Grateful & Joyful
Recipe for Joy is 1 month old!
My little book baby is crawling out into the world, getting read, and being shared with friends. I love that people are sending me pictures of my novel in their pottery studio, on the beach, next to their cat, artfully arrayed on their foyer table! I hear that cookies are being made! That glowing reviews are being written! That folks are reading Recipe for Joy in their book clubs! (I had the privilege of joining my first book club meeting on the Upper East Side earlier this month and oh my goodness, those ladies were THE BEST!)
Everyone has been so welcoming to my wordy bundle of joy, and this is a post to say THANK YOU! Yes, I’m yelling that. Yes, I use exclamation points a lot these days. Because to receive such a warm response to something you poured your heart into…well, it’s beyond special. I’m deeply grateful and so happy that people are enjoying Recipe for Joy. 😊 I’m also using lots of smiley faces of late with the exclamation points and ALL CAPS emphasis!
I think I’ve entered the annoying post-launch phase where I just gush gratitude left and right. I promise I won’t go on for too long here. But I do need a little runway because I want to boomerang some of this love right back. (Metaphors, analogies, it’s all getting scrambled up!)
A Joyful Launch
Heartfelt thanks to everyone who came to the Scarsdale Library to launch Recipe for Joy (and to everyone who couldn’t make it but was cheering on from afar!). To have friends come from all walks of my life (J-school, journalism, writing conferences)…
to have dear friends come from Cleveland, New Hampshire, and DC…
to have my sister, who’s a veritable human-Swiss army knife of joy, can-do spirit, silliness, and complete comfort, swoop in from Chicago and spend a week with anxious me (not for the faint of heart, my friends!)…
to have my husband be the husband he is and for his fantastic family whose orbit I’m so lucky to be a part of…
to have my agent there and dear writer friends who feel like family supporting me…
and for people I didn’t know come to see what my book was about…What a special, sparkly afternoon it was!
So much so it’s driven me to run-on sentences with odd punctuation. 😊
I’m So Grateful
Thank you to everyone who pre-ordered Recipe for Joy and to everyone who’s recommending it to friends. I’m at the ’80s-shampoo-commercial stage of book publicity: hoping that someone reads the book and then they tell two friends, and then they tell two friends, and so on and so on and so on. 😊 I’m a big believer in organic, world-of-mouth book recommendations, so if you enjoyed Recipe for Joy, join the ’80-shampoo-commercial fun and tell two friends about it. 😊
Now that my wee one is out in the world, know that if your book club is reading Recipe for Joy and you’d like me to join in your book discussion, I’d love to! There’s really no greater honor, as far as I’m concerned, so don’t hesitate to reach out. There’s a page on my website dedicated to book clubs getting in touch with me, so really, I’m serious. 😊 I can either zoom in, or, if you’re close, attend in person. I’m also arranging some events in Cleveland and Chicago for later this spring, summer, and fall, so if you’re there, here’s hoping I’ll see you either at an event or a book club discussion!
Finally, in addition to being full-on in the ’80s-shampoo-commercial part of book promotion, if you enjoyed Recipe for Joy and wouldn’t mind leaving a review on Goodreads or Amazon (or both—copy and paste away! 😊), I’d be SO appreciative. Because as it turns out, the review phase of book promotion goes hand-in-hand with the ’80s-shampoo-commercial phase. Why is that? Book reviews help others find Recipe for Joy. And you’ve never heard me say this before…Who couldn’t use a little more joy in their lives?
One more time with bubbly book launch feeling: THANK YOU!