The promotion for the paperback of The Young Widow’s Book of Home Improvement is underway now that I’m back in Sydney and calibrated to local time. I am doing some radio interviews tomorrow, with ABC Central Coast and ABC Alice Springs, the latter for whom I’m judging the finals of a competition in which listeners were encouraged to write the first paragraph of their own memoir! Next week I’m in Hunter Valley wine country with six events in two days, which are listed on my website here. I hope to catch up with old friends and sample some local produce while I’m there.

My book has just been reprinted in paperback, less than one month after arriving in bookstores. It’s difficult to get much attention for the paperback release of a previously released book, so I’m grateful for the attention generated by the Books Alive campaign. I am thrilled with the support of Australian booksellers and of course my publisher, University of Queensland Press, working with the sales team at Penguin, which distributes UQP titles. In the vexed question of parallel importation currently raging in Australia, I do wonder whether my book would have ever been published in the first place, let alone granted a new lease of life in a second edition.