“Be favorable to bold beginnings,” a wise man (Ben Franklin, I think) once said. On May 10, I took a “bold beginning” with the launch of my YA novel, The Secrets We Carry: Journal of a Girl in Trouble. The book had actually been on the market since the end of March, but this “launch” officially introduced it to the reading world.

The event took place at the McConnell Arts Center in Worthington before an audience of 62 people. I knew just about all of these people, but they represented different elements of my life, both past and present. There were board-gaming friends, former colleagues at the Department of Education, many fellow writers from my writing groups, and numerous family and friends from Canton, Columbus. Worthington, and Upper Arlington.

My opening remarks centered on an incident that took place many years ago during a party at The Columbus Athletic Club. A man who had too much to drink started pushing his wife around, eventually knocking her to the floor and sitting on her. My father told the man to get off his wife, and when he didn’t comply, my dad tried to pull him off. As I explained to my listeners, with The Secrets We Carry: Journal of a Girl in Trouble, I did figuratively what my father tried to do literally 60 some years ago: confront an abuser, demand that he stop his abuse, and if he didn’t comply, force him to stop. And indeed, I went a step further in my book, by bringing the abuser to justice.

I told everyone at the outset that I would be sharing my sales revenue, whatever it turned out to be, with the Ohio Domestic Violence Network and the Rape, Abuse, and Incest National Network (RAINN). Denise Kontras from the former and Michael Coursey from the latter, gave the audience some insight to how extensive the problem of sexual abuse is and the services they offer to victims.

For me, the highlight of the program was the readers’ theater presentation I did with my son Jonathan. I created a script for us by condensing Chapter 2 of the book, eliminating the narration and leaving only the dialogue. With Jonathan playing Herbie and me playing Collin, we gave the audience an idea of how the two teens figured out a strategy for identifying the “girl in trouble,” even though she doesn’t use her name in the journal.

After the readers’ theater performance, I made sure to acknowledge the people, some of whom were in my audience, that helped make the book possible. That included members of the International Women’s Writing Guild and the GEM-C Writers of Columbus State. It also included people such as former Worthington Schools Superintendent Melissa Conrath, who helped assure the accuracy of the book’s technical details. And I made absolutely certain to thank my wife, Becky, who played a major role in laying the groundwork for the book launch.

The launch concluded with a book signing in the MAC’s master classroom. Besides autographing each copy I sold, I left a personal message for the buyer. At the end of the evening, I had sold 45 copies at $10 apiece for a total of $450.

This was a solid beginning for The Secrets We Carry: Journal of a Girl in Trouble, perhaps even a bold one, but this book has a long way to go to prove its value both to my publisher and the people who buy it. The next step will be how it performs at two upcoming book festivals, one in Newark and one in Lithopolis. Stay tuned.