The Queen of Hearts

For those of you who are planning on attending the launch party for my book, you are in for a treat. I say this not out of vanity or an overinflated opinion of my writing skills, but rather because of what my wife’s imagination has conjured up for the event. Honestly, when the idea of a launch party was first presented to me by my publisher my first instinct was a hard pass. But when I mentioned it to Pam it was like waving a red towel at a charging bull. She immediately took over the project.

May 6th is probably the absolute worst possible time for this to happen. In our family, May has always been a sort of hell month. An astonishing number of our family members happened to be born from late April through the end of May including, both of our children and my father in law. Then there’s the small matter of our 40th wedding anniversary on May 19th. So planning something which neither of us have any experience with in the middle of all of this is challenging. It will be the largest party that Pam has planned outside of the weddings of our children and for those there was a wedding coordinator. For this thing…there’s my relentless, creative, and indomitable wife, along with a cadre of family and friends she has recruited to help her pull it all off.

At this point I should probably contrast for you our two visions. First mine. I thought we would set out some chairs, throw some snacks on a table with maybe some bottled water or coffee. Then after some mingling I would give a brief talk about the book, read a section, then sit down at a table with boxes of my book stacked up on it and start selling and signing them.

Now…Pam’s

I will not go into any specific details here since the plan is still in the formation stage but suffice it to say that Pam’s vision compared to mine is like a royal wedding at Buckingham Palace vs. running off to the Justice of the Peace. Its like the difference between Taylor Swift’s Eras tour and Darrell and the Drifter’s two night gig at The Pour House. At Pam’s launch party there will delicious snacks, punch, wine and book-themed cake. There will be cool banners, an actual set with chairs, a lamp, ferns and an actual semi-famous emcee. There will be decorations all over the place based on my protagonist’s gambling skills, including but certainly not limited to a roulette wheel. There will be a poster-sized edition of the book. There will be a deck of playing cards with the book on the cover, along with a super cool coffee mug for me to hold in my hand to identify the author and to keep him from fidgeting…

That’s about all I am at liberty to share at this point. You’ll just have to come to see it all for yourself. I married the Queen of Hearts.

https://dougdunnevant.com/rsvp/