YES!

This week a printer will start the presses on a vibrant new edition of "Boy on a Wire".
Lovely.
It will look much the same as the previous edition, but all the minor errors will be corrected and a small collection of the most perceptive of the reviews will be included in the front cover, or the back cover, or under cover.
If you already own a copy, great, well done. If not, this is the one to send to friends who have never heard of me and need some reasurance.
That's what reviews give, reassurance. They suggest the author knows what he or she is doing.
A re-print was all the reassurance I needed.
It was never going to be good enough to knock out a book and have it sit in a warehouse for the next ten years.
But the pace of the early sales did stun me, knocked me about a bit, then put a rocket under my confidence.
This will be the first re-print.
My work has only just begun.

The boy is home

Three weeks on tour is enough to make a ground man sick and tired but luckily this man is not fully grown and although it was hectic and full on with full trams and buses and even boats there is nothing like arriving home and finding a smooth, sharkless ocean with swells to make an almost old man smile and dip.
And here I am.
The program this month includes:
BIG SKY WRITERS' FESTIVAL, GERALDTON
Featuring: Robert Drewe, Anita Heiss, Shelly Gare, Dean Alston, Barbara Temperton, Joy Lefroy, Lara Morgan, Jim Fisher, Simon Hayes and even this blogger.
It will be fun.
Then, soon enough, SPRUNG, the word released, in ALBANY.
Some of the same as above and also:
David Malouf
Charles Firth
Maggie Beer
Scot Gardner
I could go on.
I may.
But not now.
I must away to the Albany Fresh Markets, then coffee, then lunch, then a lie down.
Oh, the life of a casual writer.

Doust heads east

Jon Doust is heading east to shove and push and generally talk up his new book, Boy on a Wire. It’s a heavy book, yet light, and easy to read.

It’s time to push. Sales are good, but could be better. Lots of folk on the eastern seaboard have not heard about it yet.

Oh yes, the reviews have been great, but how many people read them? Lots, that’s why sales increase with good reviews.

But reviews have to be accompanied by appearances, handshaking, door knocking, and annoying behaviour in order to attract attention.

That’s where Doust steps in.

Here’s his itinerary.

TUESDAY 11 August
Life Matters ABC Radio National

With Richard Aedy

9.30am

TUESDAY 11
Shore Bookclub

7.30pm

WEDNESDAY 12th
Wenona Girls School

WEDNESDAY 12 August
Bowen Library Talk
669 Anzac Parade, Maroubra
7pm to 8pm

THURSDAY 13 August

East meets West

Canberra Writers Centre

6pm

MONDAY 17 August
774 ABC in Melbourne

With Richard Stubbs

2.30pm.

Penguin Novel Selection Evening

5pm

TUESDAY 18 August
Melbourne Athenaeum Library
188 Collins Street,

Melbourne

1pm to 2pm

oh yes, now you can listen to it

It is read by Paul English who has also read Mao's Last Dancer.

Paul's work in theatre includes twenty-five productions for the Melbourne Theatre Company, from Shakespeare's Measure for Measure to Janis Balodis' The Ghosts Trilogy; premieres of new Australian work for Playbox by Michael Gurr, Peta Murray, Rodney Hall and Nick Enright; Tom Stoppard's Arcadia with the Sydney Theatre Company; and the plays of Daniel Keene with the Keene/Taylor Project, of which he is a founding member.

Thanks, Paul.
Nice read.

More info?
Go to Fremantle Press.

THE AGE - Non-fiction, Fiona Capp, 4/7/2009

THE boarding-school experience - bullying prefects, sadistic teachers and cruel rituals - has produced some classic films and books. While there is much that is familiar about Jon Doust's recollections of ills at a West Australian grammar school in this semi-fictionalised memoir, Boy on a Wire does not simply rehash old themes. From the opening sentence, it is clear that we are in the presence of a writer with a distinctive voice and uncanny ability to capture the bewilderment and burgeoning anger of a boy struggling to remain true to himself while navigating the hypocritical system he finds himself trapped in. Accentuating the narrator's sense of failure is the fact that his older brother excels at everything he does. What saves the narrator from going under and what makes Boy on a Wire much more than a bleak coming-of-age story is Doust's sharp wit. "Justice not only prevails at Grammar School, it is rampant:' If you know an angry teenager, give this to him.

As if this review would make you buy a copy!
(But on the slim that it does, go to Fremantle Press.)

Hugh Manning interviews the author of Boy on a Wire

BOOK SIGHTINGS

"Boy on a Wire" is still being reviewed and consistently well.
People are seeing the book all over the place and walking in on friends who are offering it to them as "a good book to read".
What does all this mean to me?
It has meant me coming to terms with the realisation I have written a better book than I thought I had written.
All right, of course, I did my very best: I slogged, I slaved, I shed tears, I sat up late and got up early.
All that is a given, but it does still not mean I have written a good book. It means I did my best. I tried my hardest. But not that I have the extra bit, the clever bit, the smart bit.
There are still others out there who are on their fourth, their fifth, their twenty fifth, most better than my first. I don't have enough time to match them.
All I have time left to do is the best I can in the time left.
Wish me luck.