President Obama, with his daughters in tow, recently bought 17 books from a local independent bookshop in Washington DC.
His purchases included Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness, The Narrow Road to the Deep North by Tasmanian writer Richard Flanagan and many others.
He didn’t buy my book Losing February. Hardly surprising given it has never sat on bookshelves in American stores.
But if it did. If it had been there staring him in the face would he have picked it up and thought, “I’ll get this one for Michelle.”
Unlikely given the book’s tagline — a story about love, sex and longing. That would have raised too many media eyebrows but if he had, if he could, if he did, my author life would have changed in an instant.
Like Graeme Simsion whose books The Rosie Project and The Rosie Effect were endorsed by Bill and Melinda Gates. Could there any better publicity for an Australian author trying to enter the US market?
Like many authors I dream of my story being made into a film (Toni Collette is my pick to play the divorcee on the sex machine) and of my book being read by someone so famous it prompts everyone to read Losing February. (I can send a copy over for free, Nicole)
Like so many authors who want their work to reach a global audience I look on with envy at the writers featured in Oprah’s Bookclub or on Ellen without them even trying.
And I want Michelle Obama to read my book.
It is selfish, childish even.
What it comes down to — after three weeks of intense publicity post-publication, the radio and print interviews, of seeing my book on the prominent shelves in bookstores, after all this —I am on my own.
The lonely marketing plan of an enthusiastic author with one book trying to get the world to notice.
Let me have a few reds, and dream of Michelle with her feet up on the edge of the couch, my book in her hand, reading page 79 and shedding a tear when my Dad dies.
Let an author dream.
In my dreams. Digitally altered image
