"Another First": The Star Crossed Book Launch

This past Monday marked another first for me. Star Crossed, the anthology from Fedowar Press featuring, among others, my story "Slow Recovery," came out, and as a part of the promotion, I and two of my colleagues took part in a book launch live-stream.

I was half excited and half nervous.

There's a reason I write a blog and do a podcast rather than livestream: I don't look good on camera. Ever since I suffered my last bout of Bell's palsy nine years ago, my face isn't exactly...camera friendly. Not to mention I get extremely nervous when I know I'm being recorded and it shows all too obviously in my body language. Still, I wanted to take part, so I opted to use a picture avatar and "appear" via audio only. (The upside to doing a podcast is you always have a decent microphone and headset at your disposal.)

Renee Gendron, our editor, acted as the moderator and Nikki Mitchell and I each had a turn answering questions about our experiences and our stories. We each also did some readings from our works. 

Altogether, it was a positive experience. I enjoyed answering questions about my work and more so I enjoyed doing the readings. If there was any downside, apart from a few embarrassing technical difficulties, it's that our whole cohort of authors, all of whom worked hard to put this book together, didn't get to take part. The logistics would've been hard to manage though (especially since one of the authors lives in Australia), but it would've been more enjoyable if more of us got to participate. 

The end result though (which you can view below), was still quite good.