How do you celebrate a book release?
Readers ask me how I celebrate a book release.
The truth is, I generally celebrate other milestones. Before I was published, I marked each submission because I couldn’t control if a publisher would buy one of my stories, but finishing a manuscript was up to me.
So here is me…outstanding in my field. (Joke) It’s not really my field.
When I submitted a book, I took my husband out for dinner. It didn’t matter if the book was accepted or rejected. (They were rejected a lot!) Either way, we went out, because finishing a book and having the courage to submit that story deserves to be celebrated.
Later, when I was published, we modified this celebration. Now I took my husband out for dinner when the completed book was submitted to the editor. Hurrah! Mission accomplished, and lets have fun before it boomeranged back with revisions. We did that for years.
But now, in the time of COVID19, I’ve modified celebrations again. We haven’t been out to dinner for over a year. But there are still some wonderful ways to have fun.
Jaw-dropping, packed with twists and turns, and impossible to put down until you reach the final page. Fans of Robert Dugoni, Lisa Gardner and Rachel Caine will be totally addicted to The Hunted Girls.
I celebrated sending in the final proofs for The Hunted Girls to my editor by taking a day off and going berry picking.
After shutting down the computer, we headed to a local pick-your-own berry place. The fields of bushes sat in neat rows and went on and on. The day was cool, and we decided to take three buckets, each of which should hold six pounds. It never occurred to me that I might be picking more than I could handle.
This isn’t like picking berries from the low, scrubby berry bushes that grew in the woods and meadows in New York. These bushes were taller than I was, and the berries were huge. I’m used to berries the size of tapioca. Sweet, but small. It took hours to pick and most of that time was wandering around trying to find another bush.
Berries in Jenna Kernan’s mask. Easy social-distancing in a berry patch!
I’ve loved berry picking for as long as I can remember. Plucking ripe berries from their stems reminds me of my childhood.
My mother had a deal with all of us kids. If we picked three full cups of berries, she would make a pie.
I brought her blueberries, raspberries and blackberries. I never did pick enough wild strawberries. They were so tiny, but so delicious.
Now the picking was so easy and FAST! I had a choice of several different varieties, each with a description of flavor and form, marked by spray paint on the outermost bucket. Blue was the Spring High Blue, first to ripen and very sweet, indeed. We also collected a bucket of Jewel-Purple said to have a tart, sweet flavor and finally the Emerald-Green, just coming ripe. This one might produce the largest berries.
All together we collected thirteen pounds of blueberries.!
What in the world was I thinking? Now what am I going to do with that many berries?
I’ve eaten berries on my yogurt, made blueberry pancakes and blueberry muffins. I’ve had them over ice cream and blended in my smoothies. Then I made jam.
18 Jars of Blueberry Jam!
My sisters and nieces love jam and there are no blueberries ripening in the northeast. So I packed them up and sent them each a jar. Each box cost eighteen dollars! Has postage gone up that much? Yikes! From now on I’ll just sent them ten dollars and tell them to go buy some jam!
Now that I have only 12 jars of jam left, it might be time to head back out to the field to pick more berries.
Do you live on the Gulf Coast of Florida? Here’s the berry place I visited:
Albritton Fruit Farms
Family Owned. Family Operated.
https://www.albrittonfruitfarms.com/