My Publication Day – Louise Beech.

Today, I would like to welcome you to my blog to read a new feature. I plan on running a series featuring several different authors and how they feel on their publication day. Today my guest is the lovely Louise Beech who has already had two books published with Orenda and her third Maria In the Moon will be published in September.

How will you spend the day?

I spend the day often in disbelief. Excited disbelief! Like, wow, it’s here. My baby is really out there. People can actually read it. Often the day is weirdly normal other than that because the actual launches are on different days to when the book is released. So, it can be a quiet day, where I likely carry on writing whatever new thing I’m creating. But now and again I stop and think again, wow, it’s out!

Will you be following reviews from early readers or do prefer not to know? (Excluding blog tours.)

I like to know. But it’s terrifying. It really is, every time. You’ve spent so long writing and editing and reworking, and you really want your work to be enjoyed. So I do look at places like Amazon and Goodreads… nervously!

Is it emotional, getting the novel you have worked on for months into the public eye?

Very emotional. A lot of my novels come from personal experiences, so you can feel quite exposed. I have learned to remember that not everyone feels the same about something. You can never please everyone. So, write from the heart, from your own truth, and put everything you have into it, and then you know you did the best you could, no matter what.

If you have had books published before, does the feeling change?

I swear, I think I get MORE excited! For me, it hasn’t faded one bit. Perhaps if you ask me again in ten years, the answer might be different, but I hope not. And, to be honest, I think I’ll still be excited. I’m just that kind of girl. A clap my hands and jump about kind of girl!

I often wonder and imagine that when your novel is published and you have been working on at least one novel since, is the book that is published less important?

Not less important, but sometimes strange. As in, for example, right now I’ve just been editing book four (The Lion Tamer Who Lost, which will be out next year) and have started book five, while still promoting The Mountain in my Shoe, and now of course Maria in the Moon. So sometimes you forget which story you’re in, so to speak. Because, trust me, I’m deeply in them when I write/edit. I live them.

And is it a distraction, welcome or otherwise having to focus on what is for you old material?

Haha, I quite like it. Maria in the Moon was first written after the 2007 Hull Floods, so it really is ‘old’ material in many ways. It really was a revisit when I came to edit it. But it was like revisiting an old me. A younger me. A me going through a hard time. And it was wonderful to think how far I’ve come since.