Launch Day!
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You know how when you were a kid, birthdays were the pinnacle of excitement? I always had trouble falling asleep on birthday-eve because it felt like the cusp of some huge new chapter would rise in the middle of the night and I wanted to be awake to see it.
Birthdays aren’t half so exciting after having nearly thirty of them, but a book birthday feels pretty close to what I remember the early days of five, six, seven years old were like.
My answer to almost every “what do you want to be when you grow up” prompt throughout childhood was “a writer.” Regardless of whatever interests I was flinging myself into as I grew up, I kept writing in the wings. In many ways, writing is how I keep myself close to the kid who still lives on in my core. I filled notebooks with fiction instead of diaries (and would get similarly tetchy about it if anyone ever peeked at the pages), and stories were my way to connect the dots of life.
Today on my very first book birthday—and yes I did wake up at 4:30 AM and lie awake until 6:00—that kid is so steamed at me for letting everyone read her diary. But I think underneath the huffy bravado she’s very proud.
Building dioramas in my imagination with all kinds of characters, settings, and scenarios was a key for me to make sense of the world. I’ve never been particularly good at being objective about my feelings. Making up stories became the equivalent of holding up flashcards to myself—What does this make you feel? And how about this? What if they did this instead of that? What if they kissed?
SHOOT THE MOON is not a biographical book so much as it is a very specific snapshot of the parts that made up the whole of me as it was coming together. I think every book that ever makes it way out of my brain and onto the page will be that, a mosaic of Me-ness, as I think any good, earnest, ambitious book is to the author who births it. That’s one of the big secrets: most authors really want to feel seen; heard; understood. So we write, like sending messages off in bottles to all sorts of distant coasts.
Annie’s story is one of growth and inevitable change and the rasping resistance of trying to cling to who you know you are now in the face of what you feel you will someday become. It’s about repressed memories, and the overwhelming ecstasy of feeling them unlock. It’s about love. It’s about hope. It’s about what we can be if we trust ourselves.
I hope anyone who picks up a copy today enjoys the hell out of it. If you choose to listen to the audio version, the narrator Kristen Sieh did the story such an honor with her beautiful performance. You really can’t go wrong. PRH has been a wonderful steward of this book.
If you dive in and enjoy the time you spent with it, please do leave a review on any platform! Word-of-mouth is a huge driving force for media’s sticking power these days. I would love to see Annie & co. reach as many readers as possible, and I would love to know if you loved this book as much as I do :)
Woo hoo!! Congrats!!!