.  There are pages of Priya Parmars and I am on about the thirty-seventh page.

It is pronounced exactly like it is written.  Well maybe not, the 'y' is a bit tricky and can outfox you but when people meet me they do not know about the 'y' yet.  Now, it sounds like I am talking in code.  I am not.  Still, P-R-I-Y-A--not difficult, right?  But, I know that people have trouble with it and so rather than risk hideous awkwardness, I repeat it to give them a second shot at it, and reassure them that it is a hard name, and forgive anyone who forgets it instantly, and and and...

Still, I get people being occasionally, horribly rude.  I am used to the painful pause when people forget it, but it is an altogether different beast from the puzzled pause when they try to work it out.  This happened today when the man concluded the painful pause with "What are you?"  Ummm.  How do I answer that?

What he meant was, 'what sort of name is that?'.  This man was from Michigan, he was standing in a Waterstone's book store in Gower St.  I understood the nature of the question and I am admittedly a strange half Indian, been living in Hawaii, went to university in the UK, living in the middle of London with blonde hair mix.

I would be totally prepared to overlook the badly worded question if he tone had not been so meanish.  Why mean?  We were standing in a bookstore.  Who gets personal, rude and mean in a book store?  A lovely book store at that, one of my favourites.  The Waterstone's in Gower St. is marvellous.  It has a delicious early twentieth century collection (I have been romping through Forster, Bowen and West) and has about the best poetry collection in London.  Auden, Yeats, Akhmatova, Pasternak, Herbert, Milosz, Cavafy, Walcott?  Humph, one shouldn't get mean in front of Walcott.

Onto better news:

Nell is up for a group read on Goodreads!

The Trapeze Swinger

Have you heard that song?  It is nine minutes of brutal, winding, haunting song.  I love things that fully inhabit themselves.  That is when writing, any writing, feels best.  Not easy to do.  It requires risk and courage and very good balance for the cliffs are steep out there.  But the rewards?  The rewards are huge.

I have been thinking about boldness.  It is not easy to write.  Boldness cannot fling itself onto the page, uncaring of the response.  That would not ring true.  Boldness must be conscious of the dangers and calculate how far the fall and then charge the field.  Without armour, without cavalry, without hope of rescue.

Akhmatova begins her poem "There will be thunder then.  Remember me."  Bold, dangerous.

Du Maurier begins her great novel with "Last night I dreamt I went to Manderly again."  Again?  But this is the first sentence.  She does it without a net.

Dr. Seuss fearlessly writes for children:

"I am the Lorax!  I speak for the trees,
Which you seem to be chopping as fast as you please;
But I also speak for the brown Barbaloots,
Who frolicked and played in their barbaloot suits,
Happily eating Truffula fruits."  Of course.  A Lorax.  I know a Lorax.

That is when we admire the writing.  It cannot be faked.  We would smell artifice immediately.  Every wonder of the literary canon faced a terrifying field.  But even when they fall, an often they do, we admire the attempt.

I love the options my spell check gave me for 'Barbaloots"...



  

Letters and News

They are marvellous.  Personal and public and a thing meant to be shared.  You are a different you in a letter.  Quixotic and sharp edged, loving and light; letters froth with vigour.  To write is an active verb.  It is wonderful to be writing a book largely in letters.  I get to take up the personality of the character, live his or her day in my head and then write a letter that has nothing and everything to do with that day.  

They are of a moment: singular, finite, fleeting.  As soon as you seal the envelope you are in a different moment.  You would write a different letter if you had it to do again.  It is that strange alchemy of mind, heart, pen and paper.  You cannot step into the same river twice.

I have been reading letters recently.  The love lit letters of Robert and Elizabeth Barrett Browning, the gossipy letters of Truman Capote, the stormy letters of F. Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald, the chatty, catty letters of Somerset Maugham, the achingly unfinished letters of John Keats and Fanny Brawne.  They all tell small daily stories within larger tangled, messy lives.  They are not neat, tidy stories with clean, rounded arcs.  Pathos does not lead to resolution.  Eros is often a capricious little beastie.  Quite often, nothing is learned and mistakes are remade.  I love that.  I loved the human, flawed aspect to them.  They fascinate.  

Pages written: 6

Also, I was sent the marketing plan today....  It is really happening.

I do not usually go back and tamper with posts, actually that is wrong, quite often I do and I apologize, but I had to mention what lovely June at Writing is a Blessing wrote about Nell yesterday.  Go and see...

London

Back.  Done with flying, airports, passports, travel size, lost socks, long lines, immigration, contraband liquids, seat belt signs, x ray machines, static electricity, peanuts and things that go beep.

It is wonderful to know I am going to write, go to ballet, go to the library, go to dinner with friends, write, go to sleep and then wake up and do it again tomorrow.

Pages written this week: 0

Pages to write: 20

But on the upside, I did finally finish my albatross of an Author Portal Questionnaire for Simon and Schuster.  Surely I will get better at this...