Since my last blog, I have:
- Watched a FANTASTIC version of A Midsummer Night’s Dream at the Daughter’s school
- Had someone run a stop street in our beloved suburb and lightly t-bone the husband’s car
- Had an absolutely dream launch of our group novel Chasing Marian at Exclusive Books, Rosebank.
Let me talk about the play first. I was just blown away by this wonderful adaptation of W. Shakespeare’s comedy by director, Frances Wilmot. Back in the day, we didn’t even have drama as a subject at our school in Joburg, we had to wait until university to stage these kinds of experimental, immersive, fabulous adaptations that are now happening at schools.
Perhaps I am just the TEENIEST bit biased as the daughter was one of the student directors for the play AND played a small part AND composed a piece of music AND played it during the show, but I did think it was AMAZING. From the adaptation to the staging, the direction and the acting, it was just WOW and I want to give a special shout out to Bottom and Titania who both had gorgeous comic timing.
I did want to lecture the daughter (who was playing waterpolo, netball and swimming in galas whilst rehearsing the play) about taking on TOO MUCH. But after the husband side-eyed me saying rather loudly, “Pot, kettle, black” I shut my trap. The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree in this case, but it’s never pleasant to watch your child putting themselves under so much pressure.
Note to self: be a better role model.
On to our car accident. It’s horrible when you can see someone not looking and driving straight through a stop street. The husband tried to accelerate and swerve to get away from her, but sadly she still bashed into us and the husband’s fab old chrysler (nickname: the pimpmobile.) I had the shakes afterwards, big mwah to the lovely people from the house across the street who came out and gave me some sugar water to drink and generally helped out.
Lastly, our launch. I started off the day getting my hair done at the crack of dawn by Storm from The Hairdresser & Some. She opened up on her day off specially for me and did curls because we knew the rainy weather was not going to be kind to straight hair. I was going to put green and pink streaks in my hair (to match the book) but chickened out at the last minute and went for glitter green nails and eye-shadow, and lumo-pink lipstick instead.
After the hair, I rushed back home for a virtual story meeting for the next season of the one TV show I work on. It was a bit of a battle to concentrate, but with some intravenous caffeine, I managed to focus, and I think we came up with some fab story ideas. The rest of the team didn’t bat an eyelid when I told them I was taking them to the bedroom to get ready with me whilst we carried on storylining.
Beautifying completed, I headed off to Love Books where we got to see fellow author, Qarnita Loxton IN THE FLESH for the first time in two years which was massively exciting. We also saw our banners for Chasing Marian for the first time, I have never had a banner for one of my books before so some licking was required.
After a lovely interview with blogger, Zissy Lewin I went back home and told the rest of the team at our show that I was useless to them at this point because my mind was on the launch, and settled down to finishing rereading the novel. It is a fact that once you’ve written more than one novel, you do not remember the names of your characters. With four people writing this one, it was even more difficult and frankly, I had no idea who any of them were.
Then it was time to get dressed in my special Chasing Marian t-shirt and my fabulous skirt designed by Nadia Kruger which I wore with my knee-high black docs that I bought on a trip to London in 1998 and that still look very kick-ass.
Exclusive Books, Rosebank literally rolled out the red carpet for us (thank you Shylock and Rosebank Mall), there was one hell of a crowd and Kate Sidley did a brilliant job of interviewing us – or rather of herding cats, because that’s what it was like for her trying to get us to give her a coherent timeline of how the book came about and who the characters were.
We signed umpteen books afterwards – HUGE thank you to my sister, and brother and SIL who bought a literal shitload of books, and to the Red Wine Friday crew, our local bookish community, my old school friend and everyone who came out to support us. The Husband also presented us all with flowers afterwards so he gets extra points for that (as Qarnita said to me, “I think you should keep him.” I plan to.)
The day after the launch we had a lovely interview with Pippa Smith at her rather fabulous house in Birdhaven and then finally got to spend some down time together. Qarnita Loxton had composed an agenda of things we mentioned on our whatsapp group that we proceeded to interrogate most fully.
It was a dreamy couple of days that did not feel real and I must thank the Pan Macmillan publicity team who have just gone above and beyond the call of duty in promoting this book.
Book recommendations for this week:
Chasing Marian of course! There are signed copies available at Exclusive Books, Rosebank Mall and Love Books in Melville so do go along and get your copy. Perfect reading for the long weekend!
There is also a fantastic competition happening with Need A Read and Kate Sunley. To enter go to the gram and follow @Needaread.sa @katesunley_luxury @panmacmillansa and share the love by tagging 2 friends. Multiple entries are allowed and winners will be selected on 21st of March 2022. Open to SA residents only (sorreeeeee!)
TV recommendations:
NOT Pieces of Her. It’s pretty bleh to be honest, Tony Collette is the best thing about it. I also started watching Life After Death with Tyler Henry on Netflix which is about a medium (Tyler) who has to solve a mystery in his own family while doing readings for everyone else. These readings never answer the fundamental question which is “what are y’all doing there in the spirit world? Watching Netflix? Eating marmite toast?” Those are the kinds of things I want to know.
Whew, it’s been quite a week, so I’m looking forward to this long weekend. If you’re travelling, travel safely. Happy Reading! xxx