Thank you so much to all who came to the Ōkiwi Brown launch in Havelock North and prepped and poured and sorted and carried plates around and partied at Duart House. (And tidied up afterwards – the best of friends.) By the look of these photos (thank you Max Ward) I spent the entire evening walking around smiling, and it certainly felt like that. Mary-anne Scott stood in graciously for the publisher’s speech, and Dan Brennan provided the excellent Decibel wines. Max and Phill for Wardinis sold a shit load of books – thank you everyone. Congratulations go to Jonathan Jordan who, in the “guess the grog” competition, was the only one who recognised Irish from Scotch, got the gin right but misjudged the sherry. If someone had named Old Tom gin specifically, they would have won the Decibel Wine prize immediately. And I am a bit disappointed that most guesses were that the cask contained rum or port, when I had specifically mentioned the book has twenty murders in it. Where is your imagination, people? Only Jonathan and Jill went to the dark side with a dead body. We would have accepted ‘herrings’ as well.
If you’re confused, you obviously haven’t read Ōkiwi Brown yet. Get yourself to a bookshop.
The Ōkiwi Brown launch at Unity Books in Wellington two days later was a more sedate affair – a joint launch with the fabulous Mandy Hager and her new book Strays & Waifs. We interviewed each other and I tried to get an A (can’t get over the fact that Mandy was my tutor at Whitereia) and lots of old friends turned up, along with The Cuba Press team and fans. it always feels like you have fans at a launch, even though most of these were there for Mandy. Good enough!
Ōkiwi Brown, you old bastard – consider yourself launched.
Cristina Sanders' blog 