Saturday, August 05, 2006

What a week!

Whhhhhhew! What an exhilarating week it's been! Between getting the mention from Lisa Kudrow on the Tonight Show and my launch party, my head is spinning and it's been nearly impossible to focus. But it's the weekend now, which means my mom duties are in full force, and so I'm coming back down to earth. (Make that scorched earth here on Long Island. The record heat has sucked every bit of moisture from the ground, turning the grass brown and brittle. My flowers look like they were set on fire.)

Anyway, I want to send along huge thanks to the very generous friends who have blogged about me and my book these past days, including Myfanwy Collins, who devoted an entire week to me (what a friend!), and Patricia Parkinson, who took the time to call me for an interview, and then spent hours transcribing (how generous can you get?). Other friends who helped include:

Dave Clapper
Stan Crocker
Katrina Denza
Susan DiPlacido
Mark Ebner
Pia Z. Ehrhardt
Ginger Hamilton Caudill
Melanie Lynne Hauser
Susan Henderson (tk)
Richard Lewis
Political Mama
Theodore Q. Rorschalk
Jordan Rosenfeld
Fred Schoeneman
Robin Slick
Erik Smetana

The only motivation these people had was to do something generous for a friend, and I'm so very grateful and so very touched!

In other news, I did my first drive-by signings this week, which means I popped into bookstores with pen in hand, found my books (on the new fiction table! yay!), and asked a staff member if it would be okay if I signed them. Without exception, the bookstore folks have been kind and welcoming and generous. Not sure I'm supposed to say which stores I visited, as I don't want to ruffle the feathers of those I haven't gotten to yet. But I do plan on hitting nearly every bookstore in Nassau and Suffolk counties before the summer's over. So if you live on Long Island and want a signed book, drop me an email at ellen (at) ellenmeister.com and I'll be happy to tell you where you can find one.

More happy stuff? Last night, for about five minutes anyway, my Amazon ranking was in the five-digit zone. Please, no lectures about obsessing on these numbers! I can't help myself.

Anyway, I think the temperature is supposed to drop to a crisp 85 today, so we might actually do something outdoors, like take the kids to miniature golf. Have a great weekend!

P.S. Can anyone tell me why my links are now appearing all the way down on the bottom of the page, and how I can fix it? Thanks.

9 comments:

Myfanwy Collins said...

Ellen, you make me cry! Thank you for your generosity in answering all my goofy questions. I had such fun hosting Ellen Meister Week. I wish I had it to do all over again.

Whoa that is cool about the Amazon numbers! Who wouldn't obsess?

Drive by signings--what a brilliant idea!

I hope you have a fun weekend. You certainly deserve it!

love,
Myf

Ellen said...

Thanks, my lovely friend! I appreciate you SO MUCH!! Glad you're home now ... I missed you.
xo

Maryanne Stahl said...

Mazel tov, dear Ellen!

xxx

katrina said...

It's so exciting to witness a successful book launching. And it's even better that it's YOUR book! :)

Stan said...

Hi Ellen and thanks...

As to your P.S. I think the problem is a function of which browser your blog is being viewed in. I tried the three that I have. Firefox and Safari were fine. Internet Explorer seemed to be a little mucked up. Links at the bottom etc. didn't look the same.

I wish I knew how to fix it. You will probably have to ask someone at Blogger. Maybe a browser switch isn't functioning right on your blog. That would be a problem in the html that they write, nothing to do with anything you are doing.

Jordan E. Rosenfeld said...

All I could think was that I wasn't doing ENOUGH by just posting a link. So I did however buy a lovely copy of your book at my local bookstore. I will take a photo of me with it (something I think you should invite your readers to do), when I don't look so sleep deprived :)

xo
J

Ellen said...

Thanks Maryanne and Kat!

Stan, I saw some discussions about this problem on Blogger, but I tried everything and nothing worked. Ack! I sent Blogger an email asking for help, and got back an automatic form saying that since they don't answer every email, I should try fixing it myself. Sheesh.

Jordan! I would get such an enormous thrill seeing a picture of you reading it!!!

RobinSlick said...

Aw, it's an honor and a privilege, Ellen.

And yeah, Blogger has been having problems for the last 2 weeks. Our new posts aren't appearing in blogsearch; last week it was impossible to upload a photo the usual way...I had to paste in links...I think the boys at Google in CA are having too much of a fun summer.

And I got the same damn form letter from them. It's just a good thing we don't pay for their services or I'd have popped a blood vessel last week.

Anonymous said...

Can I sign the ones in the bookstore out here?

f