Wednesday, September 06, 2006

Release Day!

This is a day of firsts for me. It was my little girl's first day of senior kindergarten. And it is the official "street date", "lay down date", or release day for my first print books, Sin and Wild Nights. Both are from Kensington’s erotic romance line, Aphrodisia.

It was a strange day of celebrating and working. First thing this morning I received an email from a reader who had just started Sin and was enjoying it. This was hugely exciting. But waiting for me was the remaining 200 pages of page proofs for my January book. I stared at the stack and it stared at me. Finally I decided to write back to my reader--that was way more fun.

Then I remembered I had to do contact a bookstore marketing manager about a booksigning I'm going with best-selling author Jo Beverley, a writer I really admire. Emails were sent, pictures gathered, a blurb written. This will be my first print book signing.

As lunchtime arrived, I tackled the proofs. This time celebrating and promotions had to wait. The proofs were in great shape. Although I had to scratch my head in one place--how could I let two different butlers end up with the same name? Hopefully that's a correction I can make. But just as I prepared to mark up my proofs for the last time, I received a wonderful email. I'm going to be on an erotica panel at the 2007 Romantic Times convention! I was way too excited to finish page proofs then. So we decided to go out and celebrate all these firsts. The kids had a great time, and now…it's back to work.

7 comments:

JoAnn Ross said...

Huge congratulations on all those firsts! And I'm glad you took time to celebrate. That's one of the things I'm still working on.

LOL about the butler, but don't worry; I've found that Kensington is really good about getting those corrections in. I think part of that is because the authors actually get to deal with the actual production person, instead of having to go through their editor. At least it worked that way with my Brava books.

Bonnie Edwards said...

Congratulations, Sharon!

What a great day to have. Seems the good things happen in bunches and kudos to you for remembering to celebrate.

There is a different kind of joy, more deeply personal, I think, when you hear from a reader.

Having just completed page proofs, I understand the call to work when all you want to do is bask in the joy...

Enjoy, Sharon, and have a great time at the signing with Jo,
Bonnie

Jennifer Y. said...

Congrats!

Anonymous said...

Mega Congrats, Sharon!

*tosses handfuls of glittery gold confetti into the air*

Celebrate large, as JoAnn suggested.

Faye

Sharon Page said...

Thank you JoAnn,
I'm amazed you have time to sleep, never mind celebrate!

Thanks for the reassurance on the butler. Kensington has been great about corrections so far. I find that copy editting, which usually has to be done fast, can be so overwhelming that something gets missed.

Sharon

Sharon Page said...

Thanks, Bonnie,
It is so true about how touching and personal the joy is when a reader contacts you. I met a reader at Atlanta who asked me if I was planning a story about a secondary character from A Gentleman Seduced--it was wonderful to know she remembered the characters and wanted to see more of them.

Sharon

Sharon Page said...

Thanks you, Faye, for the confetti! There's nothing like glittery gold confetti to make a celebration special.

Sharon Page