People-ing
A Book Launch for an Introverted Writer
The idea of a book launch has terrified me for months.
Two days before launch, I dreamed that all my bottom teeth fell out and I had to do the conversation in front of an audience without my teeth.
One day before launch, I had to take a Xanax to get the pain in my chest to go away. I went grocery shopping because it felt like a happy place, like a way for my hands to be busy. I cooked all day. I made home-made dog food (chicken livers, pork sausage, ground beef and frozen veg cooked with pig skin + trotters), pork eggs rolls, and stuffed poblano chiles with chorizo and cheese, some pickled onions and a little crema on top.
The book launches at #58,343-ish on Amazon. This seems like it might be bad, right? But instead, it feels like relief. All the pressure… poof.
I used to ghostwrite books. At one point, I was a dramaturg on Broadway. I wrote speeches for CEO’s. I’ve written three books that never saw the light of day and a few I self-published. I was a blogger, when blogging was a thing, in the aughts, writing three essays a week for a medium-sized but devoted bunch of readers. I am proud that some of my readers have been reading my work, good and really really bad, for over a decade. I have always been some kind of writer, but emotionally, I couldn’t handle the public-facing-ness of being an author of my own book. I knew it even when I wanted it to be completely different.
Truth is, like a lot of writers, I want to write and write and write and tussle with manuscripts and the throes of creating, and the deep deep fictions I wallow in inside my head, but I don’t actually want to appear on a TV morning show and talk about it. I don’t want to be ON, capital letters, big font, big energy. I’m not a good performer. I’m not one of those people who can blunder something on stage and then improvise, say something clever and have the blunder become the thing that makes the whole night even more wonderful. I don’t have that. I wish I had that.
While some authors are hoping that Terry Gross has them on Fresh Air, I think facing down Terry Gross in a zoom call might require me to be hopped up on more Xanax and have a hundred index cards in front of me reminding me of what I actually think.
This probably is because of something that happened to me in 7th grade.
When I was in Mr. White’s English class he was talking to us about some ambush interview that Mike Wallace did on 60 Minutes. A car mechanic was scamming people and Mike called him on it with video evidence and the mechanic stuttered and blubbered like an idiot. We all watched 60 Minutes back then because it was on after Wild Kingdom and because there were only three channels back then and a hanger with tin foil for an antennae on top of the set. Mr. White liked to prop his right foot on the base of his teaching pedestal and he used to lean on it and kind of rock the whole lectern back and forth while talking, and so he was doing this rocking thing when he told us that if 60 Minutes ever called us to do and interview we should “never ever do it.”
He was dead serious. I have been scared to do press ever since. What if Terry Gross pulls a Mike Wallace and I blubber? It could happen.
I am, in many ways, still that introverted, stumbling writer that didn’t feel like she could front a book. Solid on the page, not so much in the moment. I was panicked about that harried launch that people talk about, where people use phrases like “non-stop zooms,” “frantic multi-city book tours” and engage in energy draining but boisterous criticism and op-eds, and then six weeks later they fall into bed where rest meets frazzled exhaustion.
All the people-ing.
I can’t do that. First, because my special needs kids need order and calm and ritual and routine and their mother has to be present and not a complete mess, there for them as much as I can be. My husband needs that, too. It’s part of our unofficial, unspoken family pact that one of us cannot go off half-cocked on some adventure and leave the other to fend for children feeling the effects of that absence, unless it is necessary and intregral.
Of course we leave room for our passions and things that are important to us for economic and spiritual survival, but we, The Fosters, function as a group. What impacts one of us, impacts us all.
And I need the calm. Menopause has impacted my brain - I am more loose. More thoughtful and open, less guarded, more elastic. Less likely to suffer fools. More spacey. Forgetful. More deaf. My brain can just stop working for a few seconds and then start again. I am more focused on family, pleasure, sex and righting things that are wrong. I am about relationships now, small loose dinners, close conversations. My friend Preeti texted me on launch day, through out the day, telling me how much I meant to her and my people as a way to remind me about what’s important. My friend, Yukino made dan dan noodles because I wrote about them in my book. My friend and reader, Judy, who I haven’t met in person yet, sent me flowers, a jubilant, visual reminder that what we do and say matters. My brother, Ted, flew in from the east coast to support me and make fun of how dirty my car was. Like everyday he made fun of me. Lucy and Edie’s best friend, Nakamae, from NYC pre-K came with her mom. Old friend reunion. My friend, Natasha didn’t have babysitting so she brought her baby to my launch, so she could be there. I can’t tell you how lovely it is to hear a baby babbling in the audience, it’s the best.
Johnnie, who I wrote about in chapter 3 wanted so much to come to the launch. Johnnie had been deprived of food and kept in her mother’s closet as a child. Her story helped me understand the residual impact of my son’s early hunger. We had it planned out. She is comfortable with Lucy, so Lucy was going to pick her up and she was going to sit with David and the kids at the launch, and get some love herself from the audience. But it was too much. In the end, after prepping for this for a year, the anxiety of people-ing was too much for her and she stayed home where she felt most comfortable. I carried her in my head and heart all night.
Stretch yourself when you can, but when you can’t, give yourself grace.
My launch has not been exhausting. It has been kind. I am getting sleep. I do not have to take Xanax anymore. LOL. Something about appearing so high on the ranking initially, pushed me out of worrying about it. I have gotten so many kind notes and reviews, and only one piece of hate mail where someone wanted bad things to happen to me. LOL. I love IG book influencers, especially the ones with less than 200 followers, and librarians, GoodReads readers and commenters, book club members, and folks who want to dive into the murky depths of a complicated issue with me. You all make promoting books easier on the introverted. You focus us on the work, not the exposure. Thank you! I’ve been having conversations about poverty and mental illness and vulnerable communities and how we can support them. I want our cities to be better. I want Las Vegas to be better.
I want people to read the stories of the people I wrote about.
Because they matter. These people matter. That’s the reason.
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ENDNOTES:
Stretch yourself when you can, but when you can’t, give yourself grace.
Las Vegas Book Festival
(Saturday, October 21, Historic 5th Street School, downtown)
I will be speaking at the Las Vegas Book Festival this weekend (with the amazing Scott Dickensheets who was my first editor on the Desert Companion version of The Meth Lunches, so lots of book-ending with an old friend). If you are there, come talk to us. I will be in people-ing mode. I will try not to make an ass of myself. Scott will be more subdued than Mike Wallace. I will be at these panels:
Hunger + Humanity at 10:30am talking about hunger in our communities.
Balancing Writing, A Workshop Panel at 3:30pm exploring how to get your writing done.
You can order my book here.
I’m reading now: Ahmed Naji’s Rotten Evidence after seeing him read two nights ago. It’s about his time in an Egyptian prison after being jailed for a book he wrote.
The news is a devastation. Sending love, and the hope for peace, to all Jewish and Palestinian families caught in the war machine.
Thank you, as always, for reading. xo
Hooray for kind launches! I am one of those people who has been reading you since you were a blogger and was delighted when your book arrived in the mail today. Very much looking forward to reading.
I loved this book so so much.