This is part of the Bittersweet Book Launch case study, where Dan Blank and Miranda Beverly-Whittemore share the yearlong process of launching her novel. You can view all posts here.
by Miranda Beverly-Whittemore
Nothing about being a writer prepares you for the possibility that at some point someone may want to come to your house to take pictures of you so they can put them in a magazine.
And nothing about being a work-from-home-parent (and all the chaos that implies) prepares you for the possibility that at some point someone will want to come to your house, and lest you be mistaken for someone on Hoarders, you’ll have to clean your home for a few days straight.
This is what my writing room looked like when I woke up on Tuesday morning. And here’s what it looked like before I went to bed on Tuesday night:
So that was a relief (and yay- now I have a clean office!). But Wednesday morning I still had eyebrows to pluck, a shirt to pick out and iron, some makeup to put on, not to mention a Kindergarten tour, and a kid to get to school before the Kindergarten tour (ahhh, the glamorous life of a writer!)
After the tour, I had just enough time to get home and have a cup of tea. And then these guys arrived:
That’s Tony, Murray and Kevin, from Poets & Writers. Apologies for the blurry, but I had to think a LOT about appearing to be effortlessly lounging in my always-clean dining room, and I could only snap a few shots before the paparazzi was begging me to Put. Down. The. Phone.
There was strategizing:
And posing (I insisted they pose in their roles as “photographer,” “designer,” and “editor,” since I was playing the part of “writer”):
Pretty cute, huh?
488 pictures, four locations, and two hours later, they packed up their gear and were off. Keep your eyes peeled for the March/April issue of Poets & Writers!