Writing books requires imagination, persistence, and a willingness to spend far too long deciding whether a sentence is funny.
Being an author also apparently requires a professional photograph.
This is where things become complicated.
I’ve been finishing my author media kit, which sounds wonderfully organized. There are biographies, book covers, interview topics, and contact details. It gives the reassuring impression that someone is in charge.
Then we get to the photographs.
Choosing an author photo is a peculiar exercise. You want to look approachable, but also as though you might know something. Friendly, without appearing about to ask whether anyone brought snacks. Ideally, you’d like the photograph to resemble the person you expect to see in the mirror, rather than the stranger occasionally ambushed by your phone camera.
Somewhere in that process, I began wondering how much of a life a single photograph can actually explain.
My media kit now includes a photo from my circus days. There I am in sequins and a magnificent feathered headdress, looking considerably more prepared for an entrance than I usually do these days.
There’s a current author portrait too. Different clothes, different chapter.
Looking at those photographs together reminded me how many versions of ourselves we carry around. The person we were at twenty. The person who raised a family, went to work, changed direction, or started again. The person who finally tried something they’d been quietly thinking about for years.
They don’t all fit neatly into a short biography.
Perhaps that’s why I enjoy writing about the messy business of being human. People have histories, unexpected skills, questionable decisions, and entire chapters you would never guess from meeting them in the grocery store.
I might look like a retired woman traveling around Australia and writing books. You wouldn’t necessarily look at me and think, “I wonder how she managed a feathered headdress.”
But there we are.
The media kit is finished now, which means I can return to writing. A photograph may introduce me, but the books give me considerably more room to explain myself.
What’s one chapter of your life that would surprise someone who only knows you now?
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