As a treat for finishing Runaway and the Book Blast tour, Glynn and I decided to leave the world behind for a few days. Finding a Travelzoo deal, we headed for the other end of the state and booked a room into an upscale hotel. And this was actually an upscale joint, not one of Glynn’s “Hey, baby, this place is so upscale! They have cloth towels!” kind of places.

This picture is of the hallway that led to our room. The moment I saw it, I thought of the Overlook Hotel. Glynn must have thought of the same thing because he looked at me and said, in a low voice, "Redrum." Fortunately, no ghostly little twin girls haunted the walkway at night. Unfortunately, a noisy ice machine did its best to disturb our slumber, anyway. At least our drinks were cold.

So we were in a hotel in Scottsdale, Arizona in late June -- and you know where it's really, really hot? In Scottsdale, Arizona in late June. One of the guests on our floor had come to the hotel to attend a wedding ceremony there and, as he pointed out within seconds of meeting us, he wasn't a fan of the weather. "I hope the wedding party all passes out and falls down", he said, and we wondered if maybe he should have just sent a gift, instead. Then he showed us where the ice machine was located – “You can’t miss it, it’s right across from your place” – and we wondered if maybe this was the room dedicated for Travelzoo bargain hunters.

But, overall, we had a great time. We did a little shopping, saw the Egypt exhibit at the Science Center, went to Aunt Chilada's for Mexican food, and attended our first High Tea (and the Goddess of High Tea, Julie, was amazing). When we were ready to check out, I realized I hadn’t checked our Amazon sales numbers for days. Taking a moment to do so, I saw that things were popping along at a decent pace. For a time, however briefly, “Anne Glynn” even had a rising “Amazon Author Rank”, something that was nice to see because it meant that people were downloading our stories.

Frankly, I was feeling fairly good about the whole writing thing. Maybe I was finally getting things together.

When we returned home, I discovered the paperback edition of Runaway in our mailbox. The actual, physical book looked great. Opening the cover, I read the dedication: “To L.M., who makes lemons from lemonade” … and then my eyes kind of went all blinky and I had to read it over again.

A few seconds later, I started to laugh. Glynn and I had gone over the manuscript a dozen times, we’d had beta readers go over it almost as often, and no one had ever noticed the wonky dedication. Immediately, I called my friend, L.M., and read her the dedication. She started to laugh, too. 

We both agreed that maybe I have a little bit further to go before I really get things together.  

So asketh the Good Witch when she returned from vacation. As if she didn't have internet access down at the lake and hadn't cruised the thirty sites that were sponsoring our new novel, The Runaway Mail-Order Bride .

"Good and bad," I told her.

(I also mentioned I was going to use this post to show a photo of Dale Chihuly's glass balloons -- or whatever these beautiful bubbles are called -- because I liked the balloons and I liked Glynn's picture. The Good Witch said the photograph was a little random but she enjoys random so here it is.)

There are at least a dozen book tour outfits but Glynn and I went with Goddess Fish because a friend recommended them. Marianne from G.F. was lovely. She was always friendly, she answered my emails quickly, and she patted my hand when I needed some reassurance. When the tour was over, she remained in contact, just in case there was something else I needed. What more can you ask?

G.F. also sold more slots than I'd been promised, which was kind of a miracle. I was guaranteed 15-25 slots and they found 31 interested parties. They provided links to every site and all but one of the sites was up and running when I stumbled out of bed. Since G.F. wants their authors to post in the morning, I had to set my alarm for 5 A.M. which, I'm telling you now, is part of the bad. The vital we'll-save-you people of this world -- the nurses and firemen and policemen and such -- well, we need them out of bed and ready for action before the sun has risen because stuff happens. But fiction writers need to be treated with a touch of delicacy. Let us sleep in, awaken us gently as you enter our room, bringing us coffee and chocolate chip pancakes ...but never before noon. Yes, that should be the rule.

Many of the tour sites were lovely (you know who you are) but a few of them were so filled with other tours, books, and promotions, all on or around the same day, that it felt as if any individual author or novel got lost in the clutter. Only a few comments were made at any of the participating locations, which is fairly common according to Marianne, but it felt a little lonely on those sites where the only obvious visitors were Goddess Fish and me. The novel’s sales ranking improved steadily throughout the day. Sales were modest – our Amazon sales ranking went from 186,000+ to the 30,000 range – but probably would have been better if Glynn and I used Twitter or Facebook or Tumblr or Pininterest or did anything else in the world to have promoted the Book Blast. All we did, all we wanted to do, was to list it here, on our website.

Oh, and one of the bloggers gave us our first review and then posted it on Amazon. That was very good news. Thank you, Brenda Casto. The next day, a second review appeared on another of the Book Blast websites and we were told we could post it to Amazon. Thank you, Ruth.

Since the novel was launching, I also decided to see if I could send out our first newsletter through MailChimp. I found the process to be pretty easy, meaning the email/newsletter was probably terribly messed up, but I didn't send a copy to me so I don’t know for certain. Oh, and a couple of new subscribers joined the day of the tour, so I counted that as a ‘win’, too.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going back to bed. I’m waiting for Glynn to bring me my chocolate chip pancakes and a cup of half-caff. That doesn’t seem too much to ask, does it?

If you stopped by here yesterday, looking for a blog post, you probably didn’t find one. If you did find one, you went to the wrong site. I was intending to chatter on about my recent Book Blast tour but stuff happened.

Wednesday morning went like this: Glynn and I went out to the local pancake place for breakfast, we ate pancakes, a good time was had by all…except maybe our waitress, who wasn’t having the best day of her life, but that’s another story. (Alison, I’m telling you now, the man is nearly 40 years old. He’s spent most of his adult life in college, studying for a series of degrees, while you’ve supported him by delivering delicious pancakes to your appreciative customers. Also, semi-delicious hash browns. Not matter what you told him last night, the odds aren’t good that he’s finally going to go out and find a job, especially when he tells you he wants to get ANOTHER degree. Just an observation.)

As we’re driving back home, I was mentally organizing my day ahead – (a) write blog and (b) finally get my garage sale ready, because I’ve been meaning to do this for months now, the spare room is packed with boxes, and it’s time to pull the trigger – when Glynn pulled the car up to a stop sign and stopped.

Which, apparently, was the wrong choice because the auto behind us didn’t stop.

Well, it did, inevitably, but only after schmunching into our back bumper, sending bits of vehicle everywhere and pushing our car across the intersection. After checking all involved for broken limbs and bleeding pieces, the other driver offered her opinion that there wouldn’t have been an accident if only Glynn had kept his foot on the accelerator.

“But it was a stop sign,” Glynn said, and I could tell that the woman wasn’t impressed by his strict observation of the law. In time, a motorcycle cop stopped by who displayed a little more appreciation of the traffic laws. After he wrote his report, he gave the other driver a ticket. Until that moment, the three of us didn’t know that anyone would be getting fined. When the second driver objected, the policeman explained it like this: “There’s a rule. You’re not allowed to drive into things.”

The rest of the day was spent with insurance companies and the local auto shop and “stuff”. No blog for me. But next week?

I won't be going out for pancakes. We should be good.

It's book cover/book launch day and I'm maybe a little (lot) more nervous than I'd expected to be. Somehow, I'm going to mess this up.
 
Glynn says, I shouldn't worry. The Good Witch says, of course, I'll mess this up, because she and I always mess things up. But as long as we can laugh after, it's okay.
 
I hope she's opened a bottle of wine. I don't drink but she does and maybe I can get a buzz through osmosis. Or something.
 
I've never done a virtual book tour before and I was concerned that the Goddess Fish crew might struggle to fill the 15-25 slots they promised. On their website, they write, "NOTE: we always attempt to book the maximum number of stops purchased but will not guarantee it", so the Good Witch said that meant we'd get at least fifteen bloggers posting our cover, which is fourteen more people than have ever cared in the past. Then, when only five folks signed up in the first couple of days, the Good Witch tried to reassure me, saying that "five" was a good number, especially if you were wanting the correct number of fingers on one hand.
 
I squeaked a little at Marianne at Goddess Fish, but she was never worried. When I finally took a deep breath, I found my full fifteen -- and more. These are the people that raised their hand to mention my book (and I'm so grateful to them):
 
1: Book Reviews by Dee
2: Book 'Em North Carolina
3: Our Wolves Den
4: Andi's Book Reviews
5: Journey of a Bookseller
6: Hope. Dreams. Life... Love
7: Something To Browse
8: Brooke Blogs
9: Tina Donahue Presents
10: Queen of All She Reads
11: WV Stitcher
12: Let's Get BOOKED!
13: Room With Books
14: TeacherWriter
15: Dawn's Reading Nook
16: Deal Sharing Aunt
17: The Pen and Muse Book Reviews
18: My Devotional Thoughts
19: You Gotta Read Reviews
20: The Book Review
21: Buried Under Romance
22: Lockdown - A Bunch of Brilliant Projects
23: Writer Wonderland
24: Two Ends of the Pen
25: Warrior Princess Romance Writer
26: Dori Lavelle
27: Mismatched Bookends
28: Reviews by Crystal
29: Lisa Haselton's Reviews and Interviews
30: For the Love of Bookends
31: Romance Novel Giveaways
 
If you get a chance, please stop by one of the sites above and say hello. There's some pretty interesting people in the list above plus we're giving away a free e-copy of our novel at every stop. And if we're going to give away stuff to anyone, we'd especially like it to be you.
 
See you next week.