Tuesday, March 15, 2011

WARP SPEED LAUNCH PARTY!

So, the night before the WARP SPEED + BOBBY THE BRAVE (SOMETIMES) Launch Party, I made one of my lists. (I'm a compulsive list-maker. Otherwise, POOF! It's outta my head forever.)

The next day, I set my grapefruit half down on -- you guessed it! My list.

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I'm sure I forgot to bring something important, like bags of money for all the guests. Oh well, luckily I had my super secret launch party team watching my back. Yes, that's right. My mom and dad. They provided all the food!!!

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Vroman's in Pasadena provided the books . . .

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(See the small trees? Those are bonsai and my dad created those.)

Soon, the guest started arriving. I always freak out before book parties because I'm afraid no one will show up.

I was wrong. Hooray!!!
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First I talked about WARP SPEED and how the book came to be. I also read from the novel . . .

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Of course, since Marley, the protagonist, is a Star Trek fan, everyone did the Vulcan sign -- you could tell that some people did this all the time, and others, er, not so much . . .

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Because Marley loves Star Trek, and his best friend, Ramen, loves Star Wars, and their mutual friend Max loves Batman . . . I asked . . .

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I'd say it was a tie between Batman and Star Wars, with Star Trek coming in a semi-distant third. (This surprised me.)

Speaking of surprises, as I showed slides of the guys who helped me with some of the book's research ("Hi, Ed!" "Hi, Curtis!"), I mentioned that my Star Wars/Batman expert was in the room, and asked if anyone could figure out who it was . . .

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Not to brag, but I have the smartest book launch guests. They figured out that Matt "DM" Cunningham was standing in the back! (Yes, that's him in the Bat-shirt.) I'll be blogging about the other dudes soon, too.

Next up was a reading from BOBBY THE BRAVE (SOMETIMES). I read the part of Bobby Ellis-Chan, a boy who questions his bravery, and amazing illustrator of the Bobby series (and pal), Dan Santat, played the cat with 27-toes who scares Bobby . . .

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We had so much fun, it was hard not to crack up!!!

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Dan's also the person who shot the launch party video. You can hear him during the blooper reel making me laugh . . .


While Dan was setting up to talk about how he lost 25 pounds with the help of his iTouch app, plus how he illustrated BOBBY THE BRAVE (SOMETIMES), I had a contest to give away one of my dad's bonsai trees. Can you say . . .

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(That's Hawaiian for their state fish, the trigger fish, and is in ALOHA, KANANI.)

These brave people gave it a try . . .
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It was soooo close that the winner was decided by who had the closest birthday coming up! (Jason Sperber, who blogs at "a href="http://ricedaddies.blogspot.com/2011/02/interview-with-author-lisa-yee.html">RiceDaddies, also won a bonsai since he spent his birthday at the launch party.)

After Dan spoke it was time to sign books . . .

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There was more fun to come, but we'll show that on the next blog. In the meantime, here's a hint of what you'll see . . .

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Disclaimer: No proofreaders were harmed (or even used) in the creation of this blog.

PLACES I WILL BE SOON, AND HOPE YOU WILL BE, TOO . . .

The week of March 21, I'll be in Kaua'i speaking about how the American Girl/Kanani books were created.

If you're in the Los Angeles area, stop by my WARP SPEED book signing at Apostrophe in Long Beach, CA on April 2nd . . .
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Lisa Yee









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