It’s been a long time in the coming!
Even though I received my advance copies of the final book in my Kendra Kandlestar series back in March, it’s only this week that the book is officially available to the public.
You can buy or order it at your favorite bookstore, and I ask that you please do, especially if you have a young fantasy author in your life.
We celebrated the launch of the book at the end of May with a giant party. I suppose we weren’t just celebrating the new book, but the entire series. Here are some of my favorite photos from the event . . .
My lovely wife, Marcie, was the official greeter. She spent hours doing her “Een” hair:
But she wasn’t the only one wearing Een-style braids at the party. In fact, we had a “braiding station.” Even the boys put braids in their hair. (Because everyone—boys included—wears braids in the Land of Een to honor their founder, Leemus Longbraids.)
Also, everyone who arrived had to fill out a form to invent their own “Een” name. So, pretty much everyone had his or her own alias for the entire evening.
Here’s the entire series on display, along with the museum of Een artifacts.
What’s a launch without great food? Check out this beautiful Kendra cake, designed and baked my friend, Carrie. Gorgeous!
Plenty of Eenberry beverages were on hand, too!
It was almost a shame to have to cut the cake. We ended up removing the Kendra topping (I just couldn’t bear to damage her).
There were many activities at the party, including “Pin the braid on Kendra” and “solve a secret code,” but there’s no two ways about it—the most popular station was “Survive the Rumble Pit”, which was managed by friend, author James McCann. It’s a card game played with Dungeons & Dragon dice. You pick a warrior and a weapon and then battle other contestants. Nothing is more fun that to watch a mouse with an onion try to fight a giant with a pickle. (But, hey, those are all things from the Kendra Kandlestar books!)
As part of the festivities, I did a short presentation on the background for Kendra Kandlestar series. This was a lot of fun because I got to show photos of some of the real-life places that inspired the book and talk about how they connected to Kendra’s overall journey.
We had a lot of great prizes at the launch, including T-shirts, buttons, and posters. But the grand prize was an original piece of artwork from the book. Here’s a photo of my emcee, Dona, and the winner, Joseph. (He’s looking pretty pleased with himself!)
Of course, the great thing about a launch is that you get things coming the other way. This is a card made by Sarah (or, as it says on her tag, Sarla Sunstar) and her brother. (Looking at this photo now, I see that I was really rocking the Tin-Tin hair that night!)
A big thanks to EVERYONE who helped make this a huge success. I called in all my author friends to help. James McCann ran the Rumble Pit, kc dyer took photos, and Kallie George (who is also the editor of the series) managed the braiding station. And a super big thanks to my actress wife Marcie Nestman who squeezed in all that extra time during a busy week of directing and acting to help with the launch.
Between the Cracks of Here and There 