So tomorrow my book (Broken) comes out and I am both excited and terrified. Preorders make a really enormous difference in books so a GIANT thank you to everyone who has already ordered one! My virtual tour starts tomorrow and I was so worried that people wouldn’t come but they actually are sold out of some events and I can’t even wrap my head around that. (Click here to see what’s still available if you want to come and join us.) And I know the bookstores would want me to thank you as well because having a virtual tour with this much support makes such a difference to them too.
Slightly related…Want to hear a story? I’ve loved Omar Rayyan‘s artwork for years and his series of lovely ladies holding terrible beasties has always felt like a perfect symbol of fighting depression or anxiety while living with it so I was ecstatic when he agreed to do my portrait for the book cover. I couldn’t sit for him in real life because we are still living in THE PLAGUE YEARS so instead I sent him a series of pictures of me holding a squirming Hunter S. Thomcat as a stand-in for the beastie and I love the finished portrait for many reasons, including the fact that I think he really managed to capture Hunter S. Thomcat’s complicated inner soul.
He’d send sketches throughout the process and I asked if he’d consider selling the final piece to me because I thought it would be fun to own but I could never get a really straight answer and I worried that he’d already sold it to someone else or that I was being a pain by continuing to ask if I could buy it when clearly he didn’t want to sell it, and then I found out that he couldn’t sell it to me because he actually had already sold it to someone else.
He’d sold it to Victor who bought it as a surprise to celebrate the book.
And then I felt incredibly lucky and happy. And slightly dumb for continually harassing everyone about a painting that no one could tell me I technically already owned.
Yay for strange and wonderful surprises that come when you least expect them.
Tomorrow the book comes out. Now I’m just going to go lightly panic a bit until then.
