{"id":2268,"date":"2017-11-20T13:41:09","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T03:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/?p=2268"},"modified":"2017-11-20T13:41:09","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T03:11:09","slug":"launch-surrogate-tracy-crisp","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/2017\/11\/launch-surrogate-tracy-crisp\/","title":{"rendered":"The launch of SURROGATE by Tracy Crisp"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Last week we launched Tracy Crisp’s new book Surrogate<\/em><\/a> to a very full house at Imprints Booksellers. After an excellent speech by ABC Adelaide’s Deb Tribe, here is what Tracy had to say.<\/p>\n

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Thank you, Deb. For being so open to the invitation and so generous with your time to prepare for tonight and to be here this evening. And thank you for giving Surrogate<\/em> such a great send-off into the world. It\u2019s extremely nerve wracking, and I really appreciate what you\u2019ve done to wish it bon voyage<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Thank you to Imprints, and especially Jason who has been very patient with all my Hi Jason, just double-checking<\/em> emails. I remember the first time I walked into Imprints \u2026 it was down the road, and I\u2019d just moved to Adelaide to go to uni. I was entirely overwhelmed that year, feeling completely out of place, but when I walked inside, I knew that I wanted to be part of this world. I bought the Complete Shakespeare Sonnets<\/em> \u2013 because that\u2019s how clever I was \u2013 and every year since I\u2019ve made a new year\u2019s resolution to learn them all by heart. 2018 will be my year.<\/p>\n

Thank you to everyone at Wakefield Press and especially to Michael who has twice now taken a punt on my work. Wakefield is truly South Australian, making sure that local stories have a place to be told.<\/p>\n

In coming back to Adelaide, I have experienced for the first time since I moved out of my home in Port Pirie the true joy of knowing what it means to feel grounded, to belong, to be at home. Being published by Wakefield has given my return home an extra potency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Julia was a very caring editor. Liz designed the perfect cover. Ayesha and Maddy have answered endless emails \u2013 Hi, just double-checking<\/em> \u2013 and Jonny is making sure my books can fly out of the nest and find a new home.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to talk too much about the tortuous process of writing this, but at a time when I was completely overwhelmed with doubt Virginia Lloyd and Jacqui Lofthouse each did a brilliant job in very different ways of helping me see the way through to the end. When I did get to the end, Penelope Goodes in Melbourne and Melissa King who lives in Adelaide and I\u2019m really pleased was able to come tonight, picked it up and did a wonderful job of saving me from embarrassing errors.<\/p>\n

Thank you to Adrian. Those of you who know him, know that he is a good man in all of the many senses that we understand that. He not only loves me, and he not only respects my work as a writer, but he values it. He values it not only because it is good for me, but also its place in our relationship. This is not to be taken for granted in a partner. Although I\u2019m not sure he values the production of tea towels taking over the house and the subsequent spread of inky cat prints across all our floors. As I was finishing off the printing for last week\u2019s market, I said to him, \u2018Do you think I\u2019m ridiculous?\u2019 And he didn\u2019t say, \u2018Yes.\u2019 Though thinking about it now, I also realise he didn\u2019t say, \u2018No.\u2019<\/p>\n

Thank you to Leo and Felix. My beautiful grandfather used to like saying, \u2018Leo and Felix. You had two cats.\u2019 But they\u2019re heaps better than cats. Their inky paw marks are bigger, but so is their love and it is more consistent too.<\/p>\n

Before I thank you for coming, I want to give a shout out to Adrian\u2019s parents who can\u2019t be here. Adrian\u2019s mum has done such a wonderful job of negotiating the complexities of the mother-in-law, daughter-in-law relationship and I am very grateful to have her as one of my greatest friends. Thank you to the many members of my family who came tonight, aunties, uncles, cousins, brother, my sisters-in-law. And thank you to mum and dad\u2019s friends.<\/p>\n

It is of course the deepest of sadness that Mum and Dad aren\u2019t here. Mum never knew that I was going to publish anything. Which is a pity because she was the first and the best storyteller I will ever know and she really had a way with words.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

From the nuns at Henley Beach who, she insisted, were constantly trying to steal her dog, to the day we drove into Port Pirie and she pointed at the stack and said to us, \u2018Do you see that? Do you know what that is? That\u2019s the largest lead smelter in the world, and do you know what that means, that means if there\u2019s ever a war, we\u2019ll be the first to be bombed\u2019; to the time that in her capacity as the Mayor\u2019s wife she stood next to Port Pirie\u2019s archbishop as the debs were presented and said to him, \u2018You know you\u2019re the only man in the town can get away with wearing hot pink, don\u2019t you?\u2019<\/p>\n

I didn\u2019t ever let Dad read the final draft of my first novel. I was nervous about what he would think, afraid that I wouldn\u2019t live up to his expectations. Not because he was especially demanding, but because he had such faith, such confidence in what I would do, and I hated the thought that I had let him down. By the time I felt like I could show it to him, he was far too tired and although I had signed the contract before he died, he never did get to see the finished product. This mistake has haunted me for a long time. But from it I hope that I have learnt to be more open and more trusting, not only in the people around me but in myself.<\/p>\n

And finally, I want to say thank you to you.<\/p>\n

The biggest challenge that I face when I\u2019m writing is staring down my demons. There\u2019s the obvious, angsty ones. I\u2019m not good enough, what have I got to say that hasn\u2019t already been said, I\u2019m fifty years old I\u2019ve got six thousand dollars in super I should probably get a real job, oh, I\u2019ve got a great idea, I\u2019ll screen print tea towels \u2026 and then I will give them away, because I\u2019m too embarrassed to ask for money \u2026 but there are also far deeper and much darker demons than those.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a clich\u00e9 of writing classes to be told, \u2018write what you know.\u2019 Okay. So, clich\u00e9s ahoy, my first novel is set in a town nestled in the shadow of a lead smelte \u2013 although spoiler alert, war is never declared \u2013 but writing, creating anything, is a way of making sense of the world, of making sense of what it means to be human. So, writing what you know means that wherever you start, you always end up processing the most difficult of emotions. The losses, the pain, the anger, the mistakes. I remember when Leo was quite young and he was asking about the events of my work so far and when we got to the end, he said, \u2018Have you ever thought about, instead of all the death, you have a brush with death?<\/p>\n

But of course, we only know what it is to feel loss and pain because we know celebration and joy. Because we know friendship and we know love. So, when I say thank you for coming, thank you for helping me to celebrate, I mean it most sincerely.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Thank you for coming to the launch of my new novel, Surrogate<\/em>. Thank you for reading it, and thank you in advance for sending me nice notes to tell me how much you loved it. Thank you for telling me a little white fib if you never get around to reading it, and thank you for flat out lying if you do read it but you don\u2019t really like it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Last week we launched Tracy Crisp’s new book Surrogate to a very full house at Imprints Booksellers. After an excellent speech by ABC Adelaide’s Deb Tribe, here is what Tracy had to say.     Thank you, Deb. For … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[77],"tags":[377,40,756,755],"class_list":["post-2268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-launches","tag-adelaide","tag-book-launch","tag-surrogte","tag-tracy-crisp"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4v1Of-AA","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2268"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2278,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2268\/revisions\/2278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wakefieldpress.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}