MY BOOK IS RELEASED TODAY!

So. Despite lack of a firm on-sale date (which allowed many of my pre-ordering folks to receive their book early), release date is a huge deal, especially for authors who have never had a book published before (i.e., ME)!

What's it like to officially be a published author, you ask?

::shrug:: I dunno. I had some coffee, did laundry, and paid the rent today.

Not sure if it's sunk in entirely, or if maybe I've just been distributing the reaction over a long period of time so there was never any one large spike of OMG OMG. But I wanted to prepare for anything--feeling weird, feeling blah, getting overwhelmed with attention, having some emergency, lacking energy, having too much energy, etc.--so I decided this week to take a mini-vacation from my part-time job and just have some peace.

With all the hoopla leading up to release and all the unrelated stress attached to the Pitch Wars contest I'm mentoring, I have had no time to soak in anything and no time to catch up on e-mail--no time really to relax. So I'm planning to spend this week chilling, not jumping to deadlines, submitting some short stories, answering e-mail, and maybe--gasp--doing some writing.

If you're interested in supporting me or want to know what cool release-related stuff is happening:

Besides buying the book, haha (available in hardcover, audio, and eBook):

• Check out autographed bookplates to stick inside your copy.
• Request an Authorgraph for your eBook version.
• Add it to your To Be Read list on Goodreads, please!
• Review it. Please do this if you have anything to say! Post reviews on your own site/blog, Goodreads, Amazon, and Barnes & Noble.
• Sign up for my newsletter.
• Download a flier in DOC or PDF that has all the book's info, and give it to either people who might wanna order it or YOUR LIBRARY. You can just request it by title at the library as well.
• Follow me on Twitter @JulieSondra.
• Subscribe to my author YouTube account for neat videos.

In other news, my family and friends ambushed me with a surprise party on Saturday!

Yes, the cake says "Author Sextraordinaire." Thanks Mom!

(Those who don't understand the significance of this cake design may be interested to know that the stripes are supposed to be the asexual flag--yeah, we have one--and the "ace" card design is a reference to how asexual people call themselves "ace" for short, like bisexual people say "bi," etc. Not sure if it was intentional but the Ace of Spades is usually associated with aromantic asexual people too, as opposed to the Ace of Hearts which is associated with romantic asexual people! I'm aromantic.)

My mom had been wanting to know if I wanted to do any kind of event for my release day and I said no. I was tired of planning and plotting and arranging and stressing, and I just wanted the day to be calm. So rather than do something weird on release day, she arranged to have my three best friends appear at my house on Saturday (and she came too, of course), and they presented me with cake, food, company, cheer, and a cool poster of my book cover made into a framed picture.

Now they're saying it's the first of many and I'm gonna have a hall lined with these. :) I sure hope so!

I enjoyed celebrating with my pals and just having some down time before they left me alone with my remaining Pitch Wars applications for the evening. My mom had gotten us Subway sandwiches to eat, but we never got around to eating them--we just ate all the appetizers (veggies and fruit, hummus and crackers) and then ate the cake. Eventually they took their sandwiches home and left me with the "vegetarian one," which my mom promised contained "nothing weird." It was literally a roll full of lettuce. Nothing but lettuce and those tiny cheese things. Hahaha.

It's not really the kind of book that I think would do well with a signing event or anything--though I would certainly consider signing books and selling them at some kind of related event. I'm just really not a Big Events person, and wouldn't have wanted to make some big awkward deal about getting a signing scheduled. I signed a book for my mom at the party, and that's about it.

My nearest and dearest: Meggie, Victor, Jeaux.
I have known them since 1994, 1996, and 2000, respectively.
Man those dudes are stoic.

Happy book birthday to me. :)