Colours of Thursday: The Art of Self-Promotion (Part 3)
Sharp-eyed readers of this blog will observe that there has never been an Art of Self-Promotion (Part 1) or an Art of Self-Promotion (Part 2), so how can there be a Part 3?
It’s a good question, sharp-eyed readers.
But listen, take it easy. I was once a guest blogger at “Inside A Dog” and while there I wrote the Art of Self-Promotion (Part 1) and (Part 2).
A Tangle of Gold is out now in Australia! In all honesty, it has just come out! (US and Canada release date is March 29). Years ago, I decided I would have a party to celebrate the launch of this book. It was going to be HUGE! Fireworks, a trapeze artists, clowns on stilts! Charlie and I spent hours planning it. We thought that a colourful theme would make sense. I suggested cupcakes with multi-coloured icing. Charlie was pretty neutral about that idea. His plan was that we should get a lot of cans of coloured hairspray, and he would stand at the entrance to the party, shaking the cans hard and then dyeing everybody’s hair as they arrived. It was a good plan. Charlie also felt strongly that we should hire a tattoo artist, and have this person mingling with the guests, offering everybody colourful tattoos. He had big plans for his own tattoo. In fact, a lot of our party-planning conversations ended in dreamy musings on Charlie’s tattoo.
To celebrate the release of A Tangle of Gold, there is going to be a High Tea at Better Read than Dead in Newtown on Saturday 12 March at 3 pm. I will be in conversation with the brilliant YA author, Justine Larbalestier! Tickets are $15. Book your ticket here!
After Justine emailed to say yes, thanks for asking, she’d love to interview me for this event, I felt very happy. But that night I had a dream about the high tea. Justine sat up the front asking me questions while I wandered around looking for cake. I could tell that Justine was frustrated. She kept trying new questions and I kept glancing over at her and carrying on with my search for cake. Next thing, it was all over and I hadn’t said a word. I felt really disappointed in myself.
On the bus ride home, somebody asked me a question about the route that this bus took, and I suddenly saw an opportunity. I grabbed a microphone and answered the person’s question by telling him all about A Tangle of Gold. I went on and on. The man who had asked the question gave me a complicated smile. Strangers on the bus turned and stared.
The next day I checked with Justine whether she really did want to interview me for this high tea. I outlined my dream and I said I would understand if she now preferred not to do it. But she still seemed keen.
Let’s see what happens at the high tea. So many possibilities.
I am also appearing at the Dymocks YA Bookmeet on Magical Realism, which is at the Dymocks George Street in Sydney, on Saturday 5 March at 2.30 pm.
Kate Evans interviewed me on the Books and Arts Program on Radio National. And I recorded a podcast with the Coop bookshop which is here.
The other day I was at Balmoral Beach with two of my sisters, Liane and Nicola. We were having coffee with an artist named Leigha White. She had asked if she could paint our portrait. When she emailed to ask this question, she told us she likes to paint sisters. She directed us to her website. (It’s here.) The first thing you see on her website is a painting of several nude sisters. Don’t worry, she said, I’m not going to paint you nude.
WHY NOT? I replied. I was so offended.
Leigha White assured us that she would be happy to paint us nude if that’s what we wanted. It’s frightening, the things you can get yourselves and your sisters into when you pretend to be offended.
Anyway, now we were in Bathers at Balmoral having coffee with Leigha White. There were people everywhere. It would have been so inappropriate, for us to be nude. We had made the right decision, wearing clothes.
It was fun. We drank coffee and chatted. Leigha had a camera and tripod and she took photos of us. She asked us to talk among ourselves so she could get a sense of us.
Eventually, we finished our coffee and went outside so Leigha could take some more pictures with the beach behind us.
We remembered that we had planned to make a short video of Liane, Nicola and me talking about the release of A Tangle of Gold. This seemed like a great opportunity to do that. Beautiful day, beautiful Balmoral! Very kindly, Leigha agreed to film us.
Liane held up a copy of A Tangle of Gold and told the camera that it was an amazing book, and then Nicola said how she was looking forward to reading it, and then I thanked them both.
We looked at the short video on the camera. All you could hear was the sound of waves and wind. Also our hair was going wild.
We decided to go back inside Bathers and film it there. But the cafe was humming now! Crowds of people. Every table taken!
Bathers has a cafe on the right and a restaurant on the left. We looked over at the restaurant. It was completely empty. Perfect.
A waiter approached. We explained what we wanted to do. He nodded and smiled and said, I’ll just confirm that that’s okay with the manager.
He hurried upstairs. We stood looking in at the empty restaurant.
The waiter returned with the manager behind him. We all smiled at each other. We explained what we wanted to do.
The manager widened his eyes. ‘Now?’ he exclaimed. He laughed quietly. ‘I mean, if you’d called yesterday!’ We stared at him.
‘That would be quite impossible!’ he said. ‘It’s the lunch hour!’
All of us, including the manager and waiter, looked at the empty restaurant. Here is a picture:
‘Two minutes,’ we said. ‘It will take us two minutes.’
He shook his head very firmly. ‘Imagine,’ he said, lowering his voice, ‘just imagine if you were to disturb one of our guests!’
So we filmed just outside the back doors. Through the glass of these doors, we watched the empty restaurant. We were very agitated, worrying that the manager would catch us there.
Afterwards, it occurred to me that he must have thought we were planning to film an action sequence.
I went back to Balmoral a couple of days later and took this picture. Look, you can see colours of the Kingdom of Cello falling from the sky.
