Personal Digest Saturday: August 30 – September 5

Life news this week: 

• My family and friends ambushed me with a book release party on Saturday, the rats. It was super cute. I got a cake that said "Author Sextraordinaire" and a big framed poster of my book cover. And lots of attention and food (with a fruit arrangement sent from my sister).

• Well obviously, my book came out on Tuesday. I took most of the week off work so I could be not too distracted and get to enjoy the event. It's on my publisher's page now.

• Um, but in all honesty Pitch Wars ate the week. The whole week. I wrote feedback for all of my 103 submissions and the responses took hours and hours and totaled about 60,000 words. The feedback thing wasn't required but I like to do it. Maybe I was throwing myself into that to distract myself from the publishing thing? I don't know. I made some friends. Everybody seems thrilled with my feedback.

• I picked Megan Paasch as my mentee, with her lovely New Adult fantasy Charlotte Elemental. It has two things I really like in it: Fae characters, and a query letter that mentions (gasp) a boy and a girl whose plot doesn't appear to revolve around their feelings for each other. I also picked Natalka Burian as my alternate. Her Adult Literary novel Everything Is Flowing was probably the weirdest thing in my inbox. In a good way. About a machine that lets people see an ancestor or relative's past, and some girl who uses it and experiences the birth of a star. (Wut.)

• The audio book of my book is cool. You can listen to the sample of the book and decide if you want to get the whole thing.

• I finally finished all of the Amazon and Goodreads reviews I was posting. So now my author account on Goodreads is up to date and full of delicious reviews. Those who have friended me/added me there will finally start getting my updates on what I'm reading, but there are over 900 reviews there now.

• I ate at IHOP with Jeaux this week. We went to his house to watch America's Got Talent and listened to Night Vale. The September Monologues were great :D

Places featured:

• Why/Why Not in-depth interview on SL Huang's blog.

• Brenda Drake's blog featured my book on its release date.

• This AVEN thread is about my book.

• Petticoat Pedaler Lilian writes about being jazzed to win my book in the giveaway. Lilian was one of five winners out of over 500 entrants!

• Skyhorse Publishing: my publisher listed it on their site as a new release.

• The Asexual Agenda made reference to one of my interviews and my reviews.

Reviews:

• Video review from Davy Dave: One of my YouTube fans gives a short overview of why my book is important and how my work has helped him.
• Queenie's Review on Concept Awesome.
• Sciatrix's Review on The Asexual Agenda.
• Avani/Avi/Queen of Carven Stone posted the same review on Goodreads, Amazon, and Tumblr.

Reading progress:

• Finished Eyeshield 21 Volume 22 by Riichiro Inagaki and Yusuke Murata. ★★★★★ (Five-star review)
• Currently reading Behind the Scenes by Dahlia Adler.

New singing performances:

I am singing "Invisible Touch" by Genesis here. Figured after releasing The Invisible Orientation I should sing about something else invisible. :)




New drawings:

Webcomic Negative One Issue 0486: "A Word For You."

New videos:

None, but you can watch Davy Dave's video review:


New photos:

My youngest fan devours the book.

The cake from my party.

The attendees of my party.

Social media counts:

YouTube subscribers: 3,756 for swankivy (30 new this week), 374 for JulieSondra (1 new). Twitter followers: 542 for swankivy (4 new), 698 for JulieSondra (22 new). Facebook: 269 friends (4 new--added a few Pitch Wars pals) and 134 followers (minus one) for swankivy, 394 likes for JulieSondra (2 new), 48 likes for Negative One (no change), 80 likes for So You Write (no change). Tumblr followers: 1,506 (23 new).