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…I mean, yes, okay, I was a published author before, with Creampuffs, and all my various short stories, but there is something very different between self-publishing and having someone else decide your book is worth the effort.

In case you didn’t know, Brain Lag publisher Catherine decided that Blackout Odyssey was indeed worth the effort, and BOO finally launched August 13, 2021!! It’s real! It happened!!! For all of those keeping track, I started querying BOO in January of 2019; I sent out 128 queries before Catherine sent me a “yes” in September 2020. And now it’s here! IT’S A REAL BOOK BEHELD BY SEVERAL REAL PEOPLE!!

Well okay there were more people than that who bought copies but they don’t all have twitter. YOU GET THE GIST I THINK

August 14th, 2021 was not only the 18th anniversary of the blackout, but my official launch party. Due to the seemingly never-ending plague, we elected fairly early on to have an online launch party. Quite a few people asked me if that was a bit disappointing. Maybe a little; I couldn’t see the chat comments (Catherine read some of them out but that’s not the same) and it’s hard to justify a buying a spread of snacks when everyone is online. BUT Lil and Marc were my tech support/peanut gallery and so after the online portion wrapped, we had warm beer (to toast the blackout!) and cupcakes (to toast my success!!) and that made it very much like a Real Party, albeit small.

The better news about the launch party being online is that YOU CAN STILL WATCH IT! It’s currently on Twitch. It features an interview (of me, how crazy is that), some q & a where people share their blackout memories, my reading from the book (I did fairly well, if I do say so myself, and totes fooled everyone into thinking I wasn’t extremely nervous: success!) and I believe a guest appearance by my cat Emmett, who despite knowing better, leapt onto the chest of drawers I was using as my background.

If that’s not a summation of 2020-21 I don’t know what is.

Due to a bit of a hiccup in the printerly sphere of getting a book published, I have not received my copies, and do not know what the book feels like, to hold. (My author [!] copies [!!] should be arriving sometime in September. Luckily people who pre-ordered are already receiving theirs.) But I definitely plan on making a little unboxing video, and I will publish that here, when I do.

I WROTE A BOOK AND THEN I SOLD THAT BOOK TO A PUBLISHER AND NOW IT’S A REAL BOOK YOU GUYS!!

It took ONE HUNDRED AND TWENTY EIGHT QUERIES to find that one yes!, and if I can sum up my one piece of advice to other writers out there, it is this:

NEVER GIVE UP
NEVER SURRENDER

There is a home for every story, even weirdo genderbent retellings of The Odyssey set in Toronto.

…what a trip.

Tagged with Blackout Odyssey

vfeistner

Victoria Feistner is a novelist, a graphic designer, and an artisan in equal parts, although some of those parts are more equal than others. She resides in Toronto with her husband and two fur children, also known as cats.

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