OR how to run a book launch during COVID.
Mike and I had always planned to have some sort of book launch event where we invited people we knew…and celebrated, but COVID made that impossible, so we took a different path.
We had worked together for many years at the same professional services firm: GHD. That’s where we started writing Court of the Grandchildren. As a result, a lot of the people who work at GHD knew about the book and were very interested in it’s progress. So what better way to launch the book than to hold an online event hosted by GHD.
Lots of my fellow employees were very interested in how two engineers came to write a novel, so instead of talking about the book: we talked about why we wrote it, and what was involved: hence our event’s cheeky title. The launch was attended by more than 160 people and we got lots of questions: apparently there are more than a few budding authors lurking in the wings.
One thing that came up was an interest in the fundamental theme of the novel, which is embedded in its title – are we acting today in a way that the future will look kindly on?
Since the launch event, the latest IPCC reports have made the dangers of climate change even more apparent, and our immersion in a (long-predicted but poorly-planned-for) global pandemic suggests to me that we all have a lot of work to do before we can answer that question with comfort.
Here is my suggestion to any of you who read this post: it’s not about a book. It’s about having the courage to start a conversation. My many discussions after this little event in just a single company show how powerful starting a conversation can be.
