It’s official: Rules for Ghosting is a published novel!
This past week has been an absolute roller coaster of emotions. I’ve laughed and cried and been overwhelmed by how much love I’ve received and smushed down a bunch of imposter syndrome and shared so many special moments I’ve lost count. But I’ll round up a few of them!
I had my official book launch event at Bluestockings Bookstore in New York, and it was incredible! I was baby-author nervous that no one would come, but we ended up with a packed room — and it wasn’t just people I knew! My beloved agent sibling Haley Jakobson did such an amazing job moderating (seriously, get her to moderate your book events!!!) and the audience questions were so fun and insightful. Some highlights from the evening:
My college roommate bringing her grandmother to the event, and said grandmother asking one of my favorite questions of the night, about how I felt about joining the “funeral home fiction canon” and whether or not I’d read FUN HOME, which, obviously I have. (Did the cast recording feature regularly during my early writing sessions? Maybe!)
Getting to facilitate a fabulous small-worlds-collide meeting between my fellow debut author Ella Dawson, who wrote the fabulous But How Are You, Really?, and my childhood friend Jaime Lamchick, who narrated the audiobook of Ella’s novel.
Getting to meet my publicist and marketing manager in person, and having my entire amazing book team in one place!
Impulse-buying $40 of stickers as stress relief before the event got started and feeling not even a little bit guilty about it.
An audience member asking if I had a “writing bag of tricks” that I use whenever I’m working on a new project, my brain going immediately blank, and answering, “I have a bag of em dashes?” Because I am nothing if not predictable.
Getting to take a photo with some amazing friends from the Story Grove, one of my beloved writing discords, who came out to support me.
Going out for fancy drinks and un-fancy fries (thank you to my editor for swinging by Shake Shack on the way to the bar for us!) after the launch and decompressing from a night of Being A Professional Author by chatting about queer karaoke, life-changing books (because…obviously), and the trials and tribulations of hosting lip-syncing parties.
And of course, getting to do a signing line — a true author bucket list item!
I obviously didn’t want the in-person event people to have all the fun, so I also got to team up with my friend Ella (of But How Are You, Really fame!) for my first-ever Instagram live! It was super fun and a total treat to have a more informal chat about the book — and I didn’t even say anything that would get me in trouble with my parents, who were listening in! Honestly, a victory in and of itself.
One of the things I was most nervous about going into launch week was obviously how people would feel about the book, and I’ve been honestly overwhelmed at how lovely people have been. I’ve also gotten to do some (surprisingly not-scary???) press, and have been part of some amazing roundups (being featured on LitHub was a bucket list item, I love them!), and even got to write a reading list for Electric Lit! There are a few more things coming out soon (podcasts! YouTube shows! possible additional book events!) that I’m excited to share in the next few weeks — apparently, the fun isn’t over yet.
Debut week might be over, but I’m still — shamelessly!!! — asking your help to make Rules for Ghosting successful!
If you’ve read the book, the most helpful thing you can do is leave a review — on Goodreads, Amazon, social media (feel free to tag me!) or anywhere else! Reviews help show publishers that people are finding and enjoying the book, and it makes them more likely to buy my next projects!
Tell your friends about Rules for Ghosting if you think they’d like it! We all know the target audiences at this point, but word of mouth makes a huge difference in helping books find their readers. Be loud! Be proud! Be gay! Throw my book at people!
Check your local library for Rules for Ghosting, and if they don’t have it on (physical or digital!) shelves, ask them to order it in. Ideally in as many forms as possible!
Lastly, if it’s in your budget, please consider buying a copy of Rules for Ghosting! As much as I wish they didn’t, sales numbers make a difference — not just for this book, but in how much publishers will invest in my next projects, since they’re likely to be just as weird and queer and Jewish. (If not more so! What can I say, I love a niche.)
I’ll have another newsletter coming out soon-ish about the ups and downs of this whole adventure — about post-debut crash, and imposter syndrome, and second book syndrome, and what happens when your goal-setting eyes are bigger than your goal-achieving stomach (listen, it’s been a long week, not every metaphor can be a winner), and all those other fun things. We’ll also be getting back to our monthly Creativity Q&As (and thanks for your patience while I focused on myself this month!) in September, and I can’t wait to share some of the amazing interviews we’ve got lined up. People are doing such cool stuff out there, y’all. It’s going to be so much fun.
But for now, I’m just letting myself be proud. Of myself, of my amazing pub team, and most of all, of Rules for Ghosting, my first literary baby. Welcome to the world, you weird, queer, Jewish, ghostly darling. I can’t wait for you to find your people!
