Freaks!

It's Friday! Could I be happier? I think not.

Today, I'm delighted to have author Nik Perring here. Nik is a fantastic story-teller, and if you've ever read one of his perfectly formed short stories, you'll know exactly what I mean. Nik's talking about his new book, Freaks, and one of my favourite things: celebrating.

Take it away, Nik!

How Do You Celebrate Your Book Being Released?

I’ve spent a considerable number of evenings over this past few years sitting quietly. Usually reading and often in a pub. And sitting quietly, for me, is important. It helps me recover. Because the majority of my days are spent working hard. Either I’m editing for The Story Corrective or writing stories, or doing other Writing Work, so that couple of hours of down time is really important and, I like to think, they keep me (reasonably) sane. Plus, I really love reading. I love stories. Really, what we do – it’s all about the stories, isn’t it?

Last week Freaks! came out. Freaks! is a collaboration – a short story collection I wrote with the brilliant Caroline Smailes. Its characters all have super powers, some real, some imagined, and it’s something I’m really, really proud of.

And as publication day loomed I got to thinking about how I should go about marking the event, how I should celebrate it. You know, I’ve been doing this a fair old while now and I know that these moments don’t come around too often and that, because they’re special and important, they should be marked in some way.

Now, I’m not the kind of person who really does celebrations. Or is any good at organising anything (and I mean really!). I prefer things to be low key. So, instead of any big party or anything like that, I thought I’d have a nice evening with a couple of friends. Or something like that.

But there was a problem (see the bit about me being crap at organising anything). By the time I got around to trying to arrange something, no-one was about. Most of my good friends live out of town (or the country). My brother and his girlfriend had visited the previous week – they’d even bought me a bottle of Champagne (thank you! ) – but they’d since returned to London. And the other people I would have liked to have spent the evening with were out of town too (curse those FA cup semi-finals).

So, what’s a writer to do?

I’ll tell you what I did. I went to the pub with a book and I sat there quietly. And you know what, it was brilliant. Because I love books and I love stories. And I didn’t have to organise anything with a single person. I was happy celebrating it my way. And it worked.

 So, I’m curious. How would you celebrate your book coming out?


Nik Perring is a writer and editor. He’s the co-author of Freaks!, and the author of Not So Perfect. His website’s http://nikperring.com and he tweets as @nikperring.

Thank you, Nik! Have a great weekend, everyone.