publicity -

The debut release storm

by Irma
27 February 202120 May 2024
2 Comments

I have started trying to write this post so many times but pre-publicity for The Breaking has me feeling like I’m in the middle of a storm. I had the best of intentions. Over the Christmas holiday period I knew I would have a couple of manuscripts to edit but that there would be plenty of time to write a bunch of guest blog posts and Q&A interviews. My plan was to get ahead on everything so that come release day I wouldn’t be overwhelmed.

Read More »The debut release storm

There was one small problem that I hadn’t accounted for. Christmas slow mode. It happens every year, and yet every year I forget about it. My family came up from Melbourne (extra wonderful after all their months in lockdown) and I stopped working. I never stop working. One of the dangers of working freelance is that evenings and weekends are just extra work days, so I never really stop. And then when I do, it’s like someone switched my motor off. I didn’t want to go near my email, or even think about anything other than just being with friends and family and enjoying the summer. Then I took the kids north for a week (bliss), and then it was still school holidays. It took me a long while to get back into gear. And needless to say, instead of being ahead, I was then behind.

The story behind the story

by Irma
13 June 20133 July 2017

Riding the publicity trail for a book can be surreal and lovely or exhausting and tedious. Sometimes it’s all of those things at once. It’s a strange experience to talk endlessly about the story behind your book, but fascinating to hear readers’ perceptions of the work. Many reviewers, for instance, have noted that Megumi and the Bear is about never giving up hope. They’re absolutely right, and yet this wasn’t consciously in my mind as I wrote it.

I’ve also realised that in recounting Megumi’s origins I’ve inadvertently given some readers a false impression. I’ve been talking about how this picture book is unusual because the illustrations came first. Craig Phillips emailed me a handful of drawings of a little girl and a bear playing in the snow, inspired by a trip to Japan, and I was in turn inspired to write the story that became Megumi and the Bear. However, it wasn’t until Alex Sloan interviewed me on ABC that I realised people have assumed that the story was all mapped out in pictures and I simply added the words. Not so. The illustrations were only the starting point, or the spring board, for the story. None of those original illustrations are in the finished book, though a couple of pages are variations on them. (Here’s an original so you can see why I fell madly in love with these two. Though you’ll notice how different the bear looks.)

Sometimes in the publicity whirlwind it’s easy to lose the sheer pleasure of finally seeing your precious book getting out and about. As Craig Phillips wrote to me: ‘We should just be enjoying the fact that we have a book out. How many people have their own children’s book out on the stands?? Not many!’ A very good reminder.