Last Monday I was invited to a meeting of the Best Kind Book Club. I walked. It took half an hour. On the walk I thought about how being an author means people read your book secretly, when you are not looking. I am still not used to this. I would like to be there, just to make sure everything is going okay. Or I would like to know when you are reading my book so I can send warm thoughts to my characters, who are performing. Also, I would like to see the set you are using. The food. What kind of airplanes.

But this is impractical. Readers read books behind authors’ backs. I know that.

Except! Sometimes readers will invite you behind the scenes. Sometimes they will show you the set.

Last Monday night, I, the author of Come, Thou Tortoise, walked into the Best Kind Book Club meeting and lo! Real-life oranges in castles, “Piety” pie, licorice allsorts, a toy mouse, a windup tortoise, model airplanes (Lufthansa and DHL - not Qantas - profound apologies), a Jell-O orange castle with a flag on top, homemade chocolate tortoises. Kelp!

I batted my eyelashes. So these are the hands my book has been in - the best hands, the best kind of hands. I cupped an orange in a castle in my palm. I had never seen a real one, didn’t know they existed, or could exist. I had just made them up.

The Best Kind Book Club welcomed me back into the book I thought I had lost and fed me Tortoise food and shared their sets and told me about the performances they had seen in their minds - each one different - and we laughed about some funny things that had happened in those performances.

When the time came to go, they wouldn’t let me walk. They gave me a drive. They sent me home with parts of the set, including an orange in a castle. I put the castle on my counter. I marveled at it. I took pictures. I thought: this is the best gift I’ve been given, ever. I can’t eat it. Yes, I can. Imagine eating something you imagined. Imagine.

Am I the only one who felt queasy before my first book launch party? For days before, I’d been haunted by a vision of me standing in a room with 5 other people: bookseller, caterer, spouse, son, and one independent witness to my humiliation. So as I walked down to the venue, my hands were actually shaking. What kind of reception would The Agency: A Spy in the House receive?

Fortunately, I am a bad prophet: we packed the house!

But I learned a few things about launch parties that I’ll apply to my next one:

1. Arrive much earlier than you think is necessary. People started trickling in at 7pm for a 7:30 start!

2. Get your camera out right away. I forgot about mine until the 3/4 mark, when the jam-packed crowd began to thin out. Yes, I really regret that.

3. Plan some music. My friend Sarah made a CD (I feared might be the only source of noise in an echoing room). The party turned out to be so loud that no one could hear the music, but I maintain this was a good back-up plan. If worst came to worst, we could have had a rave.

4. Choose an appropriate space. Ours was the beautifully restored limestone building that now houses the Body Now 4 Mums studio in Portsmouth Village, Kingston. It was the perfect setting for a novel set in Victorian London, and it got people talking.

5. Work with an experienced bookseller. Oscar Malan of Novel Idea was enthusiastic and he called me the week before to say he’d ordered “a wackload” of books. I cringed, thinking how grumpy he’d be lugging them all back to the store. In hindsight, he was right and I was wrong. Not that surprising, given our respective years of experience in the world of books.

6. Invite kids (if you like them, obviously). I do, and feel that most parties are improved by nicely behaved children. They relax the adults, ask delightful questions, and make excellent topics of conversation if you’re stuck for small talk.

7. Feed your masses (budget permitting). Oscar chose the wine. Joanna Malan provided fabulous nibbles: garlicky spanakopita! rhubarb compote! pita with za’atar, sumac and vegan-friendly toppings! chocolate-covered marmalade! kid-friendly carrot cake! homemade limeade served in tiny green bottles with straws! and many things I didn’t even get a look at.

8. Ask someone to bring you food & drink at the midway point. If it’s a great party, you’ll be hungry, thirsty, and have no idea of the time.

9. Bring more pens than you think you’ll need.

10. It’s really happening. Smile so hard your face hurts.

Mind you, this probably won’t stop me from nervous foreboding then, either.

[Ed. note Visit www.yslee.com for series updates, and be sure to enter the More Loot contest!]

Signing a book for dance buddy Jane, at Babar en Ville

WHOOSH! That sound you just heard? That was February rushing by. And the thump? That’s me, landing on my butt in March, thinking “did that just happen? Did I just do that?”
Do what, exactly? Everything. Seriously:

1- Launch Rhythm and Blues (a teen comedy of ambition, identity and Auto-Tune!) with my favourite Montreal writer friends, at Babar en Ville.

Reading and mingling with guests, including authors P.J. Bracegirdle, Monique Polack and J.L. Scharf, and illustrators Susan Mitchell and Suana Verelst.

2- Keep the party going all month with SweatFest, with my dancing buds at Studio Sweatshop, where we all did twenty eight street dance classes in twenty eight days.

3- Finish a whole manuscript draft for a future project of unknowable fabulousness.

4- Read 5 1/2 books, including C.K. Kelly Martin’s I Know It’s Over, Dave Eggers’ Zeitoun, Chris Cleave’s Little Bee and Gayla Trail’s Grow Great Grub.

5- Do fun authory things like go to writers union workshops, and speak on a panel for Yes Oui CANSCAIP, to help other writers figure out how to get their books out there.

The Babar en Ville party was warm, and fun, with lots of food. I got up and did a reading, and there was plenty of time to chat with new friends and old, and sign a few books!

At the end of SweatFest, there was a prize draw, and two intrepid SweatFesters, Janice and Julio, won copies of Rhythm and Blues, and Break on Through.

SweatFest Winner, Janice

And here’s a hot tip: February is over, but the winning is not! If you’re in Montreal, and want to pick up a copy of Rhythm and Blues or my first book, Break on Through if you go to Babar en Ville between now and March 17th, you still have time to enter our contest to score dance classes and Reebok, shoes!