Last week was what I’ve been building up towards for a long time: publication week for Nevertell. Which involved much excitement! Much celebration! And, because I’m no good at being centre of attention, much feeling like I was going to be sick! Allll the time. But thankfully nausea was only a small part of the overall experience, and something unexpected happened that worked better than a tub of Andrews. This:
Friends and family started to send me… pictures. Of them with the book. Of the book in the shops. Of the book at their houses having just been bought from the shops. Old school friends got in touch to reminisce and say how proud they are. Neighbours stopped in the street to congratulate me. Tales of excited bookshop assistants and getting Nevertell displays moved from behind the door to centre stage in the window were shared.
I even got a photo of a young girl I don’t know, whose mum said her daughter had read Nevertell and couldn’t stop talking about the book. And now wants to become an author. And of schoolkids, their faces buried in my book.
I didn’t anticipate this turn of events, but it’s been one of the best things about the whole experience. If not the best. The excitement, happiness and pride of others - and their overwhelming support - has been so genuine and so palpable as to make this past week not just about me, or even about Nevertell, but about all of us.
It’s felt like a communal celebration. Or a celebration of a community. I don’t think I can describe it better than that? But that’s something much more valuable than one person’s achievement, to my mind (a book, of course, is as much about all the people who made it happen as it is about the person who wrote it, after all). This has been something I’ll never forget, for a reason I never expected or knew that I wanted.
But I did.
