On the 20th June 'Single Minded' was officially launched, in the fabulous surrounding of Liverpool's Anglican Cathedral. It was such a completely fabulous evening! A massive thank you to everyone from the Cathedral for letting me use such a great venue and for helping with the organisation; to everyone at Monarch for all their support; and to everyone who came along on the night. If you were there, I hope you had a great time too.
It was a very surreal evening in lots of ways. For most of the week leading up to it, and especially on the afternoon (probably to the great annoyance of everyone who was with me) I was absolutely terrified that no one was going to come. It just seemed incredible to me that people would come out just for me and my little book! (To be fair, they probably actually came out for the free wine, but never mind).
I'd never before been to a book launch so had very little idea of what was supposed to happen - fortunately, nice people told me what to do when! Basically it seems to involve a few speeches, quite a lot of wine, and then lots of chatting and mingling (for all the guests) and signing your name so many times that your wrist goes numb (for me).
As I said on the night, the Cathedral has really special memories for me, having been ordained deacon there in 2005 and priest in 2006. It's an awesome building, in the true sense of that word, and it fitted the occasion perfectly. It was a privilege to have the Dean, Pete there, as well as Jenny from Monarch, both of whom said nice things about the book, and of course it was lovely to also have chance myself to talk about why I wrote the book, what my hopes for it are, and to thank everyone for their support. So many great people came along, from so many different parts of my life, and some travelled quite a long way, which was lovely.
I spent a lot of the evening having that weird, slightly out-of-body sort of feeling, when you can't quite believe that you are where you are, doing what you're doing. How was this possible? How had I actually written a book?
I'm thrilled with the end-product of the book - I like the cover, the font, the layout. I hope people enjoy reading it as much as I have enjoyed writing it. But ultimately I hope that everyone who reads it finds God within, and that whoever they are, and whatever their reason for reading it, they hear him speak as they do so.
So, this is a rambling, musing sort of a post, and really it's just to say - yay! the book is here, and thanks! to everyone who's been part of getting to this point. If you've read the book, do let me know what you thought - feel free to comment on here, or to email me, or to post a comment on amazon. If you haven't yet read the book you can get it in all the usual places, or directly from me if you prefer - let me know if so.
