Lisa Yee's Blog: 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.

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!!!

Vroman's in Pasadena provided the books . . .

(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!!!

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

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 . . .

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

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 . . .

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 . . .

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

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 . . .

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

These brave people gave it a try . . .

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 . . .

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 . . .

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 . . .