Blog Entry: Launch parties and giddiness
Today I am thinking grateful thoughts about why I really, really LOVE my publishers.
When I first started researching about the lifestyle of a professional author, I found out about all these important practical things authors have to do, like introducing themselves to their local bookstores! Arranging launch parties! Designing invitations! Designing bookmarks! Writing press releases! Arranging all the food & drink details for their launch parties!
It all makes sense, right? There's only one problem: I am AWFUL at stuff like that. I love meeting people - I love hanging out with people who love books - but when it comes to organizing practical functions, I am hopelessly incompetent. Worse yet, at the very idea of introducing myself to a bookstore manager as an author (and one who WANTS SOMETHING from them, like a launch party!), I immediately shrivel inside. It's less than a month till my book comes out, and I still haven't summoned up the guts to introduce myself as an author to my local branch of Waterstones, or even to my wonderful local library.
I'd been getting more and more worried about this issue as it got closer and closer to my book's publication date. But now?
I love, love, love my publicist at Templar Books SO much. All those things I was dreading? She did them for me, without even blinking. Yesterday, she set up my launch party. I am having a real, live launch party!!!!!! I am so excited. And honestly, as pathetic as this is, I have to admit that it would probably never have happened if it had been left to me to organize. I would have spent the entire time up until my book's release just trying to talk myself into asking my local Waterstones to do it...and truly, I would never have gotten the guts to follow through. Luckily, my awesome publicist has plenty of guts to spare! :)
My launch party is at 6pm on Thursday, August 12th, at the Waterstones bookshop in Abergavenny, Wales.
This morning, it was my turn to sleep in after MrD woke up (Patrick and I take turns), but for once, I couldn't do it. I was already panicking. I would need invitations! I would need to DESIGN invitations! I can't design anything! I am artistically inept! OMG I WOULD HAVE NO INVITATIONS TO SEND! AAAAGGHHH!
Well. I just got an email from my publicist telling me (by pure coincidence) that she's getting some invitations designed for me to send out, as well as a whole bunch of bookmarks and postcards to promote the book (two things I'd been thinking I really ought to get done, but which intimidated me like crazy). She's also arranging and paying for the drinks and nibbles.
If she had been here instead of in Dorking, I would have fallen on her neck with tears of joy and gratitude. (So if you're reading this, Phil - be very, very grateful that you're in Dorking instead of Wales right now! ;p )
I am a limp, happy, and most of all intensely relieved author right now. And I'm having a launch party!!!! Have I mentioned that yet????
Abergavenny is a great small town in a beautiful Welsh valley, with one ruined castle in the town center, another just out of town, and several really nice coffeeshops. (They sell the best vegan hazelnut brownies EVER!) Better yet, it's got a great train service and is a very easy, short train ride from Bristol, Cardiff, and pretty much anywhere in the southern half of the UK.
I know a lot of the people who read this blog are in the U.S. or Canada, and of course I will not be offended if you don't all immediately hop onto a plane to come party with me...but I do wish that all of you could! And for anyone who CAN come:
Free drinks! Free nibbles! Party prizes! And as much as I get intimidated by event-organization and practical design skills, I LOVE hanging out at parties with other people who love books.
I would really, really love to see you guys there!