Modjaji Books

Whiplash’s Tess already has loads of friends, she must be on facebook or something. The Gaslight Cafe on Thursday night was packed to beyond capacity and spilled out onto the street as the community of readers and friends who came to wish Tracey Farren well as her first novel was launched turned out in their numbers and made the launch more like a street party or Muizenberg winter carnival.

The evening was enlivened with fabulous belly-dancing - Julia Nowicki and 7 dancers from her studio opened the proceedings and if you want to know why there was belly dancing at the launch - you will have to read the book.

Tracey hardly had time for anything else except signing books all night, she was kept busy with a constant stream of eager readers.

Sally Argent, who recently wrote and published a book called Golden’s Flowers - brought some of Golden’s flowers along - and I was able to give all those who participated in the publishing of the book and in the launch of it with one of Golden’s flowers. It felt like a fitting transition to me, as it was one of the last books to get a CPP award while I was still at the Centre for the Book.

My Whiplash launch speech

It is my enormous pleasure to welcome all of you here tonight to the launch of Whiplash.

It doesn’t seem possible that it was only towards the end of last year, was it October that we agreed, Ron and Tracey at lunch at the Five Flies that we would launch Whiplash in time for the CT Book Fair and here we are! Wow – what a journey… I knew it was possible to do it, but it seemed far in the future.

I think I had just or was just about to publish my first book as Modjaji Books - Fourth Child – Megan Hall’s beautiful book of poems when Whiplash came to me. Modjaji Books still felt like she was a fledgling press, a newly hatched creature and then along came Whiplash and Modjaji’s insistent urgings made me realise she was much older and wiser and more fully developed than I realised and that she had to do Whiplash. I read the manuscript the day I got it, till three in the morning, I didn’t quite finish it and first thing the next morning I phoned my friend, Colleen Crawford Cousins and told her that I had this amazing manuscript and could I bring it over to her to read, I kept back the 50 or so pages that I hadn’t quite been able to finish. I needed to check with someone that this book was as good as I thought I knew it was. She too read it in one sitting, except for the 50 pages or so that I had annoyingly kept back. (I took them to her as soon as I was done). She agreed wholeheartedly that this was indeed a fabulous book.

I knew it was one of those turning points in my life, Whiplash was the thing I had been waiting for, the good thing. And I recognised it for what it was. Although I was scared and couldn’t believe the thing looked like this. Oh, I thought, oh my goodness!

I felt kind of giddy, dizzy with the possibilities. I could see that given half a chance – Modjaji was going to come along and take my hand, and get me publishing — what novels!?! And here my first one I could see has the potential to be a bestseller!

Publishing a novel is an undertaking of a different order to publishing a book of poems. Firstly the book is so much bigger, it simply has more pages, it is more of a financial investment, it requires more marketing, more editing, more typesetting, a much bigger print run. But there are more possibilities for the publisher and the writer too.

I am so utterly pleased to have been the right person at the right time to midwife this beautiful, big, fantastic book! I hope you all love it as much as I did the first time I read it and continue to do as I live with it. I think readers, real readers are going to be the ones who ultimately decide the fate of this book.

I am proud of the look and feel of the book as an object. Natascha, Griessel a very talented young designer saw the opportunity that doing Whiplash presented and she rose to the challenge. Hannah Morris created a cover art work and lettering that is absolutely spot on - it gives us the mood and feel of the book, the sense of the side of Cape Town that isn’t the one in the tourist brochures, it suggests the bleakness of what Tess experiences day after day, but it also offers Tess’s optimism and her quirky truth telling humour.

I have been privileged to have Beryl Eichenberger offer me absolutely top class PR and marketing on the smell of an oil rag! She also caught the excitement that this book has generated in its wake.

My friends, Francois Loots and Maire Fisher in different ways offered their editorial expertise, which Tracey Farren eagerly engaged with. Tracey is I think a truly professional writer, she is committed to the story, to the characters, to the book and is prepared to do what it takes to make the book the best it can be. She had already done a huge amount of this before I got to see the whole book the first time. I have been hugely privileged to work with a writer of her calibre and commitment.

Tracey has a real, strong, fascinating story here and she is indeed an important new voice. Tracey gives us a character in Tess that is as memorable as that other Tess given to us by Thomas Hardy. The Tess in Whiplash is a working class girl, a working girl, a survivor, who with a combination of street smarts and a sense of humour, is able to trust herself in spite of the violence and abuse she has encountered, a girl who is able to with the help of women friends and the return of a pure male energy to begin a journey to heal herself. If you had all the read the book I could say all kinds of things, I don’t want to give the story away, but I hope you will all read it and love it as I do.

I want to say thank you with flowers tonight, flowers which were made by another survivor, a man called Golden who lives in Khayalitsha and who has found a way of supporting his family by making flowers out of tin cans he picks up on a trash heap. These flowers are a small way for me to acknowledge all of those who contributed to this evening happening – the book being published — I also want to acknowledge how the publishing a book is a collaborative effort.

The first person to get a flower is Tracey for writing this wonderful book that I can see you are all longing to read!

Tracey’s family – her son, Tao, her daughter, Grace and her partner David, for having to put up with what the families of writers have to put up with the obsession of their writer being caught up with another world. David, thank you also for the wine! We are all enjoying it enormously.

Tracey’s mom - thank you for giving us Tracey and thank you for coming from Durban tonight to be here.

Maire Fisher – for believing in the book and suggesting to Tracey that she take it to Ron.

Ron Irwin, Tracey’s agent who after exploring many other possibilities came to me. But who believed that the right publisher is the one who loves the book as much as it should be loved.

A flower for my friend, Colleen Crawford Cousins – who also loved the book straight away and didn’t hesitate to support me in my plan to publish it.

Francois Loots – for always reading like a writer and offering this incredibly valuable insight to Tracey and Whiplash

Natascha Griessel for making the book look superb

Hannah Morris, you deserve a flower for your evocative, original art work and lettering on the cover

Andre, my husband – for supporting me to become an independent publisher – even when at times it may have terrified the living daylights out of you, especially the day I told you I was going to give up my permanent job with benefits to become a full time (self-employed) publisher and that I was going to publish a novel! I can see how preposterous that might sound, but you have largely taken it in your stride – including overseeing truckloads of books being offloaded at our house, having me do emails in bed (you were the one who bought me a laptop and got me wireless internet)

Kate, my six year old daughter – for giving me a second chance at believing in the world and for making me want to be the kind of person you will be glad to have as a mother and for putting up with me having to do emails and take phone calls and other boring things at what must seem like inappropriate times

Thanks too, Anne Schuster – for all the work and love you have offered to Tracey and to many of the other writers here tonight, this is probably one of the densest per square metre of writers in the country right now!

Dear Beryl – thank you for seeing the challenge and fun and possibilities in helping to promote Whiplash and Modjaji Books and for doing it mostly out of passion and for generously offering your professional services much more for love than for money. Hopefully one day the love and money will be more equitably balanced.

A huge thanks to Joanne Fedler in Australia – who read the book and also fell in love with Tess and the writing and who wrote the heartfelt shout on the back cover.

Thanks to Ferdie – Gaslight Café – for accommodating us here tonight and giving us this venue that is redolent of Tess’s Muizenberg

Thank you to Julia, Janey and the other Belly Dancers who have added a fantastic pizzazz have given us a wonderful sense of what the belly dancing in the book is all about.

Finally thank you to all the readers and supporters of Tracey and Modjaji who have come here tonight, I don’t have flowers for all of you, but there is wine, food and books. So please enjoy.

Now over to Tracey, the woman of the evening!