This past Sunday, I was thrilled and honoured to have had the opportunity to sign copies of my début novel, See What Flowers, at the Yonge and Eglinton Indigo location in Toronto, Canada.

Set in Toronto, Vancouver, and the Canadian Arctic, See What Flowers is a contemporary fiction about love and mental illness.

While this is not the first event I’ve done to promote my book–I launched it in both Toronto and Ottawa, and did a book signing in Shawville, Québec–I was most nervous to talk about my book in front of Indigo customers, most of whom I had never met before.

Chapters/IndigoChapters/Indigo is Canada’s biggest bookstore, so it felt like I had entered the “big league” with this event.

During the event, there were most definitely awkward moments. I felt shy about encouraging readers to purchase copies of my book when copies of Rohinton Mistry’s A Fine Balance and Marlon James’ A Brief History of Seven Killings were prominently displayed on the shelf in front of me.

But I kept reminding myself that my last name is “Mullen”…which gives me the alphabetical order advantage to be shelved beside “Munro” (as in Alice).

This little self-pep talk gave me the boost of confidence I needed to chat about the plot, setting, and characters of See What Flowers, my writing process, and about book publishing in general.

In the end, many customers took a chance on my book, choosing to place See What Flowers alongside the many books that fill their own personal libraries.

I am very fortunate and grateful that Chapters/Indigo has such an active “Local Authors” program to support emerging authors like me promote their work.

The best part of the day was when one of the staff members placed the remaining copies in Indigo’s CanLit section, complete with “Signed By Author” stickers.