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Tag Archives: success

Book launches with benefits

23 Sunday Oct 2011

Posted by louisecusack in Understanding Ourselves as Writers, Writers out in Public

≈ 16 Comments

Tags

book launch, books, emotion, family, friends, literature, memory, significance, success, writers, writing

What makes a book launch memorable?  Well I’ve been to more than I can readily remember, but the ones that stand out in my memory were the ones where the writer included their family and friends in their celebration (because a book launch is as much about WooHoo! as it is about selling books).  I went to a great one last Friday night at Dymocks in Bundaberg.  We were helping launch Sandy Curtis‘s new thriller “Fatal Flaw”, and here’s a pic of romance author Helen Lacey and I holding our copies with Sandy – tiny dynamo she is.

While I was lining up to get my copy signed I had the chance to chat to Sandy’s grandson Alex, who was thrilled to be at the signing table, and Sandy’s own mum (great grandma) was seated nearby enjoying the glow of her daughter’s success.  It reminded me of my very first book launch a decade ago.  My mother is a seamstress and she created a gorgeous black velvet cocktail dress for me because the venue was going to be a recently renovated heritage building in Brisbane city – quite glam.  In the lead-up, while I was stressing about invitations and copies arriving on time, she was nervous about what to wear, never having attended a launch before.  After checking her dress would be suitable and, it being night-time, whether she’d need gloves, I remember her saying in a tentative voice, “So, a hat?”  I’m ashamed to admit that I couldn’t help laughing, or saying, “It’s not mother-of-the-bride, ma!” But she’d never been to a launch before.  How would she know?  To her it was the glamorous culmination of a decade of my hard solitary labour.  For all she knew, there might be paparazzi!  Clearly, she knows better now.

I didn’t recognise it at the time, but my family had been endlessly supportive without ever really having a clue about what I was doing, or how all that coffee consumption in a room with the door shut could possibly end up as a real book in a real bookstore tucked between real writers like Michael Crichton and Clive Cussler.  For them, the launch was their only window into my career, their only chance to show publicly that despite being astonished, they were proud of me.  I’m glad now that I wasn’t so overwhelmed by excitement that I left them out of it.  They were all there on the night, acting as hosts, mingling, making people feel relaxed, sharing embarrassing stories about me.  But then my family and friends have always been the rock that my stability is based on.  When you spend a third of your life inside a world that doesn’t exist, you need to be anchored when you step away from the computer.

Seeing the anchors around Sandy on Friday night reminded me that my own family and friends are still the most important thing in my life, a fact eloquently shared by an Internationally successful author friend who, at the birth of her first child said, “If something happened and I could never write again I’d find solace in my family.  But if something happened to my child, I’d find no comfort in my writing.”  I can only echo those thoughts, and feel unutterably grateful that I have it all: family, friends and career.  But to put that in perspective, when my daughter gave me a scrapbook for Mothers Day the year she moved out (a poignant year for me) I knew I was holding in my hands the most significant and meaningful story I’d ever created.  In the ‘brag’ section of my bookcase where my own published novels sit, it holds pride of place.

Society holds some writers up as being ‘special’, imagining their contribution to literature is more important than the children they’ve raised, the parents they’ve lost or the friend’s they’ve loved.  But as a writer myself, I know for a fact, the people I love will always be more important than the books I create.  I wouldn’t have it any other way.

Having said, that, book launches are one of the few opportunities in our lives where we can celebrate both.  And that’s what makes them so memorable.

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A significant day

28 Wednesday Sep 2011

Posted by louisecusack in Ramble

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

contracts, creativity, faith, never give up, never surrender, passion, publishing, success, writers, writing

Had one of those days yesterday you wait a decade for.  I signed a three book contract with Pan MacMillan’s digital publishing arm Momentum Books.  Early next year they’re re-releasing my first fantasy trilogy “Shadow Through Time” into a worldwide market.  My first eBooks.  My first time as an International author.

Back in 2001 when those novels were first released as print books into the Australian territories, eBooks were a novelty and I had no idea that a decade later the world would be awash with eReaders, and that you could walk into BigW and buy a Kindle.  Of course I’d dreamt of an International readership.  I think most authors do.  But the print books hadn’t sold overseas, and after a while they went out of print.

Am I allowed to give myself credit for never giving up on them?  For loving those characters and knowing that readers who’d never met them would love them too?  I’m sure you’ll give me permission for that.  In a way this deal is like being a mother and watching your child fulfil their potential, because it’s painful for a writer (or a mother) to give up on people they’ve created, and it usually only happens when it hurts too much to hang on.  Here I can thank my mother for my perseverance.  From a young age I saw her dealing with our out-there family and I realised she simply would not allow herself to give up on a child, no matter how badly they might behave, how they might disappoint her or not live up to her expectations.  I grew up with the example that you love them still, dammit!  And you hope.

So I loved my characters.  And I hoped.  And I dreamed.  I kept dog-eared printouts of fan emails, and when I felt low I’d read them and think, “These guys loved my characters.  It’s not fair to give up on them.”  I shared my despairs and my moments of inspiration and elation with my writing buddies while I wrote more books and tried to get them published, and I weathered the well meaning inquiries of family and friends wondering “Whatever happened to those books?  And when are new ones coming out?”

Well now I can answer that question.  The trilogy that was so well received in Australia is about to step onto the world stage and within six months I’ll be getting fan emails from readers in countries I’ve never even been to.  Exciting doesn’t begin to describe, and the books I’ve written in between are now lined up ready to slot into various publishing markets.  In a weird way it’s like water behind a dam wall.  It just takes one breach to let everything behind it flow out.

So yesterday was significant for me.  Not just because I signed a contract for the first time in a decade, but because it taught me probably the most valuable lesson in my life so far: faith is rewarded.

Just that.

Never give up.

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Welcome Writers!

I'm Louise Cusack, an Australian author of fantasy and romance published by Harper Collins, Simon and Schuster, and Pan Macmillan. I also mentor and tutor other writers like yourself. Please avail yourself of the resources on this website, and happy writing!

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