{"id":496,"date":"2010-06-16T22:42:58","date_gmt":"2010-06-17T03:42:58","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/?p=496"},"modified":"2010-06-16T23:00:26","modified_gmt":"2010-06-17T04:00:26","slug":"nice-and-mean-nyc-launch-party","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/2010\/06\/nice-and-mean-nyc-launch-party\/","title":{"rendered":"Nice and Mean NYC Launch Party!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i830.photobucket.com\/albums\/zz224\/jmleader\/NYC%20Book%20launch%20610\/553.jpg\" alt=\"me signing\" \/><br \/>\nAs I sit down in my mom\u2019s apartment to write about my very first book party ever in this world, planet and universe, major construction is taking place above my head.\u00a0 I cannot for the life of me imagine what kind of remodeling they are doing up there, but it sounds like they are thumping down huge Grecian pillars that will burst through the ceiling at any moment.\u00a0 After the events of this past week, I can pretty much die happy, but I\u2019m also going to put in a vote that I get to keep living.\u00a0 Now that I know how much fun there is to be had when your book comes out, I want to get in as much as possible.<\/p>\n<p>The first book party event took place at The Bank Street Bookstore.\u00a0 Because the bookstore is somehow affiliated with the K-8 school and the teachers\u2019 college of the same name, it doesn\u2019t just have excellent books\u2014it has kits for science experiments and homemade soap!\u00a0 I felt right at home and got to work setting up.<\/p>\n<p>We had mad food, man.\u00a0 My mom had volunteered\/been deputized\/kind of been forced since I was getting in so late to shop, and there was a lot to lay out\u2014including the book-cover cake that my partner commissioned from the Food Emporium and the mom-designed napkins!\u00a0 I\u2019m sure there is some teenage version of myself that thinks these are a little, I don\u2019t know, hinky, but the adult me is like, \u201cThis is great!\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The next stage of the game was the advent of people who made me want to cry with happiness.\u00a0 Which was pretty much all of them.\u00a0 The first guests were high-school students I\u2019d met doing research for the novel.\u00a0 One of them had randomly contacted me a few days before the launch (quote from email: \u201ci hope you&#8217;re not a weird old person who doesn&#8217;t get crazy teen abbreviations\u201d)\u2014and I\u2019d invited him to the party, so I was thrilled when he came (from Long Island!) and brought one of the girls who was on the trip as well (from Connecticut!)<\/p>\n<p>Let\u2019s see, who made me cry next?\u00a0 DP, one of my incredibly talented classmates from the Vermont College MFA, up all the way from Brooklyn where she teaches.\u00a0 So great to see her, although I didn\u2019t get to snap a pic.\u00a0 My 9th-grade English teacher, who for years read drafts of my novels.\u00a0 Family friend Suzy, who inspired me to write for kids in the first place.\u00a0 The principal of the school where I taught, who every year makes that school even cooler.\u00a0 Old friends.\u00a0 Parents of old friends.\u00a0 My sister\u2019s friends.\u00a0 My partner\u2019s friends.\u00a0 My partner\u2019s mom, down from Syracuse.\u00a0 My agent, and her three adorable children.\u00a0 Amazing grad school writers.\u00a0 Lots and lots and lots of people.\u00a0 I was really moved.<\/p>\n<p>One notable moment: Seeing my mom, my 9th-grade English teacher and my agent talking and thinking, \u201cCollectively, they all know way too much about me!\u00a0 I\u2019m not going anywhere near that conversation!\u201d<\/p>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i830.photobucket.com\/albums\/zz224\/jmleader\/NYC%20Book%20launch%20610\/551.jpg\" alt=\"jill micol marianna\" width=\"397\" height=\"230\" \/><\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/i830.photobucket.com\/albums\/zz224\/jmleader\/NYC%20Book%20launch%20610\/558.jpg\" alt=\"me rey alex\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Another notable experience: after hearing many Tenners advise on the subject, I\u2019d decided not to read from Nice and Mean.\u00a0 I\u2019d been advised, \u201cSocialize!\u201d and had set it up more like a party than a reading, although my display did draw in a 5th-grader, who asked her mom to buy a copy.\u00a0 Partly I was following the Tenners\u2019 advice in my set-up, but frankly, there were so many amazing writers at the party (see below), and the thought of reading in front of them reminded me of little girls who pull their dresses over their heads in public.\u00a0 You\u2019re like, \u201cYeah, that\u2019s kind of cute\u2014but not here.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>But you know what?\u00a0 After the party, even though everybody was so nice and congratulatory, I had a strange little feeling like something was missing.\u00a0 (Ogads\u2014they\u2019ve started dismantling the temple again upstairs!\u00a0 They are seriously going to kill us all!\u00a0 Hold on, must change rooms.)\u00a0 All right, what was I saying?\u00a0 Yes\u2014something was missing.\u00a0 It was like going to a wedding shower and not having someone open the presents\u2014a piece of theatre that didn\u2019t have the catharsis.\u00a0 When I read in Boston on Monday (and I will post about that in a moment), I thought, Ahh!\u00a0 This is what the book release occasion needs!<\/p>\n<p>I honestly don\u2019t know if I would do things differently if I had the chance again; I still shudder a little to think of reading in front of some of those guys, which is idiotic, since most of them are from grad school and we\u2019ve all done the writerly equivalent of seeing each other in our underwear anyway.\u00a0 (That is a metaphor.\u00a0 Vermont College is not a hook-up scene, believe me.)\u00a0 I guess I\u2019ll just file those observations under \u201cthings to remember next time you are nervous,\u201d but mostly, I file this night under E for Excellent.\u00a0 Thanks again for coming, everyone.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As I sit down in my mom\u2019s apartment to write about my very first book party ever in this world, planet and universe, major construction is taking place above my head.\u00a0 I cannot for the life of me imagine what kind of remodeling they are doing up there, but it sounds like they are thumping [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[73,72],"class_list":["post-496","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-niceandmean","tag-bank-street-bookstore","tag-launch-parties"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=496"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":509,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/496\/revisions\/509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=496"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=496"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/jessicaleader.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=496"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}