As I told my parents as I was leaving Wisconsin on Monday, “Tomorrow is going to be just like any other day when I wake up, except my book will be out.” Boy, was I wrong! I didn’t realize that a certain popular author whom I work with (let’s call her Stephenie) would blog about my book later that night. So when I woke up and checked my author e-mail box, I was super confused as to what happened. Sure, I’d get dozens of messages each day from Twitter and Facebook, but there were HUNDREDS of messages yesterday morning. This wasn’t going to be an ordinary day.
Since I had the week off from work and I just returned from the holidays, I went to the gym in the morning, spent most of the afternoon on my computer watching the Large Hadron Collider people on Twitter get confused by the influx of “I’m joining the Lonely Hearts Club” tweets flooding their #LHC tag, then headed off to Manhattan to stalk my book.
I met my fabulous editor, David Levithan, and my friend Natalie at the Barnes and Noble in Union Square to see The Lonely Hearts Club display. I hadn’t seen it yet, my brother sent me a text that morning of from Minnesota, so I somewhat knew what it looked like.
We got off the escalator on the second floor and then David took me over to the display. There it was. My book in a bookstore. It was a very surreal experience. I’m very appreciative that Scholastic made a nice sturdy display, because I somewhat attacked it. In front of me was the result of five years of work, so needless to say, I was very excited.
We met up with some more friends afterwards to celebrate the release. Natalie had a bunch of books for me to sign. Having someone sit at a table and sign six books got the attention of some cute boys nearby, but did they say anything? Of course not. Why? Because boys are stupid. (As you can probably tell, I have plenty of stories ready for a Lonely Hearts Club sequel…).
December 29, 2009 will forever be one of the most rewarding and fun days of my life. There are tons of people who are responsible for this day being possible, but I would like to especially acknowledge everybody at Scholastic for all of their amazing work from the editing and design to the promotion of The Lonely Hearts Club. Of course big hug to my friends for being so supportive. And to everybody who sent me tweets and messages that they are reading and enjoying the book. Those notes truly made my day!
I’ve got a bunch of blogs to write for my blog tour (details on that are in a below post), so I’ll be back on this in the New Year. I hope everybody has a very happy and healthy 2010!
XO, Elizabeth (the published author – hooray!)