Sandstone Press

The staircase of excitement

Posted by Simon Varwell on 9th December 2009

“Are you really excited about the launch?” a friend asked me last night over a drink at Eden Court.  She and my wife had been seeing a film earlier that evening, while I had been meeting Bob from Sandstone Press to talk about the launch of “Up The Creek Without A Mullet” and related publicity.  The three of us had convened afterwards to swap respective reports on their film (apparently dull) and my meeting (definitely not dull).

“Not especially,” I had to confess.  Though I instantly clarified what I meant - I was excited about the prospect of the launch; I was just barely more excited about that than I have been about everything else to do with the book lately.

It was a bit like a staircase of excitement, I surmised.  A very long, very incremental staircase.  In 2003 when I had the idea which sparked off the mullet-hunting mission, it was a little bit exciting.  A little bit more so to go on my first trip.  Later on, extra excitement would come as I visited each mullet, conducted media interviews and saw or heard the output in print or on air.  A bit more excitement was caused by the prospect of a book, then the certainty of it, then the design of the cover, the appearance on Amazon, the launch date… all the steps along the way were just a bit more exciting than the last, but only a bit. 

It might seem obtuse, perhaps ungrateful or unemotional, not to be jumping up and down with unrestrained glee like a cross between Tigger, Jade Goody and Archbishop Desmond Tutu (although that’s probably an inaccurate assembly of hyperactivity - one’s fictitious, one’s dead and the third is probably getting on a bit).  And I would concede that, comparing today with pre-2003, then yes I am excited.  And I don’t want to make it sound like having a book published is a real drag on one’s life.

But writing a book and getting it published is a long-drawn out process, as is visiting all the places in the world with the word “mullet” in their name.  It takes years.  There are often several steps backwards as well as steps forward, and my forthcoming book certainly charts one or two of the more difficult challenges faced in the mission’s early days.

That’s why it’s not the great glass elevator of excitement, but more a protracted staircase with some wobbly and missing steps along the way, some that take you back down again, and a number of landings which go neither up nor down for seemingly ages.

Anyway, I don’t want to get stuck in an endless loop of metaphors (if that is not a contradiction in terms).  Suffice to say that the emerging details of the launch are definitely exciting, but so is every other new aspect of the process.  Indeed, the launch isn’t the end, and in many ways is just the beginning.

It was good, therefore, to discuss a number of issues relating to pre-launch publicity, details of which will no doubt appear on the Sandstone Press website in due course.  Bob and I also had a look round the Bishop’s Palace, a magnificent annex to Eden Court where the launch will take place and in which I had never before been.  On my “proper” blog you can see a couple of photos I took.  The book is out on Monday 1 February, and the launch details will also no doubt be here on the Sandstone Press website soon.

That will make things just a little bit more exciting once more.

But just a bit.