I'm Having a Book Launch Party and You're Invited!

Let's meet up! Without leaving home!

Jun 28, 2024

In a few weeks, I’ll be heading out across the country on a book tour to talk about my new book, The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession. I hope I’ll see some of you when I’m on the road, but before I leave, I’m throwing myself a virtual book launch party on Zoom, right here at home, just for all of you newsletter subscribers.

This isn’t going to be like the rest of my book tour events. I’m going to talk more about the process of writing the book and how it fits with the rest of my life, creatively…and since I’ll be at home, I’ll also show you some of the original art and talk about how that came together. I’m also happy to share more about the process of developing the proposal, working with my publisher on the concept for the book and the design, and all that insider-ish stuff.

Me and my book and one of my tree friends

Also, because I know a lot of you already, I’m hoping that we can have more of a conversation! So I’ll be inviting you to ask lots of questions, so that we can turn this into more of a chat.

Details:

Tuesday, July 16 at 5 PM Pacific/8 PM Eastern. I’ll record this event & send out a link afterwards for anyone who can’t be there.

Please pre-register right here. You’ll get a confirmation email from Zoom with the link.

Signed copies are available for pre-order from Broadway Books here in Portland. I’ll go over there and sign all the books they have before I leave on book tour on July 17. Any orders that come in while I’m on the road will have to wait a bit, until I can come home and sign more copies.

It’s been a wild couple of weeks around here

The run-up to a book launch is always such a maddening combination of nothing happening and everything happening all at once. When it’s quiet, I’m doing things like wondering why nothing’s happening (that’s the main thing I do), trying to figure out the ultimate travel wardrobe (for the sweltering July heat! that looks professional! but not too professional! and can be washed in the hotel sink!)—or hand-painting a million of these little cards, which I’m sending out to all the tree collectors who were involved in the making of this book, along with a bunch of other people:

pssst: paid subscribers: I’ll be teaching you how to make these in a couple weeks!

When it’s busy, I’m doing podcast interviews (bought a new USB microphone! but why isn’t it working?), flying to San Francisco to meet a camera crew to film a major national TV segment about the book that I can’t tell you about yet (more wardrobe crisis! and they want me to paint on camera! so I need all new better art supplies!) while simultaneously fielding offers for my next two books (how does anyone even write a book? I think I’ve forgotten how to do it!)

Also, I weirdly have to read my own book just to make sure I don’t flub any interview answers! I know this sounds crazy, but I’ve talked to enough authors to know that this happens to all of us: in the middle of an interview, when the pressure is on, our brains immediately lose all relevant facts about our books: names, places, dates, numbers, the Latin names of trees… So although I feel ridiculous doing it, I am STUDYING for this tour, too!

More to come. There’s going to be a lot of book and book tour and life-on-the-road-related news over the next couple of months. I’ll try to make it entertaining.

Need some video help? Hire my brother!

My brother, Jason Stewart, is definitely the funnier, more talented, and harder working of the Stewart siblings. He’s an artist, a musician, a novice surfer, and a great dad. You’ve never met him because he works behind the scenes in Hollywood as an editor and VFX/motion graphics guy—but you’ve seen his work.

He just finished doing visual effects on Apple’s new hit show Dark Matter. Over the last couple of decades, he’s worked on all kinds of popular shows and movies. He’s been to Sundance with some cool indie films he edited. He got to work with Robin Williams, if you can imagine sitting in an editing booth and watching every one of Robin’s takes over and over to find the funniest one.

And now…you can hire him! He can do straightforward video editing of any kind, but he also does visual effects (like he can turn your kitten into a dinosaur), motion graphics (he can make your logo spin around), and much more. You can contact him directly through his website, or hire him through a freelance platform like Fiverr or UpWork. I barely understand all the high tech wizardry he can accomplish, but fortunately he did what he does best and made a video:

Anyway, if you know anyone who needs to make a video look amazing—he’s your guy!

Paid subscribers are painting trees

Today I’m sending out the third in a series on painting trees. Everything we’re doing is also helpful if you want to paint any kind of greenery or landscape. And of course, these are basic watercolor (and colored pencil/marker) techniques that will serve you well no matter what you want to draw and paint.

For the price of a pencil or two, you get a weekly art lesson sent to your in-box, the occasional live Zoom, a pretty robust archive of lessons to dip into at your leisure, and you help keep the lights on around here. There’s also an option to join at a higher level and I’ll paint your vacation photo (or some photo), use that as a lesson for my subscribers, and mail you the finished painting. Notice that this “Patron of the Arts” level lets you choose the amount!

The Bit at the End

I’d love to see you on book tour! Many of these events ask that you pre-register.

Order a SIGNED copy of my new book, The Tree Collectors: Tales of Arboreal Obsession, from Broadway Books in Portland, OR.

Come find me on Instagram, or see paintings for sale- Right here

Order signed copies of some of my books from my husband’s bookstore, or order my books and many books I love at Bookshop.org

Take one of my online writing or art classes here

Leave a comment! I love to hear from you!

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