I am in avoidance. I HATE promoting my stuff. Yet needs must when you publish your own work.

Writing PR does not come naturally to me. You try and be all bright and breezy and it turns out sounding fake, chummy and desperate. How do you sell your own creations? How to put a fair price on them? Know the value of them? When I can see its flaws and not its glory – I know every word in it, I have read it a hundred times over, and know every fact. How to see its freshness and gifts? How to know how it might honestly be received… and who might really need it?

So what I really want to write is this…

Look – I don’t know if this book is good or not – what I do know is I have given it every ounce of my energy, a lot of research, an open heart, an honest sharing of my journey and a lot of really helpful resources to follow up.

And it might be just what you’re looking for – it could, in the words of one, very sweet reviewer – change your life. I sincerely hope so.

But really I’m terrified that you’ll hate it, that you’ll find the lurking mistakes that I overlooked, the fragments of sentences that Microsoft Word sneered at, facts that are disputable… and then you’ll judge me harshly, sneer at me, hate me, call a fatwa…

Here, for you, stranger, is my heart on a plate – please buy it and pay me fairly – know that I do not want to take money from you – that I hate to deal with money, to ask for it – but I must pay for the privilege of two days a week creative time, which I have promised to use to support my family. I have taken a risk and followed my heart, my deepest dream – to write a book – rather than to write safe articles which will sell to mainstream media, or do copy writing jobs that numb my brain to pay the bills. I want to offer you more and more money off, to know just the way to entice you to buy it… but in the end I play in a marketplace where prices are already decided – and the post service will probably make more from each copy than I will.

But this is PR – I cannot say any of this, anything really real. So I have to pretend that none of this is true. I have to pretend that it is the book you have most wanted in your entire life, that it is perfect, desirable – and find just the right words to make you buy it/ review it/ stock it.

What I dearly hope it that you will hold it close, that it will open parts of your mind to your body and soul that you never really understood. That it will become a treasured tome that you will be glad to have as a companion on your journey.

But what do I know? I am just a writer mama – though at times like this I wonder why? What was so bad about being JUST a mama?

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