Well, it’s been a few weeks since all my launches finished and now I finally have a chance to talk about it here. So here’s a round-up of all 4 launches and some little bonus reflections.

In many ways, the Melbourne launch was what I had always imagined my book launch would be. For some time, I’d had a particular vision for what the eventual launch for Look Who’s Morphing would look like. The launch would be at Hares and Hyenas. It would be packed with so many people that there would be punters out on the sidewalk. My English Literature teacher from high school would be there. I would kick off my reading with “AIYO!!! An evil group of ninjas is entering and destroying a call centre!!!” and it would go well and I wouldn’t forget any of the words. As it turned out, all of those things happened and it was very satisfying to have them happen.

The Sydney, Newcastle and Perth launches were all different and all good in their own ways. The Sydney launch was at Gallery 4A at the Asia-Australia Arts Centre. Only a few days before, I’d had that review from the Sydney Morning Herald which, I confess, really made me have one of those days where I wished I didn’t have an Asian background. But, in the space of Gallery 4A, I watched William Yang launch my book. Then, as I spoke next, I looked around at William and some of the other ‘Asian-’ artists in the room – people like Adam Aitken and Andy Quan – and it really did help me to not feel so alone.

After the launch, William, myself, Tara (my partner) and two of my friends had a fun dinner in Chinatown. William and Tara shared a bottle of wine and we all talked and talked. Eventually, we got around to discussing the use of the word ‘queer’. Surrounded by the queer company at the table, William declared himself to be gay and said that he couldn’t adopt the word ‘queer’ in reference to himself. But he drank more and we all chatted more and, soon enough, he rather happily changed his mind. He even put it in writing for us. With his permission, I’m unveiling it here:

As you can tell, that last sentence is from Tara – who does enjoy getting the last word :)

The Newcastle launch was on a cold and rainy night. Perhaps it wasn’t really a launch. I gave a reading, accompanied by a projected montage of clips from some of the films featured in the book. Due to the rain, we then relocated indoors for my ‘in-complication’ with Keri Glastonbury (I think I named it that because of my complicated embarrassment about the term ‘in conversation’ which, believe me, is only going to get more complicated). The room was fairly cosy and, as we sat around chatting about books, zines, fan fiction, cocks (well, I occasionally steered the conversation in that direction), pop culture, and other matters, it somehow felt like a session from the National Young Writers’ Festival – perhaps one of the zine discussions from the festival – the kind where you want to get to know everyone in the room and what they might be writing.

I certainly had never expected a Perth launch for the book (in fact, I hadn’t expected any launches beyond the Melbourne one). But, as it turned out, it felt right to have the final launch in a city where I’d never been to before – one where I couldn’t really draw upon much of an audience that was already familiar with my work. In a way, it pointed to future ambitions I’ve long had for Look Who’s Morphing – ambitions to have this book published overseas. Yes, the event did attract people from what might seem some expected constituencies but, as I mentioned in my launch speech, it’s also great to just throw all those ideas of audience out the window and to take an anti-marketing approach of sorts – one in which I don’t make assumptions about who my audiences are. I saw plenty of unfamiliar faces in the crowd and I felt excited that these people were potential new readers: they didn’t know me and I didn’t know them but, hey, maybe we could make this author-reader relationship work.

In the end, though, there are also many other people involved in the public life of my book and thus many other relationships to consider. It’s something I’ve become quite conscious of – the presence of others with their own stake in my book: a publisher, bookshops, reviewers, writers festival directors, a distributor, journalists, maybe an agent and, yes, readers. My contact with writers festival directors is starting to increase – in fact, I have festival appearances coming up at the Melbourne Writers Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival and Ubud Writers and Readers Festival (the latter being in Bali). There have also been various interviews, some forthcoming and some already published (like this one with LiteraryMinded – AKA Angela Meyer, this one from the queer website Same Same and this one with writer, zinester and performer Scott-Patrick Mitchell for the queer newspaper Out In Perth). And I’m loving the occasional emails I get from readers. But, eventually, I guess some of these relationships are fleeting or have a window of intensity. I know I have my own stake in things like publication, reviews and writers festival appearances. For that reason but also for many more (I have made some friends via all of this…), I think part of me will definitely miss the more regular contact of some of these relationships.

At the same time, lately, I’ve also been missing the process of writing fiction: just me and the text on the computer screen – the intimacy of it, the games I play with words and the discoveries I make. Ultimately, it’s my favourite relationship.