A Different Kind of Release Day, Hold the Release
If you get two but slightly different versions of this newsletter, I apologize. The original one said "still sending" after over 24 hours, so I'm giving this a go again and hope whatever glitched has unglitched.
As I began writing this on Monday evening, I was fresh off a good cry. After several days of being in a pretty good mood (all things considered) and a few weeks of feeling detached from the very idea that I have a new book out smack in the middle of pandemic ti it all hit me at once:
My eighth book is coming out today, but
I haven't yet seen the finished copies (they came on release day afternoon - about a month later than they normally would - and are sitting on the decontamination zone of our entryway still).
All my events are canceled! Meaning -
It's my first book ever that didn't involve a celebratory launch event at The King's English here in SLC or anywhere else, where I get to speak to a roomful of writer and nonwriter friends and strangers, and then proceed to a local restaurant that's a favorite post-event spot - not because of the food, but because they will do separate checks for a large group and they're open late.
None of that is happening, and while certainly those events can always have a little bit of an anticlimactic shadow side to them, I am sure feeling the emotional loss of that particular kind of celebration. Maybe particularly for this book, which involved a number of firsts for me:
My first time writing a male narrator/story, my first time developing a book from idea to finished product with this editor, and my first time writing about a big extended family--something I've long wanted to do.
Cousins! Aunts! Uncles! Grandparents! Great Aunts! Multiple siblings! All in a big world, up and and down the state of California and including a family farm with lots of history and a lot going on among the various Baker family members.
Or as a starred review in BCCB put it: "Zarr adroitly crafts and dismantles the Baker family at the same time," and, according to Publishers Weekly, "A moving slice of realism, this book shows how a family crisis impacts many aspects of one boy’s life.” You could also see it as Joy Preble of Brazos Bookstore does: "Sara Zarr has written another intimate portrait of a family falling apart from secrets, of a teen searching for identity and stability, of the courage it takes to move forward when you discover that the people you love are flawed and imperfect and not always there for you."
I try, I try.
A couple reviewers thought Kyle's relationship with his cousin, Emily, is a little "weird," but I like to think of it as "the codependent projections onto safe people that happen when all your support systems have fallen apart."
I wrote more about the what and the why of this book here, for School Library Journal. The gist of which is built around the Iris Murdoch quote, "Love is the difficult realization that something other than oneself is real." A quote that I think could also be used to define "coming of age."
By now you're surely wondering how you can get your hands on this incredible masterpiece. All the usual ways! I encourage you and all of us to especially support independent booksellers right now. You can:
Get in touch with your local indie and find out the best way to order and support! Many are doing free or cheap shipping or curbside pickup right now.
Visit your local indie's web site to learn how to get an ebook through their storefront through Kobo or the My Must Reads app.
Check out Bookshop.org - I've made it super easy for you to find all of my books (as well as books I recommend and books featured on my podcast), buy them directly from my lists, and benefit me and indie stores at the same time. Right here.
Are you an Audible fan? Get acquainted with Libro.fm. Great app with the same subscription options as Audible or, if you'd rather, a way to buy audiobooks one at a time. The Goodbye from Nowhere audio features the beloved Michael Crouch reading. You can connect your Libro account to whatever indie bookseller you want to support.
Get it from the library! Most libraries are closed now, but if you haven't yet discovered the Libby app, discover it now. It is literally what's keeping me in ebooks and audiobooks throughout These Times.
Leave a review at Amazon, Goodreads, B&N, etc. IF YOU LIKED IT. If for you it was a 3-star book, then just carry on without reviewing, or lie and then silently fume - my algorithms thank you! 😅
Since my newsletter didn't send yesterday morning as it was supposed to, I can now report how release day felt and tell you: it was a MIX. A real mix. I felt the love, I felt the support. I also felt alone and sad. I cried, I laughed, I went live on IG with a friend, and I tweeted my butt off until I was so sick of myself that I imagined deactivating my account and never tweeting again.
In the absolute best of times, book release days are strange. Just about any author will tell you. From the outside, a thing that looks "fun" can feel extremely conflicted, sometimes directly in proportion to how long and hard you worked on the book. Do the hundreds of hours and all the time amount to a week spent competing for eyeballs and clicks online alongside news that feels so much more important and immediate? Will readers find the book? Do they care? Do you care?
And we carry on. And find the ways to care and the people who help us remember. In the new episode of This Creative Life that went out yesterday, I talked to my friend Katie Cotugno about how fiction lets us stop time, and go into and under moments that tend to brush past us in day to day life, leaving a mark we haven't understood. That still interests me, still matters to me, and helps me care.
Thank you for reading, sharing where you can, and for everything you're doing to help your household and community get through this strange time.