How to Celebrate Your Pub Date

July 3, 2012

I decided this party wasn't going to be a traditional book launch party. Instead, I wanted it to be a celebration of our friends to thank them for how generous and indefatigable they have been in their support, enthusiasm, and cheerleading. They've talked to chefs about my book and given a copy to Dave Eggers. They mounted an incredibly effective Twitter campaign and won the battle in less than ten minutes. They've listened to me whine, fret, complain, and freak out, and they've tolerated it, they've calmed me, and they've told me I could do everything I said I could not. They've let me interview them, picky their brains, and they've delivered postcards all over town. Oh, yes, so about those postcards...

5000 shiny, blue, beautiful postcards for SUFFERING SUCCOTASH and every single one of them had the same embarrassing typo. Many critical eyes, including my very own, looked over that postcard text before printing, but we all missed it. It happens. My fantabulous editor at Perigee Books quickly ordered a corrected reprint of the 5000 postcards sent to me. Yet, even with the corrected reprint, the questioned remained: what do you do with 5000 typoed postcards?

Invite them to a party.

Originally, I thought about blowing up the cover to poster size and slicking it across the door but, you know, I had 5000 typoed postcards. Why not be all green by using them in my party decorations instead of just pulping them? I was just going to collaging my entire front door with them. It looked cool, it was bizarre, it would make my guests laugh.

But then I went outside and made a Suffering Succotash tree.

And I decorated the kitchen.

And the bathroom.

I thought about making a tablecloth out of them, but that was veering into an Ed Gein territory of crazy, so I resisted.

Today, the OnTrac guy will deliver my book. The copy I ordered myself, because while I do have about 60 author copies sitting in stacks around the house, I just wanted the experience of ordering my book and having it delivered to me on The Day. I have this vision of ripping the package open right in front of the OnTrac guy, telling him, "This is my book! I wrote it!" and then giving it to him. Of course, he'll be touched and read it immediately upon leaving my house and it will change his life and henceforth he will always treasure the memory of the wild-eyed author who ordered a book only to give it away as soon as it was delivered.

Unfortunately, that vision is supplanted by one where I struggle with the plastic zip tape that cuts through the cardboard perfectly about 50% of the time and rips completely off in my hand the other 50%, so by the time I tear the package open with my bare hands, rip my book free from its shrinkwrapped sarcophagus, and try to give it to the delivery guy, he will be back in his OnTrac Eurovan and I will have to run down the cul-de-sac after him, wildly waving the book I ordered but now want to give it away panting, "This...is...my...book! I...wrote...it!"

All of which will cement my neighbors opinion of me when they saw my Suffering Succotash postcard tree: butterfly nets are too good for me.

But dude, I wrote a book, y'all!