Being an independent author can be tough, in that those books brought out by larger publishers have sales, marketing, rights and publicity departments. My publisher, Caroline Wood of Margaret River Press, does all of these things with a skeleton staff and on a much smaller scale and budget. The benefit of this is that we have a personal, supportive relationship, and she's my greatest champion. The downside is that it's much harder for my book to get traction, interest and coverage when pitted against entire departments of industry professionals. 

So how did I do, despite all of this? All told, I'm grateful both for the opportunities that surfaced (I was pretty flawed by a feature in The Australian and my goofy grin staring back at me in the Saturday Herald Sun) and for the people who reached out to me. Wherever I went, be it a library, festival, or just checking my emails, someone said, 'Your book moved me, and I wanted to let you know.' Some people seemed like real-life versions of my characters. Others were just sound, soulful people. I will never forget a single one of them, or the chance they gave to share my world and words.

Because I had such an amazing time with my debut novel, I wanted to do something to say thank you. And it turns out that those video editing skills I picked up in my undergraduate degree at ECU proved beneficial in the long-run! So here, before I share it to the world, is a video I made about a book, and some, if not all of the many folks who made the journey so special.  

Thank you, always.