Book Tour & Launch Party Pics

I promised pics. But I won't mind if you don't check them out. They are probably much more interesting to me than anyone else.

At Brockbank Elementary, during my second day of school visits.

I love how many of the kids have great ideas when we are making up the plot for a story.

Three of my helpers with their posters.


Before the launch party begins.


Thank goodness people are buying books!


Not quite Stephenie Myer lines, but the line was there pretty much through the whole event!

My littlest guy serves cupcakes

I signed over 400 posters

Cool cupcake cakes, huh?

That's me and Paul from Barnes and Noble. I'm being interviewed by the local news.

The Launch Party

“J Scott Savage, ace reporter, here on the scene to report to you from what some people are calling a whirlwind of activity.”

Okay, I’m not really a reporter. And, to the best of my knowledge, I’m the only person calling it a whirlwind of activity. And even I hadn’t ever called it a whirlwind of anything until I wrote this. So you are officially allowed to take the rest of this post with a grain of salt or two. But I promise that everything else I write here today will be the way it all really happened.

When last we left off, it was Thursday night. I had just completed my first round of school visits and was—hopefully—prepared for the second round. First of all, let me just say that I LOVE school visits. I love the way the kids give you these curious looks when they file in. I love the way some of them wave. I love the feeling of energy as the entire gym becomes packed with kids. The teachers do a really good job of keeping things in check. But the rumble of voices and the wave of excitement are palpable. So I was really pumped to go back out.

Friday

This time, I called all three schools I was visiting in advance, which made things much smoother. When I showed up at Brockbank Elementary, the first school, everything was ready, which made setting up much easier. By the time the kids filed in, the projector was running, the first slide was up and all of the props were in place. I felt much more comfortable with the presentation too. No pauses, trying to remember what the next slide was. The new clicker worked like a charm. It even has a little laser doohickey so I can point things out on the screen. In fact, the only problem I ran into was that some of the story cards got turned around so I was showing the back “hidden” part. But no worries. We had a ball and the kids were great. They even took a picture of me with some of the students for the paper.

I finished Brockbank at 10:15, and the next school wasn’t until 12:45. My wife was at Sam’s Club with my parents buying chips and sodas for the launch party, so I called and asked her if they wanted to meet me at Cracker Barrel for lunch, where my son works as a server. When we got together, they all laughed at how I was losing my voice. It’s funny though, because my regular talking voice will get hoarse, but my presenting voice is just fine. It was nice to have a little break. Then on to the next school.

American Leadership Academy is a K-12 charter school, so I was in an auditorium for this one. Usually I am in a gym. This time I was up on stage with a huge screen and spotlight. That was cool, but there were two issues. First, the person who sets up all the equipment had forgotten about the event, so he wasn’t there. Suddenly there was a mad rush to find someone who could plug everything in. Second, my clicker doesn’t reach clear up to the sound room, so I can’t do my own slides. Fortunately, my wife is the Parent Council President there, and she got everything together like a champ. The presentation went great! Thanks Jeff and Johnny.

The one other funny thing I wanted to mention is that kids are really funny about autographs. Have you ever seen the line at Disneyland when one of the characters comes out? Generally I sign posters, bookmarks, and obviously books. But if one kid asks me to sign something else, suddenly everyone wants me to sign something. I’m totally good with that as long as we have time. But what is hilarious is what happens when none of them have any paper. I signed many, many shoes, sticky notes, notebooks, some teeny tiny scraps of paper, and again, had to tell about a dozen kids that I don’t sign hands, arms, foreheads, or any body parts. They assured me their parents wouldn’t mind seeing my name on their child’s head in permanent marker, but being a parent myself, I had to respectfully disagree.

My last school, Riverview, was at 2:30, and it went great as well. The students were funny, involved, and really seemed to enjoy the presentation. I even had one of the students bring me back the extra bookmarks and launch party invitations, as I was packing up. I thought that was pretty classy. Thus ended my second day of school visits. By Friday night I was confident I could take my show on the road without too many worries. Now the big question. Would any of the kids come to the launch party?

Saturday

Even though I was extremely nervous about the big event, I slept like a log Friday night. Usually I read for a while before I crash, but I was so tired, I fell asleep as soon as my head hit the pillow. At eight o’clock I popped wide awake though. We didn’t need to go pick anything up until 10:00, but I took a drive by the library just to see if the tents and chairs were out on the lawn. They were. (Thanks, Sterling!)

For several months, my wife and I have been planning the event. We decided to provide free food along with the posters to really give things a party atmosphere. Fortunately, Shadow Mountain agreed to cover the expenses. Spanish Fork Smokehouse BBQ and Pizza gave us a great deal on enough pulled pork sandwiches to feed 500 people. My wife ordered 300 cupcakes. Originally the plan had been to do four large cakes with the Water Keep cover on them, but Wal-Mart has these great “cakes” that are actually made of cupcakes. So we had four book cakes plus a bunch of assorted cupcakes in the Water Keep cover colors.

We had also gotten a ton of publicity for the event. The Deseret News ran a great article that included information about the party. The local cable channel did a story. The city sent out notice of the event in everyone’s utility bills. And of course I visited seven schools over two days. But two days earlier, I’d been talking to a friend and telling her how worried I was that no one would show up. Did she reassure me that there’d be a big turnout? No. Instead she told me about a well known musician who’d recently had an event where, despite massive publicity, no one showed up and they even forgot to have lights for the event. Thanks LS! J

So with all this in mind, we flash back to Saturday morning. I’d had nightmares that it would be terrible weather or everyone would forget the setup. But it was a beautiful day, with clear blue skies. Two big banners fluttered on the library lawn announcing the event. Two tents were set up with tables and chairs on the library lawn, and the Smokehouse tables were also set up. So far so good.

At 10:00, my wife and I went to Wal-Mart and picked up the cupcakes (Have you ever seen 300 cupcakes? It draws a lot of attention!) We also picked up ten bags of ice. Every time someone asked, “When’s the party?” Jen told them, “Come to the library. It’s going to be great!” She’s an awesome PR person.

At quarter to 11:00 we pulled up to the library and started unloading. Hopefully we’d thought of everything: extra pens for signing, tape, scissors, posters, bookmarks, chips, drinks, two big ice-chests. A few minutes later, my parents showed up with the drinks. By the time we were done setting up, everything looked great. Now it was time for me to go home and get changed into something a little more author-like than my jeans and t-shirt.

You know that feeling where you’ve invited all your child’s friends to a birthday party and no one is showing up? You look at your son’s or daughter’s face and keep saying, “Don’t worry. I’m sure they’ll be here soon.” That’s the feeling I had as I was home alone, changing clothes. What if nobody showed? My whole family would be there. Chris, from my publisher, had said he’d drop by. Even the local news was coming. What if we were all standing around with enough food to feed 500 people and no one showed? One thing we hadn’t taken into consideration when initially planning the event was that at 1:30 (halfway through the event) BYU was playing UCLA in Provo. We are smack dab in the middle of Cougar country, and it would definitely have an impact.

At a quarter to twelve—just as I was heading out the door—my wife called from the library.

“Where are you?”

“I’m on my way. I just took a minute to print a couple of arrows so we could point out where we are to people coming up to the front library door.”

“Well hurry up. People are here.”

“People? You mean real people or family?” Sorry family, I know you are real people. But . . . well . . . you know what I mean.

“Real people.”

Real People! My heart started to race. By the time I reached the library there was a small line. I hurried over to the tent, sat down, and started greeting people. You know how people talk about time going by in a blur? I don’t think I’d ever really understood what that meant until Saturday morning. As soon as I sat down, I focused on the people coming up to the table. It was great—kids, parents, families—signing posters, books, bookmarks. Taking to people about what kinds of books they liked to read. Getting tons of complements on the cover artwork. Hearing from children about how much they liked the school presentations, and even a few people who had already read or started reading the book.

Lots of the kids I’d met at schools came. It was a blast meeting them and talking to their families. Several bloggers I knew came by including Mind of Murph and Suey. People came by who knew my parents. Some of the cutest kids in the world came up to the table all shy and big-eyed. Courtney and Paul from Barnes and Noble were amazed by the crowd. Paul said it was the biggest turnout he’d ever seen for a single author event. Lots of family came. My older sister—and soon to be published author—brought me a beautiful plant. Two members of my critique group, Michele and LuAnn came by. Chris Schoebinger came with his cute, cute kids.

The local TV News and Newspaper came by to cover the event. All my fears of no one showing up disappeared in a wash of the nicest people. Every time I looked up there was a line.

At about 1:30, when the game started, there was the first break in the line. I thought it was going to wind down, but before I could even finish a sandwich, the line started up again. I didn’t realize how caught up in things I had been until the line finally wound down. I checked my watch and realized it was after 3:00. Then I realized everything and everyone except my wife was gone. Smokehouse was just putting things away. All the food was gone—ALL the food. I was absolutely astounded.

Final recap? 80 books sold. 400+ posters signed. 500 BBQ sandwiches, chips, and drinks consumed. 300+ cupcakes gone. Some incredible number of bookmarks given away. And a ton of new friends made. I would consider that a pretty big success considering that the most books I’d ever sold at a single signing was less than twenty.

I’ll post pictures later today. But I just wanted to tell everyone who came by, thanks so much for making the party such a great success. I wish I could have talked to you all longer, but it meant so much to me to have you there. Now it’s time to buckle down and finish Land Keep. But today, I’m just going to relax and bask!

The Big Day!

I know that yesterday was the official launch, but today feels like the day. This is where I find out if anybody comes to the launch party. The good news is that I’ve already pre-sold one book, as a teacher gave my wife a check to buy one. Later today I’ll give you more info about yesterday’s school visits (I signed shoes!), today’s launch party, and all the stuff I’ve missed. (Like, say, all my other blog tour stops!) Wish me luck.

And let me pass on my best wishes and prayers to the people of Texas. I hope you and yours are all safe.

Craziness

I know I have been the most absentee blogger of all time lately. And considering how much I like to blog and keep you all updated, this tells you how crazy busy things have been. I keep saying, “Things will calm down a little once . . .” Once I get my ARCs sent out, once I get my interviews done, one I get my school presentation done, once my launch party is over.

You get the idea. I’ve got so much I want to talk about, but it just seems like I never have time to sit down and type, and when I do, it’s usually trying to meet the deadline on Land Keep.

But I really want to tell you what’s been going on, and I promised I’d give you a glimpse inside launching a new series. So here goes.

First of all, the books have hit store shelves pretty much everywhere. I have reports from Barnes and Nobles in several states, pretty much all the local stores, and even a Costco here in Utah that had an entire shelf of Farworld books. Here’s a picture I took in a local bookstore. Even people who have ordered from Amazon have reported receiving their books in the mail. If you have read water Keep and haven’t posted a review yet. Jump over and post if you have a chance.

Also as most of you have probably seen, the new website is up http://www.readfarworld.com/. There are several things we need to get added and fixed, but the designer had gallstones or kidney stones. Anyway, some kind of stones. So that got slowed down a little. But I love the look and feel they gave it, and I’m excited we could get elements like the forum, the blog, the teacher section, etc.

One of the things I feel very strongly about is that a web site should be community oriented. It’s cool to have the first chapters of the book, the map, the characters, etc. But it’s even cooler to have a site that is updated regularly. A place where I can talk with other readers and writers about books, publishing, school visits or whatever. I can’t stand static web sites. So I really appreciated all the support I got from Patrick, Chris, and the rest of the SM marketing team.

The next thing we went to work on was the PP slides and the overall school presentation. This was a very tricky thing to nail just right, because we wanted to create a presentation that would keep kids as young as Kindergarten entertained, but would also be educational for kids as old as sixth grade. Not an easy task. I wanted to focus on three main areas: encouraging kids to read, teaching the basics of plotting a story, and reminding the students that they all have magic inside them, and even though they are young, they can accomplish great things. Of course I wanted to sell some books along the way, since my publisher is providing bookmarks and paying for travel expenses. But I didn’t want it to feel like a commercial for Farworld.

I think we succeeded in creating the right presentation. But then it was up to me to take it on the road. And the day to start visiting schools came up much faster than I expected. In fact today was day one. So let me give you a recap of how may first day of school visits went.

Wednesday night, I went over my presentation what seemed like a dozen times. I checked the props for my magic trick and printed out my maps. I went to bed late, but figured I was all set—especially considering that my first assembly wasn’t until 9:30. Of course this morning I woke up and instantly realized all the things I had forgotten. I needed three 8 ½ by 11 cards for my plotting game. Where was the poster board? I couldn’t find the memory card for the camera. I needed to make a couple of last minute changes to the power point slides. Suddenly it was 9:00 and I hadn’t even loaded everything into the car. Fortunately it was a short drive to the school but I got there only a few minutes before 9:30. Fortunately they had everything set up. Unfortunately it takes a long time to get 900+ kids into a gym.

That’s right 900+! What an exciting way to start out my school presentation career. And let me just say the students of Spanish Oaks Elementary are awesome. They were doing this handclapping singing thing that could have landed them a gig on Letterman. And all the kids took part while the rest filed in. The younger kids were on the floor in the first 2/3rds of gym and the older kids brought their chairs in and sat in the back.

Unfortunately the wireless mouse I thought would let me remotely change slides wouldn’t work more than like two feet from the computer. Fortunately, my lovely and talented wife Jennifer was there to help me out. Doing the presentation was amazing. You can’t imagine how cool it is to have 900 kids laughing their heads off and taking part in all the games.

One thing I quickly realized however was that some parts of my presentation were taking too long, and others needed a little more detail. Also, since Jen didn’t know the PP slides, we were a little out of sync. I also need to buy myself a wireless hand microphone so I can get to the back of a large group of students when asking or taking questions. But I had a ball, and hopefully the students did too.

The second thing I learned was that you should never schedule two schools fifteen minutes apart no matter how close they are. That does NOT work. Because I showed up only a few minutes before 9:30, and because it took about fifteen minutes to get all the kids in the gym and get started, I finished my presentation just about the time that I had to start the next one.

Again, much thanks to Mrs. Savage who helped me shove everything in the car and race to the next school. Canyon Elementary was especially fun because it is just around the corner from my house, so I know many of the kids. It was a slightly smaller group because it was just the 3rd through 6th grade. Also, my wife and I were much more in sync. The kids and I had a lot of fun making up a story about a magical giant boy who was ugly but quite friendly. Everyone was very nice and one boy even asked me to sign his forehead. I had to decline on the basis that I thought his mother would kill me. He suggested the back of his hand, but I set a firm rule of not signing any body parts.

From 11:15 to 1:20 we had a slight break. I was hoping it would be a relaxing hour and a half. But another emergency jumped up to bite us. Along with bookmarks, we were handing out invitations to my launch party which is Saturday at the Spanish Fork Library. (More about that later in the post.) But when we checked the box, we realized we’d given out nearly all of them. Quickly we called FedEx Office (formerly FedEx Kinkos) and begged them to make more invitations by 1:00. They came through like champs.

Breathing a sigh of relief, we e-mailed them our file (Thanks for sending it to me, Keith!), and headed to lunch at a local restaurant called Magelbys Fresh. Blacked chicken-stuffed breadsticks were exactly what we needed. Then we rushed off to pick up the invitations and head to East Meadows Elementary. One other thing I learned (are you sensing a trend here?) is in setting up the tour, we didn’t pass along the information that we needed a screen, power cord, etc, clearly enough—or it didn’t get to the right people. Everyone was great about getting things set up, but most weren’t expecting a projector. This was especially an issue because the last two presentations were only 30 and 35 minutes long, and again only twenty minutes between assemblies.

We had a ball though. Part of the presentation is a game where the kids try to guess the elements of a story by asking yes and no questions. What they don’t realize until later is that they aren’t guessing the story at all, but actually making it up. This can have some pretty funny consequences. In this case, we came up with the story of a fifteen-year-old girl with a goatee who was saving animals from a bunch of bad guys.

Again, we had a great time but ended up late to the next school, Larson Elementary. And now there was no wiggle room, because we were right up against the end of the school day. Let me tell you, that was the fastest school presentation I have ever done. But we got through everything—including the story of an orphan boy fighting an evil magician. Afterward, I had tons of kids come up and ask me questions. These kids knew their authors. One was very impressed that I knew Brandon Mull. An aspiring author told me that K.L Fogg had told her about a book that you needed to buy to get an agent or a publisher, but she couldn’t remember the name of the book.

“Writers Market?” I suggested.

Her whole face lit up. “Yes, that’s exactly it!”

She promised to come by my forum and ask lots of writing questions. I even know what her user name will be, so I am looking forward to hearing from her. Lots of students thanked me. And many promised to come to the launch party on Saturday. And let me tell you, talk about polite kids. As Jen and I were starting to carry our things out the back door, several students came up at the same time. The oldest boy held open the door, and said to the other kids. “Stand back, let the grown ups come through.”

What a great time we had! I have to give a huge shout out to the students, teachers, and staff of Spanish Oaks, Canyon, East Meadows, and Larson. You were all great. Thanks for putting up with this neophyte and making my first day such an incredible experience!

Finally the day was over. We picked up our own boys from their school, (I go there tomorrow), and headed to my parents’ house for sub sandwiches, swimming, and games. A great way to end the day. (Okay, actually I’m ending the day by writing this blog and then putting each of the schools stories on my forum like I promised, but that’s beside the point.)

What did I learn today?

1) Schedule each school at least 30 minutes apart minimum. You need some wiggle room.
2) Call the schools in advance and make sure they are aware of what you need.
3) On the way to my parents, I bought a good Targus clicker, since Jen won’t be with me tomorrow.
4) I couldn’t do it today, but before the two week tour I will buy a hand held cordless microphone. It is essential if you are going to interact with the older kids who are generally sitting in the back of the gym.
5) Kids love to laugh. I am keeping track of what parts of the presentation made them laugh the most and making sure I keep those parts in.
6) Tell things in your own words. As soon as you start to read your presentation, kids start to squirm. I’m not saying kids don’t like to be read to, but if you try to read a book or even a section of a book to 900+ kids, you will start to lose them.
7) However kids love to hear about your story. You should have seen their eyes light up when I told them about the bad guy who captures Marcus and turns into a giant black snake. They ate that up.
8) If you are going to do school presentations, start close to home. I can’t imagine how much more stressful this would have been if I’d been trying to pull this whole thing off by myself on the road.
9) Finally, kids are awesome! They tell it like it is, but they are so willing to take part in any activity. It made my heart swell to hear a whole gym full of kids shout, “The most powerful magic is inside ME!!!” Let me just say that despite what you might hear, our country is going to be in good hands in the future.
10) And that is a huge credit to the great teachers we have. These students were so sharp and creative. There is no doubt in my mind that their teachers are doing an incredible job in panting great seeds in these fertile little heads.

So that’s it for day one. Tomorrow I hit three more schools. Brockbank, American Leadership Academy, and Riverview. I think I’ll have things more under control. Of course at the same time, my wife and I are finalizing everything for the big launch party on Saturday. Which brings me to my last point.

If you are anywhere near Utah County, COME!!!!! It’s going to be a great party. We have a local barbeque place serving free barbeque sandwiches. We have four Farworld cakes that are actually made of cupcakes. We’ve got free posters, free sodas and chips, drawings. We’re selling and signing books. And twenty percent of the proceeds go to the Spanish Fork library.

Here are the details.

Where: Spanish Fork Library
49 S Main StSpanish Fork, UT 84660(801) 798-5010

When: Saturday, September 13th 12:00-3:00

We’ve advertised this like crazy. We’ve sent out notices in all the Spanish Fork utility bills for the last month. I’m inviting something like 5,000 kids from eight schools. I’ve got family inviting everyone they know. And yet I still have nightmares of no one showing up. So come if you can. And cross your fingers if you can’t. Now I need to update my forum. Then get some rest.

More tomorrow.