Tag: selling fiction

Events and More

I am starting to have a few events start to shape up around my book launch! I have an interview for a podcast coming up–I’m so far supposed to do the interview this weekend, then it will be edited and released whenever the host has a spot to insert it. Hopefully I can post the audio link to the Tombigbee Tales podcast here on my site.

Right around launch I have a signing at my local independent bookstore, Lemuria Books in Jackson. I had filled out a form and left a review copy at the store a few weeks ago, and they contacted me back for Saturday, August 24, at noon. It’s only a few days after launch but before football season really gets in gear. So that was a wonderful feeling to have getting this one set up.

The next week I am going to try to give back to my community back home in Ackerman with a reading and signing event at Ackerman Library, a place that was a home-away-from home for me. If mom needed to run errands or grocery shop or go to the bank, she’d drop me off there–and I was in heaven. No one ever bothered me, and I never bothered anyone else with so many books around me to read! I feel like that will be a real full-circle event for me. It is currently set for September 5 at 6 p.m. (again working round the football games!)

The final event that’s fallen into place recently is being part of a forum on Hurricane Katrina literature in observance of the twentieth anniversary of the storm. So that will be all the way off into next year with an event in conjunction with Prince George County’s Office of Human Rights in Virginia.

Of course, I am aiming to schedule more–the goal is to have at least one event/speaking opportunity a month for the first year the book is out. So this feels like a really good start! Three-and-a-half months before it’s out in stores. I wonder when the reality kicks in. I still feel like this is all some kind of dream. But it’s a good one. If it’s a dream, it’s one of the best.

Good Evening!

I didn’t post yesterday because we were traveling by car most of the day.

Just got the notification that Hurricane Baby is up for pre-order on Barnes & Noble! You can click on the Hurricane Baby: Stories page on the left-hand side of the blog and then click on the preorder button provided, or you can go to this link (paperback is the only format available there right now):

https://www.barnesandnoble.com/w/hurricane-baby-julie-liddell-whitehead/1145144169?ean=9781956440959

Pre-orders are really important to get buzz going early for the book, so feel free to take advantage of these connections! Thank you for reading!

FOR SALE!

Good afternoon! This past Friday night, I got the note from Madville Publishing that my book, Hurricane Baby: Stories, is now LIVE FOR PRE-ORDERS!

Go to the left-hand menu and click on the book’s title to see the brand-new webpage for my book, and you will see a button to click to pre-order my book through Madville Publishing’s site with delivery scheduled for August 20, 2024. As the book goes live in other places like Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Bookshop.org, I will add those buttons for you to click on as well. If you want to support your local bookshop as well, you can go and request that they order/stock it.

This page will be updated as I do events, readings, signings, and appearances. If you would like me to come do a reading or speak at your event, school, library, or festival, use the contact form to let me know, and I will see what I can work out!

This past weekend, I went to the annual meeting of the Mississippi Philological Association, which was held by the Mississippi School of Math and Science on the campus of Mississippi University for Women, where I studied for my MFA. I read the first story in the collection, “Still Waters”, and was terrified the whole time. I’ve never read anything as intense as that story out loud in public before this, and it showed. My mouth was so dry I wasn’t sure I was going to be able to finish it. It was well-received by the largely academic crowd, which made me feel good.

But this event, where I know people are going to be spending their hard-earned money on a book I wrote, is momentous. My life is not going to be the same again after this year. But I think that’s good. Keep growing, keep writing, keep learning. That’s my takeaway. Onward and upward!