It Arrived in the Mail!

Look what has arrived! It's a real-deal book y'all! Sadly, I have not seen it yet. The woes of living overseas. But my family has seen it and I'm pretty sure they are telling me the truth :) These are my advanced copies. I asked my mother-in-law to send me two copies and it cost a whopping $18 in postage so those books better get here because good grief. I can't afford to pay the postage for my own book!

Today I got on Amazon and noticed the book is no longer labeled as "pre-order", but the kindle version is. What? So, perhaps if you order it now they will actually send it to you now!! How cool would that be? Except, so much for a grand "Book Release Day" because apparently it has already released. Oh well.

So, in honor of all of us totally missing release day...whenever that was, you can apparently order it now. And I'd BE SO PUMPED if you would get on Amazon and put a review on there. That would be great!

Now, another exciting thing was that last night I met via Skype with someone from the publisher to record an interview for an upcoming podcast. Wow, that's a first for me. They wanted audio AND video. Yikes. That's unfortunate because I don't like my hair. But it's supposed to be about the book anyway so I decided to get over it and agree to the interview.

Besides the issue of my hair, there was the issue of where to set up my computer. Not in my "office" because it is more of a "crawl space" behind a giant wardrobe. And it's very messy. Not the living room because of three students doing homework and a dog that would want to sit in my lap and I don't want to be a crazy old dog-lady. Well, Kris is gone, so I took over his office.

Next problem. His office.

How to make a man's office look like a cozy living room...amazingly, I sort of did it! Look at this!

Can't you sort of think that I am sitting in a cozy living room or at least in a very cool looking office. I mean, awesome wall-hangings, a fresh ivy, family picture, cool looking lamp. "Welcome to my livingroom, all five people listening to this podcast!"

Look, I even brushed my hair and put lipstick on! I had to hunt for lipstick because seriously, who wears lipstick over here? I was once told (in a very Southern drawl) that "A Southern girl ALWAYS wears her lipstick for a picture..." (awkward pause) "you do have lipstick don't you?" To which I replied, "Does chapstick count?"

So I hunted down and actually found...well, it was more of a tinted chapstick, but pretty darn close to lipstick. I slathered it on my lips and immediately got grossed out and wiped off half of it with a kleenex. At any rate, this is what I looked like for the interview. Cozy, professional. Well, at least decent.

But to appreciate the efforts I went through, you need to see the full picture. This is what it actually looked like in there:

Yea, note the golf clubs shoved over to the left, papers barely out of camera shot. My soccer shorts go nicely with my fancy top, right? Don't you wear soccer shorts and flipflops when you are being interviewed? Hey, don't judge. If you had to do it at nine o'clock at night, you might have done that too. 

I also had to instruct my kids not to play their loud music or talk loud, puleeeeeeez, for half an hour. And I had to steal the dog's new squeeky toy that she carries in her mouth at all times and when she sleeps, she lays on top of it so no one will steal it. So she was distraught for half an hour last night. I shut the office door and could still hear her sniffing through the crack between the door and the tile floor.

Well, thankfully, the internet across 10,000 miles apparently makes the video a tad scratchy, so maybe the scene will look like a cozy living room and my hair will look awesome. I plan to post the link here whenever they put it up. They said it would be closer to the release day. 

Which brings me back to Amazon, who says they can now send it...and today it says only 2 left in stock, more on the way? What? 

Is this part of being a new author? Being in a perpetual state of confusion? At least I'm enjoying the ride!

I hope you'll get a chance to read Side By Side and will spread the word!

P.S. Oh, and I created a hashtag which is hilarious seeing as how I don't really know what to do with it. But those of you who do and want to help me spread the word, you can use #SideBySideNovel.