Well, it’s past midnight over at the other side of the world so it’s officially my book’s American/Canadian birthday. Hurray! I am super grateful for all the support and shared excitement from you all. This feels a bit cringey but this is one week I have to promote my book hard if I am going to achieve my dream of not-failing-at-this-shindig. Pre-orders and first week sales and early buzz are really critical to a book’s success, so here goes: here’s a list of things you can to do help me not-fail!

– if you like fantasy you could try reading it, I think it is quite good

– if you don’t want to spend the $ or can’t afford it you could ask your local library to stock it, that is also enormously helpful to me

– or you could suggest it to that friend or relative of yours who likes fantasy, just shout ‘anyone watch Game of Thrones’ at your BBQ or other social gathering and then when people look up you shout ‘that new Sam Hawke book looks good you should buy it’ or alternatively throw them the copy you bought at step 1, your call

– if you read it you could leave me a review on Goodreads and Amazon and any other review site you frequent. These things are kind of self-fulfilling prophecies so the more ratings and reviews things have the more reach they get, etc etc. It doesn’t need to be a big investment of time – one sentence is fine! ‘ It is good’ . ‘I liked it’. This would be SO, SO helpful and I am super grateful for everyone who takes the time. (I mean, if you hated it, you don’t need to do this, but if you hated the book but still like me you could try something factual like ‘I read this book all the way to the end’ or ‘there are a lot of words in this and it obviously took a lot of time to write so well done for trying!’)