My launch for How to Tend a Grave last week was a wonderful event! I’m happy to report that total nakedness didn’t happen, and I didn’t get crumbs on my dress either (more later). Thanks so much to everyone who came and made it such a success, and to everyone who sent congratulations and good wishes. Your support is deeply appreciated.

Thanks to Ben McNally of Ben McNally Books for hosting. What a gorgeous space! If you’re looking for a place to hold a launch, I highly recommend this bookstore. But even more important, I’d like to thank Ben for being in the business of selling books. That’s what it’s all about, after all. So if you’re looking for a place to buy books, again, I highly recommend this bookstore.

Thanks to my husband Allan, my daughter Caitlin, and my friend, writer Lena Coakley, for so graciously offering to help with everything. They kept me calm, and I couldn’t have organized and survived my book launch without them.

Books don’t just happen either. Writers need help all along the road to publication. So thanks to my family for their unconditional love and support over the years. They sustain and inspire me. And thanks to Great Plains Publications and my stellar editor, Anita Daher. I am so grateful to everyone for believing in my book.

Thanks to Michael Galan for his photos of the launch, and also for taking the time last fall to visit a historic cemetery with me to shoot my author photo for the book’s back cover.

Thanks to Nicolle Thow, emerging cake artist, who made the fun cupcake cookie favours (shown in baskets on the signing table) and the absolutely amazing book cover cake for me. She didn’t even balk when I told her it had to look like a gravestone. She just went ahead and produced a delicious vanilla cake filled with vanilla frosting and fresh strawberries.

My mother always said, “Be careful that your words are sweet, in case those words you have to eat.” Right. Thanks, Mom! So here I am, literally preparing to eat my words, because despite all my fretting, the launch went really well. And the reason I didn’t get crumbs on my dress? The cake was so popular I almost missed tasting it at all. Luckily someone saved the last piece for me to take home.

How to Tend a Grave is out in the world now. Thanks again, everyone, for everything. Roses to all of you!!!