It was the launch of The Witch of Benbar’s Cross on Tuesday.
I had a good time. A very good time.
Isn’t this just delightful? Some people dressed in hot pink to match the cover. That’s Lara at the back, a friend and long-time supporter of my work. There’s also Catriona Ross on the far left whose own witchy book, The Which Word, is launching next week, and Shameez Patel Papathanasiou, on the far right, romance writer and co-organiser of Otherworld.
This is the third year we’ve worked together on that and this is the first picture we’ve got of us together. I look like a crazy fan-girl maxing out. Probably because I am.
This is Helen. Helen was one of my line editors on this. She was my belay partner in the mid-2010s when I tried rock climbing to deal with my fear of heights. Gave that up because what the fuck, but kept Helen. She’s a real patooty and open to more line editing, just so you know.
This is Tom. We snuck a quick selfie before the event. Can you see the wild nervousness in my eyes? Not just for my launch but for his book. I’m the editor on his second book in the Arnold Prinsloo series and we’re in the final stretch of ‘deadline is in seven days and we’ve got about a month’s worth of work to get through’. I asked for the ‘literary power couple’ edition of ‘bestsellers, champagne, and soirees’ and got the ‘literary work-our-arses-off couple’ edition of ‘late nights, lamenting career choices, and chasing deadlines’. Good times.
(Seriously, though, good times. I love this.)
I learned that you really do need to tell people when something’s happening. When I launched The Fulcrum in 2022 and Neko in 2024 I told my close friends and posted it to social media twice—once on Facebook, once on Instagram—and then felt surprised when only my friends rocked up. Well, my friends and that one old dude who’s always there to eat the food and sleep and the two students who need to eat the food and sleep.
It also really landed for me that while they’re so much fun and so necessary for the author (if not the publisher—apparently, locally at least, publishers are starting to shy away from them as not worth very much), I’d love a little get-together that comes some time after a launch, once everyone’s read the book.
Because, damn, it’s difficult to unpack anything in a story when you can’t talk spoilers. Especially in a book like The Witch of Benbar’s Cross. I was trying to say what I could about the story but I kept getting the eyeball from Sherry about saying too much.
So. If you’ve got a book club and you’re reading The Witch and want to chat, I’m in. I could talk about women and rage and relationships for years.
Otherwise, where to from here for The Witch of Benbar’s Cross? I don’t know, really.
I’d really love—as any author would—to reach more readers, have more conversations. There’s Comic Con in May, Otherworld in July. I’ll be promoting all the online platforms it’s available on. I have stockists in Joburg now—Love Books (finally) and Bridge Books—which is nice. Dish some books out to libraries. Hopefully try to get some review copies to some kind of media platforms. Maybe find a book blog tour person in the States who actually does these sorts of books? I have to sell 200 books to break even on the printing costs here. Doesn’t sound like a lot, right? But trust me. In South Africa, it is pretty much par.
So now, gack, I have to start doing marketing. Yuck.
Anyway. That’s it for me.
Live, love, laugh, rage against the patriarchy,
t
TANYA MEESON 