Swamped!

The wind must have changed direction in the last 24 hours or something is up because I suddenly find myself swamped.

My auto assignments from the News & Record came in so I spent a good chunk of yesterday afternoon NOT making appointments as I'd planned, but rather leaving increasingly desperate voice mail messages for auto dealer managers to please, pretty please, call me back.

I have a big article due for a college magazine and have had trouble lining up a time to interview a primary source so that finally got scheduled for today (Saturday) at 10:30 am. 

The big thing though, is book promotion for Lessons In Stalking.  I have GOT to plan my launch party.  I'd like to have it at a bookstore but I may have waited so late in the game that I can't get in before X-Mas.  I'm going to tie it in with Hurricane Katrina animal relief and a local shelter, donating a portion of my proceeds.  I'm hoping I'll be allowed to bring in a few kittens from the shelter and have them at my authors table.  Not sure if a bookstore will got for that.  But it would be wonderful to find some homes for cats during my book launch.  (Or they could just come home with me!!!)

I'm kicking myself for a stupid, stupid, stupid mistake I made.  My friend Pam offered to stuff Lessons In Stalking postcards into a "grab bag" for publishers and book sellers at this Fall's SEBA (South Eastern Book Sellers) Association) convention.  So if you read the Kinko post, you know all about the hassle of getting the flyer done.  It ended up looking pretty good.  Until, I realized last night after Pam had already handed them out, I forgot to put the ISBN on the card as well as the name of my publishing company.  The effect of such an error is that my postcard will look extremely amateur.  Sort of like handing out a business card with no telephone number on it.  Just one great big DUH.

So I'm a little bummed about that but lesson learned and it will never happen again. 

The good news is that Pam said as they were stuffing bags a publisher came by and saw the LIS postcard and said, "This is so cute.  Can I have this?"  So I still hold out hope of thousands of orders coming in.  It would be stressful but in a good way if I went into my second printing only months after my first!

Dena