Garden of Thorns Book Launch Party

On Wednesday night, a bunch of folks came out to celebrate the release of GARDEN OF THORNS. It was a pretty overwhelming evening and I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t nervous. Luckily, I knew so many of the faces that had come to celebrate with me and as people came up to my table with my book in hand, it become a lot easier to breath.

Everything was beautiful for the night. I was lucky enough to have an amazing photographer in the family, my uncle, who took all the pictures. It was a lucky thing because I was so busy, I didn’t get a single one. I also have a talented aunt who baked three gorgeous cakes for the event and even replicated my cover.

It’s funny, I’ve been to so many book events before but when I went to plan this one, I had no idea what I was doing and by the time I got up there, I blanked for a moment and completely forgot that I was the one that needed to be answering the questions.

I chose an interview style presentation since I figured it would be much easier to do a back and forth than try to maintain the entire conversation on my own. It really helped my nerves to have someone up there with me and it helped me expand on what I was talking about. I find it easier to speak when I have someone to go off of.

After I spoke about my book, my writing process and excitement about GARDEN OF THORNS being released, I did a short reading. Even though I’d practiced reading like four times, I ended up tripping up at the beginning. I just took a deep breath, went back and continued so everything turned out okay. Everyone I know tells me I did fine and I even hear there are some recordings floating around but I don’t want to see them!

I knew I wanted my giveaways to double as decoration and wanted to be creative. I ended up getting two dozen roses, attached different quotes from the book and asked people to take a “rose on Rose” since a strong theme in the book is about flowers. My husband and I make papercraft shadowboxes so we made one of my cover to giveaway for the event and I also made Zarenite necklaces out glitter.

While people got their books signed, I put out raffle cards for them to fill out. My biggest fear of the night was spelling someone’s name wrong but one of my friend’s let me misspell my own name in her book to get that over with!

Over all, it was an incredible evening. I couldn’t believe how many people came out to support me for my very first book launch party and I wouldn’t have done a single thing differently. I can’t thank everyone enough for coming out, buying books, supporting me, asking questions and being so kind. It meant so much to me.

In my next post, I’ll give a few tips on how to throw a book launch party on a budget!

If you were there and have pictures, I’d love to see them. Also, if you have read my book and loved it, it would be great if you would review it on Goodreads, Amazon, Barnes and Noble or any other website! Thanks!