L,D&D Launched
The new edition of Life, Death and Detention has been launched!
Many thanks to all the people who showed up to help celebrate the release of my YA short story collection, Life, Death and Detention on 13 August. And a HUGE thank you to Mentone Grammar School, and particularly the Gregory Fish Library staff, for hosting the launch. It was the ideal location — firstly because we were surrounded by books; and secondly, because Mentone Grammar is my old school and my time there was the inspiration behind many of the stories in the collection.
They say that an author should always aim to get someone of greater fame than himself to launch his book. So far, I’ve been extremely lucky. Gamers’ Quest was launched by Carole Wilkinson, author of the Dragonkeeper books. Gamers’ Challenge was launched by Michael Pryor, author of The Laws of Magic. And now…
I feel rather honoured to have had Alison Goodman, author of Eon, Eona and Singing the Dogstar Blues, launch Life, Death and Detention. She said lots of lovely things about it, and entertained the audience with her eloquent and amusing speech. Thank you, Alison — much appreciated. 🙂 The launch speeches were captured on video, but I haven’t had the chance to edit them together yet. I’ll try to get around to that soon… and then post them here.
Now that the book has been released, I get to sit back and relax… NOT! It’s time to let people know that it exists and hope that they go out any buy it. I desperately want to publish another book of short stories… but that’s not gonna happen unless this one sells. So, if you’d like to buy a copy, drop into your local bookstore (get them to order it in if they don’t currently stock it) or check it out online in Australia at Boomerang Books, or at Amazon. If you prefer eBooks to traditional dead-tree books, you can get it in numerous different formats through Smashwords.
If you’d like to get an autographed copy, I’ll be signing copies at Dymocks in the Knox City Shopping Centre (Melbourne) during the school holidays on Thursday 27 September 2012, 2:00pm-3:00pm.
I’ll also be doing a talk at the Mentone Library this coming Saturday (25 Aug 2012) at 11:00am. Entry is by gold coin donation. Bookings are essential — ring 9583 5648.
The new edition of Life, Death and Detention went through a rather long process before finally seeing the light of day. You can read about that on the Literary Clutter blog I write for Boomerang Books — “The long and winding road to a new edition” and “Life, Death and Detention“.
I was recently interviewed about Life, Death and Detention on the 3CR radio program Published or Not. There is a podcast, if anyone is interested in having a listen… my interview is at about the 15min mark.
Well… that was a long post. I think it’s time for me to go an do something useful. Bye!
