October 1, 2024
As I previewed for you in the early summer, I had my first in-person event as the featured Author of the Month at the Northampton Senior Center in August. The event was small and the audience engaged and supportive. In fact, three of the audience members were women from my women writers group, and the others were clearly widows (one fairly recently). After my talk and reading two short excerpts, we had a good conversation about grief journeys and strategies for dealing with the “new normal” that comes after the loss of a loved one. And I sold three books!
My virtual book tour is currently at the halfway mark, and all the reviews have been five stars! Here are a few highlights of the things the reviewers (most of them book bloggers) have had to say about That Day And What Came After:
“Something about Rebecca Daniels’ writing is so transporting, you can be halfway through the book before you even realize it. ‘That Day and What Came After,’ is not just a memoir, but a treatise about grief, love and finding contentment again after everything has been taken from you. “
“I recommend it for readers who have unfortunately found themselves in the widowed club. It is definitely worth reading and I believe they will feel like someone actually understands them.”
“Rebecca Daniels has created a memoir here that I think will be an invaluable resource for those that are suffering, or have suffered with grieving the loss of a loved one.”
“The fog of grief is so well represented in this book that I found myself grieving along with Daniels, despite having never known Skip.”
“A stunning memoir from the author of some of the best books I’ve read in the last decade, ‘That Day And What Came After,’ is an intimate look at grief, pain and moving on in the wake of a tragedy.”
“In ‘That Day And What Came After,’ Daniels paints an unflinching portrait of grief, loss and heartbreak in a way that few other authors are willing to do.”
See the entire tour schedule, with links to the full reviews, and an opportunity to sign up for a book giveaway here.
Most grief narratives have abstract covers, but I didn’t
want random shapes. I wanted there to be something real under the abstraction. So, I gave my cover designer three photos (below) that I had taken of Skip’s grave as well as the tree memorial I had created in my back yard. I thought they might be manipulated into a somewhat more abstract image for the cover. Obviously, the designer agreed.
I’ve started to book more readings and author talks locally for early 2025, and there’s still the second half of my virtual tour to come, but this is a small market (a picturesque valley full of many small rural towns), so online reviews are incredibly helpful to get the word out to a broader readership. I’ve said this before, but if you have read and enjoyed the book, I hope you will consider putting a review on Amazon or Sunbury Press (wherever you bought your copy), or perhaps on Goodreads, if you are active there or bought the print version from your local bookstore. In addition to the promotional work, I’m going to send the book in for consideration for a few book awards, both regional and national before the end of 2024. Keep your fingers crossed for me!
Unfortunately, the Sunbury Press BlogTalk Radio program interview with the founder of the company, originally scheduled for August, had to be postponed again, twice, and probably won’t happen until November. This latest book is not exactly holiday gift material for a general audience, but if someone you know is struggling through their own grief journey, it does make a good gift, though it can be helpful if the giver has read it first.
The audiobook for That Day is now available through Audible on Amazon, with yours truly doing the narration. That was a tough challenge, but I’m glad I decided to do it. I’m also working on narrating Finding Sisters, which came out during the second year of the pandemic, so it has languished until now. But I hope to have that finished before we get too deep into the holiday season.
The other project that is taking my time this fall is the play I co-wrote with my good friend and collaborator of many years, Richard Carp. We are deep into production planning for a premiere full production of Weaving Penelope next fall at the Chehalem Cultural Center’s brand new LaJoie theatre in Newberg, Oregon, located in Yamhill County wine country just outside Portland. Richard will direct and I will assist electronically from a distance, flying out west for final auditions/casting and then again for the last rehearsals before opening night. We’re just getting started with assembling a production team, and it’s finally starting to feel real, very real! The images below are from the workshop staged reading in the fall of 2022 at Keizer Homegrown Theatre near Salem, OR. One is our wonderful dramaturg (Zachary Dorsey, who continues to advise us from afar) waiting for rehearsal to get started; the other is a scene from that same rehearsal.
It feels too early to be saying this out loud, but it seems the holidays are nearly upon us. In fact, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas (or whatever other winter holiday you celebrate), and New Year’s will have passed before I write again, since I only write once every quarter. So, Happy Holidays to you, however and whichever you choose to celebrate.
Rebecca Daniels 