Patricia Paddey

On pie, plans, and principles: or, “how we launched our book”

Patricia Paddey 6 Comments
pie buffet

It was our first time ever hosting a book launch. We’ve been to a few such launches over the years of course. You probably can’t be a passionate reader or a writer with writer-friends and not wind up attending one or two. So when it came time to planning our own book launch for Craft, Cost & Call: How to Build a Life as a Christian Writer, we had a few ideas about how we hoped things might go.

The launch happened this past weekend, and looking back, I believe that things went well.

I think what helped them to go well was that we tried to let our plans be guided by our principles.

As people who believe that we are called to love others as ourselves, I can see in hindsight that it was the principle of loving others that drove our decisions. Not consciously. But as I reflect on the weeks leading up to the event and the event itself, I think it was the desire to try to treat others as we would want to be treated that shaped and undergirded most of our choices.

What kind of atmosphere would we, ourselves, most like to experience at such an event? (Relaxed fun with candlelight.) How long would we want to have to sit? (Not long at all.) What sorts of things would we most enjoy hearing? (Definitely not the authors droning on and on.) Should we serve food and beverages? (Yes, of course.) Should we do a hard sell? (Definitely not.) Should we sign books? (In advance, so as not to keep people waiting. Although, truth be told, we also wanted to avoid the awkwardness of sitting at a table if no one actually wanted to buy books.)

Again and again, we came back to the realization that even though our book launch would be a celebration of something that we had done—we did not want it to be “all about us.”

So we invited other writers to tell us a bit about their writing lives, to read portions of our book, and then to respond to it. A fire blazed in the fireplace, candlelight flickered throughout the room, dinner jazz played on the sound system, and our guests visited with us and with one another and feasted on a delicious pie buffet.

As for Karen and I, once the first guests began to arrive, we relaxed and delighted in the visible reminder that we are blessed to have people in our lives who care enough to show their support and come to a party celebrating this thing that we have done. And yes, we sold some books. We also enjoyed our guests. We ate pie. Our cups overflowed. Our hearts are full.

 

Looking elsewhere

Patricia Paddey Leave a comment

“When I was a boy and I would see scary things in the news, my mother would say to me, ‘Look for the helpers. You will always find people who are helping.'”

— Fred Rogers

We’ve been experiencing a hot, dry summer here in southern Ontario. The kind of summer that entices cicadas to celebrate with concerts while the day is still young, but compels most everyone else – who can’t flee to a lake or poolside – to choose instead the artificial hum of air conditioning. It’s been the kind of summer that turns grass golden and brittle, until it crunches like crackers beneath your feet.

For those who follow the news (and who can avoid it?) it’s also been a summer of shock and sadness. Too many innocents – indeed too much innocence – lost in the midst of too much violence. It’s almost enough to make a person lose sight of all the goodness and beauty we trust is still here. But maybe it’s precisely at times like these that we have to train our eyes to focus elsewhere for the beauty that surely still exists.

Take the grass for instance: it’s a shame about the grass. But the same conditions that persuade lawns to go dormant at times like this permit other plants to thrive. Captivating plants like chicory with its delicate sky-tinted petals, and exquisite Queen Anne’s Lace. Such subversives appear to wait in secret anticipation of the moment when, presented with just the right opportunity, they shoot upwards to reveal their hitherto forgotten existence; and seemingly overnight send long stems reaching, reaching.

I’m thinking about these wily weeds today; they’ve been in evidence everywhere recently as Percy (our family’s border collie) and I have taken our walks. Strong and resilient, they prosper in spite of the drought that makes the grass all around them appear to die. And I’m thinking their example has something to teach us.

The secret of these plants’ success against the odds is their roots; tough, swollen and deeply penetrating, they tap into sources of nourishment and sustenance far beyond the limits to which the threadlike roots of the little grass plants can reach. The loveliness of such weeds and wildflowers is there for anyone with eyes to see: frothy blooms in shades that nourish the soul surrounded by feathery green foliage, made all the more obvious, even, by their now brown and brittle surroundings. The fact that no one cuts the grass while dormant, ensures invasive neighbours thrive.

It is the oppressive heat and wretched drought that not only encourage weeds and wildflowers to flourish in fields and along roadsides, but enable them to do so.

I think Mrs. Rogers had it right.