Hezada! I Miss You Book Release Party
Sunday, February 9th
2:00 PM
Washington Cracker Building
304 W. Pacific, Spokane
In second grade, I was big into making and selling friendship bracelets. I carried a Tupperware around with square compartments inside where I organized my embroidery floss; I'd work out of the box on bus rides to and from school, at recess, and probably during downtime in class. On the front lid, I'd taped a handwritten sign with my prices; prices were dependent on how many strands a person wanted. The lowest price was a penny, mid-range a nickel, and the highest was twenty-five cents. But it took me a while to make even the penny kind. My business went pretty well, as far as I remember, until a third grader who was a reliable customer broke her bracelet arm.
The doctor had to cut the bracelets off to set her arm and put the cast on. She hoped that I'd understand and replace all the bracelets at no cost. I mean, it made total sense to me. I think I tried. I might even have succeeded. Maybe she even brought a dollar or two to pay for the replacement, but that would have been a huge order--at the most 100, 200 bracelets. A wonderful order had I known anything about business and contracting other children into making the bracelets with me. Had I known anything about contracts, phrases like no replacements or no warranty. I remember the quandary of the situation. It's not like she broke her arm on purpose. It's not as though the doctor cut the bracelets with any anger.
I'm not sure how much longer I sold bracelets. I don't remember whether I fulfilled the order. I still feel the hardness of the situation, the heaviness of what I was asked to do but didn't have the capacity to do. I remember the feeling of being punched when imagining all those beautiful bracelets being cut off her arm. Some had been 10-strand bracelets, bracelets thicker than my thumb. Two-day, all-night bracelets.
So, here I am, thirty years later in what feels like a similar predicament. I have written a book, a novel. I don't know how long it took me to write. Years. In actuality, my whole life since I agree with whoever said that a piece of art is the accumulation of an artist's life--and I don't see how any of my life and perspective could be divorced from my writing.
By capitalist terms, were I to calculate hours by cost, the novel would be the same price as a medieval illustrated manuscript--which means a book-release party would basically be a party between me and the wealthiest person in fairy-tale miles. Which doesn't sound like a party at all.
Were this a cooking blog, I feel like now would be a good time to tell you the ingredients, how long to stir, whether to grease the pan. Cookbooks are the number one seller among books. Novels that center on a rural village, a circus that has run its course for a century, and a woman who dies by suicide--well, I don't think those kinds of books are the number two seller.
A well-meaning person might say, Well, Erin, it's not about how many books you sell.
A well-meaning person might say, Erin, you didn't write it because you wanted to be famous.
A well-meaning person might say, Erin, it will be fine.
I do not trust well-meaning people.
This is the time in a book's life, one month before publication, where the author, in this case me, needs to be promoting the hell out of her book.
But it seems some sorts of books lend themselves better to marketing.
My publisher is likely shaking her head as she reads this.
What is my reticence to hawking my book in the town square? Why do I think that this novel is deeply worthwhile, a beautiful book, a truthfully rendered story but at the same time I feel it would be impolite to say so? I feel it would be impolite to ask you directly to buy the book. I feel it would be more polite to explain that, yes, my sister wrote books, a whole series of books, and yes, she did make money on her books--enough to live on, in fact (had she kept living). I do not write the sort of books she did.
What makes someone buy a book?
It would be easier for me to talk you out of buying the book. Here, I'll just do that.
All the reasons you should not buy Hezada! I Miss You
1. You could just read the copy from the library (as long as you ask your librarian to order a copy for the library).2. It's not like the twenty-dollar bill you exchange for the book magically appears in the author's hand. There are many hands that went toward creating the book--though I imagine the printer's hand takes the most (How does she not even know how the price breaks down? What kind of writer doesn't know?)
3. Books are just so expensive these days.
4. You probably have a lot of books already.
5. Of those books you have, you probably still have a stack that you've been meaning to read.
6. You could wait and buy it used, which would probably be better for the environment.
7. Lots of things would be better for the environment.
Okay, I can't continue that list because it makes me feel bad.
Here's the situation. I love this book. I wrote it for you. I wrote it for the ghost of myself. I wrote it for every kid who has grown up rural, whether they are like the characters in the book or have simply lived alongside the characters in this book. I wrote this because I was in deep mourning for my sister. I mean, I'd been working on a circus book for a decade before my sister died, but it was in deep mourning when the book came together, found its engine, I guess.
I don't know that I'll ever not be in deep mourning for my sister. I'm less prone to crying on what would seem like a whim to everyone around me. I'm less prone to saying anything that would lead to my crying. I'm less prone to the nightmares featuring her resurrection, of not knowing how she'll appear this time, as a red bird with terrible claws coming out of the sky, or as a woman who doesn't know yet that she's going to kill herself, or as a woman who has already done it but is back, regardless. Once, I dreamed she was walking through her house looking for her grave among others. The graves rose out of the floor. It was a kind of tourist shop.
Friends, I'm haunted.
I live a haunted life.
And it's hard for me to tell you about this novel because it is part of the haunting. It is my full attempt to exorcise the haunting. To explain it, to understand it, to cut it open and dig and dig through the wet organs and memories and sunsets of a sister I loved, and a place I loved but had to leave because my life didn't fit among the lives that live there. I miss my home. I miss my town. I miss my sister (and dad and best friend and all the people who have and will die because that's what we do).
And because this novel is connected to all of this, and because I am trying my best to cope, I don't know how to talk about the book without utterly losing my cool--myself--my balance--my necessary compartmentalizing that allows me to train for a marathon and teach art to preschoolers and go ice-skating with my son.
I don't think that any of this will be your experience, though, in reading the book. I've tried to create an experience, but not this one. So, you need not worry in that way.
An anecdote. My friend Melissa came to Spokane to read from her memoir, Driven, which centers on her brother's death by suicide. During the question-answer period, I asked her if she'd write the book again.
She paused. I paused.
In hindsight, it probably isn't a real question. I mean, it's like asking what a person's biggest regret is or which regret they'd change if they could live their life again.
I don't remember her answer. I don't know my own answer to the question. It makes me sick to imagine doing it all over again.
But shouldn't I know the answer to sell this book?
What's your book about?
Oh, it's sad.
Listen, friend, I'm trying to tell you a secret. I have written a beautiful book that I care deeply about. It is not about my sister. But I had to think so deeply about my sister and my life while writing the book that it unbuckles me to think about the book.
It makes me feel like an asshole for even trying to sell the book. For even writing a book like this.
Were I a shoemaker, everyone would think I was crazy for spending so much time working on such beautiful, terrible shoes, and then how ridiculous it would be for the shoemaker to hold a party to sell these shoes.
And what do we think of the shoemaker wandering the streets of her town, holding out the shoes to everyone who can hear, telling everyone, ... but my life--these shoes--please, I know you will never walk the same once you try these on. I know that these shoes, you've never known how much your body has felt like these shoes will make you feel . . . it's an awareness as much as it is the walking. These shoes, I promise, are not the red shoes that will dance you to your death, but these shoes are the most honest shoes I've ever made.
Oh, friend.
In conclusion, I'd like you to come to the book-release party. My friend Neil Elwell will be playing his guitar and singing the perfectly sad songs and raw songs and right blues songs for the afternoon. I'll read from the book. My friend Barbara will say words about it. There will be copies of the book for sale. The party is an old building that has been made into something new, but it carries the stories of itself in the walls, the ceiling, the floors. That's why I wanted it there instead of somewhere with painted walls and smooth floors. The windows are large and drafty. There will be wine, though you'll have to buy your own glass.
You're invited.
I'd love to read to you.
Hezada! I Miss You Book Release Party
Sunday, February 9th
2:00 PM
Washington Cracker Building
304 W. Pacific, Spokane
Facebook event page: https://www.facebook.com/events/2729278653759017/
Unable to attend? Preorder book here:https://awst-press.com/shop/hezada
🕮🐘
