Five Days and Counting Down

Saturday, March 27, 2010

Is “Nerves” an emotion? No matter. Mine are standing on end. If one more person says, This is a once in a lifetime moment! You only have a first novel launch once! I’ll just deck ‘em.

And this thing of being the center of attention. Good grief. Why do you think I chose a career where I could hold the spotlight on someone else?

We’re planning a launch party – I’m okay with some of it – the celebration of the book is a good thing. And the chance to share, with so many who made it possible, the solid sailing of this ship, is something I can get behind. I’ll get to shine a light on a few of the folks who should be credited – and that will please me very much.

Frank has just written a lovely little piece that the women's website WowOwow requested, as the first of their essays by celebrity 'husbands'. He points out the fact that at an event, I’m just fine as long as you give me a job to do. Play quiet cocktail-party piano in the background, is what I used to be asked to do at party after party–unpaid entertainment, okay, but it’s what I felt happiest doing, so everyone won. But passing the food, filling the glasses, cleaning the kitchen floor – all of those things I’d gladly do instead of standing at the center of the room, smiling, like a happy, confident center of attention.

So—come Wednesday night, when our office is filled with parrot tulips and we embellished the shirts of the wait-staff with our signature William Morris flowers, pulled directly from the beautiful cover of "The Season of Second Chances", and there are even tulip cookies to sweeten the fare; when the glasses are filled with Proseco and our 907 orange and fennel Vodka, and our wonderful, inventive caterer, Andrea Giardino, has cooked up delicious treats (that promise to be nothing like the things Teddy would have made), I might be just be found playing cocktail piano back in the corner – and maybe then – I’ll be in my real comfort zone.