Oh, what a week(s) it’s been…
Aug 10, 2012 
You guys may have noticed I’ve been a bit quiet lately. Well, there’s a lot of reasons for that. The biggest one is that this happened last week:
SKYLARK is in stores now!
There’s so much emotion involved with the release of your first book that it’s hard for me to even blog about it. Clearly, as I’m a week and a half late actually doing it! Right now all I have to say is that I’m so grateful to my agent, my publisher, and most of all to the friends and family and brand new fans who have been cheering and supporting me all through this process. Every time one of you snaps a photo with SKYLARK, or hunts it down in a bookstore in order to send me a picture… it makes my day. Thank you.
The weekend before SKYLARK showed up on bookshelves I had my official launch party at One More Page Books, and it was so much fun. It was unbelievably cool to see so many of my friends and family all in one place, supporting me, as well as a bunch of bloggers and fans who turned out to support me.
Some people drove hours to be there, which absolutely blew my mind! Relatives from the other side of the country flew in. Friends trained down from NYC, like Ellen B. Wright, who photographed the event beautifully. My agent came, wearing ridiculously awesome pants.
My amazing roommate, Caitlin, hand-painted a cake for the event. Asia Nine, my favorite downtown DC restaurant, catered the whole affair. The fantastic staff at One More Page all wore purple to celebrate SKYLARK. I got to sign books and hang out with everyone I love. It was fantastic, and I couldn’t have asked for anything better.
People keep asking me how it feels to have my book out in the world, and the strange thing is that it doesn’t feel all that different. Yeah, an increase in twitter/email/facebook traffic, more requests for interviews and the like, but that’s all just surface stuff. I think by the time the book actually hit the shelves I’d had time to get used to the idea of it being out there. After all, plenty of people got ARCs and e-galleys, so there were already plenty of reviews and reactions to be found.
The biggest difference, so far, is that I’m finally getting back to the business of writing. I’m in the middle of revisions for both SHADOWLARK, book two in the Skylark Trilogy, and for THESE BROKEN STARS, book one of my co-authored series with Amie Kaufman. After so much stress and event planning and promotion and blog touring, it’s actually really nice to get back to the real work of being an author. Even if that business is revision, normally my least favorite part of the process!
Because I’ve been so absent, here are a few other things that have happened over the past couple of weeks!
- SKYLARK’s UK edition (Random House UK) now has a beautiful, original cover! Click here to check it out and see what others are saying about it!
- Hey, Australia! SKYLARK is on shelves down-under, too, sporting a paperback version of the US cover. It’s been spotted at Dymock’s, Reader’s Feast in Melbourne, and a number of indie bookstores.
- The Sky’s The Limit Contest for SKYLARK has officially ended, and I’ve finally finished mailing out all the prizes. There were hundreds and hundreds of entries from over 35 countries around the world, making it the biggest, awesomest contest I’ve ever been a part of. Thank you to all who entered!
- The official SKYLARK blog tour has also wound to a close. Thank you so much to all of the participating bloggers, and for everyone who turned up to join in. I saw a lot of familiar faces following me from blog to blog, and there’s nothing more you can ask than that!
And now, it’s time for me to get back to work. Mission accomplished. What’s next?
5 comments ; ?>/i/tag@2x.png)
agent, books, cake, launch party, publishing, release day, skylark, thankful, these broken stars, update, writing, YA
I love the cake! And Josh’s pants! Looks like a wonderful launch event. So cool to see it on shelves. Really excited for you!
Aren’t the pants awesome? It’s funny, people would come up to me and be like “Is your agent the one with the pants?” Oh, Josh.
So SO happy for you hon. 🙂 It’s REALLY REAL. Onwards and upwards!
Awww!! Congrats! That’s super amazing. & I so wish I could have some of that cake.. ;__; LOOKS SO GOOD.
I can’t wait to read your book, btw! Sounds great (:
I was hoping you would post about your awesome launch, Meagan! I loved every detail. You look simply SMASHING (and so does Josh!), your cake is STUNNING, the pictures, the covers, it’s all epically terrific and I’m so happy for you!!! Congratulations again! I have my very own beautiful copy of SKYLARK and have read the first chapter and am so intrigued. I’ve been on some kick-me-to-the-gutter editorial revisions for my YA the past 3 weeks and working 12 hour days so I haven’t gotten to read anymore – or anything else! – but yours is first on my stack, even if I did have to push the older books down! 🙂
Yeah, I only got 3 weeks for the revision for a 100,000 word novel! I added 20,000 new words, cut 10,000 and edited/tweaked/rewrote every single line, developing characters more and most of the major scenes. Whew! I’m exhausted. And during this, I sold my 4th MG to Scholastic and they want the book by October so I start drafting that on Monday. Then more YA revisions before it goes to copy edits. THEN draft Book 2 before my trip to Jordan/Israel October 27th!
What a life, eh? So now that I’ve written an email as a comment, I will shut up . . . XOXO, Kimberley