Out To Launch

Last Thursday, April 23rd was the official book launch for Fatted Calf Blues at the Confederation Centre Library in Charlottetown.  I'm pleased to report that it went reasonably well.  About 20 people showed up, a respectable showing.  I was grateful to see some writers whom I have come to know. Considering that I live so far from Charlottetown and feel relatively disconnected from the literary scene there, I very much appreciated the show of support.  

After being introduced, I was surprised to find how nervous I felt.  The strategy was to talk about the book, the disparate nature of the stories and what connects them as a collection, how living on PEI has influenced my writing, where the stories come from and using my own personal experience as a springboard into fiction -- all the while reading excerpts from the stories to prove my point.  It was not as successful as I had hoped it would be.  I wrote a small speech, which I had on the podium in front of me with salient parts highlighted.  As much as I tried to speak "off the cuff" I kept finding myself with head craned over the podium, constantly referring to my notes so as not to lose the thread of theme.  In short, it felt like a disaster, although people were very nice about it.  More successful, I think (and everyone's compliments confirmed this) was the actual reading of the excerpts.  I like reading in public and I believed this showed in my delivery. I chose to read excerpts because I was afraid of boring the audience with a whole story.  

I now realized my mistake lay in not playing to my strengths and misjudging my approach.  Rather than talking about influences, themes, etc. and reading excerpts to show examples,  I should have chosen a story, read it in whole and then talked about influences, themes, etc.  A rookie mistake,and one I hope to rectify in the upcoming launches and appearances I will in Montreal, Ottawa, Hamilton and Toronto.