The first few months after releasing a book–especially a first one, I would think–are a strange period. The elation dissipates, but so too does the anxiety. All the running around that comes with launch preparations and sending out review copies (and incessantly googling yourself afterward) and well-timed reading events catches up to you. For a time, you just sleep a lot. If it’s summer, you go to the beach. You travel. You watch baseball and you play baseball (or at least, if you’re me, you do). You start to get worked up about not writing much new material; you get really worked up when you reread the new material you do write and remember that the book you’ve just put into the world also once looked as bad as this mess of a new draft. You try really hard not to, but if you’re moving into fall you start thinking about awards season, and how to show absolutely no emotion when your lottery ticket predictably doesn’t come in. You start to wonder if maybe your little moment is over, too; you did some events, you got some press, you sold some books, and now it’s on to the new publishing season and the new books by other people. You accept that you’ll get back to that wonderful just-released-your-first-book glow one day…
And then some really good things happen:
- You take over your university alumni association’s Twitter feed;
- Your alma mater shouts you out in their magazine, too;
- You finally do that super-fun interview with a great writer friend, the interview you both agreed to save until after the initial “buzz” had died down;
- A writer friend invites to you for a weekend in Montreal, to join him on-stage–at Matrix‘s Lit Pop Reading Series, no less;
- You meet an eager literary thinker like Charles Gonsalves and he asks you some awesome, tough, wide-ranging questions;
- You bring new material to your workshop for the first time in months;
- You get to know more writers and read their excellent work;
- You perform in a play of sorts, for the first time in 10 years;
- You meet up with your bigger than ever group of comrades and draw up the biggest year yet for the reading series you help run;
- You get another book review;
- You realize your next reading event, the one that seemed so far off when you booked it, is just around the corner!
I’m charged up for the fall, friends. And I’m writing again: improving Nobody Looks That Young Here in short bursts and drafting that next book, too. I hope to have more events booked soon, and maybe a couple more bookstore visits just in time for the holidays.
Thanks for reading!
Daniel Perry 