Well, if it was going to happen, it was going to happen with this book. We picked up the copies of Perfections for the launch late on the Friday afternoon before Continuum — the nick of time, thinks we — only to find that the second-to-last page was blank. BLANK. That’s right, my novel literally had no ending. Devious little book. Being too late to fix and reprint anything in time for the launch on Sunday morning, there was no small amount of panic and anxiety, let me tell you. But when life gives you lemons …*

After some truly motivated brainstorming and a couple of trips to a stationary store, a solution was determined: for the Continuum launch only, my novel would be known and sold as (im)Perfections. I amended the title on cover and spine with a pretty new silver Sharpie, folded over the actual last page — which contained half a dozen lines — and secured it with a “Spoilers” sticker, then hand-wrote a personalised vignette on the blank page for everyone who bought a copy. It may have been a slightly mad idea. Certainly, I don’t look entirely sane in the midst of it all. But it was lots of fun and lots of lovely people bought lots of imperfect books. There were also, as promised, lollipops!

Everyone who bought a copy on the day will receive a complimentary ebook once they are ready — very soon, I’m told — and will also have the option of a replacement paperback if they want one. Many people seemed happy to just get an ebook rather than have a second physical book crowding their shelves which makes perfect sense to me! (Ha. See what I did there?) I believe the wonderful Alisa at Twelfth Planet Press is in the process of emailing everyone about this now, as well as sending them the missing page so they can finish to book without needing to wait too long for a complete copy. 🙂 We’re fairly sure we have everyone’s details but if you did purchase a copy of (im)Perfections and don’t hear anything, please get in touch with with either Alisa or myself and we’ll sort you out.

A massive THANK YOU to everyone who came to the launch, offered congratulations and/or commiserations, bought a book, sucked on a lollipop and generally helped make what could have been a miserable situation into a glorious one-of-a-kind event!

If you couldn’t come along, you can of course still grab yourself a copy of Perfections in its perfect form from Twelfth Planet Press.

The other delightful news to come out of the weekend was that “The Home for Broken Dolls” won a Ditmar Award for Best Novellette or Novella! I was a little shocked — it’s a horrible, horrible story — but very happy. As I said in my acceptance speech, I really have Alisa Krasnostein to thank for this. Without knowing in advance that the novella had a predetermined home in my Twelve Planets collection, I’m not sure I would have finished it. The research was difficult and, at times, the writing even more so, and it would have been near impossible to place a 20K piece like this on spec. So many thanks to Alisa, to Twelfth Planet Press, and to the small press community at large. Work like this deserves a home and it finds one because of publishers like you.

And that’s about it for now. Back to the word mines!

∞

* But you know, to make lemonade palatable, quite a bit of sugar is needed. Somehow I doubt that a universe insistent upon the forced provision of sour citrus fruit would also happily furnish the requisite sweetener to make said fruit into a delicious beverage. Proverbs, hey?

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