My book launch

Hi! You know, I've recently published and launched my book, and I'm really proud of it! Thank you to everyone who has bought/read a copy. The rest of the post speaks for itself!

Now, I guess I should probably start with why I wrote the book. You might have read one of my posts about why I started blogging. I would like to add another reason : I don't like handwriting. I always found my  handwriting messy and hard to read, but I used to write a diary, like, with the pen and notebook sort of thing, but I really couldn't read some of the entries myself. And I definitely can't now. So when my mom introduced blogging to me, I was overjoyed because it meant that I could :

a) Write down only the important stuff and not write about the days when nothing happened (Dear diary, today I woke up and got dressed, brushed my teeth and- *yawn, snore*).

b) Type instead of write

Anyways, I really enjoyed blogging, so a thought occurred to me : why not compile the posts into a book?

So that's what I did. Of course, there were probably some chapters and stories in there that aren't here. Anyways, after a lot of editing, I finally had a complete manuscript, and I pitched it to the publisher myself!

Now, time-skip forward, it was the night before the book launching at Eslite Bookstore, and I was practicing with my brother Joe, who was going to be my emcee. After that we went straight to bed. It took me quite a while to fall asleep, as I tried to imagine what the next day would be like. I didn't even come close to forming an actual picture in my head before falling asleep. The next morning, when we went to the bookstore, almost all our relatives were there (one of my uncles even came overseas to surprise me!), along with a lot of other people I didn't know. I was very nervous, but also happy and proud that so many people had showed up to watch the launching of my book which was about me.

During the book launch, a lot of important people came on stage, because guess what? I got the record titles : Youngest Book Author in the Malaysia Book of Records, and Youngest Nonfiction Published Author in the Youth Achievement records. They required witnesses who were "notable figures," and we ended up inviting quite a few. Again, I was quite nervous and proud about my book, because to be honest with you, at first I didn't even expect to get it published!

While onstage, although we hadn't really practiced, I could almost answer the questions without thinking. Maybe it was because all the questions were about me in a way, since the book was about me, most of the questions about the book were about me too, but whatever the reason, at times it felt like I was watching someone else answering the questions, or watching a playback of me answering the questions.

Then afterwards, was the book signing. there were a lot of people, each bringing with them between one to six books for signing. Now that is a lot. But after finishing the signing, I felt a great sense of achievement at completing so many tasks for something that I felt worth it.

But to be honest with you, after all of that, the thing I wanted to do most was to read a book. I mean someone else's book. Not because I didn't like my own, of course, but because, actually, one of the other reasons I was inspired to write my own book was because I enjoy reading myself. A lot of my written vocabulary came from context clues while reading, just as my spoken vocabulary came from listening and joining in conversations. In fact, maybe right now as you are reading this, I'm be reading some other book📖, lost in storyland.

With pride and joy ~Nicodidiary