Well, it’s done, sans author having to break into Singin’ in the Rain.
Creepy & Maud was officially launched by Norman Jorgensen on September 27th 2012 at Kulcha Arts in Fremantle. It was a great night, beautifully MC-ed by Cate Sutherland from Fremantle Press and amazingly...attended by people other than my immediate family!
Kulcha has to be one of my favourite venues for absolutely anything (I momentarily considered combining my launch with their free Salsa class but thought my mother might break a hip and subsequently make the evening all about her...). The staff are friendly and organized and well informed about obscenity laws (“Author: Am I in breach of any laws if one of the songs on my playlist for the signing session has the word “Fuck” in it? Sound Technician: Fuck no!”). I also love the colour of their walls. It’s a happy space.
It was an occasion to genuinely thank everyone responsible for getting Creepy & Maud onto the shelves: Cate Sutherland, Amanda Curtin, Claire Miller, Tracey Gibbs and peripherally (though no less importantly) Joscelyn Leatt-Hayter and Chenelle Davies. Clive Klicker from Dymocks Fremantle set up against one of Kulcha’s bright red walls and sold on the night (as soon as I moved away and stopped stroking the display...) and the signing table, to my surprise, was festooned with liliums, irises, and roses from my friend Tom Jacobson who used the inconvenience of intercontinental travel as an excuse not to attend. Also unexpectedly in attendance was a group from Perth YA Fans Unite. This is a fairly young organization doing great things for this genre so we need to get behind them.
Norman Jorgensen was inimitable, demonstrating his usual caustic wit with his suspicion that Maud might, just might, be loosely based on Zelda Fitzgerald. (Makes me wish I had have set Maud alight at some stage during the narrative). He also let me in on a little piece of successful, award-winning writer’s lore: “Don’t sign your books the way you sign your cheques”. Oh dear. Why didn’t I think of that? The first few books I signed have completely different signatures because that’s where I practiced, and perfected, my author signature. Sorry about that people.
It was the end of a crazy couple of weeks. There were photo shoots, interviews on 6EBA 95.3FM, Radio Fremantle (Dita Jevons and I almost fell off our chairs laughing), Goolarri Radio, and RTR FM 92.1 as well as an interview with Helen Crompton from The West Australian. I’ve had so much time off from my day job I’m sure they are beginning to question my commitment to the construction industry... (And the next few months are looking to be just as busy).
So Creepy & Maud is on the shelves now, on Amazon, downloadable, the whole kit and caboodle. Don’t waste valuable purchasing time reading this! – (I’ve heard it’s a good read...)
