Once Upon Our Childhood is live today on major e-book retailers – Amazon, Apple Books, Google Play, Kobo, Okada Books – and also available in print via Amazon for international readers! Also a bonus update – a second print version will be released locally in Q3 2020!
I’m equally nervous and excited but overall, relieved to finally share a story I’ve been a steward of for too long.
We’re exploring options to drive some local publicity starting this month and ahead of the second release. This should be interesting, given my limited social media bandwidth and the fact that I write, and will continue to write, under a pen name.
One of the folks we’ve been speaking to asked me a poignant question the other day which helped me figure out what to call out in today’s post beyond highlighting that you should be on page ten of Once Upon Our Childhood by now! As part of pulling together her proposal, she was curious about what I wanted people to walk away with, having read OUOC.
I’d given her an off-the-cuff answer, never having thought about it beyond Lara, just get this darn book out ffs and go see if you can write another! But reflecting on her question later, I thought what better way to honor today’s e-release than to recap a refined version of my rambling spiel to her?
“Dear Reader, thanks for picking up a copy of Once Upon Our Childhood! By the time you turn over the last page, I’d love, especially if you’re a young woman, for you to…
- … feel seen, heard, reflected … not necessarily in the girls themselves but in their experiences, their constructs, their expressions, their stories. Nothing would please me more than if you were the complete antithesis of Lara or Fola or Abi or Bibs, but yet still felt a thread of connection to one or all of them.
- … newly understand or be reminded of the mutability of abuse, which isn’t always an overt, violent monster. You likely know already that it is an enemy that breathes easiest in shadows, grows quickest in silence, flourishes best on a diet of shame. It presents itself in perfectly ordinary faces, in seemingly harmless habits, in traditions long held to be normal.
- … spark a dialogue by sharing your thoughts with someone, and no, not to drive my sales, a nice bonus as that may be. The enemy above can only be defeated by calling it by its name. Our dialogue, our stories, our revelations may be discredited as noise but we know our voices are weapons. The more we speak, the more light we shine on those corners, the less darkness there is for abuse to thrive.
Thank you for reading and (see you in the next one, maybe?)”
Wrapping up with an excerpt … grab your copy today!
The truth was I had pretended for so long to be the damaged girl on purpose rather than admit that I had been given no choice not to be. Admitting that horrible truth meant that everyone, including me, would see right through the tough, invulnerable facade I had put on most of my life. If I were forced to put aside that facade, I was afraid I would not know the person behind it. I was afraid I would not know who I was.
Once Upon Our Childhood
L.
Worlds via Words 