Before I wow everyone with my deep, philosophically-charged blog posts on my journey of writing Step 2, 3, 4… I wanted to write a fun one about how awesome the launch party was!

So, here goes:

The launch party on 8/15 was awesome and I had so much fun! It was a rush, and went by too fast.

My parents, sister, a fellow dancer, and I made all the food and punch for the party. There were veggies and ranch, apparently there was a lot of fruit dishes, minty Oreo bonbons (my specialty), a tie-dye cake, chocolate fudge, sugared walnuts, cookies, and fruit punch. I didn’t get a plate to my dismay (how did I forget!?) but I sold a lot of books! 🙂

No one came on time, but within 30 minutes most of the people who came were here, and there was a line of people! I had a friend help write out receipts, because I, in my paranoia, wanted to make sure I had 100 receipts if I sold 100 books because I didn’t want to lose track of what’s going on for tax purposes. Pre-filling them out with the dollar amount and signature would have gone faster but I thought of that in the middle of the party, not beforehand… just ended up mostly scribbling anything down on the receipt to make it look legit.

I got fun ‘author pictures’ taken probably six weeks before the launch party for Step 2, 3, 4 and for my next book. In the pictures, I wore my ballroom dress I bought for a waltz performance in 2012, and I showed them off at the launch party. I have the photos posted on my Step 2, 3, 4 facebook page now.

I put out advanced reader copy reviews so people could see what others were saying about the novel. I would have NEVER figured out how to actually have a book launch if I hadn’t read Tim Grahl‘s blog which helped a lot; I follow it now. I wouldn’t have ever thought of having an email list or sending out copies to get Amazon reviews, that’s for sure.

During the party I played my playlist to Step 2, 3, 4 and will post about the individual songs that inspired it the most later on in this blog.

My dance partner taught the group of spectators a ‘tush push’ lesson which may or may not have been to music that was ‘too fast’ but I still think people enjoyed it.

Due to crowd demand, my dance partner and I performed an impromptu cha cha to ‘Stuck in The Middle with You’ by Michael Buble, which was one of the songs on my Step 2, 3, 4 playlist (more about this later). I finally just got to see the video a few days ago and it looked awesome!

A lovely couple I knew from dance since 2013, I think, bought me champagne and a star-shaped balloon with ‘STEP 2, 3, 4’ spelled out on it with stickers. It was such a sweet present.

I was overwhelmed of course and couldn’t focus on anything for the rest of the night. Can’t even believe it happened just two weeks ago, and it was such a great milestone. Now I’m looking up places to sell it next as well.

I bought typewriter thank you cards to send to the reviewers and am still working on sending them. I get to use my Step 2, 3, 4 stamps I bought on Zazzle.com too 🙂

It was definitely fun; and you never know who will be willing to help write reviews and WANT to help you because they too love writing/reading fiction. I tell people who say “yeah, I thought about writing” or “I started something but never continued it” to just do it, because everyone has a story to tell!

The book launch party, for me, was a perfect culmination of all the work I put into Step 2, 3, 4.