This post about my launch week is going up shamefully late--almost a month after my publication date! It was a crazy, fun, hectic week, after which I came home and melted into a puddle for a while. So please excuse the delay. I was busy putting myself back together.
The launch party was held on January 27th, the day before my official publication date, at Mysterious Galaxy in Redondo Beach, a fabulous little independent bookstore. We had wine and mini-cupcakes, and all my wonderful friends came out to support me and my little book. Honestly, it was incredible. I gave a completely unprepared speech about how writing a book had always been my dream from childhood, and how much work and sacrifice went into making it happen. Then I did a reading from the book, with the help of a few engineers from Space Exploration Technologies, the company that my husband worked at for almost ten years. Rocket scientist theater! They did an awesome job. As the culmination of years of hard work and persistence and the celebration of a big milestone in my life, my launch party was everything I'd ever dreamed of. And Mysterious Galaxy sold out of copies of my book to boot!
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| Rocket scientist theater! |
Early the next morning, I got picked up at home for the first day of my book tour. My amazing publicist at Macmillan had arranged four action-packed days of visiting schools in LA, the Bay Area, and San Diego so I could talk to kids about THE LOST PLANET and the path I followed to become an author. Here's a little secret: Up until my launch, I'd never spoken to a single kid about my book. So I had an insane amount of fun sharing my stories with them and answering their questions, and meeting the young writers who came up to me after my presentations to let me know that they had author dreams as well. All the schools were fantastic--one even hung their students' Lost Planet art projects in the room where I gave my presentation. I just about had an out-of-body experience when I saw them:
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| Awesomesauce! |
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| More awesomesauce! |
Since I got home, I've been wrapping up some final publicity stuff and getting to work on revising the sequel to THE LOST PLANET, which is turning out great and I'm super excited about! I've had to take things a little slower than usual because of another project I'm working on in 2014, one that will come to fruition this August. Unlike my writing projects, this project has the side effects of extreme fatigue and the need to huddle on the sofa in a ball of miserable nausea (another reason I've been so slow to post anything). I'm counting down the days until I will (supposedly!) start feeling normal again, so I can get cranking at a decent pace and get all my to-dos in order before life as I know it implodes.
Other updates:
ReadKiddoRead is running a sweepstakes this month for THE LOST PLANET. I've been promoting this on Twitter and Facebook, but I wanted to mention it here because there are still two days left to sign up here:
http://readkiddoread.com/uploads/sweeps.php
I've got a guest post up today on Read Now Sleep Later about world-building in THE LOST PLANET:
http://www.readnowsleeplater.com/2014/02/the-lost-planet-guest-post-with-author.html
I've got some appearances coming up in the L.A. area in April--click on the
Events link for more info if you're interested!
