Today is October 12th. The Space Between: The Prophecy of Faeries was released exactly one month ago. And somehow, despite my frequently stated intentions, the release still came as a bit of a surprise. Even more surprising: Hell didn’t freeze over, Earth’s magnetic poles didn’t reverse (not lately, at least), and the mystery surrounding suspected planet-gobbling star KIC 8462852 and its proposed alien megastructure/Dyson Sphere has still not been solved. These were all possibilities I often thought stood a better chance of occurring in our lifetimes than the publication of my book.
The biggest surprise of all was when this happened:
These are some of the 55 dear friends and family who, despite having—I’m sure—better things to do, came together on the evening of September 29th to eat and drink merrily, helping Glen and me celebrate a story that was 12 years in the making.
And they bought the book.
I was dumbfounded. Before the book release party, I’d worried endlessly that no one would want to come, and even had several dreams in which I sat at a table stacked with copies of The Space Between in an otherwise empty room. Then when the invitees started accepting, I moved on to a new worry, as scripted by my subconscious in this dream a night or two before the event:
I was wandering through the lobby floor of an enormous hotel, looking for the small back room where the book release party was being held. I knew the party had started, but the room was impossible to find and no one could direct me. I was crossing the lobby yet again, looking for faces I recognized, when the hotel guests surged inward from the front doors, shouting that the hotel was under terrorist attack. I saw an SUV thrown into reverse and speeding backward up the hotel front steps. As I joined the crowd running to escape, the police moved in to calm everyone down. It developed that the vehicle was driven by a man who’d had an argument with another man and intended to “teach him a lesson.”
Since the police seemed to have the situation successfully defused, I wandered off again to continue searching and came upon the hotel nightclub, where a music act called the Rodeo Clowns was playing. The other musicians were offstage, but in the spotlight was the lead singer, in full rodeo clown costume, face paint and all. The nightclub floor was slippery with squashed tomatoes, because part of the group’s act was to pretend that the audience had pelted them with rotten tomatoes. After listening to a little of their music (a catchy little number), I left the club and—finally!—succeeded in finding the room where my book release party was. I walked in and saw Glen, Katie and Glen’s sister Denise coming to meet me, emerging from a noisy, vibrant crowd of . . . utter strangers. All of whom were having an uproariously good time. And not one of whom bought a book. There the dream ended.
The subconscious can be a mean and snarky mother. “You can throw a party, but no one will come. Okay, fine, they may come, but you won’t know any of them and they won’t buy your book.”
Well, Subconscious . . . you may have an impressive track record, but you aren’t always right. These wonderful, supportive friends and relatives proved that.
Honestly, though, if I didn’t have these pictures to remember it by, I’d be thinking the real party was as insubstantial as the dream version. Katie left three days after the party. Denise, four. They’ve been gone less than two weeks, but already it seems as if they were never here. Their visit went by in such a whirl. But Denise, thank heavens, takes pictures. Unfortunately, as happens so often with the family picture-taker, there are no photos of Denise at the book party, since she was pointing the camera. So here’s one I took a couple of days later when we were fishing.
Yes, she’s got her back turned to the camera. You have to keep an eye on those calves because you never know what they’ll do when they sneak up behind you. They might even lick the back of your head with their big slobbery tongues.
And that’s why I was fishing on the opposite side of the stock tank.
Thank you, everyone. I am so grateful for all of you.
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