One was the arrival of my first royalty statement and cheque. In its first three months out in the world Alzheimer's: a Love Story had already sold enough copies to pay back my advance, with some left over for a payment.
To tell you the truth, I was so excited that I danced around the kitchen, singing, 'I'm in the money...' and then I tripped over the wood box, breaking a dish, bruising my knee and cutting my finger as I went down. Oh dear. What's that they say about pride going before a fall? Still, it didn't spoil the moment.
Not that it was such a huge cheque, but I'm thrilled the book is repaying my publisher's belief in it. When Scribe accepted my manuscript I hadn't even finished writing the first draft. In fact I was less than halfway through and some of the writing was still quite raw. It was a gamble really that I would be even able to finish it.
The second exciting thing was a full page interview of Dad and me by Bernadette Clohesy in Saturday morning's Melbourne Age.
I love that section, '2 of Us'. And apparently so do a lot of other people. I've heard it's the most read section of the Saturday paper. And there we are, Dad and I, smiling away at the readers. My mum would have been so proud. My lovely daughter Meg has put the article in the media section of my website if you want to read it.
I've had lots of exciting milestones along the way with the publication of this book. Receiving the advance reading copies was a highlight. And now I've begun making speeches, which I find I'm really enjoying. I'll be speaking on a panel at Katoomba as part of the Sydney Writers' Festival next month. That'll be another first. The session's called Stories and Secrets and I'll blog about it again closer to the time. I'm appearing with David Carlin, another Scribe author. Some of my appearances are listed on my website in the events section.
