Ironically, the day after I wrote the last post about my love/hate relationship with the spotlight, this wonderful feature of me in the Substack Starry, Starry Kite appeared. (Please check out this newsletter and subscribe!) So, I guess that means I’m doing my marketing homework.

It feels overwhelming, but in the past few weeks I’ve doubled the time I’ve spent on social media, mostly searching for and posting to groups. I also culled lists for a final email blast inviting people to my book launch next week, updated my Amazon and Goodreads author pages, revised my website, talked up the book at local bookstores, wrote an article for my alumni association, and connected with a number of editors of journals I’ve been published in to ask them to spread the word about the book. Still on my list is to set up and publicize a Youtube channel, investigate more blogs and podcasts, and connect more with journals and other relevant groups I know on social media, etc. etc. It never ends.

And as I was going full-steam ahead, a surprise snuck up on me. My poetry book  Here in Sanctuary–Whirling was suddenly in its final stages of pre-publication. In fact, it’s scheduled to come out from Querencia Press in late February and can already be pre-ordered at this link.

So now I have two books to drum up the buzz about. It’s kind of like having a second child, and (like the way I felt before actually having a second child) I’m worried about giving each book the love and attention it deserves. I had a similar situation in 2006, when my two children’s books, Escaping Into the Night and Playing Dad’s Song came out within months of each other. Escaping Into the Night continued to do well, since its unusual Holocaust story generated a lot of interest from middle school students and teachers. But Playing Dad’s Song, a book very close to my heart about music as a healing force from grief and aimed at a slightly younger audience, never found its niche. And several people with knowledge of the industry suggested its lack of success might have been related to being published too soon after my first book.

But these two new books are thematically related, so my plan is to market them together and let the books build on each other, treating Here in Sanctuary–Whirling as more like a late-arriving twin than a second child. There’ll be some differences in audience, since not all fiction readers like to read poetry and vice/versa. But both books center on the very human stories related to immigrants and immigration justice–one through poetry, the other via short fiction. And I believe there’s an emotional core in both these books that matters, and that we need to tell these stories to soften hearts and reject the horrible rhetoric that depicts immigrants as less than people.

And this alone is reason enough to keep marketing–and braving the spotlight.

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