Happy Official Publication Date!

Well, Laura can hardly believe it, but today is the official publication date for GET OVER YOURSELF! For those of you familiar with the book publishing business, obviously the "official" publication date means nothing, except that it provides the perfect excuse to toot your horn about your book.  When Laura's first four books were published, you know, those novels she used to write, her mother would always call her on the "official pub date" in order to be filled in on the exciting events planned for the day. Imagine her mother's disappointment when Laura, each and every time (and you can double that to include the "official pub dates" of all her paperbacks), had to say, "GEE!  There's NOTHING planned for today since today is just the arbitrary date that publishers pick for the 'due date' of your book."  Laura could write several paragraphs right here and right now -- the psychic emotional wounds are still so fresh!  -- about the long silence on the other end of the phone and the subsequent desperate follow-up questions her mother would bombard her with -- "No advertising?  No reading?  No review in the paper?" -- but Laura doesn't want to get off on some crazy embarrassing humiliating tangent.  Because today's a big day.

Laura still has a hard time wrapping her head around the fact that a year ago today she hadn't even gone to Buffalo yet to spend a few days with Patti and get her first batch of messy notes written with a giant Sharpie on many many many legal pads -- Patti talks fast and says so much great stuff that Laura wanted to get down as much as she possibly could as fast as she possibly could -- and today, a year later, the book is actually in bookstores!  Only in America!!!  Laura has yet to go to the local Barnes and Noble or to her favorite local independent bookstore, the New England Mobile Bookfair, where she and her technologically-challenged sister both used to work during high school and part of college -- but she hopes to do that later, once she finishes branting.  Until then, Laura wants to just take another minute and pay tribute to Patti -- and her great taste in ghostwriters -- just kidding! -- and her truly impressive gift for "getting" people and telling them what they so desperately need to hear.  

Laura will be posting information on all the publicity Patti will be doing in the coming months -- there's the Today show, CNN's American Morning, The New York Daily News, Cosmopolitan, just for starters -- not to mention the biggest Single's Mingle ever, arranged by Patti's matchmaking service, Buffalo-Niagara Introductions, and taking place later this month in Buffalo -- but for now, she just wants to thank Patti for choosing her as her writing partner and to wish her a very very happy pub date!