Launch Day for January and July

JANUARY AND JULY is out today (July 7)! You can order at your preferred stores here to meet “tenacious bookworm” and intel analyst January Holte and rookie bodyguard July Whitlock.

And I’m just gonna say: launch days can be weird.

I’ve had launch days where I was doing my first signings and felt horribly nervous about talking about my books or my process. But grateful beyond belief that anyone showed up at the signing to even listen to me or ask a question or buy a book.

I’ve had launch days where I’m embarking on a two-week book tour and launch days where I’m at home.

I had one launch day where I was standing in the ruins of my burnt-down home and had to cancel half the tour because I did not feel comfortable leaving my wife and children for a week in the immediate aftermath of losing our home. (Life matters more than launch.)

This is a quiet day for a loud book, no signings this time around, and the promotion is mostly digital. I am slowly learning the power of Instagram. (@jeffabbottbooks, if you want to find me there) and my publisher has kindly made cool animated videos and graphics and has taken videos I have made and made them nicer. So I’ll do all the mentioning and posting and arm-waving that’s required in a world where our attention spans last a few seconds. (I’m not judging, I’m the same way.)

But the real launch is when you, the reader, opens the print edition or ebook or begins the audiobook . . . and starts to read that first sentence. Starts, hopefully, to be drawn inexorably into the world I have spent months creating for you. Starts to lose your sense of time as you read, and before you know it you’re fifty pages in and oops you meant to start dinner or it’s past your bedtime. That’s the true launch, that moment of special connection that only happens between reader and book.

That’s the launch I hope you all have with JANUARY AND JULY. And launch days are days of thanks: thankful for the incredible team I get to work with at Blackstone Publishing and my agents, for the readers who have supported me and encouraged me, and for my family and friends, who have always been there for me.

Thank you, and have a great day and a wonderful rest of your summer!